• Plato’s Epistemology
• Plato’s Theory of Forms
  • Introduction
  • Metaphysical Models in History of Thought
  • Difficulties of Theory of Forms (Plato’s Parmenides)
• Plato On God and Cosmos
  • Timaeus
  • God in Other Dialogues
  • The Problem of Evil
  • Comments in Timaeus
  • Two Interpretations of Platonism
  • Comments in the Laws
• Plato on the Human Soul
• The Good Life (Plato’s Ethics)
  • Two Loves
  • The Improvement of the Soul
  • Role of Pleasure
• Conclusions

Plato’s Epistemology

There are two lines of thought emerges in the pre-Socratics, one has to do with pre-scientific cosmology, in which Sophists raised the question about the epistemology, about the possibility of knowing anything about the reality that governs the nature at all. The other one was the notion of the moral order, which also raised an epistemological question, can we really know objective truth in ethical matters, are there universal moral ideals or man is the measure of all things. The same question of knowledge vs. skepticism develop in both lines of thought. Plato inherits the question from the pre-Socratics. His Meno is trying to address specifically this issue, it focuses on the question “can virtue be taught” as we still talked about today. In asking whether virtue can be taught, we first need to know what is virtue, and in turn what is knowledge.

In Meno, Symposium and Phaedo, Plato talks about the distinction between opinion and knowledge. Opinion is based on experience, or sense-perception. Sense perception is relative, and it does not yield unchanging truth. We have difficulty “tethering” opinions that comes from unreliable sense perception. Plato claims that we need to use dialectic to “tether” true opinion in order to get knowledge. Dialectic is thinking something through beyond the relativity that is true in all conditions. The way dialectic uncovers what is true is very much like recollect something. Plato believes the pre-existence of the soul, so dialectic facilitates the recollection of the innate knowledge from the pre-existence of the soul.

Plato talks about the famous cave analogy in the Republic. He likens the soul of the life to prisoner in the cave, the prisoners can only look at the walls of the cave, where they can see constantly changing shadows of the real objects. The prisoner is unable to see the real object outside of the cave. Unless somebody starts to use dialectic to elicit some awareness and recollection, it is impossible that a person can be freed from the chains and reach outside of the cave to came to know how things are. Plato also has a famous analogy of divided line, first it divides the world into a visible and intelligible world, then he further divides the visible world into section of images, imaginations and a section of physical particulars, the intelligible world can be divided into a section of reasoning and inference, where mathematical objects belongs to, and another section of first principles. All the four types of world corresponds to a different kind of awareness, images corresponds to illusion, physical particulars corresponds to sense perception, both are opinions. And intelligible world corresponds to deductive reasoning and dialectic to knowledge of first principles.

Plato’s Theory of Forms

Introduction

We’ll move from the epistemological side of the divided line to the metaphysical side, from the nature of knowing to the object of the knowledge. The object of knowledge is not the world of particulars, because opinion is all we can have about the world of change, therefore, it must be another kind of reality, which Plato called Form(Idea). They are archetypes or ideals of things, and they are real entities of an immaterial sort, for example, Forms of qualities, kinds of things or relationships. We can get particular exemplification of Forms in the world. Forms are universal and unchanging but particulars are changing and temporal. Theory of Forms has tremendous ramification over many disciplines like mathematics, even music, but in effect he is saying we live in a rationally ordered universe, he is developing Heraclitus’ Logos, or Anaxagoras’s Nous in a fuller way in Theory of Forms.

Metaphysical Models in History of Thought

When we look through the history of thought, we find a succession of metaphysical models which provides the structure of thought behind philosophy that’s going on, underlying science, art, social structure, ethics. In Greek or Medieval, there is Theory of Forms, what we have is a hierarchical model and we have hierarchical social structure in the middle ages. In Renaissance/Enlightenment, we have mechanistic science, systematized by Newton. Philosophically, it rejected the notion that there was any cosmic intrinsic order, everything is a product of matter and motion, there is no place for moral and nature of things, it is a world that’s devoid of any intrinsic meaning or value. Nihilism and some Existentialist like Sartre are later reactions against that. The third period (1900-now) are reactions to the mechanistic science view, which begins with Romanticism and then continues with Existentialism and Post-Modernism. In the scientific side, there is development of a more organic model, developmental biology, electromagnetic field theory, relativistic physics and quantum mechanics. However, while we think in a more organic model scientifically, some disciplines still think in mechanistic model.

Difficulties of Theory of Forms (Plato’s Parmenides)

Zeno has a thesis for the Monism, that is, if the world is consists of many things, then things will be like and unlike each other, but there is a contradiction because things can not be both like and unlike each other. In response to the thesis, we discovered some difficulties in Theory of Forms. First we might say things can be like and unlike each other in respect to different Forms, but what about Forms? Can Forms be both like and unlike each other? Second question is are there Forms of everything, is there Forms of opposites? For example, there is Form of Good, is there Form of Bad? If everything participates in an ideal Form, is there an ideal Form of evil or wickedness? There is two ways in the Platonic tradition that problem of evil is handled, one is by reverting to dualism, which means there is an ordered realm of Good and and ordered realm of Evil. The other is that Evil is a privation of Good. Third question is are Forms inherent patterns? Are there patterns that’s inherent in nature so that Forms are like patterns and what does it mean for a particular to participate in Forms. This gives rise to the Third Man argument. If a particular is known to be like an Form, we must have not only a conception of particular, a Form, but also a conception of the likeness which is shared by the particular and the Form. And in order for the likeness Form to hold, we need a forth conception of the likeness which connects the likeness of the particular and the Form and the Form of this likeness. And there is no way to stop. The final problem is can Form be known? If a Form can be known then it must be known by a mind, but if it is going to be some relationship between an mind and a Form, then the mind must be like the Form, but mind is a particular. Presumably we want the Form of mind to be closet to the Form, but the Form of the mind is God, so God can know, but can we?

Plato On God and Cosmos

Plato speaks of overall arrangement of things in the universe as Being, Becoming and Non-Being. Becoming is the state of change, a characteristics for a world of particulars. Being is the realm of unchanging Forms. Non-Being is a total privation of Form. The question is how do particulars come to be. Plato does not anticipate the later Christian view that creation is ex nihilo(out of nothing), instead, Plato’s God is a shaper, an organizer.

Plato believes that there is a vast collection of Forms. They transcend the world of particular things and they are ideals. The question arrives on what is the relation between all the Forms. There must be something that unifies them, in other words, there should be a Form of all the Forms, in which Plato regard as the Form of Good, which is developed in the Republic. It’s the notion of the Form of Good that starts his conception of one transcendent supreme kind of Being. The Good is the source of knowledge, the source of existence of Forms and the source of the nature of things. Parmenides talks about the one is distinct from the many, the Good becomes the one while the world of particulars represents the many.

Plato’s later writing takes two direction, the first is cosmology and the second moral order. By virtue of the One, which is the Good, there is order in the cosmos, a rational order which Heraclitus called logos. By virtue of the fact that the Form of the Form-ness is the Good, the Good is to be imitated, the macrocosm is the cosmos and the microcosm, the city state and the individual’s moral life. The source of order in both is the Form of Good.

Timaeus

In Timaeus, Plato speaks about an artificer and the world soul. Artificer, a.k.a Demiurge in Greek, is a worker, a cosmic workman. Of the artificer, Plato says being Good, he desires all things to be good, and so made them according to Forms. Therefore, the artificer is not simply an transcendent ideal to be admired, it is also the source for the being of the Forms, and the source for the becoming of the cosmos. He think of artificer as the architect, the planner, who assigns to the world soul and he thinks the cosmos as a living creature. World soul is the active power that shapes the cosmos in accordance with the Forms. In the further comments made by Plato, there seems to be some connection between the world soul and reason. Just like the human has a rational soul, so is the world soul.

God in Other Dialogues

In Theaetetus, the attention goes more to the moral order side. Evils can never be done with, nor have they any place in the divine world but they must needs haunt this region of our mortal nature. In the realm of eternal there is no evil, it’s in this world. That’s why we need to become like the divine as far as we can, to become just, righteous, with the help of wisdom. The Form of the Good has moral significance, it provides the ideal for the moral life. In the Statesmen, he likens God to the shepherding his people. In the Laws, he speaks of God as a self moving world soul who knows all things, cares about humans and their affairs, rewards good and evil and gives excellence to nature as a whole. The initial impression of Timaeus for people might be cosmology, however, the overarching purpose and concern is not about cosmology but the moral life, and he walks into that through the notion of a cosmic order overseen by the Good, activated by the world soul.

The Problem of Evil

Evil represents disharmony, while Good represents a harmonious order. Plato gives different accounts in different places. In Timaeus, he notices that in addition to the operation of reason of the world soul, there is also the operation of necessity, the causal necessity of some blind fate. So there is blind forces at work in nature in addition to the Good. Some put that together with what he says about Non-Being as if it were some primal material stuff unruly as if Plato is a metaphysical dualist. You have eternal matter and eternal soul, and evil occurs because matter resists reasonable ordering. That interpretation went off more into the Gnostic direction, the main line of thought after Plato interpreting him is more monastic, there is not two realities but only one, and matter really is Non-Being, nothing. What you have is Form trying in particulars to manifest itself in a world of conflicting particulars. That is a idealist interpretation rather than a dualist interpretation. Everything exists are of the nature of reason, soul, Form, but there are manifestations of that, which are appearances, but not themselves realities. That comes out of Neo-Platonism movement. In the Laws, he makes a different suggestions that seems to push to a dualist direction. In addition to the One or the world soul, he refers to a “dyad” which is a second, comparing to monad, which means the first. The fuller account is in the Statesman. What he has is certainly not a dualistic thing, it’s rather as if you have the interplay of opposing qualities in the physical world. Plato seems to have in mind that there are two opposing properties in the physical cosmos. He explicitly rejects dualism saying that we may not say that a pair of divinities make it revolve alternatively in the opposed senses. Instead he believes in one era it’s assisted by the transcendent divine cause receiving renewal of life immortality of contriving in the other era it moves by its own innate forces stored up so much momentum of its release that it can revolve in the reverse sense. He is depicting a cyclical cosmos, an ordered rational harmony and growing disharmony, which is similar to some other Greek philosophers. There is inherent instability in the finite existence because it’s the world of becoming and of change, so evil is a natural ingredient in the natural order in the finite physical universe. The problem of natural evil is the problem of the very nature of a finite being rather than due to some moral thought.

Comments in Timaeus

Timaeus starts by talking about making things, whenever the maker of anything, looks to what is unchanging and use it as the model in fashioning the form and quality of his work, all that he accomplishes must be good, but if he looks to something that is come to be, then it will not be good. He goes on to apply the overall notion to the making of the cosmos. The material elements may well be eternal, but the ordered cosmos is something that comes to be. That which becomes must become by the agency of some cause. If the world is good, then clearly you have to look into the eternal, but on the contrary supposition, then it may well be a copy of something that’s come to be. Obviously the world is such as an ordered unity, that we have to look into an eternal model. The cosmos is shaped in a way that would be alike of its maker. This is picked up by Christian theologians, that is, God created a world to reflect his perfection and splendor. Plato’s defines time as a changing image of the eternal. Plato then refers Space as receptacle, that as it were in which the elements are bound together, and encompasses the world of Becoming.

Two Interpretations of Platonism

The two interpretation of Plato are dualist and idealist. The dualist interpretation is the Demiurge takes the eternal Forms to combine them with eternal material elements. Form and matter are two eternal elements in making of the cosmos. The idealistic interpretation, developed in both Middle and Neo Platonism, is that the only reality is Being, the realm of Forms. The other extreme is the realm of Non-Being. This world of Becoming is a manifestation of the world of eternal Forms where there would have being nothing. There are approximations or images of the Form, but there is no reality of its own. There are Being, Space and Becoming that things are made.

Comments in the Laws

In the Laws he makes more explicit the concept of the shaper of the universe as the one supreme God and this has profound moral implications. If we are to like that one God, being just, being good, then those who do not believe in God should have no place in his ideal Republic. We need not only to have a justly ordered society, we need to pay attention to the grounds of morality, which he sees in the belief in God.

Plato on the Human Soul

The human individual is a microcosm, which is consists of body and soul, two separate entities that’s united in this life. He is very explicit that the soul is eternal and the body is generated. Plato gives the most attention to the eternality of the soul, the eternal is uncreated and always was. The soul precedes the physical birth and survives physical death. There are four arguments for the eternality of the soul. One of them is in Meno or Phado, in the argument of knowledge by recollection. Socrates is able to bring mathematical knowledge that’s never learned by a slave boy. The conclusion is that knowledge must be innate, it must be in the soul and the soul must pre-exist. The second is an argument from the cyclical recurrence of the opposites, if the soul pre-existed the body, where did the soul come from if not from the death of another body. So there is a cycle of life and death. He is playing with the cyclical view of the nature’s processes, and he talks about the notion of transmigration, of reincarnation. The third argument is that the soul is a simple rather than a composite thing. To be a simple, is to be an indivisible unit. If it’s immaterial it’s indivisible, if it’s indivisible, it’s indestructible, if it’s indestructible it’s immortal. The fourth argument is from Phaedrus, there the notion is the soul is the life of the body, and that which gives life can’t lose it.

The Good Life (Plato’s Ethics)

We will start with the tripartite soul, and the three levels of functions are intellect, the spirited, the appetite. And it’s the intellect that distinguishes human soul with other souls. He also locates the soul in different part of the body, the intellect in head, the spirited in chest, the appetite in stomach. There are corresponding telos(goal) of different parts, the intellect is to achieve wisdom, the ideal for the spirited is courage, and self-control for appetite. The just person is one in whom these three elements perform their respective functions of right. The intellect must guide the spirited, and then the spirited can bring its energy to bear in controlling the appetite.

Two Loves

In the discussion of Phaedrus, Plato talks about two loves, that in one case the appetite is set on what is below, and in the other case the love is on things above, with eyes on the ideal Form and eventually on the Form of the Good. The word for love he uses in both cases is Eros, which means desire, the question is what you desire. That is picked up by Christian writer Augustine, in his book Confessions. In order to understand Plato’s picture on the soul, we need to understand the relationship between knowledge and love, that is, guided by reason but motivated by love. Plato’s perception of the life of the soul is not one of purely objective, theoretical discussion. What Plato talks about is a mind of intellect that is filled with wonder, with the love for Good. Another kind of love Philo, different from Eros, as in philosophy, is kind of friendship love, it is a love of wisdom for its own sake, rather than because of appetite, a self interest.

The Improvement of the Soul

The soul is valued because it is eternal, the ideal for the soul is to be like the Good, to be like the Form the Good, and in his later writing he identifies the Form of Good with God, so to like the God. The cultivation of virtues, “arete”, which means a quality, excellence of the soul. The soul has virtue when the elements of the soul achieve their proper natural function. Plato also explores the relationship between different virtues.

Role of Pleasure

What is the role of pleasure in the Good life? While he rejects that pleasure is the highest Good, he still sees pleasure as Good, a Good. It’s the appetitive, self interested creature, always trying to gratify its own desires, which makes pleasure the highest Good, that becomes hedonism. And Plato criticizes hedonism as a mistaken view of what is Good for human. Human is not a simply appetitive beings, and as a result, pleasure is not the highest Good. And there are good pleasures and bad pleasures, there are some higher, more enriching pleasures like pleasure of contemplation. Pleasure is a by-product of higher activities. Plato essentially has the same view of the place of pleasure as you get from the Book of Ecclesiastes, where the wise man comments that whatever my heart desires I kept back from it, it was all vanities, and on the other hand there is nothing better than to enjoy the good things as gifts of God in wisdom, recognizing what their enjoyment can be in terms of the love of the Good.

Conclusions

One way to think about Plato, is to think of him as developing a core thesis, that you can represent by virtue of the divided line analogy, where on the one side you have the distinction between knowledge and opinion, the epistemological side of the divided line. And then when you talk about the object of the knowledge and opinion, the distinction between Forms and Particulars. In light of this, he develops his ideas in ethics, soul, politics, education, cosmology, God, history, etc. Plato also develops a cyclical view of the history and the human soul, which runs through the Greek thinking. Plato doesn’t have much foundation for the optimism of life so we can’t find the idea of historical progress in society in Plato.

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