Athens, 427 - id., 347 av. J. - C.
In Plato Greek. Greek philosopher. First large thinker of the western world, Plato approached most fields which constitute the philosophical discipline still today, that it defined as the research of the truth and the rational investigation.
Its work, primarily made up of dialogs which present a real literary beauty, deeply marked the history of philosophy, in particular in late Antiquity and since the Rebirth.
Biography
Plato is born in one from the most prestigious families from Athens. This city is then the most powerful democracy, the first military force and naval, the intellectual and artistic hearth of the Greek world. In the years which preceded the birth by Plato, the Athenian policy had run up against the rival ambitions of Sparte , cité au government oligarchical. Plato had twenty-three years when the Peloponnesian War was completed with the destruction of the Athenian power and the installation of the mode of the Thirty, with the number of which one counted Charmide, the maternal uncle of Plato, and Critias, the cousin of his mother.
The friend of Socrate
Old of about twenty years hardly, Plato had started to attend Socrate. Persuaded to achieve a mission prescribed by a god, Socrate passed his life to examine its fellow-citizens and to convince them to improve their heart. After the democracy was restored into 403, this activity of examination and oligarchical sympathies which were charged to him were the subject of Socrate of a hostility marked on the part of the Athenians. In 399, Socrate is translated due to impiety in front of a court of more than five hundred sworn drawn with the fate. Recognized guilty, it is condemned to drink the conium.
The death of Socrate appeared to Plato like the proof of an irreducible political evil, attached to the majority of the shapes of government, which they are democratic or oligarchical. It also seems that this dramatic event dissuaded it to try to play in its city the political role for which its family and her alliances intended it: it will be held from now on below political movements of Athens.
The founder of the Academy
In 389, Plato leaves for Large Greece (Italy of the South), to undoubtedly meet Pythagorean thinkers there; he passes then by Sicily and goes to the court of the tyrant of Syracuse, Denys the Old one. There, Plato tries, it seems, to convince Denys to establish in Syracuse the shape of government governed by the philosophers; he that point does not reach but gains however the unfailing attachment of Dion, cousin of the tyrant.
Returned in Athens, Plato founds there the Academy, the first school of philosophy, attended by disciples carefully selected, where it exempts a teaching in the various fields of philosophical knowledge. Aristote will study there then will teach during the twenty last years of the life of Plato. Old of about sixty years, Plato makes two more voyages in Sicily to try to persuade Denys the Young person, who succeeded his father, to adhere to his ideas. He fails, but he will give his support for unhappy forwarding later that Dion undertook to dethrone Denys.
The witness of the democracy
Plato dies into 347, at the eighty years age. Ten years later, in 336, the Greek cities will give up their independence in front of Philippe of Macedonia. It will be the end of the Athenian democracy. Plato will thus have observed during more than six decades the toughening and the wear of the democratic regime whose criticism strongly marked its thought moral and political, and who only survived to him about ten years.
Platonic dialogs
With Epictète and Plotin, Plato is one of the three Greek philosophers whose work reached us in his near total. But the texts which were forwarded to us under the name of Plato (forty-two dialogs, thirteen letters and a collection of definitions) are not all of him.
The specialists distinguish twenty-six authentic dialogs, of the suspect dialogs - undoubtedly composed by the familiar ones of the Platonic school - and dialogs apocryphal books, some of very late composition. As for the order of the authentic Platonic dialogs, the only thing known with certainty is that Plato died whereas it put the last hand at a dialog entitled the Laws. Since the end of the XIX E century, thanks to a rather precise formal description of the style of this last dialog, one could propose a chronological classification of works of Plato. It was thus noted that the first dialogs testify most obviously to the influence of the Socratic thought. On the other hand, in the dialogs whose one locates the composition during one later time - of maturity or old age -, one attends the development of a properly Platonic philosophy.
Chronology of the dialogs
One thus distinguishes a period from youth (399-390), which understands the Socratic dialogs (in particular Protagoras and the Apology for Socrate), that Plato wrote at once after the disappearance of its Master; one transitional period (390-385), where one still perceives the influence of the personality of Socrate but where Plato presents already the clean topics of his thought (Gorgias and Ménon). The period of maturity (385-370), which includes the great dialogs (Phédon, Banquet, République, Phèdre). Lastly, the period which corresponds to the last years of its life (370-348) understands its most difficult dialogs (Parménide, Théétète, the Sophist, the Policy, Timée, Philèbe and Laws).
Subjects and style of the dialogs
The Platonic dialogs present a whole a form of philosophical “drama”, centered on the examination of a problem. This one can evolve towards a resolution or the conclusion which a solution is impossible, which Plato indicates like “aporia”. Each Platonic dialog is devoted to a particular object (for example, piety in Euthyphron, rhetoric in Gorgias, love in the Banquet, justice in the Republic or pleasure in Philèbe), even if many other topics are approached there.
Socrat often seems the Master of the discussion, which raises questions, critical the answers brought and is expert in this art of the dialog that Plato calls “dialectical”. In the last dialogs, Socrate is erased behind the enigmatic figure from Abroad of Elée (it is the case of the Sophist and the Policy) or of the Athenian (in the Laws). But the philosophical dialog is not, as it will be the case in the authors of the XVIII E century, a simple artifice of talk. Guided by the research of the truth, it follows a sinuous course - idle by digressions - that the Socratic irony makes sometimes dubious.
The criticism of the false knowledge
As of the first dialogs, Socrate questions without slackening its interlocutors to make sure of reality to know to them. The Apology for Socrate explains us the direction of this search. The oracle of Delphes having announced that Socrate is most erudite of the men, this one, quite conscious of its ignorance, since he said anything to know, endeavoured to put to the test the word of the god by scanning the knowledge of the men who claim to know. The politicians, the poets and the craftsmen all, are thus successively examined more or less unable to define their competence.
However, Socrate does not doubt that it knows a large number of things which milked, for example, with the daily life or the elementary mathematical truths. But the possession of a knowledge or a knowledge (the Greek terms of epistêmê, technê or sophia are often interchangeable in this context) requires more: a unified comprehension of the phenomena considered, a search for their causes and the possibility of justifying the judgments pronounced at their place. Many alleged competences cannot satisfy the conditions required by such a model with knowledge. It is the case of rhetoric (defined in Gorgias like “an empirical practice and a routine”), art of interpretation (criticized in the Ion, and that the rhapsode practices) and of the control of the public affairs in Athens.
The best proof which can be given owing to the fact that one has really a knowledge is the capacity to accept a question of the type “of what the object of this knowledge consists?”. Almost all the dialogs of youth and transition start with a similar question which arises in fact like a search for definition. Does Socrat ask thus “what the beauty?” in major Hippias, and “what justice?” in the Republic. But, in answer to this question, it does not await a lexical definition, giving the right use of the term, even less one example or an illustration: the Hippias sophist ridicules himself while proposing to define the beauty by a beautiful young girl. What research Plato, it is rather the description of a nature common to a set of objects, the beauty of all the beautiful things, the justice of all the right things, i.e. a gasoline (eidos), universal or a general character which one can identify with none the particular objects but which however does not seem to present any trancendance compared to them. It is only in one later stage of its thought that Plato will recognize with such gasolines a form of understandable reality which will radically detach them from the objects by which they are at the same time exemplified and made dull.
Two principal methods of criticism
Two principal methods are used by Socrate to criticize to them false certainty and to discriminate between the true judgments and the false judgments.
Refutation
The first procedure, whose almost all Socratic dialogs give an illustration, consists of a refutation (elenchos). The Socratic refutation aims at showing that the thesis supported by the interlocutor will lead to a contradiction if this one agrees to be subjected to a interrogation.
The method employed is simple: it consists in drawing the conclusions which rise from the thesis in question and to show that those are incompatible with other certainty of the interlocutor. Such a way of doing does not make it possible it to only establish an absolute truth, but Plato trusts it enough to make say to Socrate in Gorgias that the conclusions to which this kind of refutation led - in this case, to show that the life of the man without scruples will make his misfortune - are bound by “diamond and iron reasons”.
The maieutic one
The second procedure is the maieutic one, the art of the midwife. Socrat, in Théétète, points out that his/her mother was midwife and adds that it practices to him also same art, even if it examines only “the kids of the spirit” and not those of the body, and that its essential work lies in the sorting which it operates between the theses or judgments which its interlocutors advance; the examination to which these judgments are subjected consists in observing if they are coherent with other allowed principles and if they do not lead to any contradiction; in this case only they will be declared viable.
The whole of Théétète gives a remarkable illustration of this method, which consists at the same time of a refutation and a systematic development of the thesis suggested, in order to examine of them possible reformulations and all the consequences. It is applied to the first definition of the knowledge which gives the Théétète young person: knowledge is true opinion. Having shown that this thesis, once clearly reformulated, leads to a relativism, similar to that which the Protagoras sophist, and with an ontology where nothing is stable nor defined, Plato defended will issue it nonviable and thus distorts. But such an examination simply does not aim at testing the thesis, it is also used to release the conditions of a true knowledge of realities.
Reminiscence and knowledge
It is in Ménon that Plato exposes, for the first time, its philosophy of knowledge. To answer the paradox, of sophistical origin, that its young Ménon interlocutor opposes to him, namely that “one can nothing learn, because is one knows already and one does not have to learn, is one does not know and thus one does not know how to seek”, Socrate stresses that knowledge belongs to the heart before even as this one is not incarnated in the life present; thus, the act to learn corresponds to the effort of recollection necessary to again bring to the conscience this forgotten knowledge. Any research, any acquisition of knowledge thus consists of a recollection, or reminiscence (name which remained attached to this Platonic design): thus, in Ménon, after two vain attempts to answer a difficult question of geometry, a young boy, uncultivated slave, are capable of comprehension.
A response to skepticism and the relativism
The Platonic theory of the reminiscence represents in the history of philosophy one of the first references of the designs inneists of knowledge. The idea essential, specific to this theory, is that all the knowledge which belongs to the heart is acquired before the incarnation and which it is forgotten as soon as the heart enters in a terrestrial body. In addition, this knowledge relates to the totality of the knowledge and it has as a function to ensure the permanence of the nature of the heart each new generation. Lastly, the recollection by the heart of a thing before known gives access to all the other truths which the heart has, thanks to the reasoning and with the progressive discovery of the bonds which exist between knowledge. The Platonic response to the skepticism and the relativism as regards knowledge is undoubtedly one of most powerful which were ever brought. It makes it possible to the man to justify his knowledge, to seek the causes and the principles of the certainty which he has already, and thus to found science.
Understandable realities
Ménon, Phédon and the Republic show Plato anxious to distinguish between the two rival forms from truth which are the true opinion and knowledge. One can indeed be in truth in connection with such or such thing while being unable to justify this truth or to bring it back to other certainty. If the true opinion (alêthês doxa) is thus undoubtedly a form of truth, this one is however intrinsically precarious and vulnerable to the lapse of memory and the deformations. In Ménon, however, Plato does not exclude that a work of deepening, interrogations repeated or of research of the causal links can gradually transform a set of true opinions into a form of knowledge. But this thesis is abandoned in Phédon and the Republic. If the reminiscence is always the access road privileged to knowledge, the possibility of knowing is then attached to a field of realities whose Plato, as of his maturity, will not cease affirming that they are only truly real and the only likely ones to be known. They is understandable realities which are the Ideas or the Forms, whereas one can base no unquestionable science on the feelings or the judgments posed starting from empirical knowledge.
Forms and the dialectical one
The existence of a place, separated from the sensitive world, where are understandable realities is one of the theses best known Platonic thought. But the need for defining such an understandable place results for Plato from research from the conditions from a true knowledge. The presence of an innate but latent knowledge was well established as of the formulation of the theory of the reminiscence. But it remained to define the nature of the objects to which such a knowledge could relate. To answer this question, Plato partly takes again the asset of Socratic research devoted to define the gasoline common to a multiplicity of objects. Only the eidos (“idea”) will not be conceived any more like immanent with the sensitive objects. It from now on is presented like a completely understandable reality, detached of the sensitive and material beings. Admittedly, the beautiful things are beautiful insofar as they take part in the Form of the Beauty, but Plato insists on the fact that it is of this Form which these things draw the little from reality that they have; and it is only because they “take part” in the Beauty which they will be known.
Platonic ontology is presented in the form of a realism of the gasolines. But the Forms are also understandable beings, which give the condition of any knowledge. However, they are not at all representations of the spirit, concepts or ideas. Not only they are true realities, but they are all reality. That resulted in indicating the philosophy of Plato like a “realism of the Ideas”.
The Shapes, separate realities of the sensitive world
The Platonic Forms are thus stable and permanent realities; they are necessarily existing and constitute “what is” such as it is. In addition, the Forms are really dissociated from the multiplicity of the sensitive objects which are named according to them. So they are free of diversity and contradiction inherent in the empirical world, which is, deprived to him of true reality. But they are also made necessary, “are wished”, said Phédon, by contradictions of the sensitive world which seek their own resolution. It is with this aspect of the philosophy of Plato that Aristote will be opposed most clearly. This one, which was until the forty years age a disciple then a teacher of the Academy, will not have of cease to underline contradictions to which the will leads “to separate” (khorizein), like made Plato, the Shapes of the sensitive beings: the Platonic Forms are real gasolines, understandable and separated from the sensitive world, but they exert a form of causality on the knowledge which applies to them.
The allegory of the cave
The allegory of the cave (VII of the Republic deliver) described, in unforgettable terms, the slow one and painful rise of the prisoners who are detached little by little from the images and apparent realities of this world. Some of them end up escaping the darkness and, still dazzled by the clearness of the day, see only little by little true realities. Soon, they will convert with the Shape of the Good. This one is like the light that the eye, familiar of the darkness, cannot support to see, even if this same eye accommodates it gradually.
The first means of reaching the Forms is the knowledge a priori whose reminiscence gave the model. Indeed, neither the refutation nor the maieutic one can exceed the critical role which was reserved to them and rise until the knowledge of the gasoline.
The dialectical one
The dialogs of the maturity, where Plato presents in the form the most elaborate his theory of the Forms, are also those where the dialectical one is gradually defined either only like the art of the dialog, but like the only philosophical method appropriate to the examination of the gasoline. The dialectician can indeed undertake philosophical research according to the nature of the thing subjected to the examination, until giving off the gasoline from it (like a good butcher, said Plato in Phèdre, can cut out an animal according to its natural articulations). But the dialectician can also recognize the relationships, or the incompatibilities, which exist between several Forms. Because the place of the Forms is a place organized and arranged hierarchically.
Forms or “kinds to be it”
Plato explains in the Sophist that there exist five principal Forms, or “kinds to be it”: the Being, Rest, the Movement, the Same one, the Other. He shows how certain Forms are related the ones to the others, or “take part” from/to each other; it is the case of the Form of the Fire and that of Heat, of the Form of the Cold and that of Snow. Such an interlacing of the Forms gives the ontological base of the possibility of the true judgment, as “fire is hot” or “snow is cold”. On the other hand, certain Forms are excluded, as the Form of the Rest and that of the Movement. Any judgment which would like to associate two predicates returning with two Forms being excluded one the other is necessarily a false judgment. Lastly, all the Forms take part in the Being, while the Form of the Other is widespread through all the understandable place. The Non-being is thus defined as the Other Être. This form of existence recognized with the Non-being makes it possible to explain how it is possible to speak about something which does not exist. It is there one in the ways in which Plato returns account, within the framework of its ontology, of the possibility of the error.
Forms in Parménide
The theory of the Forms summarizes the essence of the philosophical ambition of Plato. It is true that in Parménide Plato still young Socrate presents to us, accumulating the objections against this theory, but the intention - ironic or serious - of this dialog is very difficult to define. In addition, even in the dialogs where Plato presents and defends the existence of the Forms, it does not fail to underline the difficulties which are attached there. There is thus no reason to think that if it wanted, in Parménide, systematically to expose the difficulties in question, that must mean that he would have given up this theory.
The heart, faculty of knowledge and love
The role played by the heart in the knowledge of the Forms is approached in Phèdre, where Plato describes the nature (partly divine) of the heart and the long formation which it underwent in contact with understandable realities. The dialog that Plato devoted to study the nature of the heart also relates to the love. Because the movement of the heart towards the Forms is similar to the dash, with “is delirious” that the love prints in the lover. As will show it the Banquet, that which likes continues indeed, beyond the physical beauty, the moral beauty and the Form of the Beauty. The heart is thus a faculty of knowledge and love; it is related with realities which it knows, but its constitution is also marked by the moral life of the man whom it animates. That shows how much ontology and moral philosophy are closely dependant in the work of Plato. Because the supreme Form, being it with the fullest direction, is the Form of the Good, which gathers the formal characteristics of beauty, order and symmetry, but whose contemplation - condition of the excellence of the heart and goal of education - is the essential condition which will make it possible to carry out an equivalent of the Good in the human business.
Platonic morals
The moral question fundamental, present in almost all the dialogs of Plato, had been initially formulated by Socrate: “How must I live?” It is not a question so much of knowing with which rule or moral law to conform its life, but rather how to determine the activities, the thoughts which will make that the state of its heart is the best possible one and leads to happiness. The two fundamental terms of Platonic morals are the virtue (edge) and happiness (eudaimonia).
The virtue
The virtue of an human being is relative to the good provision of its heart and is defined by two principal features: knowledge and conformity with the Good. By conformity with the Good, it should be heard that the order and the harmony are printed in the heart, that they reign between its various components and its various functions. But this good of the heart, Plato also defines it as the knowledge.
The reason or the knowledge is indeed the only principles able to ensure the accuracy and the success of any voluntary action. In this direction, as one of the paradoxes allotted to Socrate underlined it, the malicious man is it never voluntarily. Such a dependence of the whole of qualities of the heart with regard to knowledge resulted in recognizing at Plato a form of “moral intellectualism”. The virtue is indeed freed from the goods dependant on the body or the external goods (like the richness or the honor).
Happiness
By ordering his life with the virtue, the individual will be able to reach a happiness which does not consist of a simple state of satisfaction, but which is the effect of an objective order defined by the clean good of the heart.
This design of the virtue breaks clearly with the traditional morality of the time. Indeed, Plato does not cease underlining the limits of the social and political virtues, founded on the reproduction of the dominant uses. Thus, in the Republic, he criticizes the design of the justice which consists in returning what one owes, to make of the good to his friends, of the evil to his enemies. He still criticizes, in Ménon, the design of the virtue which compares to the love of the beautiful things faculty to get them. But similar justice, similar virtue are criticized in the name of a properly moral design directed towards the research of the Good.
Plato also opposes the moral conventionnalism which the sophists had defended. With their relativistic pragmatism, which amounted making virtues the object of a consensus defined by the practices of the city, he objects that the virtues divide the same gasoline, founded on an understandable reality, which makes they as many forms of knowledge. To the sophistical idea that the virtue can be taught like one teaches the means of the private and public success, Plato opposes the long effort of recollection which gradually leads the heart in contact with the shape of the Good until making itself similar to the Good and able to reproduce this one in the political order.
The political reform and education
Three dialogs of Plato, and among the large ones, are devoted to the policy: the Republic, the Policy and Laws, but it is in the Republic that it exposes the most radical political reform whose organization of the State and education of the man ever were the object.
The Republic
This dialog is entirely occupied defining justice. However, for understanding the justice of the man well, it is initially necessary to know justice in the city. In order to lead this examination, Plato builds a perfect city gradually. This one is made up of three bodies of citizens: controlling, guards and the remainder of the citizens (“plowmen”). The latter enjoy all the material possessions, but do not have any political power. Their moral life consists in yielding with a form of administration of the morals which does not leave them any initiative. The guards, on the other hand, have anything, neither richnesses, neither home, nor even family, and must devote body and heart to the conservation of the State. They are carefully selected according to their natural qualities and of the education which they received. They are charged to preserve the city similar to itself. Lastly, controlling them are selected among those of the guards who will have achieved until his term a length and difficult work of formation intended to make them suited, by the dialectical one, to contemplate the nature of the Good and to try to reproduce it in the order of the city.
Sometimes strange details of the organization of this city reveal several lesson characteristic of the Platonic political thought. The ideal city is before a a whole city right. However the virtue of justice does not consist in here at all respecting civil rights or a set of obligations; it represents an internal state of perfection rather. The justice of the city milked with the harmony present between the various orders which compose it, at the fact that each individual must achieve the task for which it is made and that it must be satisfied with his place and its share.
For Plato, a true city is a city one. The guards in charge of the conservation of this unit must also carry it out in their class; the lifestyle which is imposed to them and which aims at stripping them of any private life is supposed to produce between the guards a total unit of thoughts and feelings. The third teaching milked with the incompatibility between the political goods and the tangible properties. The plowmen, who have the richnesses, can enjoy no political good. Contrary, the guards, who are responsible for the maintenance of the city, should not have any tangible property. The idea that the richness always perverts the exercise of the power and causes the degeneration of it is strongly anchored in the thought of Plato.
Power with the philosophers
The basic principle which determines the Platonic design of the State is that the political power must be entrusted to those which hold the knowledge. Socrat underlined already how much it was necessary that the government was exerted by those which have a real competence. Plato will confirm this requirement. The power must belong to the men who, at the end of a long academic cycle mathematics then of a as far as possible thorough dialectical training, acquired the knowledge of the Forms. These men will be the philosopher-kings, also able to modify human reality and to print there as on a fabric the elements of the Shape of the Good. It there will not have cease with the evils of the States, affirms Plato, as long as the philosophers will not be placed in charge of the city and will not be charged with improving the hearts of the citizens. One can imagine that a heart entrusted to a deprived teacher as remarkable as Socrate can become good. But, as Socrate underlined it itself, this result will remain always subjected to all kinds of vicissitudes. It is only at the level of one city that the moral improvement of the individuals could be realized in a stable way. “The art which deals with the heart, I call it policy”, known as Socrate in Gorgias. It is the art which the philosopher-kings practice, and it is an ambition of this type which Plato sought in vain to carry out in Syracuse.
The Policy and Laws
A certain pessimism characterizes the Policy and the Laws, that the philosopher wrote in the last years of his life. Plato appears to doubt that the government of those which know can be recognized like legitimate by the whole of the city. The Policy describes with force how controlling arrives, by mixing the human characters according to the good measure, to manufacture social fabric, but one believes to also read there the suggestion according to which the philosopher, though true holder of political art, is perhaps not always in the position of the command. Takes shape then, for the first time, the figure of the philosopher adviser of the prince.
The certainty of the degeneration of the States and the assigned role with the legislation mark also these last dialogs. Plato had already underlined in the Republic that the beautiful city would not be maintained a long time in a its state of perfection, that it would be transformed soon into timocratie (the government based on the honor), then in oligarchy (the government of the small number, which is also, to the eyes of Plato, a government of the money), finally in democracy (where equality and freedom are exempted with all, even with what is unequal) and in tyranny. This talk of the constitutions will have a real posterity at Aristote, Polybe and Machiavel. But each constitution is defined at Plato according to a moral deficiency (excessive taste of the honor, richness or equality). In addition, the concern of basing political legitimacy on science is less clearly expressed in these last dialogs, which opens the possibility of a theory of the legality which compensates for it. The Policy affirms that the government according to the laws comes at once after the government from the philosophers. But it is especially in the Laws that one finds a system complete of legislation, a true spirit of the laws of which discourse, at the time of the foundation of a new city, an Athenian, Cretan and a Spartan. Plato shows himself there also anxious to lead the citizens to like the law by means of preludes and of exhortations.
Education
Education receives its form the most developed in the Laws. The talk of the payments of the city of the Republic had made it possible to present the means of an education of the heart and temperament, which passed by the control of the poetic and musical modes to lead the citizen to practice the order and measurement. The most endowed with the guards were then intended to follow a long academic cycle being completed by the dialectical one. So as regards education the same policy interventionist prevails as in the Republic (in particular on the marriages), the Laws leave however a larger autonomy to the citizens. Especially, the purpose of education is to inculcate in each one the considered respect of the law and to establish, by the practice and the reflection, a harmonious relation between the various parts of its heart. But the reading of this last dialog of Plato leaves the feeling which the philosopher gave up the idea that the intelligence and the knowledge can prevent the decline.
The Platonic policy was to remain a reference in the history of the theories of the government for two imperative reasons. Initially because it establishes that the installation of a State right is not possible that starting from a radical reform of the man; then because it supports that the knowledge and philosophy are with the principle of the government right. But Plato remains the first thinker to have presented with clearness and in an exemplary way the existing conflict between a certain model of political effectiveness and the promotion of other goods related on the autonomy of the citizen or the safeguarding of his moral spontaneousness.