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Plato of Athens (427-347 BC)

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General Background

Dedicated disciple of SocratesPerfected the thought of his master.Most of his works are in the form of dialogues.Main character is typically Socrates.Dialogue usually takes the name of the interlocutor.

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Dialogues: Socratic, Middle, Later

Dialogues can be divided into three periods:

Socratic Dialogues: written early in Platos career, they more faithfully portray the pure, unaltered thought of Socrates. E.g., Euthyphro, Apology, Crito.

Middle Dialogues: written during the middle years of Platos career, they represent the development of Platos own ideas. E.g., Phaedo, Symposium, Meno, Republic.

Later Dialogues: written toward the end of Platos career, they represent Platos mature thought and often challenge the views presented in the middle dialogues. E.g., Sophist, Theaetetus, Parmenides.

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Senses vs. Intellect

The senses get you acquainted with a world of change. (E.g., this horse, that friendship.)The intellect, however, can get you acquainted with a world that is quite different, a world of pure ideas or forms. (E.g., horsness, friendship itself.)Like Socrates, Plato sought the pure forms that lie beyond each individual, sensible, physical, changing thing. These forms are universal, ideal, immaterial, and permanent.The task of philosophy is to find the definition of these ideas that lie beyond individual instances.Unlike Socratic dialogues, the Middle and Later Dialogues, will not usually end in aporia. As Plato develops his own thought, he will offer definitions of forms.

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Senses vs. Intellect

Plato developed the idea of a separate world of forms, known by the intellect alone.The world of senses is more a distraction than an aid to attain it.The philosopher should, therefore, seek to mute his senses, as it were, and concentrate on intellectual ideas only.

This is a representation of Aristophaness Clouds, a parody of Socrates by one of his contemporaries. Socrates is portrayed philosophizing in a basket hanging from the ceiling. The idea is that Socrates was so unconcerned with the world of the senses that he would hang from the ceiling in a basket in order to minimize distractions from the senses.

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Allegory of the Cave

Republic, Bk. VII:

Imagine several prisoners inside a cave, each shackled and made unable to move their heads around, forced to look at a wall.

Behind them is an elevated road, over which people pass, holding puppets representing, and making the sounds of the animals.

Behind the road there is a great fire, which casts the shadow of the statues onto the wall to which the prisoners are looking.

Behind the fire is the entrance to the cave.

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Allegory of the Cave (contd)

The prisoners have never seen anything other than the shadows cast on the wall.

They start naming the different patters on the wall and,

after a while, they begin predicting the behavior of each different pattern.

They take pride in their knowledge of the shadows and seek to outdo each other.

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Allegory of the Cave (contd)

One day, one of the prisoners is released.He turns and is blinded by the fire. After a little while, he gets accustomed to the brightness and is able to see the puppets. He realizes the shadows are not real. The shadows are the shadows of puppets. The puppets are whats real.He then walks toward the entrance of the cave. He is blinded by the brightness at the entrance. After a while he is able to get accustomed and goes outside.There, he sees the objects of which the puppets were representations. In the end, he comes to the realization that the puppets were not real. When he was naming shadows in the cave, he was twice removed from reality.

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Allegory of the Cave (conc.)

Moral of the story:

We are prisoners who are naming, not puppets, but physical objects which are nothing but representations of higher realities.

A horse is not reality, but a representation of an idea of horseness.

A just act is not ultimate reality, but a representation of an idea of Justice itself.

It is the philosophers task to come to this realization and be able to know ultimate reality.

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