the other cave-dwellers. This is a dangerous enterprise because she now speaks a different language and introduces new, strange images and ideas to her colleagues. Her probable fate is, like Socrates, death and so it is prudent to keep the cave-dwellers chained until they too ‘see the light’ and in their turn enlighten others.
Teachers have for centuries followed Plato’s advice and endeavour to keep their students chained by examining them, even when postmodern students announce that exams are unreasonable because their (low) grades are based on their teachers’ feelings. It has to be said that teachers brought this upon themselves with the popular belief that education should be free of competition and stress and that students should be seen as customers who demand, and should therefore receive appropriate service by passing their subjects. And so it is suggested (half-jokingly) that students should not be failed on the grounds that this discriminates against those with low ability. Socrates would appreciate the half-joke: Plato would not.
Enlightenment is intimately connected in Plato with his theory of the Forms. While we can conjecture about images, have beliefs about objects, understand concepts, it is through pure reason that we have knowledge of the Forms. The Forms (or objective ideas) are universals, such as Justice, Courage, Love and Beauty. Perfect, adamantine, unchanging, such universals exist on their own unmixed with time and space or each other. No particular action can be called truly courageous: only Courage is really courageous. While Plato maintains that the Forms are external to the individual, it is clear that since they are spaceless and timeless, they cannot be said to be anywhere. In short, they are everywhere and nowhere. Nonetheless, if through philosophical reflection we can entertain some notion of, say, Courage, we are in a better position to act rationally and wisely with respect to courageous action. We can be trained to act courageously, but we cannot know Courage thereby. Really to know Courage we need to be educated and this requires at least some knowledge of moral concepts. As education is concerned to draw out the innate knowledge which resides in the mind, Platonic education is governed by the rules of deductive reasoning and based on the practice of dialectic.
In one of Plato’s later dialogues, Parmenides, Socrates encounters the venerable Parmenides and discusses with him the theory of the Forms. Parmenides replies with a devastating critique of the theory and reduces Socrates, for the first time in Plato’s dialogues, to despair. There are three difficult questions to be answered before the theory of the Forms can be accepted. First, are there Forms of everything? Socrates is sure that there are forms of Beauty and Goodness. But he suffers doubts about whether there are Forms of mud, hair and dirt. Second, are Forms thoughts in the mind? Parmenides objects that thoughts are of real things and so cannot be thoughts in the mind. Third, are the Forms cut off from the world? Since knowledge must be of real things, it is difficult to see how one can know the Forms, which are by definition unreal because they are universals. Furthermore, how is it possible to talk about Forms? If we say that a painting is beautiful we imply that the painting partakes of the Form of Beauty. But if we say with Plato that the Form of Beauty is eternal, we seem to be saying that the Form of Beauty partakes of the Form of Eternity and this appears to mean that the Forms communicate with each other, which Plato denies. Socrates offers no convincing answers to Parmenides’ challenges but this is attributed to his insufficient education which, when improved, may enable him to save the theory of Forms. They have not been saved although they have been modified by generations of spiritualists and religionists.
Education is, for Plato, the noblest profession since it helps others climb the greatest of human heights. At the summit, people will understand the true meaning of moral concepts and so will have acquired wisdom through rational means. And since rational people are wise, they do not engage in evil intentionally. Accordingly, they should be the rulers of Plato’s ideal society, outlined in The Republic. Unlike Homer, who thought that the best warriors should be rulers, Plato prefers philosopher-kings, because they think rationally and act wisely. Warriors are well-trained but ill-educated. Rulers must be trained and educated: they must be philosophers.
Plato realises, however, that warriors are disinclined to accept their exclusion from rulership. In his attempt to address and correct this dilemma, Plato is led into an apparent paradox when he argues that since philosophers are those who love truth, rulers must nonetheless lie so that they may gain the acceptance of warriors and workers. He is adamant that it is the business of political rulers to tell lies and so deceive both its enemies and its own citizens for the benefit of the state and no one else must touch this privilege. If the citizens lie, the rulers must punish them for introducing a practice which injures and endangers the state. Plato goes even further and asks whether rulers could fabricate a single lordly lie with which they can persuade even the rulers themselves. The lordly lie is that some people are born to rule and this audacious lie has been accepted down the ages by rulers who see it as the perfect justification for legitimating power.
Around 1945, Karl Popper scandalised a large part of the philosophical world with his attack on Plato in The Open Society and its Enemies. Popper charged Plato with being the spokesman for a closed society ruled by totalitarian gangsters. He argued that, unlike Socrates, Plato compromised his integrity with every step he took. He was opposed to free thought and the pursuit of truth, and defended lying, superstition and brutal violence.
Plato may have been a defender of totalitarian politics but he also raised important philosophical questions which still exercise the imagination. What, for example, do we mean when we talk of ideal justice or ideal courage? Are these universals mere abstractions, nothing more than words? Or are we able in some imperfect way to come to an understanding that beyond the data of our five senses there is a world of perfection against which we judge ourselves and others? When we strive for excellence, what do we strive for? Is there some eternal, unchanging ideal standard of excellence which we dimly apprehend and which guides us through life? To be sure, only a few people can gain an imperfect appreciation of ideals, but does that invalidate their existence? Plato asks fascinating and important questions to which we still strive to find answers.
Plato believes that reason should guide and control the feelings which sabotage our quest for truth. If we are well-educated and pursue a rational approach to life, we will act wisely. We should have a physician of the body to cure our physical problems, and a physician of the ‘soul’ to cure our psychological problems. He seems to have invented ‘soul’ for the practical purpose of helping people live in truth. But in arguing that people who act irrationally are suffering from illnesses of the soul, he fathered the mental illness industry. Plato’s views, therefore, encourage those in power to act against individuals like Socrates because they are ‘mad’. He starts out lamenting the fate of Socrates but he ends with a philosophy which has encouraged totalitarians to incarcerate or kill those who argue against them, either by indicting them for a crime or by depriving them of their liberty by labelling them as mentally ill. This paradox worried Plato’s most famous pupil – Aristotle.
Aristotle was born in 384 BC in northern Greece. His father was court physician to the king of Macedon. At the age of 17 he studied at Plato’s Academy in Athens where he remained for 20 years until Plato’s death in 347 BC. He assumed that he would take over as head of the Academy but the job went to a justly forgotten opponent. He then worked for a philosopher-king in Sicily after which he tutored the youth who was to be known as Alexander the Great. Aristotle returned to Athens in 336 BC and founded his own academy – the Lyceum – discovered by archaeologists in 1996. Alexander’s unexpected death in 323 BC saw Aristotle, like Socrates before him, charged with impiety. Unlike Socrates, he prudently went into voluntary exile in order to prevent the Athenians from committing a second sin against philosophy. Sadly his exile took him away from his philosophical colleagues and he soon died at age 62 leaving an impressive body of work.
Close to Plato in many ways, Aristotle developed a theory of body, psyche and mind which informs his influential theory of ethics. He believed that philosophy begins with a sense of wonder before nature and concluded that the best and happiest people spend as much time as possible in philosophical activity, using their reason to govern their actions and thinking.
Aristotle
