PLATO (427-347) and his

influence on Western Philosophy

Mario Neva

Djimé Grand Philosophat November 2012

It is difficult to establish the extent of Plato’s influence

on human culture, so profound, original and wide is the legacy

he has left through his works. Plato left us 36 dialogues and 13

letters, which after his death were handed down through the

centuries, preserving their appeal and stimulating ever new

translators and interpreters. Each new translation of Plato’s

collected works has brought or signposted a renewal of

philosophy and also in part of theology. Plato’s translations are

therefore a very relevant issue in Western philosophy, an issue

running in parallel with the question of the translation of the

Bible. There are justified doubts regarding the complete

authenticity of the 13 letters, but Plato’s thought rises like the

sun’s light from these writings. This is certainly not the place

for such a discussion. Suffice it to say that there are no

reasonable doubts regarding the authenticity of the most

important texts, their individual and collective coherence, and

above all regarding the genius of their author. Plato’s

biography and his thought were well known during his life and

immediately after his death, due to the illustrious status of his

Academy, dedicated to Athens, the divine protector of the

Polis. The Academy started its activity after Plato’s first

journey to Syracuse, in 487, when he, a man of forty, was

already rich in experiences and rich in contacts with living

philosophies all around the Mediterranean area (Megara,

Egypt, Italy). We stress this aspect to counter the widespread

misapprehension that abstraction, and consequently theory,

are far from life. On the contrary, theories and abstractions in

Philosophy are the splendid and vigorous daughters of much

experience. This is true for Plato’s thought above all; it is from

this realistic and ‘holistic’ approach to real life that Plato’s

famous doctrine of the Hyperuranium, the world of ideas and

of the metaphysic Kingdom, takes

its original form. Plato’s Academy

continued for almost 1000 years

until Justinian closed it in 529 AC.

The Academy was thought of as a school where

Philosophy becomes a methodical rigorous path to follow, an

all-embracing concept of education like PAIDEIA, at once

intellectual and moral, also inclusive of religious observance.

This public institution marked the future of Philosophy itself.

Aristotle’s Gymnasium, the Stoics’ Portico and Epicurus’

Garden, but also later Jewish and Christian Theological

schools, like Alexandria, take important inspiration from

Plato’s Academy. The Academy started the process whereby

Philosophy became a Greek social reality and a public

institution, not only the dream of solitary thinkers.

Another reason compels us to dwell a little longer on

this topic. It would have been impossible for Plato’s thought to

achieve such widespread diffusion and influence without a

living school, a learning environment for students like

Aristotle. The continuous production of philosophical work

requires active readers with whom a philosopher can discuss

ideas, convers In Plato’s Academy Philosophy is a synonymous

of Dialectics. The Tübingen School led by Jaeger emphasized a

statement contained in the VII letter, in which Plato, as in

Phaedrus, describes philosophy as a spoken and living thing,

only prepared by and channeled through the written word.

This is another facet of Plato’s irony: through Socrates’ mouth

he pushes the limits everywhere, and in this case, while the

dialogue insists on the superiority of live speech, the written

text reaches a superior literary style. Entering Plato’s

Philosophy is always a great adventure, a joyful, playful

adventure.

At this point we must address the extraordinary links

between Plato and Socrates, and between Plato and Aristotle.

In considering the originality of each, their relationships, their

intellectual and moral genius, it is very difficult to put things

down to coincidence. Catholic thinkers correctly ascribe this to

a providential plan, thus adding another point of view, the

theological one, to the philosophical journey. We believe

however that this providential interpretation is acceptable

only if we extend it to the whole of the world’s history, rather

than just to one particular moment. In Plato’s earlier writings,

like the Apology, Socrates appears as the symbol of

Philosophy, contrasted against the Sophists, as we have

already said, and Aristotle’s critique of Plato’s doctrine of ideas

reveals more semi-hidden similarities than superficial

oppositions …

Confronted with such a great personality we must caliber our

approach to him and make sure we think of Plato as a man

rather than a myth.

First we must consider his own PAIDEIA. He came from a rich

family. His education was characteristic of the upper classes.

During his youth he was considered a poet, able to write and

to speak. This means without any doubt that he was strongly

associated with established education, and oriented towards

public and political affairs. After the first stages of his

education, he preserved the ability to study, and keep his mind

open to worldwide culture (we must remember that at that

time philosophy embraced all cultural interests). Mathematics,

music and nature observation also find their place in this

quadrant. We must also say that Plato’s capacity for

assimilation was extraordinary… Heraclitus, Parmenides,

Cratylus, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, Euclid, Gorgias, Protagoras,

Egyptian beliefs, poems, especially Homer’s and Hesiod’s

works, all is assimilated in a superior synthesis. In his

dialogues we find the first organized history of Greek

Philosophy. We can certainly consider his approach to the

early history of Western thought a subjective one, but

geniuses’ subjectivity always has universal teachings to offer.

In particular, Plato pointed to Parmenides and Heraclitus as

the fathers of Philosophy and to Socrates as the moral paragon

of living Philosophy. All attempts to overcome this

hermeneutic canon have failed.

Coming from an excellent and aristocratic education, Plato

then actively participates to the political and cultural life of

Athens, in the historical phase of its decadence following the

Peloponnesian war, which started in 426 and ended miserably

in 404 (Plato was born in 428). His family was actively and

tragically involved in the period of the Thirty tyrants, therefore

all his political analyses, especially the POLITEIA, are not the

dreamy idylls of an utopic visionary, but snapshots anchored in

reality, and perhaps ironic denunciation: in his city the rule or

reason has become impossible. On this subject, as we have

already said, it seems to us that K. Popper speaks like a blind

man. What is absolutely not modern in Plato’s thought is its

radical orientation towards a rigorously moral behavior.

Plato was twenty years old in 399 when he witnessed

Socrates’ trial and death sentence. Biographies state that

having listened to Socrates’ lessons young Plato abandoned

poetry and his artistic and political aspirations. Socrates’ death

deeply affected Plato’s life and thought. Truth and Justice,

morals and Philosophy, good life and good thinking, happiness

and reason are the facets of the same reality. This awareness

runs through the whole of Plato’s production like a golden

thread, and reaches its apex in the definition of justice as

belonging to the divine dimension, as the most attractive idea.

But, in order to be seduced by justice, man needs to undergo a

process of purification, and to mature the ability to overcome

his human attachment to opinions (DOXA). In this wider sense,

all Plato’s philosophy, his whole theory of acknowledge can be

described as the journey from DOXA-opinion to ALETHEIA-

truth-. It is also a journey from physical to metaphysical

inquiry. The image devised by Plato is felicitous; he says that at

first philosophers follow a natural and easy way, or a ‘first

navigation’, while they observe the things; but in so doing they

cannot see the meaning of what they observe, so that a

second navigation, the dialectic one, becomes necessary: that

is Philosophy as a journey, but also Philosophy as definitive

goal.

When Heidegger criticizes Plato’s doctrine of truth, he reveals

his inability to understand this Socratic overcoming of death;

he sees Plato involved in the stupid business of building

metaphysic like a LEGO, the ONTOTEOLOGY. So did Plato

create Metaphysics or discover it? That is the question, one as

important, we think, as Shakespeare’s to be or not to be. But

we know that Heidegger was a simple teacher, limited by his

culture.

The very heart of Plato’s Philosophy is the journey from

opinions to truth; it was people’s opinion which brought

Socrates to death. The speculative centre of this journey is a

perfect perception of the interior life. Plainly put, that centre

is a constant reflection on ourselves, a true and constant full

self-consciousness of our spiritual soul.

That is not a cultural or historical question, it is at the very

heart of speculative life. In short Plato maintains that it is not

enough to learn philosophy, the question is to think: that is the

reason way he proclaims ‘if a man is Dialectic, he is Dialectic,

but if a man is not Dialectic, he is not at all’…Dialectic here is

synonymous with Philosopher. Evidently we are confronted by

an aristocratic vision of philosophy. Starting from his self-

consciousness Plato becomes a spectator of universal and

concrete existence, and through this insight he can access a

superior acknowledge, as in Heraclitus’ sentence about the

unlimited perspective of LOGOS and the SOUL.

‘You will not find out the limits of the soul when you go,

travelling on every road, so deep a logos’ it possesses.

This passage was sadly denied by Nietzsche, Marx and Freud,

so far they lived from the philosophical meadows, but to this

day it rules all metaphysical inferences…the true aim of

metaphysics is therefore not to create new worlds but to

discover that reality without intelligible, ideal and divine

world, is not logic, it is absurd. It is evident the demands of

absolute logic coherence in observing the world’s mechanisms

was from the beginning a strong philosophical foundation

which drove to the highest conception of Being and LOGOS.

We would like to say that a strong philosophical vision always

precedes the ability to demonstrate it. This is the case,

perhaps, in Plato’s doctrine too. Contemporary thinkers would

find themselves in a vicious circle: they try to demonstrate

what in the classic Platonic way is simply assumed. A

demonstration is a dialectic performance whereby a claim

reinforces itself by overcoming doubts and objections, but it is

not the way usually and normally followed by natural

intelligence. Plato’s geniality can be experienced by

observing his extraordinary ability to transform theoretic

Philosophy in living dialogue where different opinions come

from different characters. In this way, all the most important

philosophical themes find their place in Plato’s inquiry.

Starting from the theory of knowledge where Plato outlines

the notion of the innate ideas corresponding to ontological

ideas… and passing through all dimensions of human

existence, education, teaching, politics, war, poetry, rhetoric,

love-EROS … his main tendency is to discover the exact

equivalence between truth, justice and happiness, in a

theological natural dimension. Plato deeply marks all the

following philosophical inquiries with his rigorous effort to

clean the mind of figments of the imagination and religious

myths, while at the same time introducing philosophical

myths. That is the means and the literary tool that human

thought utilizes when it recognizes its limits but also its

possibilities.

Aristotle’s criticism of Plato is easy and well-known. With his

world of ideas, he says, Plato denied reality, and its ontological

essence. Aristotle seeks in the physical world what Plato

attributes to ideas as principles… Aristotle interprets Plato’s

position as deriving from the influence of Cratylus and

Heraclitus, the masters of transformation and change, and

consequently he maintains that Plato radically denies the very

possibility of achieving a science of nature. When Descartes

and Kant, in different ways, wrote about the same theme, they

were not wholly aware of those anticipations. They seem to

be slightly late in grasping the relationship between concepts

and the anticipations in Plato and Aristotle … the destiny of

philosophers sometime is cruel! The pages at the beginning of

Aristotle’s Metaphysics explain this interpretation but we can

understand it only if we think about and accept Aristotle’s

doctrine of the four causes, particularly of the formal and

material causes. While in Plato forms are separate from

things and things participate of or imitate them, in Aristotle

forms are things in themself. In our opinion both Aristotle and

Plato experience the limits that human intelligence encounters

in ruling material reality. Saint Thomas Aquinas considers

those limits to be a source of angst for great geniuses,

angustia praeclara ingenia, because those philosophers were

deprived of the biblical idea of creation, and the supreme

revelation of the living God in Jesus Christ; Biblical revelation

and the faith in Jesus Christ will overcome those Greek limits,

but it may be that we can overcome them only with grace,

with reason enlightened by divine faith.

In any case, reflecting on Aristotle’s advancements on Plato,

it is easier to criticize Plato then to sweep him off: we can

observe that, even if Aristotle’s critique is a radical one, Plato

still rules Philosophy. In this fundamental matter it is

necessary to distinguish correctly between Plato and

Platonism, and between Platonism and Neo-Platonism,

another typical issue of Western Philosophy. Naturally, like

Socrates and Plato, Aristotle needs to be studied directly. It is

odd is that many philosophical movements, abundantly

present in the XX century and now, born of the highest

expressions of the thought of

Socrates-Plato and Aristotle, are not

mentioned with the names of their

generators, unlike Stoicism,

Epicureanism, Skepticism and so on…

Finally, we must remember that among the 13 letters

attributable to Plato, only VII is considered authentic (with the

possible addition of part of VIII). The content of this letter is

very interesting and crucial to our understanding of the life of

Plato as a Philosopher and as a politician… he travelled to

Syracuse there times, three times he failed, the first time with

Dionysus I, second time with the son Dionysus II and lastly

with Dion the uncle of the new king. In this letter we find also

precious information about Plato’s Philosophy. Above all we

must underline the five-stage path, beginning with 1-name, 2-

definition, 3-image, 4-dialectic, 5-idea contemplation… all this

movement is an interior path leading to the fact that the

soul’s self-consciousness is the only essence in human culture

to be expressed definitively, with an extraordinarily

continuous effect. Perfect and adequate self-consciousness

and consequently a consciousness of ourselves as living bodies

are the pillars for the understanding of Plato, all the rest

follows from there. We are somewhat sorry for Kant and his

followers.

Plato is for soldiers and boxers … poets and musicians,

mathematicians and writers … his vision extends to the living

and visible world, and at the same time to the deepest inner

space of metaphysics… he was the amazing disciple of the man

that the oracle proclaimed to be the wisest, and teacher of the

thinkers known worldwide as the Philosopher. We do not

believe in him because only one God in Jesus Christ is worthy

of receiving the total assent of our faith, but we have read his

dialogues, starting simply to think freely … believing is God’s

property and permission, God’s gift. With Plato, then, we have

two wings.