Philosophy Read online

• about the birth of philosophy with Plato’s masterpiece The Republic

  • why Plato made Socrates his hero

  • the theory behind the Forms, Plato’s most important thesis

  • why Plato rejects realism in favour of idealism

  • the meaning of the Allegory of the Cave

  • how Plato answers the question ‘What is justice?’

  • about the role of love in the improvement of the soul.

  Thought experiment: the Ring of Gyges

  You are on vacation on a remote Caribbean island enjoying a hike through the jungle by yourself. Exploring off the trail, you come to a small cave. On its floor lies a very old-looking golden ring in which is set a dark stone. Pleased with your discovery, you slip it on, planning to bring it home as a souvenir of your trip. As you continue your hike, however, you absent-mindedly spin the stone around your finger and an extraordinary thing happens: you become invisible!

  Panicking for a moment, you spin the stone of the ring in the other direction and you magically reappear, unharmed. You test the ring a few times and try walking while invisible. Your footsteps appear in the mud, apparently by themselves. You pick up a stick and it fades out of sight; you put it down and it reappears.

  Amazed with your discovery, your first thought is to run to the nearest town and show someone. As you enter the next clearing, however, you see an exquisite palace by the seashore. Expensive cars are pulling up, out of which spill men in tuxedoes and women in evening gowns. The surrounding gardens are crawling with security guards. Though instinct tells you to turn back quickly, you are very hot, tired and hungry. So you make yourself invisible and slip into the party.

  After helping yourself to food from a sumptuous banquet table, you go upstairs to lie down for a while. Sitting on the bed of the first room you enter is a metal suitcase full of countless packets of $100 bills! The thought occurs to you: you could open an account at one of the notoriously discreet banks on the island and return home, set for life.

  You start dreaming of all the things the ring could enable you to acquire. You could buy tickets to great concerts… scratch that – you could sit on stage with the performers! You could visit the homes of your favourite television heart-throbs - see what their lives are like, perhaps accompany them into the shower… You could punish your boss and your former lover in all kinds of interesting ways… You could get away with murder… You could do so many things. But what should you do? What will you do?

  Do the right thing

  The great ancient Greek philosopher Plato (c.428/427–c.348/347 BC) first presented a version of the Ring of Gyges thought experiment in his masterpiece, The Republic, which is today considered one of the greatest books of all time. It was the inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic novel Lord of the Rings as well as for many other great works of literature.

  Like all of Plato’s works, The Republic is a dialogue between characters who represent differing points of view. One of the characters in The Republic is Thrasymachus, who thinks it obvious that you should take the money and do all the things you’ve dreamed of. He goes so far as to insist that the thought experiment proves that the only reason people don’t seize their own advantage in every situation is because they’re afraid of getting caught. With the Ring of Gyges, you would never be caught, and so you would be a fool not to do exactly as you pleased.

  The hero of The Republic, however, is Socrates (c.469–399 BC), who takes Thrasymachus to task, arguing that our hesitation about using the ring comes not only from our cowardice but also from our sense of justice. Stealing, cheating and murdering are wrong because they damage the community and they damage our own souls. The wise man seeks to be just in all his dealings even when he doesn’t have to be.

  Perhaps few would go along with Thrasymachus in rejecting justice altogether. But the Ring of Gyges raises the further question of what constitutes justice. When you thought about whether or not you would take the money, you probably considered the fact that it was most likely stolen or acquired illegally. You may have reasoned that this would make it fair game to steal. Likewise, maybe it would be OK to spy on a celebrity as long as they never knew about it. And it may actually be good to punish or even kill someone who really deserves it.

  If you assembled a room full of people to discuss these questions, you would find a wide range of disagreement. One person might insist that the right thing would be to go to the police with the entire matter. Someone else might just as easily counter that neither the police nor any government can be trusted to do the right thing. After listening to all sides of the debate you’re likely to conclude that there is no perfect solution, and you may be tempted to follow Thrasymachus, after all.

  Plato (through his mouthpiece Socrates), however, finds a way to rescue justice. Impressed with the precision of mathematics, he asks us to consider the following analogy. Look all over the entire world and you will never find a perfect triangle. It is impossible enough to find a truly straight line, much less three that join at angles to make a plane figure. Yet everyone can picture a perfect triangle in their mind’s eye. In fact, we use that image to judge the imperfectly triangular objects around us. Some are better instances than others. Though none are perfect, we can clearly identify which ones come closer to the ideal.

  Plato argues that justice is similar – as are beauty, goodness and truth itself. We see only rough approximations around us. But we wouldn’t be able to judge these approximations at all if there were no ultimate ideal with which to compare them. The job of the philosopher is to study and promote the ideal.

  Case study: Socrates and the birth of philosophy

  Plato was first in the history of Western civilization to publish philosophy. A talented wordsmith from an aristocratic family, he originally planned to become a playwright. But then, one day in Athens, he met a strange old fellow with bulgy eyes and a pug nose: Socrates.

  No aristocrat himself, Socrates spent his days ambling through the marketplace barefoot, engaging people in conversation. He was searching for wisdom but was hard pressed to find any. He asked artists about beauty, teachers about truth, religious leaders about goodness, and lawyers about justice. No one was able to answer his penetrating questions.

  In fact, Socrates so flustered the professionals of Athens that they began to resent him and wanted him to cease his disturbing inquiry. But it was too late. Socrates had already attracted a large body of young followers, who cheered him on. Eventually, a politician had him arrested for impiety and corrupting the city’s youth.

  At his trial, Socrates famously defended himself with a speech, comparing the state of Athens to a great and noble steed (i.e. a horse):

  ‘The state is a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly that God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. You will not easily find another like me, and therefore I would advise you to spare me.’

  Plato, Apology 30e–31a, trans. Benjamin Jowett (http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html)

  But the jurors voted not to spare him and he was sentenced to death by hemlock, a paralysing poison.

  Socrates’ devoted followers urged him to escape, which he could easily have done. Arguing, however, that he must respect the decision of his fellow citizens, Socrates fearlessly accepted his sentence.

  In dying for his cause, Socrates became a martyr, setting a philosophical movement on fire. Plato founded the Academy, a school for philosophy, which term comes from the Greek words for ‘love of wisdom’. There he would continue the inquiry that Socrates began on the streets of Athens. Plato’s Academy is considered the first university, and it is the source of our modern term academics.

  Immortalized as the hero of all of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates is known as the founder of Western philosophy. It has often been said that the entire history of Western philosophy is
but a footnote to Plato.

  Spotlight

  According to legend, Plato’s birth name was Aristocles. His nickname, Plato, comes from the Greek word for ‘broad’. It is disputed whether this was meant to refer to his mind or his body. According to the Monty Python ‘Philosophers Song’, ‘Plato, they say, could stick it away; Half a crate of whisky every day.’

  The Forms

  The most important thesis in Plato’s work, the thesis that shapes all his views, is that there are perfect exemplars of everything we imperfectly experience in this world (such as beauty, truth, goodness, justice and, of course, triangles). Plato reasons that these ideals must actually exist in a realm beyond our world of experience. If they existed only in our minds, they would be mere opinions, which would vary from person to person. In order for them to be objective and universal, they have to be real entities. Plato calls these entities Forms.

  If the Forms exist beyond our world of experience, then how do we know about them? Plato answers this question by once again reflecting on mathematics. In his dialogue Meno Socrates asks a slave boy to solve a geometrical puzzle. The boy can’t do it, of course, because he has never learned mathematics. But then Socrates breaks the puzzle down, asking the boy to tell him how to proceed each step of the way. The boy is amazed to discover that he can solve the puzzle, after all.

  We have all experienced that wonderful ‘Aha!’ moment when we finally recognize the truth. It feels like seeing an old friend. Plato takes this feeling very seriously as evidence that the human soul once knew the Forms directly. Wisdom lies deep within our memories; we need only learn how to summon it. This is why the ‘Socratic Method’ is to teach by asking questions.

  Spotlight

  Socrates married a much younger woman named Xanthippe, who bore him three sons. But there was never a man less suited than Socrates for domestic life. He is reputed to have told his followers: ‘By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.’

  Many Eastern religions teach the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, according to which the soul never really dies but passes from one bodily existence to the next. Plato, who spent some time studying Eastern thought, adapts this idea for his purpose.

  Every soul of man has in the way of nature beheld true being; this was the condition of her passing into the form of man. But all souls do not easily recall the things of the other world; they may have seen them for a short time only, or they may have been unfortunate in their earthly lot, and, having had their hearts turned to unrighteousness through some corrupting influence, they may have lost the memory of the holy things which once they saw.

  Plato, Phaedrus, trans. Benjamin Jowett (http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html)

  The world around us is not ‘true being’ because it consists of constant change, which creates nothing but a succession of fleeting appearances. The wiser we become, the more we realize that true reality must exist in another, eternal realm. This realm is called transcendent because it is beyond our world.

  Consider how you yourself have changed throughout your life – from baby, to child, to adult. Which of these is the real you? All of them? But that can’t be because they have contradictory properties. For example, the child-you did not like coffee and the adult-you does. None of your physical selves is the real you, according to Plato. The real you is something constant within you, your soul, which cannot be seen with the bodily eye. Likewise, the Forms are invisible and unchanging. They are the eternal constants that unify our fragmented experience.

  Idealism

  The view that the material world around us is not real is called idealism. (Plato’s particular version of it is sometimes called ‘transcendental realism’.) It is directly opposed to realism, according to which the material world is real and knowable without transcendent Forms.

  Plato rejects realism, insisting that it is incapable of securing objective and universal standards. If there are no Forms, he reasons, there is no way to evaluate competing opinions. Every opinion is equally valid. This result is called relativism.

  Although relativism may sound acceptable or even appealing at first, upon closer examination it turns sour. If everyone’s opinions are equal, then, for example, Hitler’s opinions about justice are just as valid as Ghandi’s and Mother Teresa’s. But this implication is unacceptable – or at least deeply problematic! There must be some independent source of values. Idealism readily provides this.

  The main complaint against idealism, on the other hand, is that it lacks scientific credibility. The transcendent realm, by definition, is beyond empirical measure. Why should we believe in something we cannot observe?

  While idealism has opposed science at times throughout history, it has also supported science in surprising ways. After all, the scientific principles that underlie empirical investigation are not themselves observable. For example, Plato’s conviction that the universe is modelled on perfect exemplars led him to hypothesize that the objects around us are constructed from invisible geometrical shapes (known as the Platonic solids). This hypothesis paved the way to modern chemistry.

  The Allegory of the Cave

  Regardless of whether or not you care to swallow the large metaphysical assumptions required for idealism, you may be sympathetic to the perspective it affords Plato. Seeing himself as a lover of wisdom, Plato is critical of the ‘lovers of sights and sounds’ who live life on a superficial level, never inquiring into the reality that lies beyond appearances. The mantra of his hero, Socrates, was: ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’

  The only problem is that philosophical inquiry is a difficult undertaking. In The Republic, Plato tells a memorable story called the Allegory of the Cave to illustrate the problem.

  Imagine yourself and a number of others in a cave chained to chairs facing the wall. There is a fire burning behind you and puppeteers are using the light from the fire to cast shadows on the wall in front of you. Because you have been here all your life, and these shadows are all you know, you assume that they are the sum total of reality.

  One day, however, you break your chains and discover the source of the shadows. You climb out of the cave to make your escape. Daylight seems so bright by comparison to what you are used to that you can scarcely stand it at first. In time, you adjust and find life outside the cave breathtakingly beautiful.

  Feeling bad for the other prisoners, you return to the cave to tell them that they are watching shadows from puppets which are modelled on creatures that live outside the cave. But they are content with their supposed reality and they don’t want to follow you into the blinding light. In fact, they are angry with you for disturbing them and they think you have been corrupted, because you no longer appreciate or believe in the puppet show.

  As a philosopher, Plato feels like the escaped prisoner. He has glimpsed the Forms, perfect exemplars of our everyday experiences, and wants to share his discovery. But most people just don’t care. Although philosophy in general, and Platonic philosophy in particular, can sometimes seem abstract and even elitist, Plato shows that it is deeply motivated by a concern for securing the good life – for everyone.

  The good life

  The goal of Plato’s Republic is to answer the question ‘What is justice?’ Proposing that justice in an individual person is parallel to justice in the state, Socrates sets out to describe an ideal city – a republic.

  Plato’s republic consists of three castes: the producers, the soldiers and the rulers (or ‘guardians’). Through a universal education system, each citizen is assigned to the caste to which he or she is naturally fitted. To prevent the citizens from trying to change castes, the guardians propagate the myth that every human being is made of one of three metals. Those made of bronze are born to be producers, those made of silver are born to be soldiers, and those made of gold are born to be guardians.

  Plato justifies this deception by virtue of its service to the greater good of t
he city, a strategy ever since dubbed the ‘noble lie’.

  To maintain order in the republic, the soldiers enforce the guardians’ laws. Music, poetry and theatre, which promote the love of sights and sounds, are banned. The family unit is dissolved. The best men breed with the best women and the children are raised in a communal fashion. Those who show greatest promise in recollecting the Forms, whether male or female, become the philosopher-kings.

  Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils – no, nor the human race, as I believe – and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.

  Plato, The Republic V, 473c, trans. Benjamin Jowett (http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html)

  In Plato’s view, the only way to secure the good life for everyone is to restructure society as a whole.

  Love

  Just as the state must be properly ordered, so, too, must the individual soul. Metaphorically speaking, each one of us has a ruler, a soldier and a producer within us. In order to function well, we must ensure that each does its job and stays free of corrosive influences.

  Plato famously describes the threefold structure of the soul through an analogy. The soul is like a chariot driven by two steeds. The charioteer represents reason (the ruler), one steed represents noble passions (the soldier), while the other represents base passions (the producer). The charioteer guides the chariot, trying to keep the horses from pulling in different directions.