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[b]THEORIA PLATONIC[/b][br /]
[br /]
Now, how do the dialogues fit into Plato's programme? The first thing we must be aware of is that Socrates, Plato's beloved master, never wrote a page, and that Plato himself was quite suspicious of writing. At the end of the Phædrus, after describing how true rhetoric, the true art of speech, should be a "soul's driving" (psuchagogè), he goes on to state his distrust of written speech, which cannot answer objections by readers and may lead to whatever interpretation the reader wants. Furthermore, in the VIIth Letter quoted at the beginning of this essay, written when he was more than 70 years old, and in which he never refers to any published works of his, even when one might expect such references on topics so close to those of some dialogues, and with readers that where supposed to know him well, he says: "from me anyway, on such topics, there doesn't exist any writing, and never will there be any ... If it had seemed to me they could be appropriately put in writing and expressed for the many, what could have been a better accomplishment in my life than to put in writing something so advantageous to men and to bring to light the nature of all things? But I don't think that, for men, the so-called argumentation on these topics be good, except for a few of them who are able to find by themselves with only a few indications." Without entering the debate about possible interpretations of such statements in the face of all the dialogues Plato left, let me add a few remarks.[br /]
[br /]
First and foremost, Plato was not a dogmatist, and he never tried to put into writing the answers he might have himself given to all the questions he has us rehash with the dialogues, at least not under the form of well-crafted doctrines of the kind his pupil Aristotle was so fond of. He knew well that each one must find the answers in himself and by himself, and give them not only in words, but in deeds. That, he couldn't do for us. The best he could hope for was to be a teacher, a guide along the road from the depth of the cave up the hill, giving us along the way a "few indications" that might help us find the answers. (In that respect, the whole of this essay so far is highly unplatonic, unless it makes you, the reader, wonder and want to find out more by yourself, not about scholarship on Plato, but about yourself and the meaning of your life.)[br /]
[br /]
Add to this the fact that, contrary to the feeling left by an abundant platonic literature in recent times, we know nothing about the history of Plato's literary activity. When and how did he write each of the dialogues, when did he publish them and for what purpose? On all these questions, the only things we have are hypotheses as was already the case when Diogenes Laertius wrote about Plato sixteen or seventeen centuries ago. Seventeen centuries combined with all the computers in the world to the rescue of a Darwinian "theory of evolution" have not changed an iota of that, no matter what scholars may say.[br /]
[br /]
Plato started writing his dialogues soon after Socrates' death and kept writing them all through his life, and that during such a long period of time, about fifty years, his philosophy "evolved." This assumed "evolution" provides an easy explanation for seeming discrepancies, if not outright contradictions, that scholars claim to find between the "doctrines" supposedly held by Plato in what are termed "early" and "late" dialogues. But perhaps this explanation is too easy in explaining away contradictions that are only apparent on deeper readings of the texts. We must always keep in mind that this evolutionary thesis rests on a set of still unproved (perhaps unprovable) assumptions, and that it is equally possible that Plato meant what he said when he announced in the VIIth letter that he had written nothing so far. (Indeed, if it is the case that Thomas Aquinas wrote the entire Summa Theologiæ in the last seven years of his life, while travelling all over Europe at a time when there were no planes to go from city to city, then we must admit that it is at least possible that a mind such as Plato's could have written the entire Platonic corpus in the last ten years of his life!) But then again, maybe Plato meant something else in the VIIth Letter. So, in Plato’s mind; Utopia (the perfect Universe), may have existed on the Island of Atlantis.[br /]
[br /]
One of the most important things man has to know about himself is the power and limits of logos, a Greek word which means at the same time speech, definition, rationale and reason, among other things ![br /]
[br /]
So, before introducing us to dialectic in the Sophist, Plato gives us an example, in one of his "funniest" dialogues, the Euthydemus, of what happens when people take words for "the real thing" and "play" with them with no care for what's in the "real" world. One of the biggest fights Socrates and Plato had to fight was against the rhetoric, that is, those who, like Gorgias, relied solely on the power of words and speech to reach their goals, especially when these goals were political power, as was the case with the likes of Callicles, whose discussion with Socrates makes up the second half of the Gorgias. These men were not, like Euthydemus and his brother Dionysodorus, merely playing with words in so-called "eristic" debates for the sake of silencing their opponent in idle chatter. Like them, they had very little care for truth, but they were only concerned with efficiency, that is with the persuasive power of words.[br /]
[br /]
Such a cult of the power of words was the (probably unexpected) consequence of Parmenides' doctrines (Gorgias is said to have been a disciple of Parmenides) combined with the relativism of those who, like Protagoras, would say that man is his own measure, and that there is no eternal truth he should measure himself against. This position was held, in the time of Plato, by Socrates, the most brilliant disciple of Gorgias (and the head of a very successful school in Athens that was competing with the Academy), who, unable to understand the difference between Socrates and Euthydemus, considered platonic dialectic to be mere hair-splitting with no practical application. In the Menexenus, a text that could hardly be called a dialogue, Plato gives us an example of the political rhetoric of statesmen who are not ashamed of using the services of professional speechwriters to eulogize citizens dead at war in front of their grieving parents and friends as easily as they would use these same services to send them on the next occasion to a likely death in another war, if this would keep them in power. Such a speech, reminiscent of those by Pericles, might well represent the culmination of the educational program of Socrates, but, for Plato, it is the caricature of politics of those who have not overcome Parmenides and mastered true dialectic. Such a politics of words contrasts with the politics of thought described in the Statesman as the culmination of true dialectic, in much the same way the eristic of the Euthydemus contrasts with the dialectic of the Sophist.[br /]
[br /]
So the only thing that matters is to know what it is to be a man, a philo-sophos aner (a man-friend of wisdom). This issue, in fact, was set from the outset in a "trilogy" of dialogues that analyzes each part of the question: the Lysis, the Laches and the Charmides. The Lysis asks what philia (friendship) means. The Charmides deals with Sophia (wisdom), or, more fittingly for the kids that are staged in the dialogue, a milder version of it called sophrôsunè, that is, moderation. In between, the Laches goes about defining andreia, that is, manhood. Indeed, the goal is to become, at least in this world, philo-sophoi, friends of wisdom, not sophoi, wisemen, that is, to establish and improve a relationship with something that is and remains outside of us rather than to reach a state which may only come with death, when our being is "perfected."[br /]
[br /]
If that is really the question that matters, then Socrates is right to say that he knows nothing! Nothing that is really worth it, that is. All the knowledge in the world - that is, the scientific and technical knowledge that he so often takes as an example in discussions only to show that there is no way you can succeed unless you know what your goal is - may give you a means of changing the world, the world of becoming, but it will never tell you how to use it in order to reach your goal, the goal of perfecting your self in becoming a philosophic man. Scientific and technical knowledge is neutral with regard to good and evil. It is man who must chose what he does with it, and the more knowledge able you are in one area, the more predictably you may reach good or evil results in that area, as Socrates shows in the Hippias minor.[br /]
[br /]
Knowledge of self, knowing the "ideal" of man, then, is not of the same kind as knowing how to double the surface of a square! In that matter, like it or not, you must be content with opinion, with doxa, and yet live, and die, by it, only hoping that your opinion was a true opinion. Socrates was of the opinion that what makes a man is his soul, that justice of the kind he describes in the Republic is the ideal of man, and that the soul is everlasting and will be rewarded in eternity according to its share with this justice. Yet, after a dialogue full of unconvincing demonstrations on the immortality of the soul, at the end of the Phaedo, minutes before drinking the poison that will kill him, the only thing he could say was that to live and die by this belief is a "beautiful risk". Indeed, it is because he lived and died by this belief that he, not Plato, is our guide all through the dialogues.[br /]
[br /]
This also is the reason why it is between his logical death at the end of the Crito, at the conclusion of a trilogy started with the Euthyphro and centered on his trial, and his physical death at the end of the Phaedo, in the central dialogues making up the "tetralogy" Symposium, Phaedrus, Republic, Phaedo, that Socrates reveals to us his highest beliefs on love, the soul, its ideal of justice and its destiny. It is there that he moves us from the visible to the intelligible "world," where, resurrected in words, he may now be able to teach us true dialectic, only to leave us on our own when the time finally comes for us to get serious and write new laws for the city, to move back down to earth and build our own lives while walking toward god's "cave." (The whole dialogue of the Laws, Plato's last work, and the only one where Socrates is totally absent, takes place during a day-long walk toward Zeus' cave and shrine on mount Ida : the cave of the Republic has become God's cave when it's time for us to move back into it!).[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
Now, how do the dialogues fit into Plato's programme? The first thing we must be aware of is that Socrates, Plato's beloved master, never wrote a page, and that Plato himself was quite suspicious of writing. At the end of the Phædrus, after describing how true rhetoric, the true art of speech, should be a "soul's driving" (psuchagogè), he goes on to state his distrust of written speech, which cannot answer objections by readers and may lead to whatever interpretation the reader wants. Furthermore, in the VIIth Letter quoted at the beginning of this essay, written when he was more than 70 years old, and in which he never refers to any published works of his, even when one might expect such references on topics so close to those of some dialogues, and with readers that where supposed to know him well, he says: "from me anyway, on such topics, there doesn't exist any writing, and never will there be any ... If it had seemed to me they could be appropriately put in writing and expressed for the many, what could have been a better accomplishment in my life than to put in writing something so advantageous to men and to bring to light the nature of all things? But I don't think that, for men, the so-called argumentation on these topics be good, except for a few of them who are able to find by themselves with only a few indications." Without entering the debate about possible interpretations of such statements in the face of all the dialogues Plato left, let me add a few remarks.[br /]
[br /]
First and foremost, Plato was not a dogmatist, and he never tried to put into writing the answers he might have himself given to all the questions he has us rehash with the dialogues, at least not under the form of well-crafted doctrines of the kind his pupil Aristotle was so fond of. He knew well that each one must find the answers in himself and by himself, and give them not only in words, but in deeds. That, he couldn't do for us. The best he could hope for was to be a teacher, a guide along the road from the depth of the cave up the hill, giving us along the way a "few indications" that might help us find the answers. (In that respect, the whole of this essay so far is highly unplatonic, unless it makes you, the reader, wonder and want to find out more by yourself, not about scholarship on Plato, but about yourself and the meaning of your life.)[br /]
[br /]
Add to this the fact that, contrary to the feeling left by an abundant platonic literature in recent times, we know nothing about the history of Plato's literary activity. When and how did he write each of the dialogues, when did he publish them and for what purpose? On all these questions, the only things we have are hypotheses as was already the case when Diogenes Laertius wrote about Plato sixteen or seventeen centuries ago. Seventeen centuries combined with all the computers in the world to the rescue of a Darwinian "theory of evolution" have not changed an iota of that, no matter what scholars may say.[br /]
[br /]
Plato started writing his dialogues soon after Socrates' death and kept writing them all through his life, and that during such a long period of time, about fifty years, his philosophy "evolved." This assumed "evolution" provides an easy explanation for seeming discrepancies, if not outright contradictions, that scholars claim to find between the "doctrines" supposedly held by Plato in what are termed "early" and "late" dialogues. But perhaps this explanation is too easy in explaining away contradictions that are only apparent on deeper readings of the texts. We must always keep in mind that this evolutionary thesis rests on a set of still unproved (perhaps unprovable) assumptions, and that it is equally possible that Plato meant what he said when he announced in the VIIth letter that he had written nothing so far. (Indeed, if it is the case that Thomas Aquinas wrote the entire Summa Theologiæ in the last seven years of his life, while travelling all over Europe at a time when there were no planes to go from city to city, then we must admit that it is at least possible that a mind such as Plato's could have written the entire Platonic corpus in the last ten years of his life!) But then again, maybe Plato meant something else in the VIIth Letter. So, in Plato’s mind; Utopia (the perfect Universe), may have existed on the Island of Atlantis.[br /]
[br /]
One of the most important things man has to know about himself is the power and limits of logos, a Greek word which means at the same time speech, definition, rationale and reason, among other things ![br /]
[br /]
So, before introducing us to dialectic in the Sophist, Plato gives us an example, in one of his "funniest" dialogues, the Euthydemus, of what happens when people take words for "the real thing" and "play" with them with no care for what's in the "real" world. One of the biggest fights Socrates and Plato had to fight was against the rhetoric, that is, those who, like Gorgias, relied solely on the power of words and speech to reach their goals, especially when these goals were political power, as was the case with the likes of Callicles, whose discussion with Socrates makes up the second half of the Gorgias. These men were not, like Euthydemus and his brother Dionysodorus, merely playing with words in so-called "eristic" debates for the sake of silencing their opponent in idle chatter. Like them, they had very little care for truth, but they were only concerned with efficiency, that is with the persuasive power of words.[br /]
[br /]
Such a cult of the power of words was the (probably unexpected) consequence of Parmenides' doctrines (Gorgias is said to have been a disciple of Parmenides) combined with the relativism of those who, like Protagoras, would say that man is his own measure, and that there is no eternal truth he should measure himself against. This position was held, in the time of Plato, by Socrates, the most brilliant disciple of Gorgias (and the head of a very successful school in Athens that was competing with the Academy), who, unable to understand the difference between Socrates and Euthydemus, considered platonic dialectic to be mere hair-splitting with no practical application. In the Menexenus, a text that could hardly be called a dialogue, Plato gives us an example of the political rhetoric of statesmen who are not ashamed of using the services of professional speechwriters to eulogize citizens dead at war in front of their grieving parents and friends as easily as they would use these same services to send them on the next occasion to a likely death in another war, if this would keep them in power. Such a speech, reminiscent of those by Pericles, might well represent the culmination of the educational program of Socrates, but, for Plato, it is the caricature of politics of those who have not overcome Parmenides and mastered true dialectic. Such a politics of words contrasts with the politics of thought described in the Statesman as the culmination of true dialectic, in much the same way the eristic of the Euthydemus contrasts with the dialectic of the Sophist.[br /]
[br /]
So the only thing that matters is to know what it is to be a man, a philo-sophos aner (a man-friend of wisdom). This issue, in fact, was set from the outset in a "trilogy" of dialogues that analyzes each part of the question: the Lysis, the Laches and the Charmides. The Lysis asks what philia (friendship) means. The Charmides deals with Sophia (wisdom), or, more fittingly for the kids that are staged in the dialogue, a milder version of it called sophrôsunè, that is, moderation. In between, the Laches goes about defining andreia, that is, manhood. Indeed, the goal is to become, at least in this world, philo-sophoi, friends of wisdom, not sophoi, wisemen, that is, to establish and improve a relationship with something that is and remains outside of us rather than to reach a state which may only come with death, when our being is "perfected."[br /]
[br /]
If that is really the question that matters, then Socrates is right to say that he knows nothing! Nothing that is really worth it, that is. All the knowledge in the world - that is, the scientific and technical knowledge that he so often takes as an example in discussions only to show that there is no way you can succeed unless you know what your goal is - may give you a means of changing the world, the world of becoming, but it will never tell you how to use it in order to reach your goal, the goal of perfecting your self in becoming a philosophic man. Scientific and technical knowledge is neutral with regard to good and evil. It is man who must chose what he does with it, and the more knowledge able you are in one area, the more predictably you may reach good or evil results in that area, as Socrates shows in the Hippias minor.[br /]
[br /]
Knowledge of self, knowing the "ideal" of man, then, is not of the same kind as knowing how to double the surface of a square! In that matter, like it or not, you must be content with opinion, with doxa, and yet live, and die, by it, only hoping that your opinion was a true opinion. Socrates was of the opinion that what makes a man is his soul, that justice of the kind he describes in the Republic is the ideal of man, and that the soul is everlasting and will be rewarded in eternity according to its share with this justice. Yet, after a dialogue full of unconvincing demonstrations on the immortality of the soul, at the end of the Phaedo, minutes before drinking the poison that will kill him, the only thing he could say was that to live and die by this belief is a "beautiful risk". Indeed, it is because he lived and died by this belief that he, not Plato, is our guide all through the dialogues.[br /]
[br /]
This also is the reason why it is between his logical death at the end of the Crito, at the conclusion of a trilogy started with the Euthyphro and centered on his trial, and his physical death at the end of the Phaedo, in the central dialogues making up the "tetralogy" Symposium, Phaedrus, Republic, Phaedo, that Socrates reveals to us his highest beliefs on love, the soul, its ideal of justice and its destiny. It is there that he moves us from the visible to the intelligible "world," where, resurrected in words, he may now be able to teach us true dialectic, only to leave us on our own when the time finally comes for us to get serious and write new laws for the city, to move back down to earth and build our own lives while walking toward god's "cave." (The whole dialogue of the Laws, Plato's last work, and the only one where Socrates is totally absent, takes place during a day-long walk toward Zeus' cave and shrine on mount Ida : the cave of the Republic has become God's cave when it's time for us to move back into it!).[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
[b]LIFE OF PLATO[/b][br /]
[br /]
According to the most reliable accounts, Plato was born in the spring of year 427 BC, in the island of Agina, near Athens. His father was Ariston. His mother was Perictone who belonged to the highly esteemed family of Solon, the early Greek philosopher.[br /]
[br /]
Critias and Charmides, two leaders of The Thirty Tyrants, were respectively cousin and brother of Perictone; both were friends of Socrates, and through them Plato must have known the philosopher from boyhood.Plato studied music under Dracon. He also then occupied himself with painting and poetry.[br /]
[br /]
Plato spent some portion of his years in camp, perhaps as a cavalryman. Even in ordinary times, the young Athenian was required to perform garrison and sentry duty. Much more so at an epoch like this, when Athens was straining every nerve to meet the attack of Sparta.[br /]
[br /]
Plato’s own early ambition, under Socrates’ influence and disillusioned by what he saw of Athenian politics in his youth, including the tyranny led by his relatives, and culminating in Socrates’ condemnation and execution. Mankind’s fate was hopeless unless there was a deep change in men’s education, specially for statesmen. He therefore never took part in active politics himself.[br /]
[br /]
Year 399 BC proved a turning point for Plato. With condemnation and execution of Socrates, in that Plato’s years of study ended and years of travel begun.The next dozen years 387-398 BC were spent by Plato in extended travels. A few short or long visits to his city might have interrupted these years, but his travels were not done in any restless hurry. He desired to see and admire the wonders of nature and art to gain knowledge of those subjects more fully studied abroad than in Athens of that day. Not least of all, his object was to see "the men of many cities" and learn to know their "mind".[br /]
[br /]
Plato travelled in Greece, Egypt and Italy. He himself stated that he visited Italy and Sicily at the age of 40 and was disgusted at the gross sensuality of life there, but found a hundred spirit in Dion, brother-in-law of Dionysius I, the ruler of Seracuse.[br /]
[br /]
He did not intend to let the Athenians silence and forget Socrates by executing him. He intended to show that Socrates was as he claimed to be a public benefactor, not a criminal. On return from his voyages, Plato decided to set up a school, a specific institution designed for exploring, discussing, recording and perhaps experimenting for continued advancement of knowledge. Plato established his educational centre on the adjoining ground, and thus it acquired the name THE ACADEMY. It was designed to be a university – a small replica of the universe it was to study. It was to carry forward Socrates’ ideas of inquiry and so it was given a teaching as well as a research function.[br /]
[br /]
The Academy was a great success and quickly achieved reputation in Greece and beyond. In 361 BC Plato went to Seracuse again to act as a mediator between Diongsiusil and Dion, but was unsuccessful.During 387-347 BC Plato worked hard till his death. After opening the Academy, Plato began to see more clearly how his ideas could be combined in a new system of philosophy. In his later dialogues of this period he shared his new vision with his readers.[br /]
[br /]
For the last 20 years of his life, Plato worked in his school, leading discussion, writing and investigating. His last dialogues are much more technical and analytical than his earlier works.When he died at the age of 80, Plato was still hard at work on The Laws, a monumental detailed model legal code for cities of the time.Of Plato’s character and personality, little is known and little can be inferred from his writings. But it is worth recording that Aristotle, his most able pupil, described Plato as a man "whom it is blasphemy in the base even to praise," character that bad men should not even speak about him.[br /]
[br /]
A very rough measure of Plato’s importance in Western intellectual history is indicated by the facts that the Academy continued as a centre of learning until 529 AD, and that Platonism remains, down to the present day, one of the major traditions in Western philosophy.Plato was born in Athens, about 427 B.C., and died there about 347 B.C. In early life Plato saw war service and had political ambitions. However, he was never really sympathetic to the Athenian democracy and he could not join wholeheartedly in its government. He was devoted follower of Socrates, whose disciple he became in 409 B.C., and the execution of that philosopher by the democrats in 399 B.C. was a crushing blow. He left Athens, believing that until "kings were philosophers or philosophers were kings" things would never go well with the world. (He traced his descent from the early kings of Athens and perhaps he had himself in mind.). Thus he gave immense weightage to philosopher.[br /]
[br /]
For several years he travelled in the Greek cities of Africa and Italy, absorbing Pythagorean beliefs, and then in 387 B.C. he returned to Athens. (En route, he had been captured by pirates and held for ransom.) There, the second half of his long life, he devoted himself to philosophy. In the western suburbs he founded a school that might be termed the first university. Because it was on the grounds that had once belonged to a legendary Greek called A cademus, later on it was called the Academy, and this term has been for schools ever since.[br /]
[br /]
Plato remained at the Academy for the rest of his life, except for two brief periods in the 360s. At that timehe visited Syracuse, the chief city of Greek Sicily, to serve as tutor for the new king, Dionysius II. Here was his chance to make a king a philosopher. It turned out very badly. The king insisted on behaving like a king and of course made the Athenian democrats look good by comparison. Plato managed only with difficulty to return safely to Athens. His end was peaceful and happy, for he is supposed to have died in his sleep at the age of eighty after having attended the wedding feast of one of his students.[br /]
[br /]
Then Plato died, he was succeeded at the head of the Academy, not by Aristotle, who, by then, had been for about twenty years student and then teacher at the Academy, but by his nephew, Speusippus. The Academy kept functioning, under different guises, for centuries after Plato's death.[br /]
[br /]
But one thing we don't have the slightest piece of material evidence about is when Plato wrote each one of his dialogues, and even whether all or part of them were "published" (that is, made available outside the Academy) while he was still alive, despite strong statements to that effect from most scholars, who take it for granted without further proof.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
According to the most reliable accounts, Plato was born in the spring of year 427 BC, in the island of Agina, near Athens. His father was Ariston. His mother was Perictone who belonged to the highly esteemed family of Solon, the early Greek philosopher.[br /]
[br /]
Critias and Charmides, two leaders of The Thirty Tyrants, were respectively cousin and brother of Perictone; both were friends of Socrates, and through them Plato must have known the philosopher from boyhood.Plato studied music under Dracon. He also then occupied himself with painting and poetry.[br /]
[br /]
Plato spent some portion of his years in camp, perhaps as a cavalryman. Even in ordinary times, the young Athenian was required to perform garrison and sentry duty. Much more so at an epoch like this, when Athens was straining every nerve to meet the attack of Sparta.[br /]
[br /]
Plato’s own early ambition, under Socrates’ influence and disillusioned by what he saw of Athenian politics in his youth, including the tyranny led by his relatives, and culminating in Socrates’ condemnation and execution. Mankind’s fate was hopeless unless there was a deep change in men’s education, specially for statesmen. He therefore never took part in active politics himself.[br /]
[br /]
Year 399 BC proved a turning point for Plato. With condemnation and execution of Socrates, in that Plato’s years of study ended and years of travel begun.The next dozen years 387-398 BC were spent by Plato in extended travels. A few short or long visits to his city might have interrupted these years, but his travels were not done in any restless hurry. He desired to see and admire the wonders of nature and art to gain knowledge of those subjects more fully studied abroad than in Athens of that day. Not least of all, his object was to see "the men of many cities" and learn to know their "mind".[br /]
[br /]
Plato travelled in Greece, Egypt and Italy. He himself stated that he visited Italy and Sicily at the age of 40 and was disgusted at the gross sensuality of life there, but found a hundred spirit in Dion, brother-in-law of Dionysius I, the ruler of Seracuse.[br /]
[br /]
He did not intend to let the Athenians silence and forget Socrates by executing him. He intended to show that Socrates was as he claimed to be a public benefactor, not a criminal. On return from his voyages, Plato decided to set up a school, a specific institution designed for exploring, discussing, recording and perhaps experimenting for continued advancement of knowledge. Plato established his educational centre on the adjoining ground, and thus it acquired the name THE ACADEMY. It was designed to be a university – a small replica of the universe it was to study. It was to carry forward Socrates’ ideas of inquiry and so it was given a teaching as well as a research function.[br /]
[br /]
The Academy was a great success and quickly achieved reputation in Greece and beyond. In 361 BC Plato went to Seracuse again to act as a mediator between Diongsiusil and Dion, but was unsuccessful.During 387-347 BC Plato worked hard till his death. After opening the Academy, Plato began to see more clearly how his ideas could be combined in a new system of philosophy. In his later dialogues of this period he shared his new vision with his readers.[br /]
[br /]
For the last 20 years of his life, Plato worked in his school, leading discussion, writing and investigating. His last dialogues are much more technical and analytical than his earlier works.When he died at the age of 80, Plato was still hard at work on The Laws, a monumental detailed model legal code for cities of the time.Of Plato’s character and personality, little is known and little can be inferred from his writings. But it is worth recording that Aristotle, his most able pupil, described Plato as a man "whom it is blasphemy in the base even to praise," character that bad men should not even speak about him.[br /]
[br /]
A very rough measure of Plato’s importance in Western intellectual history is indicated by the facts that the Academy continued as a centre of learning until 529 AD, and that Platonism remains, down to the present day, one of the major traditions in Western philosophy.Plato was born in Athens, about 427 B.C., and died there about 347 B.C. In early life Plato saw war service and had political ambitions. However, he was never really sympathetic to the Athenian democracy and he could not join wholeheartedly in its government. He was devoted follower of Socrates, whose disciple he became in 409 B.C., and the execution of that philosopher by the democrats in 399 B.C. was a crushing blow. He left Athens, believing that until "kings were philosophers or philosophers were kings" things would never go well with the world. (He traced his descent from the early kings of Athens and perhaps he had himself in mind.). Thus he gave immense weightage to philosopher.[br /]
[br /]
For several years he travelled in the Greek cities of Africa and Italy, absorbing Pythagorean beliefs, and then in 387 B.C. he returned to Athens. (En route, he had been captured by pirates and held for ransom.) There, the second half of his long life, he devoted himself to philosophy. In the western suburbs he founded a school that might be termed the first university. Because it was on the grounds that had once belonged to a legendary Greek called A cademus, later on it was called the Academy, and this term has been for schools ever since.[br /]
[br /]
Plato remained at the Academy for the rest of his life, except for two brief periods in the 360s. At that timehe visited Syracuse, the chief city of Greek Sicily, to serve as tutor for the new king, Dionysius II. Here was his chance to make a king a philosopher. It turned out very badly. The king insisted on behaving like a king and of course made the Athenian democrats look good by comparison. Plato managed only with difficulty to return safely to Athens. His end was peaceful and happy, for he is supposed to have died in his sleep at the age of eighty after having attended the wedding feast of one of his students.[br /]
[br /]
Then Plato died, he was succeeded at the head of the Academy, not by Aristotle, who, by then, had been for about twenty years student and then teacher at the Academy, but by his nephew, Speusippus. The Academy kept functioning, under different guises, for centuries after Plato's death.[br /]
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But one thing we don't have the slightest piece of material evidence about is when Plato wrote each one of his dialogues, and even whether all or part of them were "published" (that is, made available outside the Academy) while he was still alive, despite strong statements to that effect from most scholars, who take it for granted without further proof.[br /]
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Among secular books, Plato is eligible for to Omar's fanatical compliment to the Koran, when he said, "Burn the libraries; for their value is in this book." These sentences contain the culture of nations; these are the corner-stone of schools; these are the fountain-head of literatures. A discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry, language, rhetoric, ontology, morals or practical wisdom. There was never such range of speculation. Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought.[br /]
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It is singular that wherever we find a man higher by a whole head than any of his contemporaries, it is sure to come into doubt what are his real works. Thus Homer, Plato, Raffaelle, Shakespeare. For these men magnetize their contemporaries, so that their companions can do for them what they can never do for themselves; and the great man does thus live in several bodies, and write, or paint or act, by many hands; and after some time it is not easy to say what is the authentic work of the master and what is only of his school. Plato, too, like every great man, consumed his own times. What is a great man but one of great affinities, who takes up into himself all arts, sciences, all knowables, as his food ? He can spare nothing; he can dispose of every thing. What is not good for virtue, is good for knowledge. Hence his contemporaries tax him with plagiarism.[br /]
[br /]
As must be evident by now, being, for Plato, is not limited to material being. But it would be equally wrong to assume that Plato's world is limited to a "world of forms," a world of immaterial everlasting truths in some sky high above. The image that he gives of the whole of "being" in the Republic is that of a line divided in four segments. A first division distinguishes a "visible" and an "intelligible" segment. Each of these two segments is further divided in two, to distinguish images and whatever they are images of. A painting, for instance, or a photograph, is, in the visible part, an image of a man, himself a visible being; but a word, as an "intelligible" thing, is also in a sense no more than an intelligible "image" of the being or beings it names.[br /]
[br /]
The first split, between visible and intelligible, means that Plato is neither a son of the earth nor a friend of forms, the two extreme positions he has an Elean stranger criticize in the Sophist. If the stranger must commit a parricide in thought in betraying Parmenides' dogmas of the unity of being and the identity of being and thought - a parricide that is the exact counterpart in the "intelligible world" of the trial and murder of Socrates by his fellow Athenians in the "visible world" - it is precisely to flee away from the "either ... or ..." alternative between materialism and idealism and lead us into the "world" of "and ... and ...," both in words, in our description of the whole of being, and in deeds, in our action as statesmen. It is the price to pay to free our minds from empty dialectical paradoxes of the kind of which examples are given in the Parmenides and give us access to true dialectical thinking, demonstrated in the Sophist and Statesman.[br /]
[br /]
So, what is "being" for Plato ? He gives a definition of it through the mouth of the Elean stranger in the Sophist, which is supposed to be provisionally used against the materialists, but is never challenged or replaced later, and is thus meant to hold. The stranger attributes "being" to "anything whatsoever endowed with the power (dunamin) either to act on whatever other creature you'd like, or to endure the smallest thing from the part of the slightest thing, be it only once". In other words, yes! Whatever I may think of "is" (has "being"), and in this respect, Parmenides was somehow right. It has being if only by the mere fact that I think it, which is a form of "enduring" (or being acted upon) for the thought I think. But so what ? The point is that, for Plato, being is the least meaningful predicate of all, because it is the one that has the greatest extension. It applies to everything. The problem for him is not that of "being" but that of "the good beyond being". The problem is not for "something" to have being; it is to find the relationship this "being" entertains with other "beings".[br /]
[br /]
Central to Plato's thought is the soul (psuchè in Greek). Its nature (phusis) is at the heart of the Phaedrus, when, driven by love (eros), it expresses its feelings through speech (logos), uncovering in the process its divine origin. Its behaviour occupies the Republic, when it must find in its own self-made harmony the root of justice in the city. Its destiny is investigated in the Phaedo, when faith in its eternity helps it accept the death of the body. As a prelude to this trilogy, Plato depicts in the Symposium, the dialectics of eros, the soul's driving power, that may lead it from the physical love of one body all the way up to the intellectual love of everlasting "ideas."[br /]
[br /]
Thus, the central inquiry into the soul unfolds between a night in the life of Socrates and a day in his death. The night in the life of Socrates is retold in the Symposium, an all night drinking party that opens a window on the whole of Socrates' social life with the speech of a drunken Alcibiades and that ends with Socrates alone awake and well at the crowing of the cock to walk home to[br /]
another day's business. The day in Socrates, "death" is retold in the Phaedo, a sober drinking vigil (Socrates drinks the poison at the end) that opens a window on the whole of Socrates' inner life with his own "intellectual autobiography" and that ends with Socrates alone going into an everlasting "sleep" after asking Crito to offer Asclepios, the god who cures bodies, the cock that will no longer be needed to awaken his body. We should note that, behind the comedy of the drinking party and the "erotic" speeches on love of the Symposium, lies the tragedy of the "loss" of Alcibiades' soul that couldn't be saved by Socrates' love, and behind the tragedy of the poison party and the unconvincing speeches on the soul's immortality in the Phaedo, lies the joy of Socrates' definitive victory over injustice and "perfection" of his self.[br /]
[br /]
All this shows that for Plato, from the outset, man cannot be limited to a purely material being. Evidence of this fact is that he can share in truths relating to "forms" that are outside time and space. But we should be careful not to import into Plato's dialogues a preconceived notion of the soul, whether a Christian one or whatever, but rather to let Plato tell us what he means by that word. In the end, the soul is everything in man that is not matter, and the whole purpose of the Phaedo is to figure out what might happen to it when it departs from matter in death. Indeed, the Phaedo doesn't try to "prove" that the soul "survives" the body; it defines death as the separation of the material from the "immaterial" parts in man. It only purports to figure out what becomes of the immaterial part, or parts, at death, based on their nature.[br /]
[br /]
So, we must start by finding out the nature and structure of the soul. In the reference to Atlantic in The Republic (Plato’s UTOPIA), Plato investigates the structure of the soul, and there he shows it to be threefold. One part of the soul relates to the body, to the material dimension of being, to the feelings and passions. Plato calls this the "desiring" part, the epithumiai. Another part relates to the mind, the immaterial realities, "forms" and the like, and he calls it the logos. In between is a third part, the one that has to make choices, to lean toward either one or the other of the first two parts, and that he calls the thumos, the "fighting" part, akin to the will.[br /]
[br /]
But this description doesn't pretend to "anatomical" precision! It must be understood as much by what it excludes as by what it says. By presenting a threefold structure of the soul, Plato eliminates both monistic and dualistic approaches. On the one hand, Plato tells us that man is not a monistic being whose unity is given at the outset. He is not a potentiality that only has to unfold over time to become in the end what was implicitly given at the start, in an Aristotelian entelechy or in a DNA string, hoping only that "nature" will not be prevented from following its "usual" course by external events, and with no freedom whatsoever to change this course by himself. But he is not a dualistic being either. He is not a battlefield between two antagonistic principles, one good and one evil, that might be seen as the independent "creators," or origins, of body and soul, of mind and matter, with man caught in between, with no freedom of his own and no say whatsoever on the outcome of the fight.[br /]
[br /]
Once both monism and dualism have been ruled out, it no longer matters much how many parts there are, so long as there is a governing principle of unity (the logos), and a sphere of freedom (the thumos) capable of ruling over reason as well as passion. Indeed, the third part is called epithumiai, desires, with a plural to show that they are many.[br /]
[br /]
The fact is that man in this world of becoming is a being in the making; he is defined by what he should be in the end, not by what he is at the beginning or at any given point during the process. Man's unity is not there at the outset but has to be built over a lifetime. Because man is free, this unity may or may not be achieved. It can be achieved only if man partakes of the idea (rather than "form") of man. But this idea is not a map, a drawing, an "image" of man up in the sky. Rather, it is the ideal of justice depicted in the Republic, the principle of unity within and without for man.[br /]
[br /]
Plato hints at this when he starts the Timaeus by reminding us of the principles of the Republic before presenting, within a long monologue by Timaeus that he himself calls a "myth", three different "forms" of man. The "ideal" of the Republic is evoked at the outset, before the myth starts, to show that it is outside space and time, while the three other "candidates" to the "form" of man are all to be found within the myth that describes the genesis of the universe and of man within it. One is the "form" of matter man and the world are made up from, displayed in the first "mathematical" model of matter, a model based on triangles. This is the "form" best understood by physicists, even though this specific model is utterly outdated by now. Another one is the "biological form" of his body, described through its pattern drawn by the lesser gods for the sole purpose of hosting the divine soul handed over by the demiourgos. This is the "form" best understood by physicians. The last is the "form" of his soul, the mixed principle of becoming and being, bridging between the visible and the intelligible, whose making by the demiourgos is described at length. This one is the "form" best understood by psychologists and maybe priests.[br /]
[br /]
Indeed, man may satisfy himself with either one of these three explanations of himself. He may, like Gyges, the "earthly" man by his name, in the story told by Glaucon at the beginning of the Republic, move deep down in matter, within a cave opened by cosmic forces (the laws of physics, if you prefer) in search of his own self. But all he will find there is a dead body with a materialistic wooden soul shaped like an animal (the horse that serves as an image of the lower parts of the soul in the Phaedrus, but also a reminder of the Trojan horse, the fighting device which brought ruin over Greek cities) and unable to hold man's will. Though the body may look larger than nature under the scalpel of science, it is in fact a prisoner of this semblance of soul that is no more than the social and historical environment that surrounds and conditions him. But this materialistic science may also offer him the golden ring of a seemingly broken chain that will allow him to escape all responsibility in social life by making him invisible when looking at himself. This will allow him to use his eros in an egoistic way to win power by killing the king (the leading part of the soul) and to enslave his kinsmen in place of the sheep he was meant to oversee. Or he may listen to the teacher who will free him from his unfelt chains and lead him out of the cave where he was a prisoner, and up the hill all the way to the sight of the good itself. Then, and only then, knowing the true eternal ideal of man, may he go back in the cave built for him by god, to help his kinsmen free themselves.[br /]
[br /]
The misery of man is to be balked of the sight of essence and to be stuffed with conjectures; but the supreme good is reality; the supreme beauty is reality; and all virtue and all felicity depend on this science of the real: for courage is nothing else than knowledge; the fairest fortune that can befall man is to be guided by his daemon to that which is truly his own. This also is the essence of justice,- to attend every one his own: nay, the notion of virtue is not to be arrived at except through direct contemplation of the divine essence. Courage then for "the persuasion that we must search that which we do not know, will render us, beyond comparison, better, braver and more industrious than if we thought it impossible to discover what we do not know, and useless to search for it."This, then, might be the inverse of which Plato the philosopher had envisaged to be the Utopia of perfectionism.[br /]
[br /]
All philosophy, of East and West, has the same centripetence. Urged by an opposite necessity, the mind returns from the one to that which is not one, but other or many; from cause to effect; and affirms the necessary existence of variety, the self-existence of both, as each is involved in the other. These strictly-blended elements it is the problem of thought to separate and to reconcile. Their existence is mutually contradictory and exclusive; and each so fast slides into the other that we can never say what is one, and what it is not. The Proteus is as nimble in the highest as in the lowest grounds; when we contemplate the one, the true, the good,- as in the surfaces and extremities of matter. In all nations there are minds which incline to dwell in the conception of the fundamental Unity. The raptures of prayer and ecstasy of devotion lose all being in one Being. This tendency finds its highest expression in the religious writings of the East, and chiefly in the Indian Scriptures, in the Vedas, the Bhagwad Geeta, and the Vishnu Purana.[br /]
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But the "politics of thoughts" advocated by Plato, if it is politics by an elite, is not politics for an elite. Immediately after the Statesman comes the Philebus whose purpose is to set the goal for political leaders in showing them the good of man, that is, what can make a happy life for man here on earth. Again, the recipe is not, as some might expect, to withdraw from worldly matters and live in pure thought, but to give each part of the soul its due, and its share of pleasure, only under the leadership of the logos, who alone is able to understand what the due share of each part is. Thus, the happy life is depicted as a mixed life associating measured bodily and intellectual pleasures, as exemplified by Socrates in the Symposium. Plato doesn't shy away from calling pleasure "the path toward one's own being." By that, he means that, as embodied beings in the making in this earthly world of becoming, it is only through our feelings that we can get moving. We only move toward what's pleasurable to us and away from what is painful to us.[br /]
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This is the true meaning of the often criticized saying by Socrates that "nobody does evil willingly," which might better be translated as "nobody willingly harms himself," as all discussions of it in the dialogues show. Socrates never meant to say that man will never do something he knows to be "evil" in a broad, abstract, moral sense (like a "sin"). He knew perfectly well that a man can do something he knows harmful to someone else, so long as he thinks it is less harmful to him than not doing it. But to him may mean to his body or to his soul, and there lies the problem! This brings us back to the "know thyself." How we understand the difference between the pleasures and pains of our body, which are dependant on time and that we may control only to a certain extent, and those of our soul, which are not "felt" the same way by the body here on earth, is what determines what is truly pleasurable for us. So we may be wrong, not in our feelings of pleasures and pains at any given time, but in our opinions about them, in our understanding of them, which is the task of the logos in our soul, and which alone may change our feelings over time by educating our true self. We will always only desire what is pleasurable to us. But with an adequate understanding of what is truly pleasurable and of what is our true self, following our pleasures will lead us in the right direction.[br /]
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If everyone is not able to "know thyself", in keeping with the Delphic motto that was Socrates' leading principle, the task is clearly set for those who are able; they must take charge of their less fortunate fellow men, not to enslave them like Gyges, but to help each one reach the happiness he deserves and "perfect" his soul. The Laws, which is the last word of Plato's educational program, is very clear about the fact that the city is for man, for all men, and not man for the city. This does not mean that each one can do as he likes, but that the city doesn't have a soul of its own; it is only an earthly construct intended to disappear over time, and whose purpose is solely to provide the proper setting for man's making, for the building of his self, that is, the "perfecting" of his soul. Man is a "political animal," as Aristotle would say (here inspired by Plato), which means that he cannot live alone. Thus his happiness depends on the proper order of the "city" he lives in and the sacrifices he makes for the good, not of the whole as if it were a sort of metaphysical "totalitarian" entity, but of all other men and women in the city, taken as individuals engaged in a common enterprise.[br /]
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It is singular that wherever we find a man higher by a whole head than any of his contemporaries, it is sure to come into doubt what are his real works. Thus Homer, Plato, Raffaelle, Shakespeare. For these men magnetize their contemporaries, so that their companions can do for them what they can never do for themselves; and the great man does thus live in several bodies, and write, or paint or act, by many hands; and after some time it is not easy to say what is the authentic work of the master and what is only of his school. Plato, too, like every great man, consumed his own times. What is a great man but one of great affinities, who takes up into himself all arts, sciences, all knowables, as his food ? He can spare nothing; he can dispose of every thing. What is not good for virtue, is good for knowledge. Hence his contemporaries tax him with plagiarism.[br /]
[br /]
As must be evident by now, being, for Plato, is not limited to material being. But it would be equally wrong to assume that Plato's world is limited to a "world of forms," a world of immaterial everlasting truths in some sky high above. The image that he gives of the whole of "being" in the Republic is that of a line divided in four segments. A first division distinguishes a "visible" and an "intelligible" segment. Each of these two segments is further divided in two, to distinguish images and whatever they are images of. A painting, for instance, or a photograph, is, in the visible part, an image of a man, himself a visible being; but a word, as an "intelligible" thing, is also in a sense no more than an intelligible "image" of the being or beings it names.[br /]
[br /]
The first split, between visible and intelligible, means that Plato is neither a son of the earth nor a friend of forms, the two extreme positions he has an Elean stranger criticize in the Sophist. If the stranger must commit a parricide in thought in betraying Parmenides' dogmas of the unity of being and the identity of being and thought - a parricide that is the exact counterpart in the "intelligible world" of the trial and murder of Socrates by his fellow Athenians in the "visible world" - it is precisely to flee away from the "either ... or ..." alternative between materialism and idealism and lead us into the "world" of "and ... and ...," both in words, in our description of the whole of being, and in deeds, in our action as statesmen. It is the price to pay to free our minds from empty dialectical paradoxes of the kind of which examples are given in the Parmenides and give us access to true dialectical thinking, demonstrated in the Sophist and Statesman.[br /]
[br /]
So, what is "being" for Plato ? He gives a definition of it through the mouth of the Elean stranger in the Sophist, which is supposed to be provisionally used against the materialists, but is never challenged or replaced later, and is thus meant to hold. The stranger attributes "being" to "anything whatsoever endowed with the power (dunamin) either to act on whatever other creature you'd like, or to endure the smallest thing from the part of the slightest thing, be it only once". In other words, yes! Whatever I may think of "is" (has "being"), and in this respect, Parmenides was somehow right. It has being if only by the mere fact that I think it, which is a form of "enduring" (or being acted upon) for the thought I think. But so what ? The point is that, for Plato, being is the least meaningful predicate of all, because it is the one that has the greatest extension. It applies to everything. The problem for him is not that of "being" but that of "the good beyond being". The problem is not for "something" to have being; it is to find the relationship this "being" entertains with other "beings".[br /]
[br /]
Central to Plato's thought is the soul (psuchè in Greek). Its nature (phusis) is at the heart of the Phaedrus, when, driven by love (eros), it expresses its feelings through speech (logos), uncovering in the process its divine origin. Its behaviour occupies the Republic, when it must find in its own self-made harmony the root of justice in the city. Its destiny is investigated in the Phaedo, when faith in its eternity helps it accept the death of the body. As a prelude to this trilogy, Plato depicts in the Symposium, the dialectics of eros, the soul's driving power, that may lead it from the physical love of one body all the way up to the intellectual love of everlasting "ideas."[br /]
[br /]
Thus, the central inquiry into the soul unfolds between a night in the life of Socrates and a day in his death. The night in the life of Socrates is retold in the Symposium, an all night drinking party that opens a window on the whole of Socrates' social life with the speech of a drunken Alcibiades and that ends with Socrates alone awake and well at the crowing of the cock to walk home to[br /]
another day's business. The day in Socrates, "death" is retold in the Phaedo, a sober drinking vigil (Socrates drinks the poison at the end) that opens a window on the whole of Socrates' inner life with his own "intellectual autobiography" and that ends with Socrates alone going into an everlasting "sleep" after asking Crito to offer Asclepios, the god who cures bodies, the cock that will no longer be needed to awaken his body. We should note that, behind the comedy of the drinking party and the "erotic" speeches on love of the Symposium, lies the tragedy of the "loss" of Alcibiades' soul that couldn't be saved by Socrates' love, and behind the tragedy of the poison party and the unconvincing speeches on the soul's immortality in the Phaedo, lies the joy of Socrates' definitive victory over injustice and "perfection" of his self.[br /]
[br /]
All this shows that for Plato, from the outset, man cannot be limited to a purely material being. Evidence of this fact is that he can share in truths relating to "forms" that are outside time and space. But we should be careful not to import into Plato's dialogues a preconceived notion of the soul, whether a Christian one or whatever, but rather to let Plato tell us what he means by that word. In the end, the soul is everything in man that is not matter, and the whole purpose of the Phaedo is to figure out what might happen to it when it departs from matter in death. Indeed, the Phaedo doesn't try to "prove" that the soul "survives" the body; it defines death as the separation of the material from the "immaterial" parts in man. It only purports to figure out what becomes of the immaterial part, or parts, at death, based on their nature.[br /]
[br /]
So, we must start by finding out the nature and structure of the soul. In the reference to Atlantic in The Republic (Plato’s UTOPIA), Plato investigates the structure of the soul, and there he shows it to be threefold. One part of the soul relates to the body, to the material dimension of being, to the feelings and passions. Plato calls this the "desiring" part, the epithumiai. Another part relates to the mind, the immaterial realities, "forms" and the like, and he calls it the logos. In between is a third part, the one that has to make choices, to lean toward either one or the other of the first two parts, and that he calls the thumos, the "fighting" part, akin to the will.[br /]
[br /]
But this description doesn't pretend to "anatomical" precision! It must be understood as much by what it excludes as by what it says. By presenting a threefold structure of the soul, Plato eliminates both monistic and dualistic approaches. On the one hand, Plato tells us that man is not a monistic being whose unity is given at the outset. He is not a potentiality that only has to unfold over time to become in the end what was implicitly given at the start, in an Aristotelian entelechy or in a DNA string, hoping only that "nature" will not be prevented from following its "usual" course by external events, and with no freedom whatsoever to change this course by himself. But he is not a dualistic being either. He is not a battlefield between two antagonistic principles, one good and one evil, that might be seen as the independent "creators," or origins, of body and soul, of mind and matter, with man caught in between, with no freedom of his own and no say whatsoever on the outcome of the fight.[br /]
[br /]
Once both monism and dualism have been ruled out, it no longer matters much how many parts there are, so long as there is a governing principle of unity (the logos), and a sphere of freedom (the thumos) capable of ruling over reason as well as passion. Indeed, the third part is called epithumiai, desires, with a plural to show that they are many.[br /]
[br /]
The fact is that man in this world of becoming is a being in the making; he is defined by what he should be in the end, not by what he is at the beginning or at any given point during the process. Man's unity is not there at the outset but has to be built over a lifetime. Because man is free, this unity may or may not be achieved. It can be achieved only if man partakes of the idea (rather than "form") of man. But this idea is not a map, a drawing, an "image" of man up in the sky. Rather, it is the ideal of justice depicted in the Republic, the principle of unity within and without for man.[br /]
[br /]
Plato hints at this when he starts the Timaeus by reminding us of the principles of the Republic before presenting, within a long monologue by Timaeus that he himself calls a "myth", three different "forms" of man. The "ideal" of the Republic is evoked at the outset, before the myth starts, to show that it is outside space and time, while the three other "candidates" to the "form" of man are all to be found within the myth that describes the genesis of the universe and of man within it. One is the "form" of matter man and the world are made up from, displayed in the first "mathematical" model of matter, a model based on triangles. This is the "form" best understood by physicists, even though this specific model is utterly outdated by now. Another one is the "biological form" of his body, described through its pattern drawn by the lesser gods for the sole purpose of hosting the divine soul handed over by the demiourgos. This is the "form" best understood by physicians. The last is the "form" of his soul, the mixed principle of becoming and being, bridging between the visible and the intelligible, whose making by the demiourgos is described at length. This one is the "form" best understood by psychologists and maybe priests.[br /]
[br /]
Indeed, man may satisfy himself with either one of these three explanations of himself. He may, like Gyges, the "earthly" man by his name, in the story told by Glaucon at the beginning of the Republic, move deep down in matter, within a cave opened by cosmic forces (the laws of physics, if you prefer) in search of his own self. But all he will find there is a dead body with a materialistic wooden soul shaped like an animal (the horse that serves as an image of the lower parts of the soul in the Phaedrus, but also a reminder of the Trojan horse, the fighting device which brought ruin over Greek cities) and unable to hold man's will. Though the body may look larger than nature under the scalpel of science, it is in fact a prisoner of this semblance of soul that is no more than the social and historical environment that surrounds and conditions him. But this materialistic science may also offer him the golden ring of a seemingly broken chain that will allow him to escape all responsibility in social life by making him invisible when looking at himself. This will allow him to use his eros in an egoistic way to win power by killing the king (the leading part of the soul) and to enslave his kinsmen in place of the sheep he was meant to oversee. Or he may listen to the teacher who will free him from his unfelt chains and lead him out of the cave where he was a prisoner, and up the hill all the way to the sight of the good itself. Then, and only then, knowing the true eternal ideal of man, may he go back in the cave built for him by god, to help his kinsmen free themselves.[br /]
[br /]
The misery of man is to be balked of the sight of essence and to be stuffed with conjectures; but the supreme good is reality; the supreme beauty is reality; and all virtue and all felicity depend on this science of the real: for courage is nothing else than knowledge; the fairest fortune that can befall man is to be guided by his daemon to that which is truly his own. This also is the essence of justice,- to attend every one his own: nay, the notion of virtue is not to be arrived at except through direct contemplation of the divine essence. Courage then for "the persuasion that we must search that which we do not know, will render us, beyond comparison, better, braver and more industrious than if we thought it impossible to discover what we do not know, and useless to search for it."This, then, might be the inverse of which Plato the philosopher had envisaged to be the Utopia of perfectionism.[br /]
[br /]
All philosophy, of East and West, has the same centripetence. Urged by an opposite necessity, the mind returns from the one to that which is not one, but other or many; from cause to effect; and affirms the necessary existence of variety, the self-existence of both, as each is involved in the other. These strictly-blended elements it is the problem of thought to separate and to reconcile. Their existence is mutually contradictory and exclusive; and each so fast slides into the other that we can never say what is one, and what it is not. The Proteus is as nimble in the highest as in the lowest grounds; when we contemplate the one, the true, the good,- as in the surfaces and extremities of matter. In all nations there are minds which incline to dwell in the conception of the fundamental Unity. The raptures of prayer and ecstasy of devotion lose all being in one Being. This tendency finds its highest expression in the religious writings of the East, and chiefly in the Indian Scriptures, in the Vedas, the Bhagwad Geeta, and the Vishnu Purana.[br /]
[br /]
But the "politics of thoughts" advocated by Plato, if it is politics by an elite, is not politics for an elite. Immediately after the Statesman comes the Philebus whose purpose is to set the goal for political leaders in showing them the good of man, that is, what can make a happy life for man here on earth. Again, the recipe is not, as some might expect, to withdraw from worldly matters and live in pure thought, but to give each part of the soul its due, and its share of pleasure, only under the leadership of the logos, who alone is able to understand what the due share of each part is. Thus, the happy life is depicted as a mixed life associating measured bodily and intellectual pleasures, as exemplified by Socrates in the Symposium. Plato doesn't shy away from calling pleasure "the path toward one's own being." By that, he means that, as embodied beings in the making in this earthly world of becoming, it is only through our feelings that we can get moving. We only move toward what's pleasurable to us and away from what is painful to us.[br /]
[br /]
This is the true meaning of the often criticized saying by Socrates that "nobody does evil willingly," which might better be translated as "nobody willingly harms himself," as all discussions of it in the dialogues show. Socrates never meant to say that man will never do something he knows to be "evil" in a broad, abstract, moral sense (like a "sin"). He knew perfectly well that a man can do something he knows harmful to someone else, so long as he thinks it is less harmful to him than not doing it. But to him may mean to his body or to his soul, and there lies the problem! This brings us back to the "know thyself." How we understand the difference between the pleasures and pains of our body, which are dependant on time and that we may control only to a certain extent, and those of our soul, which are not "felt" the same way by the body here on earth, is what determines what is truly pleasurable for us. So we may be wrong, not in our feelings of pleasures and pains at any given time, but in our opinions about them, in our understanding of them, which is the task of the logos in our soul, and which alone may change our feelings over time by educating our true self. We will always only desire what is pleasurable to us. But with an adequate understanding of what is truly pleasurable and of what is our true self, following our pleasures will lead us in the right direction.[br /]
[br /]
If everyone is not able to "know thyself", in keeping with the Delphic motto that was Socrates' leading principle, the task is clearly set for those who are able; they must take charge of their less fortunate fellow men, not to enslave them like Gyges, but to help each one reach the happiness he deserves and "perfect" his soul. The Laws, which is the last word of Plato's educational program, is very clear about the fact that the city is for man, for all men, and not man for the city. This does not mean that each one can do as he likes, but that the city doesn't have a soul of its own; it is only an earthly construct intended to disappear over time, and whose purpose is solely to provide the proper setting for man's making, for the building of his self, that is, the "perfecting" of his soul. Man is a "political animal," as Aristotle would say (here inspired by Plato), which means that he cannot live alone. Thus his happiness depends on the proper order of the "city" he lives in and the sacrifices he makes for the good, not of the whole as if it were a sort of metaphysical "totalitarian" entity, but of all other men and women in the city, taken as individuals engaged in a common enterprise.[br /]
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[b]Plato's Academy[/b][br /]
[br /]
If we combine the various traditions concerning Plato's Academy into a narrative account, a somewhat elaborate but nonetheless clear portrait of this philosophical diatribê emerges: About 388/7, the son of Ariston chose a remote and "unhealthy" locale to dedicate a Mouseion (Temple of the Muses). Plato established his temenos (an allotted piece of sacred land) to the Muses among the groves and gymnasium (exercise gardens) dedicated to the Attic hero Academus (Hekademos). The area rested on the Sacred Way, some distance Northwest from Athens (city proper). Plato dedicated this Mouseion following a trip to Sicily, and it was in the grove that he began writing and regular instruction to groups of followers. Plato continued his pursuit of philosophy for about forty years. He was later buried nearby, in a garden facing Colonus, and the sculptor Silanium erected a statue of the philosopher - dedicating it to the Muses as well.[br /]
[br /]
Individuals soon came from all over Greece to pursue philosophy in the Academy, but Plato accepted only those "intoxicated to learn what was in their souls." A student then listened as Plato walked about the gymnasium lecturing, and they all enjoyed moderate but pleasant banquets. The meals were conducted according to an elaborate set of rules, but Plato did not hold these feasts simply to celebrate till dawn. He held his banquets so "that [he and his companions] might manifestly honor the gods and enjoy each others company and chiefly to refresh themselves with learned discussion."[br /]
[br /]
The tradition that Plato's school was founded in an unhealthy locale is late Christian embroidery. The embellishment persisted in spite of the fact Cimon had renovated the gardens (Plutarch, Cimon 13.8), making them one of the most beautiful in the Attic countryside, and they remained as such well into Roman times. If Plato desired to found a "society of learner-companions" who dined together in honor of the Muses, allotting for himself its own land in a gymnasium, he would have formed a thiasos (cult association) - specifically, he would have formed a sussitos, i.e., a specific type of thiasos whose members gathered to dine in honor of the gods. Thiasoi were small close-knit socio-religious associations and crucial in the life of the polis. They shared religious rites and rituals and also provided ideal opportunities for social intercourse as well as engaged their memberships in financial and political activities.There are two opposing opinions about this school's "nature." Exactly what Plato discussed with his "learner companions" is a more complicated affair. First, there is Plato's own attested emphasis on definitions, geometry, and other more esoteric metaphysical-epistemological matters. Second, there exists more general reputation that the Academy produced philosophical statesmen. Side by side the two traditions appear to conflict with one another, or, it is difficult to understand how the former areas of study produce the latter applied results.[br /]
[br /]
"Philosophy" was the principal focus of the Academy, but what exactly does this mean ? Mathematics, solid geometry, astronomy, natural science, and the "Theory of Ideas" are all attested subjects of study. In fact, over the entrance to Plato's Mouseion was the inscription "Ageometretos medeis eisito." There is also mention of a predilection with definitions -- by both Plato and many of his students -- as well as frequent references to "lectures" (skolê). For instance, there is a detailed report on Plato's only recorded public offering "On the Good." This was a discourse which digressed into an exposé on mathematics, numbers, geometry, astronomy, and the unity of goodness. Among all of this, would be, undoubtedly, discussions on Plato's dialogues. But there also exist cryptic remarks concerning Plato's "unwritten doctrines."[br /]
[br /]
The issues are indeed difficult. Nevertheless, when attempted to analyze Plato's Academy carefully, we realize, we are facing three problems. Once disassociated, the overall uncertainty is more manageable. The first two problems are an issue of intention; the third is one of relationship. The initial two difficulties may be summed up with general questions: what purpose did Plato's teachings serve ? And what was the connection between Plato's writings and his oral discussions ? The final difficulty, however, is, by far, the most complex. It is, in essence, a doctrinal difficulty between that, which, we today can clearly see in Plato's writings versus that which Plato's students claimed to have understood from Plato's discussions.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
If we combine the various traditions concerning Plato's Academy into a narrative account, a somewhat elaborate but nonetheless clear portrait of this philosophical diatribê emerges: About 388/7, the son of Ariston chose a remote and "unhealthy" locale to dedicate a Mouseion (Temple of the Muses). Plato established his temenos (an allotted piece of sacred land) to the Muses among the groves and gymnasium (exercise gardens) dedicated to the Attic hero Academus (Hekademos). The area rested on the Sacred Way, some distance Northwest from Athens (city proper). Plato dedicated this Mouseion following a trip to Sicily, and it was in the grove that he began writing and regular instruction to groups of followers. Plato continued his pursuit of philosophy for about forty years. He was later buried nearby, in a garden facing Colonus, and the sculptor Silanium erected a statue of the philosopher - dedicating it to the Muses as well.[br /]
[br /]
Individuals soon came from all over Greece to pursue philosophy in the Academy, but Plato accepted only those "intoxicated to learn what was in their souls." A student then listened as Plato walked about the gymnasium lecturing, and they all enjoyed moderate but pleasant banquets. The meals were conducted according to an elaborate set of rules, but Plato did not hold these feasts simply to celebrate till dawn. He held his banquets so "that [he and his companions] might manifestly honor the gods and enjoy each others company and chiefly to refresh themselves with learned discussion."[br /]
[br /]
The tradition that Plato's school was founded in an unhealthy locale is late Christian embroidery. The embellishment persisted in spite of the fact Cimon had renovated the gardens (Plutarch, Cimon 13.8), making them one of the most beautiful in the Attic countryside, and they remained as such well into Roman times. If Plato desired to found a "society of learner-companions" who dined together in honor of the Muses, allotting for himself its own land in a gymnasium, he would have formed a thiasos (cult association) - specifically, he would have formed a sussitos, i.e., a specific type of thiasos whose members gathered to dine in honor of the gods. Thiasoi were small close-knit socio-religious associations and crucial in the life of the polis. They shared religious rites and rituals and also provided ideal opportunities for social intercourse as well as engaged their memberships in financial and political activities.There are two opposing opinions about this school's "nature." Exactly what Plato discussed with his "learner companions" is a more complicated affair. First, there is Plato's own attested emphasis on definitions, geometry, and other more esoteric metaphysical-epistemological matters. Second, there exists more general reputation that the Academy produced philosophical statesmen. Side by side the two traditions appear to conflict with one another, or, it is difficult to understand how the former areas of study produce the latter applied results.[br /]
[br /]
"Philosophy" was the principal focus of the Academy, but what exactly does this mean ? Mathematics, solid geometry, astronomy, natural science, and the "Theory of Ideas" are all attested subjects of study. In fact, over the entrance to Plato's Mouseion was the inscription "Ageometretos medeis eisito." There is also mention of a predilection with definitions -- by both Plato and many of his students -- as well as frequent references to "lectures" (skolê). For instance, there is a detailed report on Plato's only recorded public offering "On the Good." This was a discourse which digressed into an exposé on mathematics, numbers, geometry, astronomy, and the unity of goodness. Among all of this, would be, undoubtedly, discussions on Plato's dialogues. But there also exist cryptic remarks concerning Plato's "unwritten doctrines."[br /]
[br /]
The issues are indeed difficult. Nevertheless, when attempted to analyze Plato's Academy carefully, we realize, we are facing three problems. Once disassociated, the overall uncertainty is more manageable. The first two problems are an issue of intention; the third is one of relationship. The initial two difficulties may be summed up with general questions: what purpose did Plato's teachings serve ? And what was the connection between Plato's writings and his oral discussions ? The final difficulty, however, is, by far, the most complex. It is, in essence, a doctrinal difficulty between that, which, we today can clearly see in Plato's writings versus that which Plato's students claimed to have understood from Plato's discussions.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
• The reasonable element and its unvarying calm are difficult to represent, and difficult to understand if represented…The dramatic poet will not therefore naturally turn to this element, nor will his skill be directed to please it, if he wants to win a popular reputation, but he will find it easy to represent a character that is unstable and refractory.[br /]
[br /]
• Poetry has the same effect on us when it represents…the other desires and feelings of pleasure which accompany all our actions. It waters them when they ought to be left to wither, and makes them control us when we ought, in the interests of our own greater welfare and happiness, to control them.[br /]
[br /]
• Our first business is to supervise the production of stories, and choose only those we think suitable and reject the rest. We shall persuade mothers and nurses to tell our chosen stories to their children, and by means of them to mould their minds and characters.[br /]
[br /]
• I am the wisest man in Athens because I know I don't know. I am only singularly ignorant. The rest of the citizens are twice ignorant. They think they know, but they still don't know.[br /]
[br /]
• We have discussed the ways of life one should follow, and the kind of man one should follow, and the kind of man one should be, but we have restricted ourselves to what one may call divine, and have not spoken of what is but human. Yet we must do so, for we are speaking for man, not gods. It is pleasures, pain and passion that are by nature most human.[br /]
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• To yield for profit or honor is shameful. As in everything else depends upon the way the thing is done, and the only worthy association is that which has moral excellence as its aim. When the physical association tends to educate the beloved in wisdom and courage, then and then alone is it free from blame. It is the motive that counts..[br /]
[br /]
• The opposites : hot and cold, bitter and sweet, and the like, must be harmonized by means of Eros, desire. This is the aim of medicine, as also of music to make harmony out of discords and it requires scientific knowledge. To reduce things to order we must yield to the better kind of desire and this is the love called heavenly…by encouraging desires that lead to justice and piety.[br /]
[br /]
• Beauty is the object of love, it is not love itself. Love aims at happiness, which is the aim of all men. Men love all the good, and they wish to posses it always. Furthermore, Eros aims at creation in beauty, whether in the body or in the soul. That is its final object..[br /]
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• Love is that divinity who creates peace among men, repose and sleep in sadness. Love divests us of all alienation from each other, and fills our vacant hearts with overflowing sympathy.[br /]
[br /]
• When they flow towards study and things of that kind and are concentrated upon the pleasures of the mind (psyche) alone, the physical pleasures are given up; when a man, that is a true philosopher and does not merely pretend to be, necessarily such a man will be controlled, never be greedy for wealth.[br /]
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• The intellect alone is immortal as the most divine part of the soul. It is that which is akin to the Gods and that alone which is the work of the Maker.[br /]
[br /]
• If this world is beautiful and its maker good, then clearly he had an eternal model before time.[br /]
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• All soul is immortal. For that which is ever in motion is immortal…That, alone which moves itself, since it never fails, never ceases to move, but is the source and beginning of motion for all other things that move. For the beginning, never came to be. And from the beginning all that comes to be born, whereas itself it derives from none. For if the beginning was born of something else it would no longer be the beginning.[br /]
[br /]
• Since it did not become, neither will it be destroyed. For if the first principle were destroyed, it could not again be derived from anything else nor could anything else be derived from it, if indeed all things are derived from it, if indeed all things are derived from a first principle. Thus the first beginning of motion is that which moves itself.[br /]
[br /]
• The philosopher who should be king…is both the ideal ruler and the ideal man, he possesses knowledge of the supreme reality…This unity of outlook shows itself in the close connection between politics and psychology.[br /]
[br /]
• The law cannot decree what is best with an exact realization of the most just and good in every case. Men and actions change so continually that it is impossible for any science to make a single rule that will fit every case once and for all.[br /]
[br /]
• Clearly all art and science would be utterly lost to us, and could never rise again because the law forbids investigation. So that life, which is hard enough now, would not be worth living at all.[br /]
[br /]
• Let no one ignorant of Mathematics enter here.[br /]
[br /]
• He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god.[br /]
[br /]
• The ludicrous state of solid geometry made me pass over this branch.[br /]
[br /]
• He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant of the fact that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side.[br /]
[br /]
• The knowledge of which geometry aims is the knowledge of the eternal..[br /]
[br /]
• I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.[br /]
[br /]
• There still remain three studies suitable for free man. Arithmetic is one of them.[br /]
[br /]
• So their combinations with themselves and with each other give rise to endless complexities, which anyone who is to give a likely account of reality must survey.[br /]
[br /]
• The earth is like one of those balls made of twelve pieces of skin.[br /]
[br /]
• He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god.[br /]
[br /]
• I can show you that the art of calculation has to do with odd and even numbers in their numerical relations to themselves and to each other.[br /]
[br /]
• Arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tangible objects into the argument.[br /]
[br /]
• Mathematics is like checkers in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state."[br /]
[br /]
• No intelligent man will ever be so bold as to put into language those things which his reason has contemplated.[br /]
[br /]
• But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you,"he said. [br /]
"Certainly not," replied Glaucon.[br /]
Then we are not going to listen; of that you can be assured.[br /]
Knowledge is the food of the soul.[br /]
[br /]
• For neither birth, nor wealth, nor honors, can awaken in the minds of men the principles which should guide those who from their youth aspire to an honorable and excellent life, as Love awakens them.[br /]
[br /]
• But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you?" he said. "Certainly not," replied Glaucon. "Then we are not going to listen; of that you can be assured.[br /]
[br /]
• For let me tell you, that the more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.[br /]
[br /]
• A friend ought always to do good to a friend and never evil.[br /]
[br /]
• When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them. Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.[br /]
[br /]
• Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.[br /]
[br /]
• Honesty is for the most par less profitable than dishonesty.[br /]
[br /]
• I have good hope that there is something after death.[br /]
[br /]
• To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege.[br /]
[br /]
• They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases.[br /]
[br /]
• States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.[br /]
[br /]
• The beginning is the most important part of the work.[br /]
[br /]
• Let nobody speak mischief of anybody.[br /]
[br /]
• No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.[br /]
[br /]
• They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth. Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.[br /]
[br /]
• Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.[br /]
[br /]
• Necessity is the mother of invention.[br /]
[br /]
• The beginning is the most important part of the work.[br /]
[br /]
• Thinking is the soul talking to itself.[br /]
[br /]
• Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.[br /]
[br /]
• All thought is naught but a footnote to Plato.[br /]
[br /]
• Plato was a bore.[br /]
[br /]
• Well begun is half ended. He best keeps from anger who remembers that God is always looking upon him.[br /]
[br /]
• Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.[br /]
[br /]
• The only thing he ought to consider, if he does anything, is whether he does right or wrong, whether it is what a good man does or a bad man.[br /]
[br /]
• Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.[br /]
[br /]
• Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.[br /]
[br /]
• When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.[br /]
[br /]
• Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.[br /]
[br /]
• Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.[br /]
[br /]
• Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.[br /]
[br /]
• I have good hope that there is something after death.[br /]
[br /]
• States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.[br /]
[br /]
• The beginning is the most important part of the work.[br /]
[br /]
• Let nobody speak mischief of anybody.[br /]
[br /]
• They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.[br /]
[br /]
• Wealth is well known to be a great comforter[br /]
[br /]
• Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.[br /]
[br /]
• The only thing worse than suffering an injustice is committing an injustice.[br /]
[br /]
• He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.[br /]
[br /]
• The democratic youth . lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practicing gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied in philosophy.[br /]
[br /]
• For this invention of yours will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn it, by causing them to neglect their memory, inasmuch as, from their confidence in writing, they will recollect by the external aid of foreign symbols, and not by the internal use of their own faculties. Your discovery, therefore, is a medicine not for memory, but for recollection- for recalling to, not for keeping in mind..(continued).[br /]
[br /]
• You are wrong, my friend, if you think a man with a spark of decency in him ought to calculate life or death; the only thing he ought to consider, if he does anything, is whether he does right or wrong, whether it is what a good man does or a bad man.[br /]
[br /]
• Trees and fields tell me nothing: men are my teachers.[br /]
[br /]
• Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind[br /]
[br /]
• Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.[br /]
[br /]
• Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.[br /]
[br /]
• For just as physicians who care for the body believe that the body cannot get benefit from any food offered to it until the internal obstacles have been removed, so the purifier of the soul is conscious that his patient will receive no benefit from the application of knowledge until he is refuted, and from refutation learns modesty; he must be purged of his prejudices first, and made to think he knows only what he knows, and no more.[br /]
[br /]
• To use words and phrases in an easygoing manner without scrutinizing them too curiously is not in general a mark of ill-breeding. On the contrary, there is something low-bred in being too precise. But sometimes there is no help for it.[br /]
[br /]
• Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods, ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.[br /]
[br /]
• The only thing he ought to consider, if he does anything, is whether he does right or wrong, whether it is what a good man does or a bad man.[br /]
[br /]
• Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.[br /]
[br /]
• Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.[br /]
[br /]
• Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods, ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.[br /]
[br /]
• He best keeps from anger who remembers that God is always looking upon him.[br /]
[br /]
• When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.[br /]
[br /]
• Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.[br /]
[br /]
• Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance.[br /]
[br /]
• The life that is unexamined is not worth living.[br /]
[br /]
• Necessity, who is the mother of invention.[br /]
[br /]
• The beginning is the most important part of the work.[br /]
[br /]
• Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to the next.[br /]
[br /]
• Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.[br /]
[br /]
• What a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose.[br /]
[br /]
• They certainly give very strange names to diseases.[br /]
[br /]
• And what is good, Phaedrus? And what is not good? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?[br /]
[br /]
• We are twice armed if we fight with faith.[br /]
[br /]
• Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.[br /]
[br /]
• I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly combat.[br /]
[br /]
• Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself.[br /]
[br /]
• The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.[br /]
[br /]
• The passionate are like men standing on their heads; they see all things the wrong way.[br /]
[br /]
• They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.[br /]
[br /]
• He was a wise man who invented God.[br /]
[br /]
• We are bound to our bodies like an oyster is to its shell.[br /]
[br /]
• Plato's philosophy is summed up in the life of reason. The sense-organs grasp only the passing and the concrete; the realm of principles and standards is accessible to the true light of reason alone. Reason is a way of knowledge, it is also a way on conduct. Reason is power; to know is to do; virtue is knowledge; thus, the good life is the reasonable life.[br /]
[br /]
• Teaching is effective only if based on the friendship of teacher and student; the student must have an adequate personal maturity to understand the truth. Ideas cannot be flung, so to speak, indiscriminately into the market-place, as they are done by books. And ideas are conveyed by contagion, from person to person.[br /]
[br /]
• For my philosophy does not admit of verbal formulation, but after prolonged application to the subject itself and after living together with it, it is born in the soul on a sudden, like a flame which is kindled by a leaping spark, and thereafter sustains itself." (Plato, Seventh Epistle.)[br /]
[br /]
• Just as for Aristotle art was not a mere esthetic pleasure, but a purgation of the soul by pity and terror, so, for Plato, philosophy was not merely an intellectual exercise but a cleansing of the mind from error and freeing of the soul from conceit.[br /]
[br /]
• Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.[br /]
[br /]
• Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.[br /]
[br /]
• Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods, ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.[br /]
[br /]
• He best keeps from anger who remembers that God is always looking upon him.[br /]
[br /]
• When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.[br /]
[br /]
• Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.[br /]
[br /]
• Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.[br /]
[br /]
• Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.[br /]
[br /]
• I have good hope that there is something after death.[br /]
[br /]
• States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.[br /]
[br /]
• The beginning is the most important part of the work.[br /]
[br /]
• Let nobody speak mischief of anybody.[br /]
[br /]
• They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.[br /]
[br /]
• Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.[br /]
[br /]
• Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.[br /]
[br /]
• The only thing worse than suffering an injustice is committing an injustice.[br /]
[br /]
• When Socrates and Phaedrus have discoursed away the noonday under the plane trees by the Ilissus, they rise and depart toward the city . . . and Socrates prays .[br /]
[br /]
• If drama and poetry written for pleasure can prove to us that they have a place in a well-run society, we will gladly admit them, for we know their fascination only too well ourselves; but it would be wicked to abandon what seems to be the truth that art written for pleasure is harmful.[br /]
[br /]
• There are some perceptions which don’t call any further exercise of thought, because sensation can judge them accurately, but others which demand the exercise of thought because sensation cannot give a trustworthy result.[br /]
[br /]
• A written text like the dialogue can contribute in its own way towards the soul’s liberation by actively engaging the intellect, getting it to look beyond the particulars of its own experience towards general accounts, and be critical of irrational responses.[br /]
[br /]
• There are three kinds of life, that of the lover of wisdom which is actuated by a passion for truth, that of the ambitious which is actuated by a passing of honor and victory, and the "passionate" properly so called, whose main object is the qualification of physical desires which gives the most pleasure.[br /]
[br /]
• O Auspicious Pan, and you other deities of this place, grant to me to become beautiful inwardly and that all my outward good may prosper my inner soul. Grant that I may esteem wisdom the only riches and that I may have only so much gold as self-restraint may handsomely carry.[br /]
[br /]
• Nothing is more precious than the beautiful beloved. Mother, brother, friends are all forgotten, fortune lost through neglect is of no account. Law and manners, in which it (soul) formerly took pride, are all despised and it is ready to be a slave and to sleep as near the object of desire as one allows it. And besides revering the beautiful one it finds in him the only healer of its greatest travail. That is the state that men call love.[br /]
[br /]
• Death is born to the thinker, indeed…the pursuit of philosophy is but a practice for death. Death is separation of soul from body and it is the aim of the philosophic soul to free itself, even during life, from the obstacles, such as distracting pleasures and confusing sensations, which the body puts in the way of the soul’s development.[br /]
[br /]
• In truth then justice appears to be something of this kind. It is not concerned with external actions but with the inner state of a man and his several parts. He must not allow every part of himself to interfere where it has no lousiness, the different kinds of soul must not hinder one another. The just man puts his own house in order, thus ruling over himself harmonizing (himself into) a unity.[br /]
[br /]
• When a man’s passion incline violently in one direction, they are as we know, weakened in other directions by this fact, like a stream that has been canalized.[br /]
[br /]
• I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.[br /]
[br /]
• And what is good, Phaedrus? And what is not good? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things ?[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
• Poetry has the same effect on us when it represents…the other desires and feelings of pleasure which accompany all our actions. It waters them when they ought to be left to wither, and makes them control us when we ought, in the interests of our own greater welfare and happiness, to control them.[br /]
[br /]
• Our first business is to supervise the production of stories, and choose only those we think suitable and reject the rest. We shall persuade mothers and nurses to tell our chosen stories to their children, and by means of them to mould their minds and characters.[br /]
[br /]
• I am the wisest man in Athens because I know I don't know. I am only singularly ignorant. The rest of the citizens are twice ignorant. They think they know, but they still don't know.[br /]
[br /]
• We have discussed the ways of life one should follow, and the kind of man one should follow, and the kind of man one should be, but we have restricted ourselves to what one may call divine, and have not spoken of what is but human. Yet we must do so, for we are speaking for man, not gods. It is pleasures, pain and passion that are by nature most human.[br /]
[br /]
• To yield for profit or honor is shameful. As in everything else depends upon the way the thing is done, and the only worthy association is that which has moral excellence as its aim. When the physical association tends to educate the beloved in wisdom and courage, then and then alone is it free from blame. It is the motive that counts..[br /]
[br /]
• The opposites : hot and cold, bitter and sweet, and the like, must be harmonized by means of Eros, desire. This is the aim of medicine, as also of music to make harmony out of discords and it requires scientific knowledge. To reduce things to order we must yield to the better kind of desire and this is the love called heavenly…by encouraging desires that lead to justice and piety.[br /]
[br /]
• Beauty is the object of love, it is not love itself. Love aims at happiness, which is the aim of all men. Men love all the good, and they wish to posses it always. Furthermore, Eros aims at creation in beauty, whether in the body or in the soul. That is its final object..[br /]
[br /]
• Love is that divinity who creates peace among men, repose and sleep in sadness. Love divests us of all alienation from each other, and fills our vacant hearts with overflowing sympathy.[br /]
[br /]
• When they flow towards study and things of that kind and are concentrated upon the pleasures of the mind (psyche) alone, the physical pleasures are given up; when a man, that is a true philosopher and does not merely pretend to be, necessarily such a man will be controlled, never be greedy for wealth.[br /]
[br /]
• The intellect alone is immortal as the most divine part of the soul. It is that which is akin to the Gods and that alone which is the work of the Maker.[br /]
[br /]
• If this world is beautiful and its maker good, then clearly he had an eternal model before time.[br /]
[br /]
• All soul is immortal. For that which is ever in motion is immortal…That, alone which moves itself, since it never fails, never ceases to move, but is the source and beginning of motion for all other things that move. For the beginning, never came to be. And from the beginning all that comes to be born, whereas itself it derives from none. For if the beginning was born of something else it would no longer be the beginning.[br /]
[br /]
• Since it did not become, neither will it be destroyed. For if the first principle were destroyed, it could not again be derived from anything else nor could anything else be derived from it, if indeed all things are derived from it, if indeed all things are derived from a first principle. Thus the first beginning of motion is that which moves itself.[br /]
[br /]
• The philosopher who should be king…is both the ideal ruler and the ideal man, he possesses knowledge of the supreme reality…This unity of outlook shows itself in the close connection between politics and psychology.[br /]
[br /]
• The law cannot decree what is best with an exact realization of the most just and good in every case. Men and actions change so continually that it is impossible for any science to make a single rule that will fit every case once and for all.[br /]
[br /]
• Clearly all art and science would be utterly lost to us, and could never rise again because the law forbids investigation. So that life, which is hard enough now, would not be worth living at all.[br /]
[br /]
• Let no one ignorant of Mathematics enter here.[br /]
[br /]
• He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god.[br /]
[br /]
• The ludicrous state of solid geometry made me pass over this branch.[br /]
[br /]
• He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant of the fact that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side.[br /]
[br /]
• The knowledge of which geometry aims is the knowledge of the eternal..[br /]
[br /]
• I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.[br /]
[br /]
• There still remain three studies suitable for free man. Arithmetic is one of them.[br /]
[br /]
• So their combinations with themselves and with each other give rise to endless complexities, which anyone who is to give a likely account of reality must survey.[br /]
[br /]
• The earth is like one of those balls made of twelve pieces of skin.[br /]
[br /]
• He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god.[br /]
[br /]
• I can show you that the art of calculation has to do with odd and even numbers in their numerical relations to themselves and to each other.[br /]
[br /]
• Arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tangible objects into the argument.[br /]
[br /]
• Mathematics is like checkers in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state."[br /]
[br /]
• No intelligent man will ever be so bold as to put into language those things which his reason has contemplated.[br /]
[br /]
• But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you,"he said. [br /]
"Certainly not," replied Glaucon.[br /]
Then we are not going to listen; of that you can be assured.[br /]
Knowledge is the food of the soul.[br /]
[br /]
• For neither birth, nor wealth, nor honors, can awaken in the minds of men the principles which should guide those who from their youth aspire to an honorable and excellent life, as Love awakens them.[br /]
[br /]
• But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you?" he said. "Certainly not," replied Glaucon. "Then we are not going to listen; of that you can be assured.[br /]
[br /]
• For let me tell you, that the more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.[br /]
[br /]
• A friend ought always to do good to a friend and never evil.[br /]
[br /]
• When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them. Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.[br /]
[br /]
• Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.[br /]
[br /]
• Honesty is for the most par less profitable than dishonesty.[br /]
[br /]
• I have good hope that there is something after death.[br /]
[br /]
• To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege.[br /]
[br /]
• They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases.[br /]
[br /]
• States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.[br /]
[br /]
• The beginning is the most important part of the work.[br /]
[br /]
• Let nobody speak mischief of anybody.[br /]
[br /]
• No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.[br /]
[br /]
• They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth. Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.[br /]
[br /]
• Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.[br /]
[br /]
• Necessity is the mother of invention.[br /]
[br /]
• The beginning is the most important part of the work.[br /]
[br /]
• Thinking is the soul talking to itself.[br /]
[br /]
• Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.[br /]
[br /]
• All thought is naught but a footnote to Plato.[br /]
[br /]
• Plato was a bore.[br /]
[br /]
• Well begun is half ended. He best keeps from anger who remembers that God is always looking upon him.[br /]
[br /]
• Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.[br /]
[br /]
• The only thing he ought to consider, if he does anything, is whether he does right or wrong, whether it is what a good man does or a bad man.[br /]
[br /]
• Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.[br /]
[br /]
• Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.[br /]
[br /]
• When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.[br /]
[br /]
• Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.[br /]
[br /]
• Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.[br /]
[br /]
• Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.[br /]
[br /]
• I have good hope that there is something after death.[br /]
[br /]
• States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.[br /]
[br /]
• The beginning is the most important part of the work.[br /]
[br /]
• Let nobody speak mischief of anybody.[br /]
[br /]
• They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.[br /]
[br /]
• Wealth is well known to be a great comforter[br /]
[br /]
• Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.[br /]
[br /]
• The only thing worse than suffering an injustice is committing an injustice.[br /]
[br /]
• He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.[br /]
[br /]
• The democratic youth . lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practicing gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied in philosophy.[br /]
[br /]
• For this invention of yours will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn it, by causing them to neglect their memory, inasmuch as, from their confidence in writing, they will recollect by the external aid of foreign symbols, and not by the internal use of their own faculties. Your discovery, therefore, is a medicine not for memory, but for recollection- for recalling to, not for keeping in mind..(continued).[br /]
[br /]
• You are wrong, my friend, if you think a man with a spark of decency in him ought to calculate life or death; the only thing he ought to consider, if he does anything, is whether he does right or wrong, whether it is what a good man does or a bad man.[br /]
[br /]
• Trees and fields tell me nothing: men are my teachers.[br /]
[br /]
• Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind[br /]
[br /]
• Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.[br /]
[br /]
• Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.[br /]
[br /]
• For just as physicians who care for the body believe that the body cannot get benefit from any food offered to it until the internal obstacles have been removed, so the purifier of the soul is conscious that his patient will receive no benefit from the application of knowledge until he is refuted, and from refutation learns modesty; he must be purged of his prejudices first, and made to think he knows only what he knows, and no more.[br /]
[br /]
• To use words and phrases in an easygoing manner without scrutinizing them too curiously is not in general a mark of ill-breeding. On the contrary, there is something low-bred in being too precise. But sometimes there is no help for it.[br /]
[br /]
• Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods, ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.[br /]
[br /]
• The only thing he ought to consider, if he does anything, is whether he does right or wrong, whether it is what a good man does or a bad man.[br /]
[br /]
• Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.[br /]
[br /]
• Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.[br /]
[br /]
• Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods, ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.[br /]
[br /]
• He best keeps from anger who remembers that God is always looking upon him.[br /]
[br /]
• When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.[br /]
[br /]
• Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.[br /]
[br /]
• Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance.[br /]
[br /]
• The life that is unexamined is not worth living.[br /]
[br /]
• Necessity, who is the mother of invention.[br /]
[br /]
• The beginning is the most important part of the work.[br /]
[br /]
• Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to the next.[br /]
[br /]
• Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.[br /]
[br /]
• What a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose.[br /]
[br /]
• They certainly give very strange names to diseases.[br /]
[br /]
• And what is good, Phaedrus? And what is not good? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?[br /]
[br /]
• We are twice armed if we fight with faith.[br /]
[br /]
• Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.[br /]
[br /]
• I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly combat.[br /]
[br /]
• Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself.[br /]
[br /]
• The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.[br /]
[br /]
• The passionate are like men standing on their heads; they see all things the wrong way.[br /]
[br /]
• They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.[br /]
[br /]
• He was a wise man who invented God.[br /]
[br /]
• We are bound to our bodies like an oyster is to its shell.[br /]
[br /]
• Plato's philosophy is summed up in the life of reason. The sense-organs grasp only the passing and the concrete; the realm of principles and standards is accessible to the true light of reason alone. Reason is a way of knowledge, it is also a way on conduct. Reason is power; to know is to do; virtue is knowledge; thus, the good life is the reasonable life.[br /]
[br /]
• Teaching is effective only if based on the friendship of teacher and student; the student must have an adequate personal maturity to understand the truth. Ideas cannot be flung, so to speak, indiscriminately into the market-place, as they are done by books. And ideas are conveyed by contagion, from person to person.[br /]
[br /]
• For my philosophy does not admit of verbal formulation, but after prolonged application to the subject itself and after living together with it, it is born in the soul on a sudden, like a flame which is kindled by a leaping spark, and thereafter sustains itself." (Plato, Seventh Epistle.)[br /]
[br /]
• Just as for Aristotle art was not a mere esthetic pleasure, but a purgation of the soul by pity and terror, so, for Plato, philosophy was not merely an intellectual exercise but a cleansing of the mind from error and freeing of the soul from conceit.[br /]
[br /]
• Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.[br /]
[br /]
• Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.[br /]
[br /]
• Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods, ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.[br /]
[br /]
• He best keeps from anger who remembers that God is always looking upon him.[br /]
[br /]
• When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.[br /]
[br /]
• Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.[br /]
[br /]
• Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.[br /]
[br /]
• Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.[br /]
[br /]
• I have good hope that there is something after death.[br /]
[br /]
• States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.[br /]
[br /]
• The beginning is the most important part of the work.[br /]
[br /]
• Let nobody speak mischief of anybody.[br /]
[br /]
• They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.[br /]
[br /]
• Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.[br /]
[br /]
• Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.[br /]
[br /]
• The only thing worse than suffering an injustice is committing an injustice.[br /]
[br /]
• When Socrates and Phaedrus have discoursed away the noonday under the plane trees by the Ilissus, they rise and depart toward the city . . . and Socrates prays .[br /]
[br /]
• If drama and poetry written for pleasure can prove to us that they have a place in a well-run society, we will gladly admit them, for we know their fascination only too well ourselves; but it would be wicked to abandon what seems to be the truth that art written for pleasure is harmful.[br /]
[br /]
• There are some perceptions which don’t call any further exercise of thought, because sensation can judge them accurately, but others which demand the exercise of thought because sensation cannot give a trustworthy result.[br /]
[br /]
• A written text like the dialogue can contribute in its own way towards the soul’s liberation by actively engaging the intellect, getting it to look beyond the particulars of its own experience towards general accounts, and be critical of irrational responses.[br /]
[br /]
• There are three kinds of life, that of the lover of wisdom which is actuated by a passion for truth, that of the ambitious which is actuated by a passing of honor and victory, and the "passionate" properly so called, whose main object is the qualification of physical desires which gives the most pleasure.[br /]
[br /]
• O Auspicious Pan, and you other deities of this place, grant to me to become beautiful inwardly and that all my outward good may prosper my inner soul. Grant that I may esteem wisdom the only riches and that I may have only so much gold as self-restraint may handsomely carry.[br /]
[br /]
• Nothing is more precious than the beautiful beloved. Mother, brother, friends are all forgotten, fortune lost through neglect is of no account. Law and manners, in which it (soul) formerly took pride, are all despised and it is ready to be a slave and to sleep as near the object of desire as one allows it. And besides revering the beautiful one it finds in him the only healer of its greatest travail. That is the state that men call love.[br /]
[br /]
• Death is born to the thinker, indeed…the pursuit of philosophy is but a practice for death. Death is separation of soul from body and it is the aim of the philosophic soul to free itself, even during life, from the obstacles, such as distracting pleasures and confusing sensations, which the body puts in the way of the soul’s development.[br /]
[br /]
• In truth then justice appears to be something of this kind. It is not concerned with external actions but with the inner state of a man and his several parts. He must not allow every part of himself to interfere where it has no lousiness, the different kinds of soul must not hinder one another. The just man puts his own house in order, thus ruling over himself harmonizing (himself into) a unity.[br /]
[br /]
• When a man’s passion incline violently in one direction, they are as we know, weakened in other directions by this fact, like a stream that has been canalized.[br /]
[br /]
• I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.[br /]
[br /]
• And what is good, Phaedrus? And what is not good? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things ?[br /]
[br /]
[br /]
When later sources indicate that certain individuals undertook political action as a result of their association with the Academy, it should not be presumed that the school was fashioned with a formal apparatus to deal with constitutional matters, or that it systematically dispatched advisors, or that the Academy, even as a thiasos, "corporately" possessed relationships with foreign rulers. The concepts are a bit too modern.[br /]
[br /]
The evidence concerning Plato's pupils may in fact be too weak to sustain a doctrine that the chief aim of the Academy was to prepare them all for statecraft - as several scholars have long recognized. It does not follow, however, that statecraft was not a substantial subject for philosophizing or that Plato did not embrace practical politics in discourse.[br /]
[br /]
Even if Plato's dialogues display serious gaps in the area of practical political application, his school's perceived expertise could have been justified. For example, the Academy's relationship to Athens, and the obligations entailed by its initiates, in addition to Plato's own teachings, both oral and written, altogether could have pointed in this direction. Specifically, the thiasos's relationship to the polis was a situation every member of Plato's cult must have incorporated into their daily routine. This relationship's importance, furthermore, was outlined in Plato's Laws and given its philosophical foundation in the Republic.[br /]
[br /]
We know of several cases where students (or former students) were believed to have undertaken political activities as result of an "association" with Plato's school, some of these were violent (e.g., the assassin Callipus; the failed despot Euaeum; and the subversive Timaeus) while one became a tyrant (Chaero of Pallene).[br /]
[br /]
Given Plato's focus on virtue, our instinct is to disassociate the philosopher and the Academy from these examples. Scholars emphasize that such activities could hardly have been in the "spirit" of the Academy's policies. Nevertheless, the ancient anti-Platonists clearly blamed Plato for his pupils' misdeeds.[br /]
[br /]
One cannot pinpoint direct and specific political aims, or an instructional body, within the Academy. Nevertheless, many individuals had a "connection" with Plato's school and had "engaged in politics". Plato, it was believed, personally dispatched Aristonymus, Phormio, and Menedemus to legislate for certain communities as well as maintained relationships with the courts of Macedonia and Syracuse. Plato's pupils, included Chabrias, Demosthenes, Hyperides, Lycurgus, and Phocion.[br /]
[br /]
Examples of political teachings might include Xenocrates's four books on "kingship," Aristotle's Politics, as well as Aristotle being the personal tutor of Alexander. Obviously, Philip thought Aristotle was qualified to serve in such a role. If Plato had not intended his school to train political advisors, it nonetheless acquired enough of a reputation that students went away confident to act as such.[br /]
[br /]
The pursuit of philosophy required one item above all in ancient times: skolê (leisure). Those individuals with this commodity were, undoubtedly, of similarly affluent background and means. Consequently, they would have belonged to the class which supplied all poleis with their leaders.[br /]
[br /]
Whether or not scholars of the Academy, including Plato himself, personally instructed students to pursue political careers is not at issue; the matter is whether or not Plato's writings alone could prepare individuals for practical politics. That individuals entered Plato's thiasos to further their own political ambitions, or walked away confident of undertaking them, in addition to the fact that the school acquired a reputation for such expertise, are crucial observations.[br /]
[br /]
The Laws includes several chapters devoted entirely to constitutional matters and legal code - everything from population control, treason, and contests over drainage to details on bee-keeping. The substance of the work, in addition to the political theories outlined in the Republic, is of such magnitude that we cannot deny some sort of intended use in either constitutional reform of existing poleis. Nevertheless, scholars will often raise questions concerning how (exactly) Plato's most ideal doctrines, as preserved in the Republic, might have equipped men to engage practical political matters of the real world. [br /]
[br /]
Taking a closer look at the Laws, it opens with the aims and methods of education and special references to the use of drink (624a-703e). The Athenian Stranger, in fact, embarks on a long eulogy, broken into several parts, which concerns properly conducted drinking parties as beneficial educational experiences and tests of moral stamina. This opening cannot be incidental. It was famed for its sympotic practices. Notably, the Laws attests that symposia must be regulated by the polis (673e) to produce a sense of reverence in the soul and health in the body (672d). As a sussitos, Plato's diatribê was founded along these lines. Consequently, we may infer that it conducted its own symposia with these aims in mind.[br /]
[br /]
The affinity, in fact, is quite striking. An Athenian law ascribed to Solon states that if members of a sussitos made arrangements amongst themselves, those agreements would have been binding unless forbidden by public writing. That Plato would set up his own thiasos in just such a manner seems both timely and, practically, self evident.[br /]
[br /]
Nevertheless, the question remains: how can we move from Plato the esoteric meta-philosopher, interested in timeless truths and men's souls, to Plato the philosopher-statesman, interested in the establishment of practical and just regimes?[br /]
[br /]
In the Republic, Socrates provides a most direct "philosophical" relationship through analogy. After failing to find justice in the individual Socrates suggests, they look for it in the city. He uses the analogy of little and big letters. This passage is remarkable for many reasons. If the interlocutors present had not accepted the premise, Socrates could not suggest that the polis was the individual. This suggests a most direct relationship between the individual and polis – at least philosophically.[br /]
[br /]
"How did Athenians such as Plato form the polis out of individuals ?" An understanding of this question will help us understand Plato's Academy and how, exactly, we can move from esoteric, idealized philosophical discourse to the general, pragmatic world of politics.[br /]
[br /]
That was the polis. The public recognition of parenthood, of religious obligation, the opportunity to vote, or to serve on a jury was crucial for proper participation in Athenian society.[br /]
[br /]
Men, women, metics, and foreigners were entitled to certain legal/religious obligations to the polis when attached to groups like the Thiasoi. One thiasos, for instance, bound its membership to redress wrongs done to any one member, to move all friends to like action, so that to molest a stranger was not to molest a helpless man. The cult's constitution also required its officers to supervise the burial of deceased members, to notify relatives (or friends), and required all members to attend the funeral.[br /]
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Prior to 306, associations of thiasotai (cult associates) could have acquired a heiron (shrine) only by vote of the polis. Thus, when individuals joined Plato's thiasos (founded in 388/7 with a shrine to the Muses), they entered a legally recognized socio-religious entity. Obligations like those outlined above appear to have been a common feature of thiasoi, and such obligations would undoubtedly have been present in Plato's Academy. In essence, a thiasos's organization was the polis in microcosm.[br /]
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It apparently disbanded thiasoi contrary to law : thus it was repealed by a graphe paranomon (written counter-suit).[br /]
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Even though Plato may have accepted only those who were "intoxicated to learn what was in their souls," by joining Plato's Academy a student entered a complex society within the Athenian political community. The Academy was a legally recognized religious-social-political organization with a strong, well defined, and direct relationship to Athenian politeia. A student would have acquired both obligations and privileges in relation to Athens upon the very act of entering Plato's thiasos.[br /]
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The Academy's public activities (or the public activity of individual members). These activities are tangible results of Plato's teachings, and they are important clues which can offer insights into what end Plato pursued in his school. By identifying the results, we can perhaps better understand the role Plato's dialogues played in his overall teaching.[br /]
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The examples of political expertise in Plato's Academy come from two directions, but both parts of the evidence stand diametrically opposed to each other. Plato's dialogues and letters do not relate anything direct about the Academy, whereas the testimony by later authors is direct but secondary.[br /]
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The evidence concerning Plato's pupils may in fact be too weak to sustain a doctrine that the chief aim of the Academy was to prepare them all for statecraft - as several scholars have long recognized. It does not follow, however, that statecraft was not a substantial subject for philosophizing or that Plato did not embrace practical politics in discourse.[br /]
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Even if Plato's dialogues display serious gaps in the area of practical political application, his school's perceived expertise could have been justified. For example, the Academy's relationship to Athens, and the obligations entailed by its initiates, in addition to Plato's own teachings, both oral and written, altogether could have pointed in this direction. Specifically, the thiasos's relationship to the polis was a situation every member of Plato's cult must have incorporated into their daily routine. This relationship's importance, furthermore, was outlined in Plato's Laws and given its philosophical foundation in the Republic.[br /]
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We know of several cases where students (or former students) were believed to have undertaken political activities as result of an "association" with Plato's school, some of these were violent (e.g., the assassin Callipus; the failed despot Euaeum; and the subversive Timaeus) while one became a tyrant (Chaero of Pallene).[br /]
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Given Plato's focus on virtue, our instinct is to disassociate the philosopher and the Academy from these examples. Scholars emphasize that such activities could hardly have been in the "spirit" of the Academy's policies. Nevertheless, the ancient anti-Platonists clearly blamed Plato for his pupils' misdeeds.[br /]
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One cannot pinpoint direct and specific political aims, or an instructional body, within the Academy. Nevertheless, many individuals had a "connection" with Plato's school and had "engaged in politics". Plato, it was believed, personally dispatched Aristonymus, Phormio, and Menedemus to legislate for certain communities as well as maintained relationships with the courts of Macedonia and Syracuse. Plato's pupils, included Chabrias, Demosthenes, Hyperides, Lycurgus, and Phocion.[br /]
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Examples of political teachings might include Xenocrates's four books on "kingship," Aristotle's Politics, as well as Aristotle being the personal tutor of Alexander. Obviously, Philip thought Aristotle was qualified to serve in such a role. If Plato had not intended his school to train political advisors, it nonetheless acquired enough of a reputation that students went away confident to act as such.[br /]
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The pursuit of philosophy required one item above all in ancient times: skolê (leisure). Those individuals with this commodity were, undoubtedly, of similarly affluent background and means. Consequently, they would have belonged to the class which supplied all poleis with their leaders.[br /]
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Whether or not scholars of the Academy, including Plato himself, personally instructed students to pursue political careers is not at issue; the matter is whether or not Plato's writings alone could prepare individuals for practical politics. That individuals entered Plato's thiasos to further their own political ambitions, or walked away confident of undertaking them, in addition to the fact that the school acquired a reputation for such expertise, are crucial observations.[br /]
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The Laws includes several chapters devoted entirely to constitutional matters and legal code - everything from population control, treason, and contests over drainage to details on bee-keeping. The substance of the work, in addition to the political theories outlined in the Republic, is of such magnitude that we cannot deny some sort of intended use in either constitutional reform of existing poleis. Nevertheless, scholars will often raise questions concerning how (exactly) Plato's most ideal doctrines, as preserved in the Republic, might have equipped men to engage practical political matters of the real world. [br /]
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Taking a closer look at the Laws, it opens with the aims and methods of education and special references to the use of drink (624a-703e). The Athenian Stranger, in fact, embarks on a long eulogy, broken into several parts, which concerns properly conducted drinking parties as beneficial educational experiences and tests of moral stamina. This opening cannot be incidental. It was famed for its sympotic practices. Notably, the Laws attests that symposia must be regulated by the polis (673e) to produce a sense of reverence in the soul and health in the body (672d). As a sussitos, Plato's diatribê was founded along these lines. Consequently, we may infer that it conducted its own symposia with these aims in mind.[br /]
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The affinity, in fact, is quite striking. An Athenian law ascribed to Solon states that if members of a sussitos made arrangements amongst themselves, those agreements would have been binding unless forbidden by public writing. That Plato would set up his own thiasos in just such a manner seems both timely and, practically, self evident.[br /]
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Nevertheless, the question remains: how can we move from Plato the esoteric meta-philosopher, interested in timeless truths and men's souls, to Plato the philosopher-statesman, interested in the establishment of practical and just regimes?[br /]
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In the Republic, Socrates provides a most direct "philosophical" relationship through analogy. After failing to find justice in the individual Socrates suggests, they look for it in the city. He uses the analogy of little and big letters. This passage is remarkable for many reasons. If the interlocutors present had not accepted the premise, Socrates could not suggest that the polis was the individual. This suggests a most direct relationship between the individual and polis – at least philosophically.[br /]
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"How did Athenians such as Plato form the polis out of individuals ?" An understanding of this question will help us understand Plato's Academy and how, exactly, we can move from esoteric, idealized philosophical discourse to the general, pragmatic world of politics.[br /]
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That was the polis. The public recognition of parenthood, of religious obligation, the opportunity to vote, or to serve on a jury was crucial for proper participation in Athenian society.[br /]
[br /]
Men, women, metics, and foreigners were entitled to certain legal/religious obligations to the polis when attached to groups like the Thiasoi. One thiasos, for instance, bound its membership to redress wrongs done to any one member, to move all friends to like action, so that to molest a stranger was not to molest a helpless man. The cult's constitution also required its officers to supervise the burial of deceased members, to notify relatives (or friends), and required all members to attend the funeral.[br /]
[br /]
Prior to 306, associations of thiasotai (cult associates) could have acquired a heiron (shrine) only by vote of the polis. Thus, when individuals joined Plato's thiasos (founded in 388/7 with a shrine to the Muses), they entered a legally recognized socio-religious entity. Obligations like those outlined above appear to have been a common feature of thiasoi, and such obligations would undoubtedly have been present in Plato's Academy. In essence, a thiasos's organization was the polis in microcosm.[br /]
[br /]
It apparently disbanded thiasoi contrary to law : thus it was repealed by a graphe paranomon (written counter-suit).[br /]
[br /]
Even though Plato may have accepted only those who were "intoxicated to learn what was in their souls," by joining Plato's Academy a student entered a complex society within the Athenian political community. The Academy was a legally recognized religious-social-political organization with a strong, well defined, and direct relationship to Athenian politeia. A student would have acquired both obligations and privileges in relation to Athens upon the very act of entering Plato's thiasos.[br /]
[br /]
The Academy's public activities (or the public activity of individual members). These activities are tangible results of Plato's teachings, and they are important clues which can offer insights into what end Plato pursued in his school. By identifying the results, we can perhaps better understand the role Plato's dialogues played in his overall teaching.[br /]
[br /]
The examples of political expertise in Plato's Academy come from two directions, but both parts of the evidence stand diametrically opposed to each other. Plato's dialogues and letters do not relate anything direct about the Academy, whereas the testimony by later authors is direct but secondary.[br /]
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