Amicus meus Plato, sed magis amica veritas. (Latin proverb. "Plato is
my friend, but truth is a greater friend.")
For purposes of this course, three elements of Plato's thought
will be important.
1-Platonism as a way of life for idealistic individuals.
2- Plato's theory of otherworldly Forms, as these Forms
function in the personal life of the ideal
Platonist.
3- Socratic reasoning, considered as a rational basis for
Plato's Form theory and the role it plays in the life of the ideal Platonist.
These essays will also employ a method of interpretation
which I will call "critical reconstruction." In the case
of Plato this means basically:
- Constructing an interpretation of Plato's Form theory that can be supported by Socratic reasoning.
- Constructing a model of Socratic reasoning that can support Plato's Form theory, as it functions in the life of the ideal Platonist.
Critical reconstruction -- to be explained further below -- is an alternative to the more common approach today, which
(1) takes some statements of Plato at face value, as statements of "What Plato believed," and
(2) if this supposed belief of Plato appears to be not true, uses this as a reason to reject Platonism as a whole.
This more common approach is the main reason for widespread rejection of "Platonism" among philosophers today. Critical reconstruction is a way of saving Plato from this modern fate, by dissociating some key elements in his thought (that can be shown to be still valid) from other elements (and especially from traditional interpretations of these other elements) that we now know cannot be rationally supported.
We are familiar today with the idea of a "role model," a person that someone
takes as a model for imitation. Plato's ideal philosopher is an idealist who
wants to strive for a level of personal excellence, higher that it would be if
she only conformed to what society expects of her, and for this reason she wants
to find or create a model of excellence she can model herself on.
Plato thinks that no concrete human person can serve this function adequately,
because a model to model oneself on should be as free from imperfections as
possible, and no human person is free of imperfections.
Why formulate perfect models? If I'm an aspiring
guitar player, I want to listen to and imitate the very best guitarists. Even if
I don't expect to achieve their level of excellence, I listen and try to imitate
them (a) because they are most inspiring and motivating, and (b) because in
becoming more like them, I can be more sure that my playing will be becoming
more excellent. As Plato himself says, imperfect models are not good
models to model oneself on and use for purposes of self evaluation: "The
imperfect is not the measure of anything" (ateles oudenos
metron).
Plato thinks that no concrete person is free of
imperfections, all individuals are mixtures of some things good and some things
not-good. In fact, the entire concrete social world we live in is a mixture of
good and not-good. The only way a person can formulate perfect models to model
herself on is to conceive of these models in the form of abstract ideas of
particular kinds of human excellence -- "abstract" means not connected to
anything belonging to the concrete visible social world. These are what
"Platonic Forms"
are. The Platonic Form of Love, for example, is a concept of what Love would be
at its very best. The Platonic Form of Courage is a concept of what Courage
would be at its very best. Perfect Love and perfect Courage do not exist in the
concrete visible social world, but I can grasp them in my mind, and try to
become a more admirable person by modeling myself on these abstract/perfect
virtue-concepts.
One could say that Plato proposed perfect virtue-Forms as a
substitute for the very morally-imperfect gods and goddesses of popular Greek
religion. Ideally the Forms, not these divine beings, should serve as the focus
for the ultimate and unconditional loyalties of the ideal Platonist. He
sometimes speaks of the Forms as "divine," and of the goal of the ideal
Platonist to "become like the divine as much as is possible to mankind." Here is
what he says in his dialogue Theaetetus:
In the divine there is no shadow of unrighteousness, only the
perfection of righteousness. And nothing is more like the divine than any one of
us who becomes as righteous as possible. 176c
Evils can never be done away with [in this world]... they [do
not] have any place in the divine world, but they must needs haunt this region
of our mortal nature. That is why we should make all speed to take flight from
this world to the other, and that means becoming like the divine so far as we
can, and that again is to become righteous with the help of Wisdom. 176a
That is: The concrete visible social world around us, including the conventional moral norms of this society, is inevitably imperfect at best, a mixture of right and not-right.
The contrasting moral perfection of the Forms, understood by Platonist
philosophical "wisdom," makes them worthy of being thought of as a "divine"
world, taking "divine" to represent what deserves our unconditional commitment.
A good Platonist mentally shifts her attention from this imperfect world to the
perfect "divine" world of the Forms.
This passage also makes clear Plato's use of poetic imagery
and metaphorical language. "Taking flight from this world to the other"
obviously does not refer to literal soul-travel to a literally existing parallel
universe above this one. It means ceasing to define oneself in the context of
the imperfect social world, and trying instead to "become as righteous as we
can" in this social world we live in, guided by Platonist "Wisdom" -- i.e.
knowledge of the most excellent Platonic Forms -- which is what it means to
"become like the divine as far as we can." In this context, it is not necessary that a literal "other world"
exists as some kind of unseen parallel universe. The practical point is that
the ideal Platonist should gain a mental grasp of perfect virtue-Forms which she
uses as models to mold her character on, and that this would be the focus of her
striving for moral excellence.
How can I know whether some idea of Courage I have arrived at is perfect?
I can know it is perfect to the degree that it can sustain
itself in the face of Socratic questioning.
Here is a simple example of Socratic questioning.
Socrates asks Polemarchos, "What is rightness?"
Polemarchos: "Rightness is giving to each person what belongs
to him."
In reply, Socrates poses a hypothetical story: Suppose a
friend left me some weapons for safekeeping. He has subsequently gone insane,
and now returns wanting his weapons back. Would it be right in this case to
follow Polemarchos' rule and "give to him what belongs to him."
Polemarchos: "Clearly not."
Socrates' story is a "counterexample" to Polemarchos' rule
defining rightness. The counterexample does not show that the rule is completely
wrong, only that it is ambiguous and imperfect. Following the rule "give to each
what is his" would, as
Plato says, "sometimes mean doing what is right [in the normal case], and
sometimes doing what is not right [in the case of the insane man]."
This questioning by counterexample is the heart of Socratic
reasoning. In the present critical reconstruction, the Platonic Form of
Rightness can be defined as: A concept of rightness which can withstand the most
severe Socratic questioning, i.e. a concept to which there are no
counterexamples. As will be argued in a later essay, Plato's picture of the
ideal philosopher in Republic chs. 5-7 assumes that it is possible,
though very difficult, to formulate a concept of Rightness that could withstand
Socratic questioning. This would be the Platonic Form of Rightness.
******
In Plato's writing, Socratic reasoning always takes the form of dialogue
between two or more people. But this dialogue form is not a necessary part
of this reasoning method itself, because it is important that Socratic reasoning
be a critical examination of a single person's own thoughts and perceptions, not
a critical confrontation between two people holding different points of view. A person engaged in Socratic reasoning need not take
into consideration the ideas of anyone else that she does not agree with. This is why Socrates says that he has no ideas of his own to
put into people. He is like his mother, a midwife, who only helps other
individuals to "deliver their own babies," first to articulate their own beliefs
and then test their own beliefs -- testing one belief an single individual has,
in the light of other ideas or perceptions this same individual has.
Following this "midwife" principle, Socrates does not say to
Polemarchos, "I disagree with your rule." Socrates makes up the counterexample
story about the insane person, but he asks Polemarchos whether Polemarchos
thinks that it would be right to return weapons to an insane person. The point
is not to bring up a conflict between what Polemarchos believes and what
Socrates believes, but to uncover a conflict between a principle Polemarchos
thought he believed in, and Polemarchos' own perception of what is right and not
right in the concrete case of the insane person. In a similar situation in
another dialogue, a person Callicles says "So Socrates disagrees with Callicles,"
Socrates replies, "No, [our conversation has shown that] Callicles disagrees
with Callicles."
Referring to Socratic questioning by its Greek term elenchos (Latinized to elenchus), Plato-scholar Richard Robinson describes well this "individualist" element essential to Socratic reasoning.
Socratic elenchus is a very personal affair... If the ulterior
end... is to be attained, it is essential that the answerer himself be
convinced, and quite indifferent whether anyone else is... Whereas in law-courts
you have to convince a third party, in the Socratic elenchus, the witnesses who
are so effective at trials are useless here. The only true witness and authority
is the answerer himself; and if he does not admit the fact, it is irrelevant how
many others do. The result depends not on a majority of votes, but on the single
vote of the answerer... The whole essence of the elenchus lies in making visible
to the answerer the link between certain of his actual beliefs [e.g.
Polemarchos' initial definition] and the contradictory of his present thesis
[e.g. Polemarchos' own perception that it would be wrong to apply this
definition to the case of the insane person].
("Elenchus" by Richard Robinson, in The Philosophy of Socrates, ed. G. Vlastos.
NY: Doubleday. 1971, p. 88)
Critical Reconstruction is an approach to interpreting Plato, which will be applied later to early Buddhist and early Christian writing as well.
Critical reconstruction does not ask, "What did Plato believe?"
Rather, in the present essays on Plato, critical reconstruction asks, first, "What must be true in order to provide a sound basis for Platonism as a way of life?" Secondly, "Does Plato offer a reasoning method capable of establishing such a basis?"
For example, it is commonly thought that Plato believed the Forms to be Eternal, Absolute truths. This amounts to the idea that there is only one small set of virtues, and only one true definition of each of these. Anyone anywhere throughout all human history who thinks there are other kinds of excellence besides these, must be mistaken. Any Platonist in any culture who gets her head into the Platonist heaven will see exactly the same set of Eternal Forms that all other good Platonists will see.
This lends itself to standardization, denying the validity of unique individuality, diversity in cultures, and historical change. In its most extreme form it would mean that there is only one truly admirable character-type, characterized by one set of virtues arranged in a certain order of priority. Everyone everywhere who wants to be an admirable ("virtuous") person must strive to mold herself on this one character-type, which also can and should be used as the one and only measuring stick for measuring every individual everywhere.
This extreme form of standardizing "Platonism" has almost always been a caricature, constructed mainly by its opponents, rather than advocated by persons who identify themselves as Platonists. It has become especially problematic in modern times. Because of increased understanding of cultural diversity, and the way cultures have changed throughout history, such a belief in Absolute Eternal truths, the same for everyone everywhere, has become very problematic and widely questioned today. Those who think that this one interpretation of the Form theory is wrong, take this as a reason to reject the Form theory in its entirety. This has become probably the number one reason that there are very few Platonists among professional philosophers today. As Richard Rorty (recent head of the American Philosophical Association) said, today "No one wants to be called a Platonist."
In another essay, I explain why it is at
least doubtful that Plato meant to assert that the Forms were Eternal Absolute
truths in the modern sense. There are other ways of explaining the Greek words
he uses that are more in accord with their context, and especially with the
central concern of Plato to provide rational support for a Platonist way of life
for individuals.
But this doesn't essentially matter. Critical reconstruction
asks: Even if Plato believed in Absolute Eternal truths, it it possible to drop this problematic aspect
of Platonism and still retain something central and important to his Form
theory?
Yes it is. The main function of the Forms is to serve
idealistic individuals as perfect models of excellence to model themselves on.
Suppose Carlos, a Platonist from Guatemala, takes ten virtue-concepts from his
culture, and is able to formulate a definition of each that he knows is perfect
because it can sustain itself in the face of Socratic questioning. Natasha, a
Platonist from Russia takes an entirely different set of ten virtue-concepts from
her culture, and is able to formulate a definition of each that she knows is
perfect because it can sustain itself in the face of Socratic questioning. If
they talk to each other, Natasha recognizes that it is "universally true" that Carlos' virtue-concepts are
perfect in their goodness. It's just that this is universally true of her
ten virtues also, so that there is no
reason she needs to model herself on his ten virtues rather than hers ten
virtues. In other words, the problem is not that there are no
universal truths, but that there are too many such universal truths to
make any one small set of such truths to be the single valid choice of everyone
everywhere who wants to be virtuous. (A paper written by a former student
from Russia -- focusing on the Russian concept
Душевный,
“Dushevnii”, "soulful" -- helps illustrate the way in
which Socratic discussions focused on words from different languages and
cultures will tend to go in different directions. This paper will be found
at the end of Instructions for the first graded
paper.)
The essential point
here in relation to transcultural Absolutes, is that "perfect in its goodness" is completely different from "universally
obligatory." Carlos can know that his virtue-concepts are perfect in their
goodness -- so suitable for him to model himself on -- without having to assert
that they obligatory for Natasha to model herself on these same virtue-concepts.
It is possible that there are an indefinite number of perfect virtue-concepts,
an indefinite number of Platonic Forms. This idea of many universal truths about
virtues preserves what is essential to the function that Forms
play in the lives of individual Platonists, while dropping the problematic
assertion that Platonic Forms constitute Absolute Universal truths -- that there
can only be one small set of true virtues, and only one correct definition of
each. It allows for the fact that there might be an indefinite number of
virtues, and several good Platonist ways of defining each.
In other words, even if Plato did believe in a single set of Absolute Timeless Truths regarding virtue, (1) Plato offers us no reasoning method capable of supporting this claim, and (2) the validity of the Platonist worldview and way of life does not depend on this claim. The Platonist worldview and way of life is one in which a person formulates for herself perfect virtue-forms to use for purposes of self-definition and self-evaluation. This requires rational knowledge that some particular virtue-concept is perfect in its goodness, not that it is universal and Absolute. As I will show below, Plato's writings do provide us with a method of critical reasoning distinguishing between more perfect and less perfect virtue-concepts.
The Main Point: "Perfect in goodness" is completely different from "universal and Absolute."
Many students seem very concerned about the question of whether and how people can reach universal agreement on moral issues, and so have a difficult time leaving out this concern when considering and practicing Socratic/Platonic reasoning.
-- Some students think it is possible and important to reach universal agreement, and hope that Socratic reasoning might be made into a method for bringing about universal agreement among everyone everywhere.
-- Others are convinced ahead of time that there is no reasoning method capable of leading everyone to agreement, and object to Socratic/Platonic reasoning because they assume that universal agreement is the main aim of all moral reasoning.
The best advice I can give to all students on this issue is:
Try to get your mind off of the issue of universal agreement entirely, when considering and practicing Socratic/Platonic reasoning as described in these essays. Concern for universal agreement (no matter what your opinion about its possibility/impossibility) is a major source of distractions when trying to understand and practice this method.
More specifically:
1. Do not depart from the Socratic individualist/midwife principle in order to try to reach or bring about agreement with others. The individualist/midwife principle states that Socratic reasoning must be a process by which an individual tries to articulate her own beliefs and perceptions, and then critically examines those beliefs and perceptions in the light of other beliefs and perceptions in her own mind. She need not try to learn about the different beliefs and perceptions of others who have different views, take them into serious consideration, or try to accommodate them.
2. Do not get frustrated or reject this method because it seems incapable of bringing everyone to agreement. Just make progress in uncovering and trying to resolve ambiguities and contradictions within your own thought, and be satisfied with doing this for yourself. Don't worry about whether it is or isn't bringing you closer to agreement with others, or bringing them into closer agreement with you.
In other words, first, no one of course can be sure that Socratic/Platonic reasoning will not lead everyone to universal agreement. Given the nature of the method and my experience with it, it seems unlikely, but I can't know that it will never happen. It's just that its validity is not dependent on whether it will or will not.
Secondly, no one can know for sure that there is absolutely no other reasoning method capable of bringing people to universal agreement about virtues. Whatever such a method might be, it seems most likely that it is quite different from this method, requiring that we depart from the Socratic individualist/midwife principle and try to cast our net as broadly as possible. So again a concern to reason in such a way as to reach universal agreement will be if anything a distraction from seriously engaging in Socratic/Platonic reasoning on the model to be explained below.
(For those who are tempted to try to find some other reasoning method capable of discovering a single, exclusively valid set of moral truths obligatory for everyone everywhere: This sounds plausible until you really try it. Most attempts stop at just proposing some list of moral norms or ideals that sound attractive, but don't really try to prove that there can be no other norms or ideals outside of this list that are also equally attractive. There has been a sustained attempt in the last 300 years among serious philosophers to achieve the goal of truly universal/absolute/timeless truths, but realistically we have to say today that in the field of morality at least this has ended in failure -- no philosopher has been able to win widespread agreement among other philosophers that he or she has achieved this goal. In other words, if you seriously try to achieve this goal you will almost surely find yourself in a morass of complicated and difficult philosophical problems that no one has yet found a way to resolve. If we need to tell individual moral idealists to postpone their efforts to strive for moral excellence until such universal/absolute truths regarding moral excellence have been arrived at, we might well be asking them to postpone such striving indefinitely.)
Following are some inessential appendices that will be of interest to those who want to understand better how the present "critical reconstruction" relates to some ideas and beliefs commonly associated with Platonism today, but which are dropped in the present critical reconstruction. Some of these remarks will be mainly of interest to Philosophy majors.
*******
In a dialogue called the Phaedo, Plato has "Socrates" speak at length about the soul as a thing-like entity that could possibly exist by itself when separated from the material body, and of the happy state that idealistic philosophers (like Socrates) can look forward to in the afterlife. (The scene in which this dialogue takes place is Socrates in prison waiting to drink the hemlock.) As in all dialogues, there is some question as to whether Plato himself is committed to this belief (A.E. Taylor thinks that the Phaedo is Plato's attempt to connect his Form theory to certain religious beliefs of Pythagoreans whom he had just met and was impressed with on a trip to Sicily). But this idea of an immortal spiritual soul, separable from a material body, is certainly something closely associated with Platonism throughout its history.
But the question for critical reconstruction is not, "What did Plato believe about the soul?" but "Does the validity of the Platonist way of life crucially depend on the truth or falsity of beliefs about an immortal soul expressed in Plato's writing?" In other words, suppose a person formulates perfect virtue concepts, makes a concerted effort to mold his character on these concepts because he values these virtues for their own sake, and is relatively successful in these efforts. She also looks forward to a happy and immortal state in an afterlife as a separated soul described in the Phaedo. but suppose it turns out that these are false hopes. It turns out that there is no soul that can exist separated from a body, and no immortal happiness in an afterlife. Will this person have led a foolish, wasted life? I argue the answer is clearly no.
What needs to be true in order to provide a sound basis for the Platonist way of life? What is necessary is that there be conscious persons capable of thought processes and capable of making choices about the kinds of people they want to be. There have to be persons who have character-traits which these persons can improve upon through conscious efforts. There has to be a difference between admirable character traits and non-admirable character traits, a difference between more excellent and less excellent virtues, and a rational method for telling the difference. Some of these truths are commonsense assumptions practically everyone takes for granted. The last truth -- about a reasoning method capable of differentiating between admirable/not-admirable and more-excellent/less-excellent -- will be argued for in detail in essays to follow, explaining a model of Socratic reasoning and the principles underlying it. By contrast, the rational arguments Plato attempts to give in the Phaedo and elsewhere, supporting a belief in an immortal soul are for the most part thin in the extreme.
*****
Many readers and thinkers have been fascinated by Plato's image of a state ruled by a "Philosopher King," presented in his dialogue The Republic. Some of the Republic passages I draw on, presenting Platonic Forms as "models" (paradeigma) to model human character on, are actually speaking of the way these Philosopher Kings, through their expert knowledge of virtues, are able to use these virtue-concepts to as models to mold the character of others on. Again many scholars have expressed doubts as to whether the Republic was intended as a serious platform advocating that others work to bring about just such a society ruled by philosopher kings. (Plato's later writing, the Laws, is much more plausible as a realistic proposal, and it drops the idea of Philosopher Kings.) In any case, the "Platonist" idea of Philosopher Kings is problematic in itself, and has become especially so in the modern world with so many dedicated to egalitarian democracies.
Whatever may be said for or against the idea of a state ruled by Platonist Philosopher Kings, the validity of Platonism as a way of life for individuals is in no way dependent on any truths about the possibility or desirability of this particular political model. The essays below will ignore this aspect of Platonist thought.
******
Here is an outline explaining several key aspects of the present critical reconstruction of Platonism.
| Overambitious claims Claims often connected with Plato's Form theory that have become problematic, and a source of objections to Platonism. |
Critical Reconstruction Dropping these overambitious claims, while retaining what is essential to the function of the Forms theory in the life of an individual Platonist. |
| The Forms are Absolute Eternal Truths. Anyone, anywhere, at any time in history, who gets her head into the single Platonist "otherworld" would see exactly the same small set of Forms. This denies the legitimacy of cultural diversity and historical change in cultures. | Critical-Pluralist Platonism. A Platonic Form is a virtue-concept that can withstand Socratic questioning. "Pluralism" accepts cultural diversity and historical change. There might be an indefinite number of Platonic Forms that can withstand Socratic questioning. "Critical" means that not just any virtue-concept qualifies as a perfect Platonic Form, because not every virtue-concept can withstand Socratic questioning (in fact, most familiar concepts cannot). |
| Reified Forms. ("Res" is Latin for "thing." To "re-ify" Platonic Forms is to "thing-ify" them, treat them as a thing-like entities objectively existing in an unseen parallel universe.) Already Aristotle, Plato's sometime pupil, ridiculed and rejected Plato's Forms, understood in this reified way. | Platonic Forms do not have to exist as objective thing-like entities, in order to deserve being taken seriously as perfect models to model oneself on. Plato's references to an "other world" and to Forms as "beings" should be understood metaphorically, not literally. |
| Like all moral philosophy, Plato's moral thought is a
theory about what should be taught to all people, teaching them the line
between acceptable and unacceptable conduct. "Morality" is essentially a
way of putting limits on individual freedom, imposed on individuals by
society for the sake of social order.
(The nature of moral rules obligatory for all, has become a matter of endless debates today. Even if philosophers or experts could agree among themselves [unlikely], there is little chance that they could get their ideas accepted by the general public.) |
Individualist and idealistic Platonism. Platonist thought is addressed to idealistic individuals, not to the general public or society at large. It wants to inspire these individuals to strive for moral excellence, and offers each individual a rational means of developing her own ideals of excellence. Achieving moral excellence is not a limitation on freedom for the sake of society, but a means to individual self-fulfillment. Practicing the Platonist way does not require agreement from anyone else, and doesn't assume any change at all in society at large. |
| Intolerant, judgmental elitism. Like most
idealistic individuals, a Platonist might be tempted to measure everyone
else in the light of her own ideals. She might judge these others on this simplistic basis, and
look down on them, without really trying to understand them. But actually, it is possible to have an intuitive understanding of very high moral ideals without developing the difficult intellectual skills in abstract thinking necessary to the Platonist way of life. |
Private Platonism. The very best kind of Platonist is a person wholeheartedly devoted to developing the intellectual skills in abstract thinking necessary to a full critical understanding of specific virtues, and cultivating these virtue-ideals in herself. But this pertains to her own private life. She does not judge everyone else by this standard, recognizing that there are other ways of leading a great human life (such as the early Buddhist and Christian ways) that do not involve or require this kind of critical thinking. |
In regard to this last point, the danger of Platonist elitism gives rise to
objections mainly if we look at it from a general point of view: Would I want to
recommend Platonism to the general public? If I think there is too
much danger that it will encourage objectionable elitism in too many people, perhaps not. But
then the question becomes: Should I preclude this as a possible option for my
own personal life, just because I would hesitate to recommend it to the general
public? If I am the kind of person aware of and
concerned about this danger, then I'm probably also someone who could interpret
and practice Platonism in a way that would not lead me to become elitist.
In this case, a better solution would be to formulate a non-elitist version of
Platonism for myself, and just not recommend it to others less resistant to elitist
temptations.
********
Many beliefs commonly attributed to Plato today are the results of interpreting his statements as though he must be trying to take on tasks and goals that almost all philosophers in the 17th-18th centuries in Europe assumed to be the proper task of all moral reasoning. These goals have also proved in many cases overambitious, and the failure of moral reasoning to accomplish them has led to a great deal of skepticism today.
Many modern objections to Plato
stem from a combination of two things:
(1) the assumption that there are certain goals that all
reasoning (including Plato's reasoning) must try to achieve, and
(2) the true observation that neither Socratic reasoning nor
any other reasoning method found in Plato's writings can actually accomplish
these goals.
For purposes of critical reconstruction, it is important to
dissociate the essential goals of Plato's reasoning from other goals which
his reasoning is clearly not suited to achieve.
Here are some more examples:
Goal #1 of modern moral thought: Moral reasoning must be able to provide rules for correct
behavior that covers all circumstances. It must be able to resolve all dilemmas
and all controversies over what is the right conduct in every circumstance (e.g.
whether abortion is right or wrong, whether capital punishment is right or
wrong, etc.)
Despite years of trying, philosophers have not provided a
method of reasoning, widely accepted among all philosophers, for resolving all
dilemmas and controversies.
Dissociating Plato from goal #1:
One result of Socratic reasoning is that no pure and precise definition of moral
goodness can take the form of a set of rules for external conduct. For Plato,
external conduct belongs to the imperfect world of visible reality, which is
always a mixture of good and bad. This is why the goal of moral reasoning is to
formulate virtue-concepts (1) that are abstract, conceptually separated from
everything visible to the senses, and (2) describe internal motives and
attitudes that are invisible. Visible external conduct represents the
"appearances" of moral goodness, whose essence is always internal and invisible.
Goal #2. Moral reasoning has to be able to give people reasons why they
should try to be morally good. (Attempts to do this have failed.)
Dissociating Plato from Goal #2.
There is no other reason to be good. In the Republic
(358d-368c) Plato argues at length that the test of a genuinely good person is
that she will continue to be good even when all the other reasons to be
good are absent. I become good when my motivations are good and admirable in
themselves. If I want to be good for some other reason (to get rewarded, to gain
the admiration of others, etc.) -- these cannot make me an admirable person
unless they are admirable in themselves.
Goal #3. The goal of moral reasoning is to enable a person to transcend
all social and cultural conditioning. The alternatives to this are: (1) Whatever
any society decides is right has to be accepted as right for them, just because
they regard it so, or (2) regarding all moral rules and principles as arbitrary
and rejecting them all.
Dissociating Plato from Goal #3.
Plato did not address this question in its modern form. Here
is an answer from the point of view of a modern critical-pluralist Platonism:
Newborn children become fully human by being socialized into some particular
culture, which includes learning a set of virtue-concepts expressed in a
particular language. These concepts (different in different cultures) provide
indispensable raw materials for Socratic/Platonic reasoning. The
goal of this reasoning is not to undo social/cultural conditioning, or to
transcend cultural particularity into a realm of transcultural, universal
truths. The problem with ordinary virtue-concepts does not lie in their
particularity, but in the fact that they are imperfect and imprecise in their
ability to represent pure goodness. Reasoning can start with any concept from
culture, but its purpose is to refine that concept to remove its imperfections
to arrive at a concept perfect in its goodness. "Perfect in its goodness" is
completely different from "universal," since there can be an indefinite
number of concepts perfect in their goodness.
Goal #4. Social order depends on everyone agreeing on the same rules. We
cannot allow each individual to do her own moral reasoning and lead her life by
her own conclusions, because this would threaten social order. This is why moral
reasoning must take everyone's ideas into consideration, and argue things
through to some final conclusion that all rational people will agree with.
Dissociating Plato from Goal #4.
Consider the figure of Socrates in Plato's dialogues. He went
around trying to get people to question accepted ideas about moral goodness. He
thought that in doing so he was teaching them to "care for their souls," because
the ideal outcome would be that they would have much-improved virtue-concepts to
model themselves on. But an Athenian jury condemned Socrates to death on the
charge of "corrupting the youth." According to the dialogue Crito, some friends
came to Socrates in prison offering him an escape plan. He refused, saying that,
even though the jury verdict was unjust, it was reached following agreed-upon
Athenian law, and the law should be followed even when it results in injustices.
This shows how individualist and pluralist Platonism is compatible with
obedience to laws necessary for social order.
For purposes of Critical Reconstruction, it does not crucially matter what Plato himself believed or did not believe on the topics just listed. Plato may indeed have made some overambitious claims that cannot be sustained in the light of what we know today. These can and should be dropped, but not allowed to bring down the entirety of Platonism with them.
Think of Plato's thought as a very large sprawling building. Plato addressed an amazingly broad range of topics, and puts into the mouth of Socrates and others a wide variety of views on these topics. Given the fact that he stands at the very beginning of rational reflection on these topics, followed up and developed by hundreds of subsequent thinkers, it is almost guaranteed that some views expressed in Plato's writings might have seemed plausible to Plato's contemporaries, but have not stood the test of time and are no longer plausible. Plato's writing opened many avenues of inquiry, but was not able to foresee -- as we know by hindsight -- which of these roads would be dead ends and which would lead somewhere.
To return to the sprawling building metaphor: On examination today, we can see that some parts of this building have a solid rational foundation and some do not. Those that do not we should let fall, and not bring down the entirety of the Platonic edifice with them.
On the other hand, I argue in a separate essay that it is at least highly doubtful whether Plato himself regarded as essential to his thought many claims associated with Platonism today.
********************
First, we have to recognize one difficulty in answering the question as to
"what Plato thought": Plato almost never speaks in his own voice. He writes
dialogues covering an amazing variety of subjects, putting all thoughts in the mouth of "Socrates" and other people. He
does this because, like his hero Socrates, his main purpose is to expose his
readers to different points of view and get them to think through the issues for
themselves.
Secondly, anyone who compares Plato's original Greek to the
standard English translations of his dialogues, will soon realize that many
Greek words and phrases Plato uses are much more ambiguous than the English
words used in translations. Modern English translators tend to assume that
modern philosophers were correct in reading back their own goals into Plato, and
so freely use heavily loaded words like "Absolute," "Eternal," "Universal," "Eternally Existing
Forms" in their translations -- giving Plato's statements maximally-ambitious,
but maximally controversial meanings. In actuality his words in Greek are easily
susceptible of other less ambitious and therefore less problematic and controversial meanings.
To give just one example of translation problems:
Aei is the ordinary Greek word for "always." Plato often uses this word in phrases describing Platonic Forms. Translators frequently translate these Greek phrases by such words as "Eternal," "Absolute," etc. But there is a clear difference, as is evident in the difference between saying "I always take the bus," and saying "I eternally take the bus." This is a good example of the way in which translators and commentators
(1) Interpret Plato's statements as though he were addressing issues that have arisen in modern times, in the context of greatly increased awareness of cultural diversity and historical change.
(2) Interpret Plato's statements in a maximalist way, so that they appear to make the very strongest claims, which for that reason have also become the most controversial and problematic today, and have in fact become the main reason for rejecting Platonism.
In another essay I give a translation of Plato's Greek text, and detailed commentary on some key passages on the Forms in Plato's Republic chs. 5-7, showing
(1) that the context there suggests that aei in these passages does not mean what the words "Eternal" and "Absolute" suggest to modern readers, and that
(2) interpreted contextually, in the light of Plato's own central concerns, aei in relation to the Forms can be given a more limited and moderate meaning that can be supported by Socratic/Platonic critical reasoning (as opposed to maximalist claims to universal Absolute Timeless truths, which cannot).
Roughly, modern translations of aei tend to assume that Plato was mainly concerned with the problem of diversity and cultural change, and his theory of "Eternal" Forms reflects the refusal of a cultural conservative to accept the legitimacy of diversity and change.
Plato's supposed "conservatism" in relation to contemporary Athenian society is problematic at best. (Aristophanes play The Clouds, making fun of Socrates as a person "with his head in the clouds" more likely shows the dislike of Socrates and Plato among cultural conservatives in Athens.)
But whatever his stand on this issue, the main problem relevant to Platonism as a way of life for individuals is not the problem of diversity and cultural change. The main problem of "change" central to this concern (and therefore to the project of critical reconstruction) is the problem raised by the kind of Socratic questioning illustrated in the interchange with Polemarchos cited above. This interchange shows that the rule "Give to each what belongs to him," is "changeable" with respect to truly admirable rightness, because following a rule like this would amount to (as Plato says in another place) "sometimes acting rightly [in the normal case], and sometimes acting not-rightly [in the case of the friend gone insane]." What the individual wanting a perfect rightness-concept to model her character on needs a rightness-concept that is "unchanging" in this sense -- unchanging in its ability to represent truly admirable rightness. The story of the man-gone-insane shows that a person cannot become a more and more admirable person by invariably following the rule "give to each what belongs to him," because this rule does not "always" represent purely admirable rightness. The characteristic of a Platonic Form of Rightness, by contrast, would be that does always (aei) represent pure rightness unmixed with anything not-right. A Platonic Form of Rightness is an not "Eternally Existing" thing-like object (a common translation of aei on), but always (aei) represents the pure being (on) of admirable rightness (its pure Goodness.)
We could describe the problem here in more exact modern English by replacing the word "change" with the word "ambiguity" as the central problem addressed by Platonism. The central problem Plato addresses is not the problem that different individuals in different cultures might disagree on the rule, "Give to each what belongs to him," but that Polemarchos' individual response to the story of the man-gone-insane shows that, according to this individual's own perceptions, this rule is ambiguous with respect to admirable rightness. "Ambiguous" means that this general rule can apply to actions taken in a wide variety of circumstances, some of which will represent admirable rightness, and some of which will not represent admirable rightness, but represent rather being unadmirably irresponsible (as in the case of the insane person).
Cast in these terms, one can say that the central purpose of Socratic questioning-by-counterexample is to reveal the ambiguity in many commonly accepted ideas about moral goodness. On close examination, commonly accepted words and concepts refer to too wide a range of actions, a range which needs to be narrowed by defining these words and concepts in a more precise way. The distinguishing characteristic of a true Platonic virtue-Form, by contrast, is that not that it is transcultural and timeless in the modern sense, but that it is precise and unambiguous with respect to some particular kind of admirable goodness.
How do we know that some virtue-concept is precise and unambiguous in this respect? By its ability to withstand Socratic questioning-by-counterexample.
Why is "precise and unambiguous" different from "transcultural and timeless"? To show that some particular small set of virtue-concepts are transcultural and timeless -- the single standard for measuring all people everywhere throughout history -- one would have to show not only that each concept in this this small set is precise and unambiguous, but that there are no other concepts outside this list that are also precise and unambiguous with respect to pure goodness. Plato never even attempts to provide any rational argument capable of showing this.
One can go further: Despite Plato's alleged beliefs in a single closed set of Eternal Truths about virtues, he never actually gives any specific virtue-definitions, asserting and supporting by rational arguments a belief that these are the only valid virtue-definitions that are Eternally valid for all people everywhere throughout subsequent history. This is a very peculiar fact about a philosopher supposedly wanting to make everyone everywhere conform to a single standard character-type -- who however never actually provides any rational arguments supporting any one particular list of virtues constituting this single universally-normative character-type.
*****
I quoted above a passage from Plato scholar Richard Robinson, describing well the "individualist" character of Socratic reasoning, based on the midwife principle. "Whereas in law-courts you have to convince a third party, in the Socratic [reasoning], the witnesses who are so effective at trials are useless here. The only true witness and authority is the answerer himself; and if he does not admit the fact, it is irrelevant how many others do. The result depends not on a majority of votes, but on the single vote of the answerer."
Continuing on in this same passage, Robinson shows a clear recognition that, because Socratic reasoning stays within the thought and perception of each individual, it is incapable of leading to a single set of moral truths authoritative for all people for all time. But Robinson assumes that this latter goal must be the goal of all true philosophy. So, instead of rolling back the ambitions ascribed to Socrates and Plato to the individualist goals that individualist Socratic reasoning is suited for (the response of Critical Reconstruction), Robinson just declares that this is a "defect" in Socratic reasoning. He also assumes, after the manner of modern philosophers, that the only alternative to universal truths is "arbitrary" "irrational" individuality. He assumes that Plato himself must have found some other reasoning method (not Socratic reasoning) actually capable of arriving at universal truths. Here is what he says:
By addressing itself always to this person here and now, [Socratic] elenchus takes on particularity and accidentalness, which are defects. In this respect it is inferior to the impersonal and universal rational march of a science axiomatized according to Aristotle's prescription. Plato might urge, however, that elenchus is the means by which the irrational and accidental individual is brought to the appreciation of universal science, brought out of his individual arbitrariness into the common world of reason. [ibid. p. 89, emphasis added]
Like many modern philosophers, Robinson clearly thinks that
there are only two alternatives: Either
(1) there is a "common world of reason," and a "universal
march of science" bringing everyone into agreement on the One Truth, or else
(2) people's choice of what to believe is arbitrary and
irrational.
But in saying that Socratic reasoning leaves each individual
in her own "irrational" and "arbitrary" individuality, Robinson ignores what
should be obvious to anyone reading Plato's Socratic dialogues: If an individual is
seriously trying to uncover conflicts and contradictions within her own thought
about virtue, it is immensely difficult to formulate a "perfect" virtue-concept
that will resolve all these contradictions.
Rather than reject Socratic reasoning because it fails to
achieve the goal that modern philosophers have set -- avoiding arbitrary
"relativism" by arriving at a single set of universal truths -- critical
reconstruction says: Let us reduce the goals of Socratic reasoning to what it is
actually capable of achieving. The natural result is critical pluralism:
-- It is possible that there is an indefinite plurality of
perfect virtue-concepts -- concepts that can withstand strenuous but
individualist Socratic self-questioning.
-- But this is critical pluralism (not skeptical relativism)
because clearly not just any concept can withstand Socratic questioning. Most
concepts in
fact cannot, and it is immensely difficult to formulate one that can.
Richard Robinson recognizes that Socratic inquiry is incapable of
establishing universal truths. But he still seems to imagine that Plato at least
found some other method besides Socratic reasoning which remedies this "defect"
in Socratic reasoning. But actually, no one today has located any such method in
Plato's writing. (Many essays of Richard Rorty, recent head of the American
Philosophical Association, show that the most influential recent philosophers
doubt whether there is any such method.)
I want now to bring in a quotation from Kant (1704-1804)
which shows Kant's recognition that Plato also actually offers us no rational
method capable of establishing universal truths.
The quote is Kant's comment on Plato in one passage of his
Critique of Pure Reason. Kant here recognizes that Plato's writings offer us no
good reasons in support of the belief that Platonic Forms represent the One
Truth valid for all people for all time. This for Kant is the purpose of
"Metaphysics," understood in the Enlightenment as the branch of philosophy whose
task is discovering a single set of "necessary truths" so evident that anyone
who understands them must admit their truth. (Mathematical truths like
2+2=4 constituted Kant's main model of such "necessary truths," and his question
is whether "Metaphysics" can be constructed on something like the model of
mathematics)
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
is a fundamental critique of all previous attempts at Metaphysics, precisely
because they lack any adequate rational basis. Plato serves for him as a
prime example of previous Metaphysicians who supposedly attempted to discover
Metaphysical truths, but whose claims to have discovered such truths went far
beyond anything they could prove by rational arguments, because they had worked
out no adequate epistemology.
I quote Kant in support of the view that (contrary to what
Robinson supposes), Plato offers no reasons in support of the One Truth idea. I
disagree however with Kant's conclusion. Kant's conclusion is to dismiss Plato's Form
theory entirely, on the grounds that this was a failed attempt to discover the
metaphysical One Truth. I think the reason Plato appears to have "failed" in
this attempt is that he wasn't really trying, so our conclusion should be the
realization that Plato did not share the central concerns and assumptions
underlying modern philosophy.
Here is the quotation from Kant.:
The light dove, piercing in her easy flight the air and
perceiving its resistance, imagines that flight would be easier still in empty
space. It was thus that Plato left the world of sense, as opposing so many
hindrances to our understanding, and ventured beyond on the wings of his ideas
into the empty space of pure understanding. He did not perceive that he was
making no progress by these endeavors, because he had no resistance as a fulcrum
on which to rest or to apply his powers, in order to cause the understanding to
advance.
It is indeed a very common fate of human reason first of all
to finish its speculative edifice as soon as possible, and then only to enquire
whether the foundation be sure. Then all sorts of excuses are made in order to
assure us as to its solidity, or to decline altogether such a late and dangerous
inquiry. (I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. tr. Max Mueller. New York:
Doubleday. 1966, p. 6.)
Translation: Because of his assumption that "philosophy" is a timeless
discipline, Kant assumes that Plato must have been trying to do the same
thing that Enlightenment philosophers were trying to do, discovering the single
true set of moral norms valid for all people for all time (as they thought
Newtonian physics had done for laws governing events in the material world). Like many Enlightenment philosophers, Plato is assumed to have been looking for
such norms in the concepts of pure understanding known to "pure reason"
independently of all sense-perceptions. Kant thinks that he has discovered a
rational method for coming to know such truths. Kant recognizes that Plato never
bases any arguments on an appeal to such "necessary truths," and that indeed it
is exceedingly implausible that Platonic virtue-Forms constitute such necessary
truths, or that they could be known in this particular way.
Kant's conclusion: Plato must have been trying to do the same
thing that Kant was doing, but unlike Kant, Plato did not really know how to do
it. According to Kant, Plato realized that appeals to actual rational evidence could only get in
his way, so his thought took flight to heights where no rational evidence would
resist his flight, but no rational evidence would support his beliefs either.
Plato of course never uses the term "metaphysics," which only
came into use several generations after his death. Under the circumstances, it
seems much wiser to simply drop the term "metaphysics" from descriptions of
Plato's thought, and focus instead on constructing a Critical Reconstruction of
his Form theory in which it is an answer to those questions more central to
Plato's concerns (fashioning a way of life for individual, idealistic Platonist
philosophers), an answer which can actually be supported by reasoning methods
(Socratic reasoning) found in Plato's writing.
(Kant's picture of Plato might seem to find some support in some of Plato's writings. For example, Phaedo 73-76 is one passage where Plato most clearly asserts that Forms can be known "by reason apart from the senses." But this passage has nothing to do with any attempt to actually discover "necessary truths" known a priori by pure reason (as Kant understood "pure reason"), and indeed provides no reasoning method whatsoever by which a person could actually use "reason alone" to arrive at a knowledge of the Forms. Plato's purpose in this passage is not to provide any epistemology for knowledge of the Forms. It is rather to enlist his Form theory in support of Pythagorean beliefs in the preexistence and immortality of the soul. So what Plato means by "reason alone" in this passage has nothing to do with Kant's "pure reason." It is represented rather by a disembodied mind existing after death separate from the body, either before or after this earthly life. This is hardly a basis for a rational method or epistemology enabling a living person to arrive at knowledge of the Forms.)
Plato experimented with the idea (unimportant in the above critical reconstruction) of expanding his theory of Unchanging Forms to refer to other areas besides virtues. This has led many philosophers (especially critics of Plato) to allege that Plato slighted the ever-changing concrete world around us in the name of some supposed unchanging world of Forms. This is a possible interpretation of Plato's writing, but again this aspect of Plato's thought is capable of a much more sensible and defensible interpretation.
Take Newtonian physics. Certainly Newton could not be accused of slighting the concrete world of changing objects and events. His whole focus was on trying to explain what causes such changes, in the service of predicting and controlling change. But his real achievement was not in observing individual events involving such changes, but to propose a set of precisely defined categories -- giving precise definitions of "energy" and "mass" (distinguished from "weight") -- to use in analyzing changes, concepts that can be quantified and used in mathematical formulae explaining why and how things change. His great achievement was to devise a relatively small set of categories and a related set of mathematical laws that can be demonstrated to apply to an exceedingly broad range of actual changes. Everyone studying Newtonian physics is therefore not gathering an immense body of knowledge about actual changing events, but is instead learning a much smaller set of "changeless" concepts (like "energy" and "mass"), and a "changeless" set of mathematical laws. (It is noteworthy that Galileo, Newton's predecessor in this project, was classified by some of his contemporaries as a "Platonist" because his "science" was focused on unchanging concepts and formulating unchanging mathematical laws capable of explaining changing events.)
Does this require a belief that general "unchanging" concepts like "energy" are thing-like objects "eternally existing" in a parallel universe in which change does not occur? This is silly.
In fact it is in the nature of all general concepts that they do not change in the way that concrete particular objects in the world change. Consider a simple general concept like "white." White objects are subject to change -- a white object can fade to grey. If all the white objects in the world faded to grey, this would not change the general concept "white" in any way. General concepts do not change when the objects to which they refer change. Does this mean that we should speak of white objects as objects that change through time, whereas the general concept "white" is a different kind of object that passes through endless time ("eternally") without changing, as the word "changeless" might suggest. This again is a silly idea.
What we should really say rather is that general concepts are not objects existing in time at all. It is not that they pass through endless time "eternally" without changing. We should rather say that concepts "time" and "change" simply do not apply to general concepts.
So when Plato is said to have believed "We can have no knowledge of concrete changing particulars, only of abstract unchanging universals," this should not be taken as an assertion of the nonsensical idea that the perceptions of concrete particular changing conditions in the world cannot be called "knowledge" in any sense of the word "knowledge." He is speaking about the particular kind of "knowledge" that interested him most and which he thought most important. In our time, following Newton, we could say "scientific knowledge." Scientific research does of course involve gathering data about specific changes, and the specific conditions under which those changes occur. But such data about changing concrete particulars only becomes a contribution to scientific knowledge when it helps confirm or undermine, and ultimately refine, the knowledge of unchanging scientific laws which we call "science" today.