My First Plato E-Book

Enrico Valente

• Herausgeber: Tektime
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 106

Beschreibung

The series “Meetings with the philosophers” is proposed to present to the lay public the life, thought and the works of the greatest philosophers of all time. The themes are faced with a simple, but rigourous language, basically adapted to anyone. The objective is to provide the reade with the essential cognitive tools to understand the basic features of the works of the author considered as well as the thoughts produces on the authors that they followed after. In this work we present the thought of Plato: the theory of ideas, political theory, knowledge, dialectic, arts, rhetoric, love, and a few myths among which the most celebrated such as the myth of the cavern and the myth winged chariot.

Leseprobe

Enrico Valente

MY FIRST

PLATO

The life, thought and works

of the great philosopher

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1. INTRODUCTION

2. LIFE

3. THE FIRST DIALOGUES

4. THE THEORY OF IDEAS

HYPERURANION AND THE CONCEPT OF IDEA IN PLATO

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE WORLD OF THE SENSES AND THE WORLD OF IDEAS

5. KNOWLEDGE OF IDEAS

THE THEORY OF REMINISCENCE

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

TRUTH AND OPINION

PASSIONS, OBSTACLE TO TRUTH

6. THE MYTHS OF PLATO

THE WINGED CHARIOT

THE MYTH OF THE CAVE

THE MYTH OF THE ANDROGYNE

THE MYTH OF THE DEMIURGE

THE MYTH OF PROMETHEUS

THE MYTH OF THEUTH

7. THE IDEAL STATE

JUSTICE

THE JUST STATE

THE THREE PARTS OF THE STATE

PLATONIC COMMUNISM

THE EDUCATION OF GOVERNORS

THE DEGENERATIONS OF THE STATE

8. SCIENCE AND IMMITATIVE ART............................................................................................

9. RHETORIC........................................................................................................................... ...

10. DIALETICS...........................................................................................................................

11. ESSENCE AND EXISTENCE.................................................................................................

12. TO BE AND NOT TO BE, THE ERROR .................................................................................

13. GOOD FOR MAN..................................................................................................................

14. THE LAWS.............................................................................................................................

15. RELIGION AND COSMIC ORDER ....................................................................................

16. PLATO IN HISTORY..........................................................................................................

1. INTRODUCTION

Introducing Plato, and, mostly, being able to do so concisely, is a difficult undertaking, to say the least, because in him we recognize one who was probably the most important and influential philosopher of antiquity. His ideas and his theories will be the themes that practically all thinkers who come after him will have to deal with. And they will do so to criticize him, to surpass him, to praise him, to confirm their own ideas or to find fault with those of others. For this reason, no scholar who wishes to undertake the long path of the history of philosophy can ignore approaching his thought.

To understand Plato adequately philosophically, we must start with two important premises. The first is that his thought is characterized by a basic intention, an imperative requirement, that is, by the will to remove all traces of relativism that were so dear to the Sophists who, by negating any stable viewpoint of things, prevented the certainty of knowledge and of language and demanded of the law the strongest work of establishing what was true and what was false, what was right and what, on the other hand, was wrong. Plato has the merit of having inaugurated the concept of the rational soul which, by regulating itself on the principle of non-contradiction, fixes the uniqueness of meanings, subtracting them from that oscillation of sense that is the expression of a symbolic language that impedes the development of a structured thought, a discourse constructed upon stable and universal definitions, a language that claims to remove any ambiguity, any risk of misunderstanding and incomprehension. This is why today we still say that Plato is the father of grammar and the founder of metaphysics and Western philosophical thought.

The second premise is that regardless we cannot ignore the historical framework in which his thought is shaped. We are talking about the profound poly-cultural crisis that affected the years of his youth. The defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian war, the nefarious experience of the aristocratic experiment of the Thirty Tyrants, the return to a democracy that soon turns out to be a disappointment so strong that it is soiled with Socrates' blood. A socio-political decay but not only, for Plato the crisis also concerns man understood in his totality: in his cultural aspects, in his values, in his being a citizen. Having acquired this appalling awareness, the Athenian philosopher will direct every effort in an attempt to trigger a profound ethical renewal of man in the name of virtue, justice and the common good, in short, what he proposes will be a global reform of human existence.

Platonism, therefore, has an all-encompassing claim. Plato does not try to give an answer to single questions, to single fields of life and knowledge, as did all the philosophers who preceded him. There is no branch of knowledge that is not considered in his philosophy. Plato is interested both in philosophical questions and in those that are religious, ethical, political, linguistic and artistic. His philosophy develops theories in every area, in the field of knowledge, in that of ethics, politics, art, the cosmos, etc. Despite this, politics remains the main objective, the greatest need of his philosophy. The search for the collective good is the object of all his efforts. For Plato, injustices will never end until philosophers lead the State. This is the fulcrum of his political theories. For this criteria any other form of government, tyranny, timocracy and also democracy were revealed, to his eyes, as being totally inadequate for the foundation of the just State.

A new man for a new politics, a new politics for a new man. This could be his slogan as well as the objective of his philosophy. For this Plato, throughout his life, will place his genius at the service of the community. His greatest masterpiece, the dialogue of the Republic, became the first work of antiquity to create a project of an ideal, utopian state. But despite his laudable intentions, he will never meet anyone who is willing to test his theories of the State and the decline of the Greek poleis [cities] will prove dramatically unstoppable.

2. LIFE

In his Chronology, Apollodorus of Athens set the date of Plato's birth at the eighty-eighth Olympiad, on the seventh day of the month of Targellion, i.e. at the end of May 428 BCE.

Plato was born in Athens to aristocratic parents: his father Aristone imposed the name of his grandfather Aristocles on him (although according to Diogenes Laërtius himself there is a legend according to which the philosopher was actually the son of the god Apollo). It was his gymnastics teacher who jokingly named him “Plato”, given the breadth of his shoulders, (from the Greek πλατύς, platýs, which means "wide" or broad). In fact, Plato practiced pancrazio a sort of combined combat and boxing. According to others, however, the name was attributed to his broad forehead.

From an early age, Plato was able to distinguish himself for his acute intellect and prodigious memory. His upbringing, at least initially, was mostly artistic. He studied music, painting and literature, distinguishing himself, in particular, in poetic and dramatic composition. Already in the period of his youth he came into contact with philosophy, as demonstrated by the fact that he had Cratylus among his teachers (himself a pupil of Heraclitus and to whom he will dedicate a dialogue).

Fundamental was the meeting with Socrates, who was able to influence his thinking decisively. Plato remained faithful to his teacher throughout his life, so much so that he became the only reference in philosophizing (the devotion will be such that in many of his writings the figure of the teacher will be almost idealized). His entire production, far from being composed into a system, was intended to be a continuous interpretative study of the master's philosophical speculation (we can therefore say that if Socrates planted the seed Plato took care of and made the plant grow).

Socrates, however, after the parenthesis of the oligarchic and pro-Spartan government of the Thirty Tyrants, was accused of impiety by the new democratic government (it was said that he had invented new divinities) and of corrupting the young and he was sentenced to death in 399 BCE (in the apologyof Socrates the pupil described the master's trial, pronounced his defense, denounced the falsity of those who accused him of corrupting the youth).

For Plato, the death of the master represented the clearest proof of the deterioration of the Greek world, which had been caused by the complete separation of politics from knowledge and justice. From this awareness the idea arose in him, which he will develop in the dialogue of the Republic, according to which only a government of philosophers could create a just State.

In 388 Plato made the first of several trips to southern Italy. He settled in Taranto, where he attended the school of the Pythagoreans, and then in Syracuse: here his political ideas aroused the irritation of the tyrant Dionysius the Elder, who considering him a dangerous opponent, imprisoned and sold him as a slave.

The philosopher Anniceris paid his ransom and, fortunately, Plato returned to Athens as a free man, where he founded the Academy in 387, the first great philosophical school of antiquity, a school that would traverse the centuries and which, even if Justinian would suppress it in 529 CE, would have profound repercussions on generations of philosophers.

In 367 BCE, after twenty years dedicated to study and teaching, the passion for politics reawakened in Plato's soul, also because Dionysius the Younger, who succeeded his father, showed interest in his theories and invited him to Syracuse, but just as had already happened with his father, this experience did not have the desired outcome.

The elderly philosopher thus made two more trips to the Sicilian city that ended in complete failure (he was imprisoned again), which nearly cost him his life. Plato's political reform was strongly opposed by the tyrannical faction that saw in the Athenian philosopher, and in his eloquence, a threat to its own existence, or even a new attempt at conquest by Athens. Returning to his hometown in 360, Plato remained at the head of the Academy until his death in 347 BCE.

During his life Plato wrote many works: 35 dialogues and 13 letters that can be grouped into the writings of his youth, maturity and old age. The teaching, as for Socrates, takes place through the technique of dialectics, that is, with debates and heated exchanges of opinion between the student and the teacher. Unlike the Sophists, who were handsomely paid to give lessons where there was no confrontation, exchange of ideas and opinions, for Plato the passive assimilation of the word did not count.

The philosopher's aversion to writing was fundamentally determined by the fact that this method led to rigid dogmatism, to the fossilization of knowledge and made the reader lazy, while dialogue has the advantage of remaining fluid, dynamic, active, continually aimed at inquiry, to the development of one's own convictions (even if, to tell the truth, many scholars say that in the Republic Plato, himself, poses as a perfect dogmatist).

All the dialogues written have his great teacher Socrates as the protagonist where the same pupils participate, directed by Plato or by the older pupils, and illustrious characters passing through Athens.

3. THE FIRST DIALOGUES

Plato's first dialogues are those that are most affected by the teachings of Socrates. In them the philosopher of Athens is engaged in a continuous search and demand for definitions. The questions cover topics such as friendship, courage, temperance, the possibility of teaching virtue and justice.

In the apology of Socrates the author describes the historical truth of the process that led Socrates, his great teacher, to be sentenced to death. The accusation is both that he did not recognize traditions, such as the gods, and of having introduced new divinities and of having corrupted the young. Faced with this accusation, the philosopher could have left the city or at least tried to defend himself. But he did not choose to, justifying himself by saying that he would not renounce his education of the Athenians for any reason.

The work that Plato dedicates to his master is, in addition to a description of the trial and of Socrates' refusal to escape condemnation, an exaltation of the social task he had proposed. The message that the author wanted to convey is, fundamentally, that a life without philosophical research does not deserve to be lived.

In the Crito, a dialogue closely linked to the Apology, Socrates is presented as being before a dreadful dilemma that consists of the chosen obligation of accepting death in respect of what the just man owes to his country and its laws, or, following the encouragement of his friends and loved ones, to escape from prison, thereby denying the substance of his teachings. In this dialogue, research is elevated to an indispensable mission for the man who has decided to dedicate his life to this.

The minor dialogues that anticipate the more mature works of this first phase of his thought foretell and prepare for the dialogues of Protagoras and Gorgias.

The central theme is virtue. According to Plato, there is only one virtue: science. All the other virtues described in the dialogues, such as sanctity, courage, wisdom, are not independent, but are interrelated and find their raison d'etre