II. Plato
Introduction
I. Plato vs. Socrates
1. Socrates – a basic methodology with the beginnings of certain themes.
2. Plato developing the themes.
II. “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Pragmatic, anti-skeptical approach. Response to the Sophists. (If all we had was the Euthyphro, then might adopt a negative, skeptical reading. Taking subsequent dialogues into account we can take a more positive view.)
The Euthyphro
I. What’s the setting? What is Euthyphro doing?
A. The problem isn’t that Euthyphro is demonstrably doing the wrong thing, it’s that he’s so sure he’s doing the right thing.
B. One sort of good action is pious action. (Piety is a subset of justice, it turns out.)
C. Socrates wants to find out what piety is, an adequate definition. And we ought, at least at the outset, to suppose that that can be done, since we do in fact communicate about it. (Running Gorgias in reverse.)
II. What is piety?
A. E: What I’m doing now. S: I don’t just want individual instances. I want the nature or form of piety.
B. E: What the gods love.
1. S: How do we know?
2. S: Don’t the gods disagree? Same thing can’t be both pious and impious, right?
C. E: What all the gods love.
1. S: The origin of the EUTHYPHRO DILEMMA (p.53): “is the pious loved by the gods because it’s pious? Or is it pious because it’s loved?” (I.e. It’s the loving that makes it pious.)
Note that the dilemma gets transformed into the question of the relationship of God to the order of value, including morality when we enter Medieval Philosophy. Jews and Christians both address it, and the popular option is “Neither of the above”. Although late in the Middle Ages, under pressure from debates among Muslim philosophers concerning the freedom of God, some Christians adopt the latter horn of the dilemma, “voluntarism”, “divine command theory”.
2. E: It’s loved by the gods because it’s pious, and not the other way around.
3. S: Yes. Something is a loved thing because it’s loved. So if, contrary to what we just said, “pious” just means a god-loved thing, then to say that it’s loved because it’s pious, OR it’s pious because it’s loved, would be just to say that it’s loved by the gods because it’s loved by the gods. That can’t be right. (We know that there is more positive content there. P.54, E hasn’t explained why it is loved.)
D. S: Isn’t piety a subset of justice?
1. E: Yes, it’s the part concerned with tending the gods.
2. S: But we can’t help the gods. E: No, I mean doing what’s pleasing to the gods.
3. S: And that’s what’s loved by the gods, right? E: I’ve got to go.
--Have we ended up back where we started? No! Euthyphro may want to think some more before he prosecutes his father.
AND We’ve got the issue of what piety consists in on the table in a much clearer way. We at least know what it isn’t.
AND we’ve demonstrated a method – When we talk about some X, in order to know what it is, we need to look, not at individual instances of X, and not just at a property all X’s might have, but at the essence or nature of X.
The Apology
I. What’s
the charge against Socrates? Corrupting the youth and teaching that there is no
god.
II. What
does he think is behind it? His annoying people. Why
does he do that?
III. The
Oracle at Delphi. Socrates sets out to test the oracle. Politicians, poets,
craftsmen…. In what way does it turn out that Socrates is the wisest?
IV.
Corrupting the young.
A. Intentionally? No one would do that.
B. Unintentionally? Then he’s not at fault.
V. Doesn’t
acknowledge the gods…but he does.
VI. So
should he abandon his mission since it might entail that he will be killed?
A. We don’t know that death is bad.
B. We KNOW that abandoning one’s mission is bad.
C. Which does you more harm, to be unjustly killed or to kill
unjustly? (A basic theme of classical and Christian thought that seems to be
“thin” among contemporary intellectuals. An example from the folks who oversee
conformity to accepted practice concerning the use of human subjects.)
D. Why didn’t he enter politics and try to promote his ideas
in the public arena?
VII. What is
the verdict?
A. Why doesn’t he propose exile?
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
B. Why not fear death? It’s one of
two things.
Crito
I. What’s
the setting? What does Crito want Socrates to do?
II. Crito: You ought to care about the opinion of the majority.
S: No you shouldn’t. It’s the opinion of the wise person that counts.
III. But
isn’t the sentence unjust? S: Yes, but you should never do injustice intentionally. Don’t return injustice for
injustice.
A. Is he
saying that the state may not exact retribution on the wrong-doer? Surely not.
B. But would
running away be unjust under the circumstances?
IV. S: Yes,
it’s wrong to disobey the Laws.
A. Laws gave
you birth. You owe them obedience as much as to your father and mother. Or even
moreso.
1.
Do you owe your father and your
mother obedience?
2. What if they tell you to
participate in doing something unjust?
3. Are the Laws like your father and your mother?
B. You gave
your tacit consent. (Problems with tacit consent!)
V. If he
runs away he proves his accusers to be right that he is a corruptor of the
youth.
VI. More
than the sentence being unjust – Suppose Socrates were guilty of what he’s
accused of – should corrupting the young and blasphemy be criminalized? What if
the law itself is unjust?
VII. Could
it be that Socrates is talking only about himself? (He’s old. He could have
afforded to leave…) But don’t we intend to be talking
about principles that apply to everyone?
Phaedo
I. The
setting.
II. [We
already proposed, in the Apology, that death is not a bad thing.] Why shouldn’t
everyone just commit suicide?
III.
Philosophy is the practice for dying and death.
A. What is
death? A separation of the soul from the body. He is a
substance dualist. [Some equivocation on the meaning of
“death”? A. The separation, or B. The ceasing to be a living thing. Or C.
going out of being in the sense of just dissolving.]
B. What are
we doing when we do philosophy? Reasoning.
C. We reason
best when we have “withdrawn” from the concerns of the body. The things we want
to know about are not things in the physical world. Not things available to our
senses. The reality of all things, that which each of
them essentially is. P.111. (Universals, not just individual
instances. He mentions the Just and the Beautiful and the Good (even
Bigness and Health). We could add 2+2=4 and – maybe – natural kinds, e.g. the Catness of the cat.)
-- Can we
show that the soul will survive the death of the body? --
IV. The
universe consists in everlasting processes where opposites come from opposites
so the living must come from the dead and return to the dead everlastingly. If
not, then everything ultimately comes to end. P.115
(If it is
possible for each soul to die and stay dead, then it is possible for ALL souls
to die and stay dead. If it could happen in the future, it would have already
happened.)
V. Socrates’
(Plato’s) epistemology depends on the thought that the soul preexists. The doctrine of recollection.
A. We know all this stuff that we
can’t have gathered through our senses. “Equal” p.116
B. We don’t seem to know it when we’re born.
C. We recollect it when our memories
are jogged by things we perceive in the world.
D. So our souls preexisted “before
they took on human form, and they had intelligence” p.117
-- But we
need further proof that the soul exists AFTER death –
VI. There
are two kinds of existences
A. the visible – the physical things
which are constantly changing -- and the invisible – the Equal in itself, the
Just, the Good…
B. and the soul should fall into the latter category. “But
when the soul investigates by itself it passes into the realm of what is pure,
ever existing, immortal, and unchanging, and being akin to this it always stays
with it whenever it is by itself and can do so…” p.119.
C. the invisible is the stronger, so the soul is stronger
than the body.
D. the fates of the philosopher
versus everybody else. He is a PLATONIC dualist! Body is a prison. “Every pleasure or pain…”
p.121
VII. But
what about those theories we’ve heard that would allow us to deny that the soul
survives the death of the body?
A. Simmias:
The soul is the harmony of the body.
B. Cebes:
The soul may be stronger and more lasting than the body, but that doesn’t prove
it wouldn’t wear out eventually.
VIII. We don’t
want to turn into misologues!
IX. Response
to Simmias – that the soul is a harmony is
inconsistent with the claim that we agreed upon which is that the soul exists
before the body comes into being.
X. Response
to Cebes
A. Things
have the properties they have because they “share in” the Form.
1. A ball is white because it shares in whiteness, and
spherical because it shares in sphereness.
2. [p. 130] Notice that he “will not insist upon the precise
nature of the relationship.
3. Which is essential
to being a ball? Can a ball be square?
B. For any
individual thing X there are only two possible futures – continuing to be X or
ceasing to be X by being destroyed and becoming
something else. (Nothing blinks out of being, so that’s not an option.)
C. The soul
cannot be destroyed.
1. The soul is what animates the body.
2. The very nature of the soul is to participate in Life. The
soul cannot have the property of
being dead. It is deathless.
3. But something which is deathless is indestructible, so the
only option for the soul is that it continues to exist as a soul.
XI. Karma –
the philosopher may escape the wheel.
XII. “Risk
the belief…” p.136.
A. A great divide – two kinds of
epistemic sin.
B. If philosophy is practical, if
doing it is for leading the good and happy life…
C. A Socratic wager
1. Say the evidence is
balanced.
a. We think
Socrates may have something with his argument that the soul is special.
b. But we
don’t have any empirical access to an afterlife.
2. Suppose his view is
false. If I believe it,
No harm done, and some benefit.
3. Suppose his view is
true. If I fail to
believe it, some, maybe a great deal of, harm done.
The Republic
Books 1 and 2
I. Thrasymachus – seems to be assuming at first that “justice”
is obeying the laws of the city.
A. “Justice
is what is advantageous for the stronger.” The rulers of the city, whatever the
form of government, make the laws for their own benefit.
B. S: I
grant that justice is advantageous – but, for the stronger?
C. S: What
if the rulers are mistaken about their benefit?
1. In that case, if “justice” means obedience to the laws of
the city, but the laws are NOT advantageous to the strong, then you’re
mistaken, Thrasymachus.
2. Do you mean to say that “Justice is what the stronger
believe to be advantageous for themselves”? But T says no.
D. T: They
aren’t rulers, qua being mistaken. E.g. someone isn’t a doctor in virtue of
making an error about the right treatment, but in virtue of his expertise at
medicine.
E. S: But then they’re rulers due to their
expertise in ruling,
1. Analogy with medicine – the doctor is a doctor because he
treats the sick.
2. So isn’t the ruler a ruler when he is doing what is
advantageous for his subjects.
F. T: Don’t
be stupid, Socrates!
1. The ruler is more like the shepherd who is not ruling for
the good of the sheep! Goodfellas.
2. The tyrant is the happiest! (Do injustice on a small scale
you get in trouble and are reviled, but do it on a large enough scale….!)
-- [skipped
some text] For the soul, being just is being virtuous,
and being unjust is being vicious. And T is saying it’s more advantageous,
you’ll lead the happier life, if you are vicious on a grand scale.--
II. S: But
the virtue of the soul is when it fulfills its function well. [n.b. In asking “What is X for?”
we are asking a question closely related to “What is X? What kind of thing is it? Nature.
Form.]
A. The
function – it’s job, like the eye is for seeing and
the ear is for hearing.
B. The soul
gives life, and it rules the whole person, it deliberates…
C. The
virtue of the soul is doing these things well.
D. So aren’t
we saying that the just man is the one who lives well, who rules himself and
deliberates well? And surely the one who lives well is happy and the one who
lives badly is unhappy.
III. Glaucon: Let’s start again and ask it through a couple of
thought-experiments
A. The Ring
of Gyges – Two men, one just and one unjust, find two
rings. How will they behave?
B. Imagine
the extremes of these two lives – one who lives unjustly with all the goodies,
and is even believed to be just vs. one who lives justly, but is stripped of
everything and is even believed to be unjust.
IV. S: Let’s
look at the individual writ large, the city. (Greek theme, microcosm and
macrocosm)
Books 3 and 4
I. Three
classes:
A. The rulers – by virtue of their ability to rule, wisdom. The smallest class.
-- One of
the most fundamental questions in political philosophy. By what right or
authority do the rulers get to make the rest of us do what they say? --
B. The auxiliaries –
by virtue of their ability to guard the state. (Both rulers and auxiliaries are
called “guardians”.)
C. The producers --
and the largest class, which produces the material goods which the city needs
to survive.
II. How do we
decide who belongs in which class? (Observe their behavior under pressure. Can
they see and do they hold to what is best for the city?)
A. As we are founding our city we may want to try to convince
our citizens of “the noble lie”.
B. Are the classes hereditary?
III. The
life of the guardians – about which more later! Want
the guardians to care more for the city than for themselves and what belongs to
them.
A. No private property that is not
wholly necessary.
B. No living quarters or storerooms that are not open for all to enter.
C. Common messes and live like soldiers in a camp.
D. [In a skipped
section] No families.
IV. Doesn’t
sound like the most advantageous life for the guardians.
S: It’s the most advantageous for the whole populas –
the kallipolis.
V. So
justice is the proper order within the city.
A. Temperance maintained by the
rulers ordering things wisely.
B. Courage – the auxiliaries protect
the state.
C. Appetite, but both producers and
auxiliaries act in obedience to the rulers.
VI. The
individual soul is tripartite.
A. Reason and appetite cannot be the
same thing.
1.Reason judges when appetite should or
should not be indulged.
2. That opposites business – One
unified thing, X, can’t undergo, be, or do both A and not-A in the same way at
the same time.
B. The spirited element (what
accounts for self-assertion and ambition) and appetite cannot be the same
thing. Similar argument.
A. We often feel anger at being drawn
by desire against our better judgment.
B. So spirit is really more like an
auxiliary of reason.
C. The spirit and reason cannot be
the same thing. We see that children are quite spirited even before they can
reason.
VII. So
justice for the individual is having reason rule over spirit and appetite. But
is that really the most advantageous?
Books 5 and 6
Book 5
I. Women
should do the same tasks as men.
II. Breeding
(You can’t have a good socialist utopia without a eugenics program.)
A. Why have a
eugenics program at all?
1. The best to the best
2. Knowing what we know now
about inbreeding…
B. The lottery (Does the lying worry
you?)
C. The children
1. The children of the
best go to the “rearing pen” and the “special nurses”.
a. Don’t want Moms and Dads to know
their own children.
b. Moms and Dads are too busy anyway.
c. Knowing what we know now about
what infants and children need to flourish?
2. What happens to the
children of the not so good? (And the children of those past
the official breeding age?)
III. Is such
a city possible?
A. Does it really matter? P.187
B. It is possible if a philosopher
could be made king.
IV.
Knowledge vs. Belief – the two are defined by the
nature of their objects, not by the internal state of the knower/believer.
A. “Knowledge” is to know what is as
it is. Cognitively grasp true reality (or True Reality).
B. “Belief” is to cognitively grasp
what “partakes of being and not being”.
Book 6
I. The Philosopher is the one who can cognitively grasp the
Form of the Good.
II. What is
the Good? (It’s fair that he doesn’t describe The Good. It’s just not a
describable sort of thing.)
A. Let’s look at the “offspring of
the Good” in terms of the visible world. More than analogy
for Plato?
1. The faculty of vision
in the seer and the thing to be seen together are not enough to allow the seer
to see.
2. Need light. The
“ultimate” light is the sun.
3. Sun also “provides
for their coming-to-be, growth, and nourishment…”p.200
B. The Form
of the Good provides knowledge and what is known. It is “beyond being”. It is
the source of all. Discursive reasoning has its limitations.
III. The
divided line
A. Images and imagining
B. Things and belief
-- A and B
are in the visible world --
C. Principles (Geometric and
scientific) and “mere” thought.
D. Forms and understanding
E. The Good
-- C, D, and
E are in the intelligible world –
Book 7
I. The Cave
II. But
isn’t it unjust to make the philosopher go back down into the cave as ruler of
the city? P.204
III. The Timaeus --
A note on an alternative picture of the relationship of god to the physical
world
A. The receptacle
B. The forms
C. The demiurge – an agent god who
imposes the forms on the receptacle to produce the world we see around us.
1. A thinking, acting god.
2. “Creates” out of
love.
3. Not a creator “ex
nihilo” like the Judeo-Christian God.
Book 8
--- The
Decline of the Ideal State --- But isn’t it perfect? – with
corresponding types of man
(First two
in sections which book skips.)
I. To Timocracy – the good is honor -- the timocratic
man. Timocracy
is an okay form of state.
II. To
Oligarchy – wealth – the oligarchic man (has a certain amount of
self-discipline and orderliness).
Oligarchy is just a bad way of doing things. Being rich is no
qualification to govern.
III. To Democracy
A. How does the change come about? Bloody revolution!
B. What the democracy is like? (p.215)
C. The democratic man. (p.218)
IV. To Tyranny
A. The insatiable desire for
freedom!
B. “Cease to care even for the
laws”. People become a mob.
C.
Three classes
1. Drones – with and without
stings. (One who has
lost his money and is idle or a criminal.)
2. “Orderly class”
(Because they are self-disciplined they can amass some wealth.)
3. The people (Workers)
D. The
People’s Hero…going to seize the property of the wealthy and distribute it to
the poor.
E. … Needs a
bodyguard.
F. Constant war. Excuse to keep people too busy working to pay
taxes to conspire against him.
G. Get rid of the better people. Now
the worst has absolute control of the city.
“Thus
liberty, getting out of all order and reason, passes into the harshest and
bitterest form of slavery.”!!!
And who is the most
miserable person in the Tyranny?
Book 9
-- Two
arguments for Socrates’ original thesis --
I. The Tyrannical man becomes a slave to his passions, an
addict. (Alcoholism, Gluttony) That can’t be happy!
II. Of the
not-thoroughly-awful forms of life…(We don’t need to
even ask the democratic and the tyrannical man, since the former is idle and
silly and the latter is a slave of his passions.)
A. pursuit of profit, of honor, and
of wisdom… (Socrates does not say that profit and honor should be ignored, just
that the pursuit of wisdom is the most important.)
B. The philosopher’s opinion is the
only one which can include experience of all three.
Book 10
I. The soul
can’t be destroyed.
A. A thing is destroyed by its own
particular destructive phenomena.
B. Wickedness is what corrupts the
soul.
C. But nobody dies of wickedness. So
there’s nothing to destroy the soul.
II. Glaucon’s original examples of the just who
appears unjust and the unjust who appears just are not consonant with real life.
II. The Myth
of Er
A. Justice after death. (Go up into
the heavens, a nice place, or down into the earth, a place of suffering.
B. Some never get out of the earth –
the incurably bad people. (229)
C. We are responsible for our lives.
(p.230)
D. One can be virtuous either with or without really
understanding. (p.231) (And the ones “from the earth” often made better choices
since they had learned something from their suffering.)
E. If you understand, then you can live happily here and in
the hereafter…and here again.