Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"
Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2020 6:59 pm
anaxarchos
02-06-2007, 01:07 AM
.
(Somewhere else, I said that I thought “Plato was a jerk”. Raphaelle asked me why I thought so. I said I would find a thing I had written on the subject. Of course, I couldn’t find it so I had to explain below… serves me right for being so disorganized but since there seems to be interest on this board on “Idealism versus Materialism”, it’s probably worth doing. Maybe this time, I won’t lose it…)
The holy trinity of Greek philosophy is Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Historically, they arrive in that order and, according to legend, each was the student of the former. While this is figuratively true, it is not entirely clear that it was actually true. Of the three, little is known about Socrates except through stories. He left nothing written behind and actually claimed to mistrust that medium. Socrates was also credited with being "playful". He continuously argued for the non-intuitive and non-obvious. It's not clear that Socrates' real gift wasn't in simply formulating the questions and a way to discuss them. The great "schools" of Greek philosophy, Sophism and Skepticism, actually did no more than that.
Plato, who came next, claimed little for himself but, instead, appeared as the chronicler of Socrates' Dialogues. That Plato was much more than a simple scribe and that both Socrates and he appear in is writings, and often in obvious opposition, is fairly clear. More than that, among the Greeks there was the idea of "Theseus' Paradox". Theseus was the semi-mythical founder-hero of ancient Athens and in his honor the Greeks preserved his ship. According to Plutarch, “The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned [from Crete] had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same." That debate, notwithstanding, it is entirely clear to me that Plato replaced the planks of Socrates' ship.
Finally, came Aristotle, who arguably was the most important of the three, the starting point of Western Logic, and the father of the classical tradition. Aristotle was, in nearly every way, the anti-Plato.
The question on which Plato and Aristotle diverged, fittingly enough, was on the nature of knowledge. Did knowledge come from within or without, before or after experience, “a priori” or “a posteriori”? Do we know, therefore we see, or do we see, therefore we know? What I have just said is a significant crudification but I am not ashamed. It is useful to see Plato as the father of all Religion, the King of the Static, a prisoner of human nature, and the mere receptacle of innate knowledge revealed according to a drama written independently of humans and unaffected by their efforts. In turn, Aristotle becomes the father of Science, an organic human that interacts with the remainder of the natural world not only to eat, and drink, and stay warm but also to think, and to understand, and to grow. To him nothing is innate, and the drama must be lived and understood first, to be written later.
While I readily admit that it ain’t really that simple, it’s close enough a starting point to get to Idealism versus Materialism, once again…
The quickest and most efficient way of coming to understand Idealist ontology is to go directly to the forefather of all Idealists - Plato. In The Republic, his major treatise on the ideal state, Plato has given us the famous Allegory of the Cave.l Imagine, he suggests, a group of people sitting in a dark cave chained down in such a way that they can look in only one direction, toward the expanse of wall on one side of the cave. Several yards behind them is an open fire providing light, and between the fire and where they are sitting is a raised runway along which figures move, casting their shadows upon the wall. The individuals, chained so that they face the wall, cannot see the fire or the figures, but only the shadows. Now, if we imagine them confined to this position for their entire lives, we must expect them to consider the shadows as real, genuinely existent beings. Not knowing anything else, having no three-dimensional beings to use for comparison, these prisoners in the cave would come to believe that what they saw before them represented true reality.
Now imagine that they are unchained and can turn around to see the fire and the figures which have occasioned the shadows. Certainly, says Plato, they would readjust their conception of reality, altering it to fit the new perceptual data that their eyes are now able to collect. Moving about the cave, they begin to get a sense of the three-dimensional character of their environment; and they conclude by thinking that they had been fooled all along, and that now they truly know what reality is.
But then imagine that they are led from the cave into the blinding brilliance of a noonday sun outside. Wouldn’t they, asks Plato, be struck dumb by the complete impossibility of it? Wouldn’t they turn away in complete bewilderment, not wishing to see the real truth of their world? Wouldn’t they gradually retreat to their cave, preferring its more manageable environment to the fantastically incredible world of space and sunlight?
Well, then, suggests the allegory, here we humans are in our own cave - the world as we see it with our five senses. It looks real enough - rocks and trees and birds and men. But it is actually only a world of images, three-dimensional “shadows” of another, more genuinely real world - a world of pure ideas - standing “behind” this world we see and hear and touch. And this realm of pure ideas or “pure mind” is so absolute in its perfection, so superlatively complete in every way, as to possess an intensity beyond the reach of the human mind. Like the sun that blinds our eyes, the “Absolute Mind” completely overwhelms our feeble intellects; and we turn away from it, as we turn our eyes from the sun, bedazzled and “injured” by our attempt to perceive it. And so, preferring a more manageable and comfortable existence, even if less genuinely real, we retreat to our “cave,” the world of sense perception, permitting our intellects only occasional and fleeting glimpses of ultimate reality.
Plato, The Republic, Book VII
But is this really the way human beings act? How long is it before they stop looking at shadows and start to compare textures, to calculate depths, and to think by virtue of their experience? And, since humans are quintessentially social, how long before they compare and test that experience? And though, Plato wouldn’t think of it, how long before they sense their chains and their cave and begin to plot their escape? Finally, to turn away from the sun may be the first reaction, but how long does it really take them to acclimatize, to “internalize” the new reality, to accept “upgraded” perception, and to take their recent “revelation” for granted… and to entirely forget the shock? And hasn’t this question been practically resolved through the actual history of knowledge (“creationism” and Darwinaphobia, notwithstanding)?
In another discussion, Plato asks whether a perfect mathematic description, once it achieves its "perfection" could not suddenly become "real" by virtue of its ideal realization?
Ummm... No... It couldn't.
For me, Plato is also the “father” of pompous, disconnected, disembodied ideas, a born apologist and historical speech-writer for a thousand William F. Buckleys to come. He hits me as a “jerk”.
To butcher Aristotle, ”Inimicus Plato sed magis amica veritas”…
I like Plato, but I like the truth more.
02-06-2007, 01:07 AM
.
(Somewhere else, I said that I thought “Plato was a jerk”. Raphaelle asked me why I thought so. I said I would find a thing I had written on the subject. Of course, I couldn’t find it so I had to explain below… serves me right for being so disorganized but since there seems to be interest on this board on “Idealism versus Materialism”, it’s probably worth doing. Maybe this time, I won’t lose it…)
The holy trinity of Greek philosophy is Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Historically, they arrive in that order and, according to legend, each was the student of the former. While this is figuratively true, it is not entirely clear that it was actually true. Of the three, little is known about Socrates except through stories. He left nothing written behind and actually claimed to mistrust that medium. Socrates was also credited with being "playful". He continuously argued for the non-intuitive and non-obvious. It's not clear that Socrates' real gift wasn't in simply formulating the questions and a way to discuss them. The great "schools" of Greek philosophy, Sophism and Skepticism, actually did no more than that.
Plato, who came next, claimed little for himself but, instead, appeared as the chronicler of Socrates' Dialogues. That Plato was much more than a simple scribe and that both Socrates and he appear in is writings, and often in obvious opposition, is fairly clear. More than that, among the Greeks there was the idea of "Theseus' Paradox". Theseus was the semi-mythical founder-hero of ancient Athens and in his honor the Greeks preserved his ship. According to Plutarch, “The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned [from Crete] had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same." That debate, notwithstanding, it is entirely clear to me that Plato replaced the planks of Socrates' ship.
Finally, came Aristotle, who arguably was the most important of the three, the starting point of Western Logic, and the father of the classical tradition. Aristotle was, in nearly every way, the anti-Plato.
The question on which Plato and Aristotle diverged, fittingly enough, was on the nature of knowledge. Did knowledge come from within or without, before or after experience, “a priori” or “a posteriori”? Do we know, therefore we see, or do we see, therefore we know? What I have just said is a significant crudification but I am not ashamed. It is useful to see Plato as the father of all Religion, the King of the Static, a prisoner of human nature, and the mere receptacle of innate knowledge revealed according to a drama written independently of humans and unaffected by their efforts. In turn, Aristotle becomes the father of Science, an organic human that interacts with the remainder of the natural world not only to eat, and drink, and stay warm but also to think, and to understand, and to grow. To him nothing is innate, and the drama must be lived and understood first, to be written later.
While I readily admit that it ain’t really that simple, it’s close enough a starting point to get to Idealism versus Materialism, once again…
The quickest and most efficient way of coming to understand Idealist ontology is to go directly to the forefather of all Idealists - Plato. In The Republic, his major treatise on the ideal state, Plato has given us the famous Allegory of the Cave.l Imagine, he suggests, a group of people sitting in a dark cave chained down in such a way that they can look in only one direction, toward the expanse of wall on one side of the cave. Several yards behind them is an open fire providing light, and between the fire and where they are sitting is a raised runway along which figures move, casting their shadows upon the wall. The individuals, chained so that they face the wall, cannot see the fire or the figures, but only the shadows. Now, if we imagine them confined to this position for their entire lives, we must expect them to consider the shadows as real, genuinely existent beings. Not knowing anything else, having no three-dimensional beings to use for comparison, these prisoners in the cave would come to believe that what they saw before them represented true reality.
Now imagine that they are unchained and can turn around to see the fire and the figures which have occasioned the shadows. Certainly, says Plato, they would readjust their conception of reality, altering it to fit the new perceptual data that their eyes are now able to collect. Moving about the cave, they begin to get a sense of the three-dimensional character of their environment; and they conclude by thinking that they had been fooled all along, and that now they truly know what reality is.
But then imagine that they are led from the cave into the blinding brilliance of a noonday sun outside. Wouldn’t they, asks Plato, be struck dumb by the complete impossibility of it? Wouldn’t they turn away in complete bewilderment, not wishing to see the real truth of their world? Wouldn’t they gradually retreat to their cave, preferring its more manageable environment to the fantastically incredible world of space and sunlight?
Well, then, suggests the allegory, here we humans are in our own cave - the world as we see it with our five senses. It looks real enough - rocks and trees and birds and men. But it is actually only a world of images, three-dimensional “shadows” of another, more genuinely real world - a world of pure ideas - standing “behind” this world we see and hear and touch. And this realm of pure ideas or “pure mind” is so absolute in its perfection, so superlatively complete in every way, as to possess an intensity beyond the reach of the human mind. Like the sun that blinds our eyes, the “Absolute Mind” completely overwhelms our feeble intellects; and we turn away from it, as we turn our eyes from the sun, bedazzled and “injured” by our attempt to perceive it. And so, preferring a more manageable and comfortable existence, even if less genuinely real, we retreat to our “cave,” the world of sense perception, permitting our intellects only occasional and fleeting glimpses of ultimate reality.
Plato, The Republic, Book VII
But is this really the way human beings act? How long is it before they stop looking at shadows and start to compare textures, to calculate depths, and to think by virtue of their experience? And, since humans are quintessentially social, how long before they compare and test that experience? And though, Plato wouldn’t think of it, how long before they sense their chains and their cave and begin to plot their escape? Finally, to turn away from the sun may be the first reaction, but how long does it really take them to acclimatize, to “internalize” the new reality, to accept “upgraded” perception, and to take their recent “revelation” for granted… and to entirely forget the shock? And hasn’t this question been practically resolved through the actual history of knowledge (“creationism” and Darwinaphobia, notwithstanding)?
In another discussion, Plato asks whether a perfect mathematic description, once it achieves its "perfection" could not suddenly become "real" by virtue of its ideal realization?
Ummm... No... It couldn't.
For me, Plato is also the “father” of pompous, disconnected, disembodied ideas, a born apologist and historical speech-writer for a thousand William F. Buckleys to come. He hits me as a “jerk”.
To butcher Aristotle, ”Inimicus Plato sed magis amica veritas”…
I like Plato, but I like the truth more.