“Wise men talk because they have something to say;
fools, because they have to say something”
“Philosophy
begins in wonder”
(Plato)
Plato is the student of
Socrates and founder of the Academy,
the first reported institution of higher education – no philosopher has had a
greater or wider-ranging influence in the history of philosophy than Plato.
Alfred North Whitehead once said, with much justification, that “the safest characterisation of Western
philosophy is that of a series of footnotes to Plato.” This is no topic of
philosophical concern for which one cannot find some view in the corpus of his
work.
Accordingly it can be
difficult to characterise such a vast and comprehensive canon of thought.
However, much of Plato’s work revolves around his conception of a realm of
ideal forms. The world of experience is illusory, Plato tells us, since only
that which is unchanging and eternal is real, an idea he borrowed from
Parmenides. There must, then, be a realm of eternal unchanging forms that are
the blueprints of the ephemeral phenomena we encounter through sense
experience. According to Plato, though there are many individual horses, cats
and dogs, they are all made in the image of the one universal form of “the
horse”, “the cat”, “the dog” and so on. Likewise, just as there many men, all
men are made in the image of the universal “form of man.” The influence of this
idea on Christian thought, in which man is made in the image of God, is only
one of many ways in which Plato had a direct influence on Christian theology.
Plato’s
Theory of Forms, however, was not
restricted to material objects. He also thought there were ideal forms of
universal or abstract concepts, such as beauty, justice, truth and mathematical
concepts such as number and class. Indeed, it is in mathematics that Plato’s
influence is still felt strongly today.
The Theory of Forms also underlies Plato’s most contentious and best known work, The Republic. In a quest to understand
the nature and value of justice, Plato offers a vision of a utopian society led
by an elite class of guardians who are trained from birth for the task of
ruling. The rest of society is divided into soldiers and the common people. In The Republic, the ideal citizen is one
who understands how best they can use their talents to the benefit of the whole
of society, and bends unerringly to that task. There is little thought of
personal freedom or individual rights in Plato’s Republic, for everything is tightly controlled by the guardians for
the good of the state as a whole. This has led some, notably Bertrand Russell,
to accuse Plato of endorsing an elitist and totalitarian regime under the guise
of communist or socialist principles. Whether Russell and others who level this
criticism are right or not is itself a subject of great debate.
But it is important to
understand Plato’s reasons for organizing society in this way. The Republic is an attempt, in line with
his Theory of Forms, to discover the ideal form of society, of which all actual
societies are mere imperfect copies, since they do not promote the good of all.
Such a society, Plato believes, would be stronger than its neighbours and
unconquerable by its enemies, a thought very much in Greek minds given the
frequent warring between Athens, Sparta and the other Hellenistic city-states.
But more importantly, such a society would be just to all its citizens, giving
to and taking from each their due, with each working for the benefit of the
whole. Whether Plato’s Republic is an
ideal, or even viable society, has had scholars divided ever since.
[Summarized from Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers by
Philip Stokes, 2012. Also watch The
School of Life: Plato https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDiyQub6vpw]
Lord, Give Us
Today Our Daily Idea(s)
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