PLATO.
I. PLATO’S LIFE. 1. His YOUTH.—Plato, the son of Aristo, of a noble
Athenian family, was born in the year 429 B. C. It was the year of the
death of Pericles, the second year of the Peloponnesian war, so fatal to
Athens. Born in the centre of Grecian culture and industry, and
descended from an old and noble family, he received a corresponding
education, although no farther tidings of this have been transmitted to
us, than the insignificant names of his teachers. That the youth growing
up under such circumstances should choose the seclusion of a philosophic
life rather than a political career may seem strange, since many and
favorable opportunities for the latter course lay open before him.
Critias, one of the thirty tyrants, was the cousin of his mother, and
Charmides, who subsequently, under the oligarchic rule at Athens, found
his death at Thrasybulus on the same day with Critias, was his uncle.
Notwithstanding this, he is never known to have appeared a single time
as a public speaker in the assembly of the people. In view of the rising
degeneracy and increasing political corruption of his native land, he
was too proud to court for himself the favor of the many-headed _Demos_;
and more attached to Doricism than to the democracy and practice of the
Attic public life, he chose to make science his chief pursuit, rather
than as a patriot to struggle in vain against unavoidable disaster, and
become a martyr to his political opinions. He regarded the Athenian
state as lost, and to hinder its inevitable ruin he would not bring a
useless offering.
2. HIS YEARS OF DISCIPLINE.—A youth of twenty, Plato came to Socrates,
in whose intercourse he spent eight years. Besides a few doubtful
anecdotes, nothing is known more particularly of this portion of his
history. In Xenophon’s Memorabilia (III. 6) Plato is only once cursorily
mentioned, but this in a way that indicates an intimate relation between
the scholar and his master. Plato himself in his dialogues has
transmitted nothing concerning his personal relations to Socrates; only
once (_Phæd._ p. 59) he names himself among the intimate friends of
Socrates. But the influence which Socrates exerted upon him, how he
recognized in him the complete representation of a wise man, how he
found not only in his doctrine but also in his life and action the most
fruitful philosophic germs, the significance which the personal
character of his master as an ideal type had for him—all this we learn
with sufficient accuracy from his writings, where he places his own
incomparably more developed philosophical system in the mouth of his
master, whom he makes the centre of his dialogues and the leader of his
discourses.
3. HIS YEARS OF TRAVEL.—After the death of Socrates 399 B. C, in the
thirtieth year of his age, Plato, fearing lest he also should be met by
the incoming reaction against philosophy, left, in company with other
Socraticists, his native city, and betook himself to Euclid, his former
fellow-scholar, the founder of the Megaric school (_cf._ § XIII. 4) at
Megara. Up to this time a pure Socraticist, he became greatly animated
and energized by his intercourse with the Megarians, among whom a
peculiar philosophical direction, a modification of Socraticism, was
already asserted. We shall see farther on the influence of this
residence at Megara upon the foundation of his philosophy, and
especially upon the elaboration and confirmation of his doctrine of
Ideas. One whole period of his literary activity and an entire group of
his dialogues, can only be satisfactorily explained by the intellectual
stimulus gained at this place. From Megara, Plato visited Cyrene, Egypt,
Magna-Grecia and Sicily. In Magna-Grecia he became acquainted with the
Pythagorean philosophy, which was then in its highest bloom. His abode
among the Pythagoreans had a marked effect upon him; as a man it made
him more practical, and increased his zest for life and his interest in
public life and social intercourse; as a philosopher it furnished him
with a new incitement to science, and new motives to literary labor. The
traces of the Pythagorean philosophy may be seen through all the last
period of his literary life; especially his aversion to public and
political life was greatly softened by his intercourse with the
Pythagoreans. While in the Theatætus, he affirmed most positively the
incompatibility of philosophy with public life, we find in his later
dialogues, especially in the Republic and also in the Statesman—upon
which Pythagoreanism seems already to have had an influence—a returning
favor for the actual world, and the well-known sentence that the ruler
must be a philosopher is an expression very characteristic of this
change. His visit to Sicily gave him the acquaintance of the elder
Dionysius and Dion his brother-in-law, but the philosopher and the
tyrant had little in common. Plato is said to have incurred his
displeasure to so high a degree, that his life was in danger. After
about ten years spent in travel, he returned to Athens in the fortieth
year of his age, (389 or 388 B. C.)
4. PLATO AS HEAD OF THE ACADEMY; HIS YEARS OF INSTRUCTION.—On his
return, Plato surrounded himself with a circle of pupils. The place
where he taught was known as the academy, a gymnasium outside of Athens
where Plato had inherited a garden from his father. Of his school and of
his later life, we have only the most meagre accounts. His life passed
evenly along, interrupted only by a second and third visit to Sicily,
where meanwhile the younger Dionysius had come to the throne. This
second and third residence of Plato at the court of Syracuse abounds in
vicissitudes, and shows us the philosopher in a great variety of
conditions (_cf._ Plutarch’s _Life of Dion_); but to us, in estimating
his philosophical character, it is of interest only for the attempt,
which, as seems probable from all accounts, he there made to realize his
ideal of a moral state, and by the philosophical education of the new
ruler to unite philosophy and the reins of government in one and the
same hand, or at least in some way by means of philosophy to achieve a
healthy change in the Sicilian state constitution. His efforts were
however fruitless; the circumstances were not propitious, and the
character of the young Dionysius, who was one of those mediocre natures
who strive after renown and distinction, but are capable of nothing
profound and earnest, deceived the expectations concerning him which
Plato, according to Dion’s account, thought he had reason to entertain.
When we look at Plato’s philosophical labors in the academy, we are
struck with the different relations to public life which philosophy
already assumes. Instead of carrying philosophy, like Socrates, into the
streets and public places and making it there a subject of social
conversation with any one who desired it, he lived and labored entirely
withdrawn from the movements of the public, satisfied to influence the
pupils who surrounded him. In precisely the measure in which philosophy
becomes a system and the systematic form is seen to be essential, does
it lose its popular character and begin to demand a scientific training,
and to become a topic for the school, an esoteric affair. Yet such was
the respect for the name of a philosopher, and especially for the name
of Plato, that requests were made to him by different states to compose
for them a book of laws, a work which in some instances it was said was
actually performed. Attended by a retinue of devoted disciples, among
whom were even women disguised as men, and receiving reiterated
demonstrations of respect, he reached the age of eighty-one years, with
his powers of mind unweakened to the latest moment.
The close of his life seems to have been clouded by disturbances and
divisions which arose in his school under the lead of Aristotle. Engaged
in writing, or as others state it at a marriage feast, death came upon
him as a gentle sleep, 348 B. C. His remains were buried in the
Ceramicus, not far from the academy.
II. THE INNER DEVELOPMENT OF THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND WRITINGS.—That
the Platonic philosophy has a real development, that it should not be
apprehended as a perfectly finished system to which the different
writings stand related as constituent elements, but that these are
rather steps of this inner development, as it were stages passed over in
the philosophical journeyings of the philosopher—is a view of the
highest importance for the true estimate of Plato’s literary labors.
Plato’s philosophical and literary labors may be divided into three
periods, which we can characterize in different ways. Looking at them in
a chronological or biographical respect, we might call them respectively
the periods of his years of discipline, of travel, of instruction, or if
we view them in reference to the prevailing external influence under
which they were formed, they might be termed the Socratic,
Heraclitic-Eleatic, and the Pythagorean; or if we looked at the content
alone, we might term them the Anti-Sophistic-Ethic, the Dialectic or
mediating, and the systematic or constructive periods.
THE FIRST PERIOD—the Socratic—is marked externally by the predominance
of the dramatic element, and in reference to its philosophical
standpoint, by an adherence to the method and the fundamental principles
of the Socratic doctrine. Not yet accurately informed of the results of
former inquiries, and rather repelled from the study of the history of
philosophy than attracted to it by the character of the Socratic
philosophizing, Plato confined himself to an analytical treatment of
conceptions, particularly of the conception of virtue, and to a
reproducing of his master, which, though something more than a mere
recital of verbal recollections, had yet no philosophical independence.
His Socrates exhibits the same view of life and the same scientific
standpoint which the historical Socrates of Xenophon had had. His
efforts were thus, like those of his contemporary fellow disciples,
directed prominently toward practical wisdom. His conflicts however,
like those of Socrates, had far more weight against the prevailing want
of science and the shallow sophisms of the day than for the opposite
scientific directions. The whole period bears an eclectic and hortatory
character. The highest point in which the dialogues of this group
culminate is the attempt which at the same time is found in the Socratic
doctrine to determine the certainty of an absolute content (of an
objective reality) to the good.
The history of the development of the Platonic philosophy would assume a
very different form if the view of some modern scholars respecting the
date of the Phædrus were correct. If, as they claim, the Phædrus were
Plato’s earliest work, this circumstance would betray from the outset an
entirely different course of culture for him than we could suppose in a
mere scholar of Socrates. The doctrine in this dialogue of the
pre-existence of souls, and their periodical transmigrations, of the
relation of earthly beauty with heavenly truth, of divine inspiration in
contrast to human wisdom, the conception of love,—these and other
Pythagorean ingredients are all so distinct from the original Socratic
doctrine that we must transfer the most of that which Plato has
creatively produced during his whole philosophical career, to the
beginning of his philosophical development. The improbability of this,
and numerous other grounds of objection, claim a far later composition
for this dialogue. Setting aside for the present the Phædrus, the
Platonic development assumes the following form:
Among the earliest works (if they are genuine) are the small dialogues
which treat of Socratic questions and themes in a Socratic way. Of these
_e. g._ the Charmides discusses temperance, the Lysis friendship, the
Laches valor, the lesser Hippias knowing and wilful wrong-doing, the
first Alcibiades, the moral and intellectual qualifications of a
statesman, &c. The immaturity and the crudeness of these dialogues, the
use of scenic means which have only an external relation to the content,
the scantiness and want of independence in the content, the indirect
manner of investigation which lacks a satisfactory and positive result,
the formal and analytical treatment of the conceptions discussed—all
these features indicate the early character of these minor dialogues.
The Protagoras may be taken as a proper type of the Socratic period.
Since this dialogue, though directing its whole polemic against the
Sophistic philosophy, confined itself almost exclusively to the outward
manifestation of this system, to its influence on its age and its method
of instruction in opposition to that of Socrates, without entering into
the ground and philosophical character of the doctrine itself, and,
still farther, since, when it comes in a strict sense to philosophize,
it confines itself, in an indirect investigation, to the Socratic
conception of virtue according to its different sides (virtue as
knowing, its unity and its teachableness, _cf._ § XII. 8,)—it represents
in the clearest manner the tendency, character and want of the first
period of Plato’s literary life.
The Gorgias, written soon after the death of Socrates, represents the
third and highest stage of this period. Directed against the Sophistical
identification of pleasure and virtue, of the good and of the agreeable,
_i. e._ against the affirmation of an absolute moral relativity, this
dialogue maintains the proof that the good, far from owing its origin
only to the right of the stronger, and thus to the arbitrariness of the
subject, has in itself an independent reality and objective validity,
and, consequently, alone is truly useful, and thus, therefore, the
measure of pleasure must follow the higher measure of the good. In this
direct and positive polemic against the Sophistic doctrine of pleasure,
in its tendency to a view of the good as something firm and abiding, and
secure against all subjective arbitrariness, consists prominently the
advance which the Gorgias makes over the Protagoras.
In the first Socratic period the Platonic philosophizing became ripe and
ready for the reception of Eleatic and Pythagorean categories. To
grapple by means of these categories with the higher questions of
philosophy, and so to free the Socratic philosophy from its so close
connection with practical life, was the task of the second period.
THE SECOND PERIOD—the dialectic or the Megaric—is marked externally, by
a less prominence of form and poetic contemplation, and not unfrequently
indeed, by obscurity and difficulties of style, and internally, by the
attempt to give a satisfactory mediation for the Eleatic doctrine and a
dialectic foundation for the doctrine of ideas.
By his exile at Megara, and his journeys to Italy, Plato became
acquainted with other and opposing philosophical directions, from which
he must now separate himself in order to elevate the Socratic doctrine
to its true significance. It was now that he first learned to know the
philosophic theories of the earlier sages, for whose study the necessary
means could not at that period, so wanting in literary publicity, be
found at Athens. By his separation from these varying standpoints, as
his older fellow pupils had already striven to do, he attempted striding
over the narrow limits of ethical philosophizing, to reach the final
ground of knowing, and to carry out the art of forming conceptions as
brought forward by Socrates, to a science of conceptions, _i. e._ to the
doctrine of ideas. That all human acting depends upon knowing, and that
all thinking depends upon the conception, were results to which Plato
might already have attained through the scientific generalization of the
Socratic doctrine itself, but now to bring this Socratic wisdom within
the circle of speculative thinking, to establish dialectically that the
conception in its simple unity is that which abides in the change of
phenomena, to disclose the fundamental principles of knowledge which had
been evaded by Socrates, to grasp the scientific theories of the
opposers direct in their scientific grounds, and follow them out in all
their ramifications,—this is the problem which the Megaric family of
dialogues attempts to solve.
The Theatætus stands at the head of this group. This is chiefly directed
against the Protagorean theory of knowledge, against the identification
of the thinking and the sensible perception, or against the claim of an
objective relativity of all knowledge. As the Gorgias before it had
sought to establish the independent being of the ethical, so does the
Theatætus ascending from the ethical to the theoretical, endeavor to
prove an independent being and objective reality for the logical
conceptions which lie at the ground of all representation and thinking,
in a word, to prove the objectivity of truth, the fact that there lies a
province of thought immanent in the thinking and independent of the
perceptions of the senses. These conceptions, whose objective reality is
thus affirmed, are those of a species, likeness and unlikeness, sameness
and difference, &c.
The Theatætus is followed by the trilogy of the Sophist, the Statesman,
and the Philosopher, which completes the Megaric group of dialogues. The
first of these dialogues examines the conception of appearance, that is
of the not-being, the last (for which the Parmenides may be taken) the
conception of being. Both dialogues are especially directed to the
Eleatic doctrine. After Plato had recognized the conception in its
simple unity as that which abides in the change of phenomena, his
attention was naturally turned towards the Eleatics, who in an opposite
way had attained the similar result that in unity consists all true
substantiality, and to multiplicity as such no true being belongs. In
order more easily on the one side to carry out this fundamental thought
of the Eleatic to its legitimate result, in which the Megarians had
already preceded him, he was obliged to give a metaphysical substance to
his abstract conceptions of species, _i. e._ ideas. But on the other
side, he could not agree with the inflexibility and exclusiveness of the
Eleatic unity, unless he would wholly sacrifice the multiplicity of
things; he was rather obliged to attempt to show by a dialectic
development of the Eleatic principle that the one must be at the same
time a totality, organically connected, and embracing multiplicity in
itself. This double relation to the Eleatic principle is carried out by
the Sophist and the Parmenides; by the former polemically against the
Eleatic doctrine, in that it proves the being of the appearance or the
not-being, and by the latter pacifically, in that it analyzes the
Eleatic one by its own logical consequences into many. The inner
progress of the doctrine of Ideas in the Megaric group of dialogues is
therefore this, viz., that the Theatætus, in opposition to the
Heraclitico-Protagorean theory of the absolute becoming, affirms the
objective and independent reality of ideas, and the Sophist shows their
reciprocal relation and combining qualities, while the Parmenides in
fine exhibits their whole dialectic completeness with their relation to
the phenomenal world.
THE THIRD PERIOD begins with the return of the philosopher to his native
city. It unites the completeness of form belonging to the first with the
profounder characteristical content belonging to the second. The
memories of his youthful years seem at this time to have risen anew
before the soul of Plato, and to have imparted again to his literary
activity the long lost freshness and fulness of that period, while at
the same time his abode in foreign lands, and especially his
acquaintance with the Pythagorean philosophy, had greatly enriched his
mind with a store of images and ideals. This reviving of old memories is
seen in the fact that the writings of this group return with fondness to
the personality of Socrates, and represent in a certain degree the whole
philosophy of Plato as the exaltation of the doctrine and the ideal
embodiment of the historical character of his early master. In
opposition to both of the first two periods, the third is marked
externally by an excess of the mythical form connected with the growing
influence of Pythagoreanism in this period, and internally by the
application of the doctrine of ideas to the concrete spheres of
psychology, ethics and natural science. That ideas possess objective
reality, and are the foundation of all essentiality and truth, while the
phenomena of the sensible world are only copies of these, was a theory
whose vindication was no longer attempted, but which was presupposed as
already proved, and as forming a dialectical basis for the pursuit of
the different branches of science. With this was connected a tendency to
unite the hitherto separate branches of science into a systematic whole,
as well as to mould together the previous philosophical directions, and
show the inner application of the Socratic philosophy for ethics, of the
Eleatic for dialectics, and the Pythagorean for physics.
Upon this standpoint, the Phædrus, Plato’s inaugural to his labors in
the Academy, together with the Symposium, which is closely connected
with it, attempts to subject the rhetorical theory and practice of their
time to a thorough criticism, in order to show in opposition to this
theory and practice, that the fixedness and stability of a true
scientific principle could only be attained by grounding every thing on
the idea. On the same standpoint the Phædon attempts to prove the
immortality of the soul from the doctrine of ideas; the Philebus to
bring out the conception of pleasure and of the highest good; the
Republic to develop the essence of the state, and the Timæus that of
nature.
Having thus sketched the inner development of the Platonic philosophy,
we now turn to a systematic statement of its principles.
III.—CLASSIFICATION OF THE PLATONIC SYSTEM.—The philosophy of Plato, as
left by himself, is without a systematic statement, and has no
comprehensive principle of classification. He has given us only the
history of his thinking, the statement of his philosophical development;
we are therefore limited in reference to his classification of
philosophy to simple intimations. Accordingly, some have divided the
Platonic system into theoretical and practical science, and others into
a philosophy of the good, the beautiful and the true. Another
classification, which has some support in old records, is more correct.
Some of the ancients say that Plato was the first to unite in one whole
the scattered philosophical elements of the earlier sages, and so to
obtain for philosophy the three parts, logic, physics, and ethics. The
more accurate statement is given by _Sextus Empiricus_, that Plato has
laid the foundation for this threefold division of philosophy, but that
it was first expressly recognized and affirmed by his scholars,
Xenocrates and Aristotle. The Platonic system may, however, without
difficulty, be divided into these three parts. True, there are many
dialogues which mingle together in different proportions the logical,
the ethical, and the physical element, and though even where Plato
treats of some special discipline, the three are suffered constantly to
interpenetrate each other, still there are some dialogues in which this
fundamental scheme can be clearly recognized. It cannot be mistaken that
the Timæus has predominantly a physical, and the Republic as decidedly
an ethical element, and if the dialectic is expressly represented in no
separate dialogue, yet does the whole Megaric group pursue the common
end of bringing out the conception of science and its true object,
being, and is, therefore, in its content decidedly dialectical. Plato
must have been led to this threefold division by even the earlier
development of philosophy, and though Xenocrates does not clearly see
it, yet since Aristotle presupposes it as universally admitted, we need
not scruple to make it the basis on which to represent the Platonic
system.
The order which these different parts should take, Plato himself has not
declared. Manifestly, however, dialectics should have the first place as
the ground of all philosophy, since Plato uniformly directs that every
philosophical investigation should begin with accurately determining the
_idea_ (_Phæd._ p. 99. Phædr. p. 237), while he subsequently examines
all the concrete spheres of science on the standpoint of the doctrine of
ideas. The relative position of the other two parts is not so clear.
Since, however, the physics culminates in the ethics, and the ethics, on
the other hand, has for its basis physical investigations into the
ensouling power in nature, we may assign to physics the former place of
the two.
The mathematical sciences Plato has expressly excluded from philosophy.
He considers them as helps to philosophical thinking (_Rep._ VII. 526),
as necessary steps of knowledge, without which no one can come to
philosophy (_Ib._ VI. 510); but mathematics with him is not philosophy,
for it assumes its principles or axioms, without at all accounting for
them, as though they were manifest to all, a procedure which is not
permitted to pure science; it also serves itself for its demonstrations,
with illustrative figures, although it does not treat of these, but of
that which they represent to the understanding (_Ib._). Plato thus
places mathematics midway between a correct opinion and science, clearer
than the one, but more obscure than the other. (_Ib._ VII. 533.)
IV. THE PLATONIC DIALECTICS. 1. CONCEPTION OF DIALECTICS.—The conception
of dialectics or of logic, is used by the ancients for the most part in
a very wide sense, while Plato employs it in repeated instances
interchangeably with philosophy, though on the other hand he treats it
also as a separate branch of philosophy. He divides it from physics as
the science of the eternal and unchangeable from the science of the
changeable, which never is, but is only ever becoming; he distinguishes
also between it and ethics, so far as the latter treats of the good not
absolutely, but in its concrete exhibition in morals and in the state;
so that dialectics may be termed philosophy in a higher sense, while
physics and ethics follow it as two less exact sciences, or as a not yet
perfected philosophy. Plato himself defines dialectics, according to the
ordinary signification of the word, as the art of developing knowledge
by way of dialogue in questions and answers. (_Rep._ VII. 534). But
since the art of communicating correctly in dialogue is according to
Plato, at the same time the art of thinking correctly, and as thus
thinking and speaking could not be separated by the ancients, but every
process of thought was a living dialogue, so Plato would more accurately
define dialectics as the science which brings speech to a correct issue,
and which combines or separates the species, _i. e._ the conceptions of
things correctly with one another. (_Soph._ p. 253. _Phædr._ p. 266).
Dialectics with him has two divisions, to know what can and what cannot
be connected, and to know how division or combination can be. But as
with Plato these conceptions of species or ideas are the only actual and
true existence, so have we, in entire conformity with this, a third
definition of dialectics (_Philebus_ p. 57), as the science of being,
the science of that which is true and unchangeable, the science of all
other sciences. We may therefore briefly characterize it as the science
of absolute being or of ideas.
2. WHAT IS SCIENCE? (1.) _As opposed to sensation and the sensuous
representation._—The Theatætus is devoted to the discussion of this
question in opposition to the Protagorean sensualism. That all knowledge
consists in perception, and that the two are one and the same thing, was
the Protagorean proposition. From this it followed, as Protagoras
himself had inferred, that things are, as they appear to me, that the
perception or sensation is infallible. But since perception and
sensation are infinitely diversified with different individuals, and
even greatly vary in the same individual, it follows farther, that there
are no objective determinations and predicates, that we can never affirm
what a thing is in itself, that all conceptions, great, small, light,
heavy, to increase, to diminish, &c., have only a relative significance,
and consequently, also, the conceptions of species, as combinations of
the changeful many, are wholly wanting in constancy and stability. In
opposition to this Protagorean thesis, Plato urges the following
objections and contradictions. _First._ The Protagorean doctrine leads
to the most startling consequences. If being and appearance, knowledge
and perception are one and the same thing, then is the irrational brute,
which is capable of perception, as fully entitled to be called the
measure of all things, as man, and if the representation is infallible,
as the expression of my subjective character at a given time, then need
there be no more instruction, no more scientific conclusion, no more
strife, and no more refutation. _Second._ The Protagorean doctrine is a
logical contradiction; for according to it Protagoras must yield the
question to every one who disputes with him, since, as he himself
affirms, no one is incorrect, but every one judges only according to
truth; the pretended truth of Protagoras is therefore true for no man,
not even for himself. _Third._ Protagoras destroys the knowledge of
future events. That which I may regard as profitable may not therefore
certainly prove itself as such in the result. To determine that which is
really profitable implies a calculation of the future, but since the
ability of men to form such a calculation is very diverse, it follows
from this that not man as such, but only the wise man can be the measure
of things. _Fourth._ The theory of Protagoras destroys perception.
Perception, according to him, rests upon a distinction of the perceived
object and the perceiving subject, and is the common product of the two.
But in his view the objects are in such an uninterrupted flow, that they
can neither become fixed in seeing nor in hearing. This condition of
constant change renders all knowledge from sense, and hence (the
identity of the two being assumed), all knowledge impossible. _Fifth._
Protagoras overlooks the apriori element in knowledge. It is seen in an
analysis of the sense-perception itself, that all knowledge cannot be
traced to the activity of the senses, but that there must also be
presupposed besides these, intellectual functions, and hence an
independent province of supersensible knowledge. We see with the eyes,
and hear with the ears, but to group together the perceptions attained
through these different organs, and to hold them fast in the unity of
self-consciousness, is beyond the power of the activity of the senses.
Again, we compare the different sense-perceptions with one another, a
function which cannot belong to the senses, since each sense can only
furnish its own distinctive perception. Still farther, we bring forward
determinations respecting the perceptions which we manifestly cannot owe
to the senses, in that we predicate of these perceptions, being and
not-being, likeness and unlikeness, &c. These determinations, to which
also belong the beautiful and the odious, good and evil, constitute a
peculiar province of knowledge, which the soul, independently of every
sense-perception, brings forward through its own independent activity.
The ethical element of this Plato exhibits in his attack upon
sensualism, and also in other dialogues. He maintains (_in the
Sophist_), that men holding such opinions must be improved before they
can be instructed, and that when made morally better, they will readily
recognize the truth of the soul and its moral and rational capacities,
and affirm that these are real things, though objects of neither sight
nor of feeling.
(2.) _The Relation of Knowing to Opinion._—Opinion is just as little
identical with knowing as is the sense-perception. An incorrect opinion
is certainly different from knowing, and a correct one is not the same,
for it can be engendered by the art of speech without therefore
attaining the validity of true knowledge. The correct opinion, so far as
it is true in matter though imperfect in form, stands rather midway
between knowing and not-knowing, and participates in both.
(3.) _The Relation of Science to Thinking._—In opposition to the
Protagorean sensualism, we have already referred to an energy of the
soul independent of the sensuous perception and sensation, competent in
itself to examine the universal, and grasp true being in thought. There
is, therefore, a double source of knowledge, sensation and rational
thinking. Sensation refers to that which is conceived in the constant
becoming and perpetual change, to the pure momentary, which is in an
incessant transition from the was, through the now, into the shall be
(_Parm._ p. 152); it is, therefore, the source of dim, impure, and
uncertain knowledge; thinking on the other hand refers to the abiding,
which neither becomes nor departs, but remains ever the same. (_Tim._ p.
51.) Existence, says the Timæus (p. 27) is of two kinds, “that which
ever is but has no becoming, and that which ever becomes but never is.
The one kind, which is always in the same state, is comprehended through
reflection by the reason, the other, which becomes and departs, but
never properly is, may be apprehended by the sensuous perception without
the reason.” True science, therefore, flows alone from that pure and
thoroughly internal activity of the soul which is free from all
corporeal qualities and every sensuous disturbance. (_Phæd._ p. 65.) In
this state the soul looks upon things purely as they are (_Phæd._ p. 66)
in their eternal being and their unchangeable condition. Hence the true
state of the philosopher is announced in the Phædon (p. 64) to be a
willingness to die, a longing to fly from the body, as from a hinderance
to true knowledge, and become pure spirit. According to all this,
science is the thinking of true being or of ideas; the means to discover
and to know these ideas, or the organ for their apprehension is the
dialectic, as the art of separating and combining conceptions; the true
objects of dialectics are ideas.
3. THE DOCTRINE OF IDEAS IN ITS GENESIS.—The Platonic doctrine of ideas
is the common product of the Socratic method of forming conceptions, the
Heraclitic doctrine of absolute becoming, and the Eleatic doctrine of
absolute being. To the first of these Plato owes the idea of a knowing
through conceptions, to the second the recognition of the becoming in
the field of the sensuous, to the third the position of a field of
absolute reality. Elsewhere (_in the Philebus_) Plato connects the
doctrine of ideas with the Pythagorean thought that every thing may be
formed from unity and multiplicity, from the limit and the unlimited.
The aim of the Theatætus, the Sophist, and the Parmenides is to refute
the principles of the Eleatics and Heraclitics: this refutation is
effected in the Theatætus by combating directly the principle of an
absolute becoming, in the Sophist by combating directly the principle of
abstract being, and in the Parmenides by taking up the Eleatic one and
showing its true relations. We have already spoken of the Theatætus; we
will now look for the development of the doctrine of ideas in the
Sophist and Parmenides.
The ostensible end of the former of these dialogues is to show that the
Sophist is really but a caricature of the philosopher, but its true end
is to fix the reality of the appearance, _i. e._ of the not-being, and
to discuss speculatively the relation of being and not-being. The
doctrine of the Eleatics ended with the rejection of all sensuous
knowledge, declaring that what we receive as the perception of a
multiplicity of things or of a becoming is only an appearance. In this
the contradiction was clear, the not-being was absolutely denied, and
yet its existence was admitted in the notion of men. Plato at once draws
attention to this contradiction, showing that a delusive opinion, which
gives rise to a false image or representation, is not possible, since
the whole theory rests upon the assumption that the false, the not-true,
_i. e._ not-being cannot even be thought. This, Plato continues, is the
great difficulty in thinking of not-being, that both he who denies and
he who affirms its reality is driven to contradict himself. For though
it is inexpressible and inconceivable either as one or as many, still,
when speaking of it, we must attribute to it both being and
multiplicity. If we admit that there is such a thing as a false opinion,
we assume in this very fact the notion of not-being, for only that
opinion can be said to be false which supposes either the not-being to
be, or makes that, which is not, to be. In short, if there actually
exists a false notion, so does there actually and truly exist a
not-being. After Plato had thus fixed the reality of not-being, he
discusses the relation of being and not-being, _i. e._ the relation of
conceptions generally in their combinations and differences. If
not-being has no less reality than being, and being no more than
not-being, if, therefore, _e. g._ the not-great is as truly real as the
great, then every conception may be apprehended according to its
opposite sides as being and not-being at the same time: it is a being in
reference to itself, as something identical with itself, but it is
not-being in reference to every one of the numberless other conceptions
which can be referred to it, and with which, on account of its
difference from them, it can have nothing in common. The conception of
the same ταὐτὸν and the different θάτερον represent the general form of
an antithesis. These are the universal formulæ of combination for all
conceptions. This reciprocal relation of conceptions as at the same time
being and not-being, by virtue of which they can be arranged among
themselves, forms now the basis for the art of dialectics, which has to
judge what conceptions can and what cannot be joined together. Plato
illustrates here by taking the conceptions of being, motion (becoming),
and rest (existence), and showing what are the results of the
combinations of these ideas. The conceptions of motion and rest cannot
well be joined together, though both of them may be joined with that of
being, since both are; the conception of rest is therefore in reference
to itself a being, but in reference to the conception of motion a
not-being or different. Thus the Platonic doctrine of ideas, after
having in the Theatætus attained its general foundation in fixing the
objective reality of conceptions, becomes now still farther developed in
the Sophist to a doctrine of the agreement and disagreement of
conceptions. The category which conditions these reciprocal relations is
that of not-being or difference. This fundamental thought of the
Sophist, that being is not without not-being and not-being is not
without being, may be expressed in modern phraseology thus: negation is
not not-being but determinateness, and on the other hand all
determinateness and concreteness of conceptions, or every thing
affirmative can be only through negation; in other words the conception
of contradiction is the soul of a philosophical method.
The doctrine of ideas appears in the Parmenides as the positive
consequence and progressive development of the Eleatic principle. Indeed
in this dialogue, in that Plato makes Parmenides the chief speaker, he
seems willing to allow that his doctrine is in substance that of the
Eleatic sage. True, the fundamental thought of the dialogue—that the one
is not conceivable in its complete singleness without the many, nor the
many without the one, that each necessarily presupposes and reciprocally
conditions the other—stands in the most direct contradiction to
Eleaticism. Yet Parmenides himself, by dividing his poem into two parts,
and treating in the first of the one and in the second of the many,
postulates an inner mediation between these two externally so disjointed
parts of his philosophy, and in this respect the Platonic theory of
ideas might give itself out as the farther elimination, and the true
sense of the Parmenidean philosophizing. This dialectical mediation
between the one and the not-one or the many Plato now attempts in four
antinomies, which have ostensibly only a negative result in so far as
they show that contradictions arise both whether the one be adopted or
rejected. The positive sense of these antinomies, though it can be
gained only through inferences which Plato himself does not expressly
utter, but leaves to be drawn by the reader—is as follows. The first
antinomy shows that the one is inconceivable as such since it is only
apprehended in its abstract opposition to the many; the second, that in
this case also the reality of the many is inconceivable; the third, that
the one or the idea cannot be conceived as not-being, since there can be
neither conception nor predicate of the absolute not-being, and since,
if not-being is excluded from all fellowship with being, all becoming
and departing, all similarity and difference, every representation and
explanation concerning it must also be denied; and lastly, the fourth
affirms that the not-one or the many cannot be conceived without the one
or the idea. What now is Plato’s aim in this discussion of the dialectic
relations between the conceptions of the one and the many? Would he use
the conception of the one only as an example to explain his dialectic
method with conceptions, or is the discussion of this conception itself
the very object before him? Manifestly the latter, or the dialogue ends
without result and without any inner connection of its two parts. But
how came Plato to make such a special investigation of this conception
of the one? If we bear in mind that the Eleatics had already perceived
the antithesis of the actual and the phenomenal world in the antithesis
of the one and the many, and that Plato himself had also regarded his
ideas as the unity of the manifold, as the one and the same in the
many—since he repeatedly uses “idea” and “the one” in the same sense,
and places (_Rep._ VII. 537) dialectics in the same rank with the
faculty of bringing many to unity—then is it clear that the one which is
made an object of investigation in the Parmenides is the idea in its
general sense, _i. e._ in its logical form, and that Plato consequently
in the dialectic of the one and the many would represent the dialectic
of the idea and the phenomenal world, or in other words would
dialectically determine and establish the correct view of the idea as
the unity in the manifoldness of the phenomenal. In that it is shown in
the Parmenides, on the one side, that the many cannot be conceived
without the one, and on the other side, that the one must be something
which embraces in itself manifoldness, so have we the ready inference on
the one side, that the phenomenal world, or the many, has a true being
only in so far as it has the one or the conception within it, and on the
other side, that since the conception is not an abstract one but
manifoldness in unity, it must actually have manifoldness in unity in
order to be able to be in the phenomenal world. The indirect result of
the Parmenides is that matter as the infinitely divisible and
undetermined mass has no actuality, but is in relation to the ideal
world a not-being, and though the ideas as the true being gain their
appearance in it, yet the idea itself is all that is actual in the
appearance or phenomenon; the phenomenal world derives its whole
existence from the ideal world which appears in it, and has a being only
so far as it has a conception or idea for its content.
4. POSITIVE EXPOSITION OF THE DOCTRINE OF IDEAS.—Ideas may be defined
according to the different sides of their historical connection, as the
common in the manifold, the universal in the particular, the one in the
many, or the constant and abiding in the changing. Subjectively they are
principles of knowing which cannot be derived from experience they are
the intuitively certain and innate regulators of our knowledge.
Objectively they are the immutable principles of being and of the
phenomenal world, incorporeal and simple unities which have no relation
to space, and which may be predicated of every independent thing. The
doctrine of ideas grew originally out of the desire to give a definite
conception to the inner essence of things, and make the real world
conceivable as a harmoniously connected intellectual world. This desire
of scientific knowledge Aristotle cites expressly as the motive to the
Platonic doctrine of ideas. “Plato,” he says (_Metaph._ XIII. 4), “came
to the doctrine of ideas because he was convinced of the truth of the
Heraclitic view which regarded the sensible world as a ceaseless flowing
and changing. His conclusion from this was, that if there be a science
of any thing there must be, besides the sensible, other substances which
have a permanence, for there can be no science of the fleeting.” It is,
therefore, the idea of science which demands the reality of ideas, a
demand which cannot be granted unless an idea or conception is also the
ground of all being. This is the case with Plato. According to him there
can be neither a true knowing nor a true being without ideas and
conceptions which have an independent reality.
What now does Plato mean by idea? From what has already been said it is
clear that he means something more than ideal conceptions of the
beautiful and the good. An idea is found, as the name itself (εἰδος)
indicates, wherever a universal conception of a species or kind is
found. Hence Plato speaks of the idea of a bed, table, strength, health,
voice, color, ideas of simple relations and properties, ideas of
mathematical figures, and even ideas of not-being, and of that, which in
its essence only contradicts the idea, baseness and vice. In a word, we
may put an idea wherever many things may be characterized by a common
name (_Rep._ X. 596): or as Aristotle expresses it (_Met._ XII. 3).
Plato places an idea to every class of being. In this sense Plato
himself speaks in the beginning of the Parmenides. Parmenides asks the
young Socrates what he calls ideas. Socrates answers by naming
unconditionally the moral ideas, the ideas of the true, the beautiful,
the good, and then after a little delay he mentions some physical ones,
as the ideas of man, of fire, of water; he will not allow ideas to be
predicated of that which is only a formless mass, or which is a part of
something else, as hair, mud and clay, but in this he is answered by
Parmenides, that if he would be fully imbued with philosophy, he must
not consider such things as these to be wholly despicable, but should
look upon them as truly though remotely participating in the idea. Here
at least the claim is asserted that no province of being is excluded
from the idea, that even that which appears most accidental and
irrational is yet a part of rational knowledge, in fact that every thing
existing may be brought within a rational conception.
5. THE RELATION OF IDEAS TO THE PHENOMENAL WORLD. Analogous to the
different definitions of idea are the different names which Plato gives
to the sensible and phenomenal world. He calls it the many, the
divisible, the unbounded, the undetermined and measureless, the
becoming, the relative, great and small, not-being. The relation now in
which these two worlds of sense and of ideas stand to each other is a
question which Plato has answered neither fully nor consistently with
himself. His most common way is to characterize the relation of things
to conceptions as a participant, or to call things the copies and
adumbrations, while ideas are the archetypes. Yet this is so indefinite
that Aristotle properly says that to talk in this way is only to use
poetical metaphors. The great difficulty of the doctrine of ideas is not
solved but only increased by these figurative representations. The
difficulty lies in the contradiction which grows out of the fact that
while Plato admits the reality of the becoming and of the province of
the becoming, he still affirms that ideas which are substances ever at
rest and ever the same are the only actual. Now in this Plato is
formally consistent with himself, while he characterizes the _matériel_
of matter not as a positive substratum but as not-being, and guards
himself with the express affirmation that he does not consider the
sensible as being, but only as something similar to being. (_Rep._ X.
597.) The position laid down in the Parmenides is also consistent with
this, that a perfect philosophy should look upon the idea as the
cognizable in the phenomenal world, and should follow it out in the
smallest particulars until every part of being should be known and all
dualism removed. In fine, Plato in many of his expressions seems to
regard the world of sensation only as a subjective appearance, as a
product of the subjective notion, as the result of a confused way of
representing ideas. In this sense the phenomena are entirely dependent
on ideas; they are nothing but the ideas themselves in the form of not
being; the phenomenal world derives its whole existence from the ideal
world which appears in it. But yet when Plato calls the sensible a
mingling of the same with the different or the not-being (_Tim._ p. 35),
when he characterizes the ideas as vowels which go through every thing
like a chain (_Soph._ p. 253), when he himself conceives the possibility
that matter might offer opposition to the formative energy of ideas
(_Tim._ p. 56), when he speaks of an evil soul of the world (_de Leg._
X. 896), and gives intimations of the presence in the world of a
principle in nature hostile to God (_Polit._ p. 268), when he in the
Phædon treats of the relation between body and soul as one wholly
discordant and malignant,—in all this there is evidence enough, even
after allowing for the mythical form of the Timæus, and the rhetorical
composition which prevails in the Phædon, to substantiate the
contradiction mentioned above. This is most clear in the Timæus. Plato
in this dialogue makes the sensible world to be formed by a Creator
after the pattern of an idea, but in this he lays down as a condition
that this Demi-urge or Creator should find at hand a something which
should be apt to receive and exhibit this ideal image. This something
Plato compares to the matter which is fashioned by the artisan (whence
the later name _hyle_). He characterizes it as wholly undetermined and
formless, but possessing in itself an aptitude for every variety of
forms, an invisible and shapeless thing, a something which it is
difficult to characterize, and which Plato even does not seem inclined
very closely to describe. In this the actuality of matter is denied;
while Plato makes it equivalent to space it is only the place, the
negative condition of the sensible while it possesses a being only as it
receives in itself the ideal form. Still matter remains the objective
and phenomenal form of the idea: the visible world arises only through
the mingling of ideas with this substratum, and if matter be
metaphysically expressed as “the different,” then does it follow with
logical necessity in a dialectical discussion that it is just as truly
being as not-being. Plato does not conceal from himself this difficulty,
and therefore attempts to represent with comparisons and images this
presupposition of a _hyle_ which he finds it as impossible to do without
as to express in a conceivable form. If he would do without it he must
rise to the conception of an absolute creation, or consider matter as an
ultimate emanation from the absolute spirit, or else explain it as
appearance only. Thus the Platonic system is only a fruitless struggle
against dualism.
6. THE IDEA OF THE GOOD AND THE DEITY. If the true and the real is
exhibited in general conceptions which are so related to each other that
every higher conception embraces and combines under it several lower, so
that any one starting from a single idea may eventually discover all
(_Meno._ p. 81), then must the sum of ideas form a connected organism
and succession in which the lower idea appears as a stepping-stone and
presupposition to a higher. This succession must have its end in an idea
which needs no higher idea or presupposition to sustain it. This highest
idea, the ultimate limit of all knowledge, and itself the independent
ground of all other ideas, Plato calls the idea of the good, _i. e._ not
of the moral but of the metaphysical good. (_Rep._ VII. 517.)
What this good is in itself, Plato undertakes to show only in images.
“In the same manner as the sun,” he says in the Republic (VI. 506), “is
the cause of sight, and the cause not merely that objects are visible
but also that they grow and are produced, so the good is of such power
and beauty, that it is not merely the cause of science to the soul, but
is also the cause of being and reality to whatever is the object of
science, and as the sun is not itself sight or the object of sight but
presides over both, so the good is not science and truth but is superior
to both, they being not the good itself but of a goodly nature.” The
good has unconditioned worth, and gives to every other thing all the
value it possesses. The idea of the good excludes all presupposition. It
is the ultimate ground at the same time of knowing and of being, of the
perceiver and the perceived, of the subjective and the objective, of the
ideal and the real, though exalted itself above such a division. (_Rep._
VI. 508-517.) Plato, however, has not attempted a derivation of the
remaining ideas from the idea of the good; his course here is wholly an
empirical one; a certain class of objects are taken, and having referred
these to their common essence this is given out as their idea. He has
treated the individual conceptions so independently, and has made each
one so complete in itself, that it is impossible to find a proper
division or establish an immanent continuation of one into another.
It is difficult to say precisely what relation this idea of the good
bore to the Deity in the Platonic view. Taking every thing together it
seems clear that Plato regarded the two as identical, but whether he
conceived this highest cause to be a personal being or not is a question
which hardly admits of a definite answer. The logical result of his
system would exclude the personality of God. If only the universal (the
idea) is the true being, then can the only absolute idea, the Deity, be
only the absolute universal; but that Plato was himself conscious of
this logical conclusion we can hardly affirm, any more than we can say
on the other hand that he was clearly a theist. For whenever in a
mythical or popular statement he speaks of innumerable gods, this only
indicates that he is speaking in the language of the popular religion,
and when he speaks in an accurate philosophical sense, he only makes the
relation of the personal deity with the idea a very uncertain one. Most
probable, therefore, is it that this whole question concerning the
personality of God was not yet definitely before him, that he took up
the religious idea of God and defended it in ethical interest against
the anthropomorphism of the mythic poets, that he sought to establish it
by arguments drawn from the evidences of design in nature, and the
universal prevalence of a belief in a God, while as a philosopher he
made no use of it.
V. THE PLATONIC PHYSICS. 1. NATURE.—The connection between the Physics
and the Dialectics of Plato lies principally in two points—the
conception of becoming, which forms the chief property of nature, and
that of real being, which is at once the all sufficient and good, and
the true end of all becoming. Because nature belongs to the province of
irrational sensation we cannot look for the same accuracy in the
treatment of it, as is furnished in dialectics. Plato therefore applied
himself with much less zest to physical investigations than to those of
an ethical or dialectical character, and indeed only attended to them in
his later years. Only in one dialogue, the Timæus, do we find any
extended evolution of physical doctrines, and even here Plato seems to
have gone to his work with much less independence than his wont, this
dialogue being more strongly tinctured with Pythagoreanism than any
other of his writings. The difficulty of the Timæus is increased by the
mythical form on which the old commentators themselves have stumbled. If
we take the first impression that it gives us, we have, before the
creation of the world, a Creator as a moving and a reflecting principle,
with on the one side the ideal world existing immovable as the eternal
archetype, and on the other side, a chaotic, formless, irregular,
fluctuating mass, which holds in itself the germ of the material world,
but has no determined character nor substance. With these two elements
the Creator now blends the world-soul which he distributes according to
the relation of numbers, and sets it in definite and harmonious motion.
In this way the material world, which has become actual through the
arrangement of the chaotic mass into the four elements, finds its
external frame, and the process thus begun is completed in its external
structure by the formation of the organic world.
It is difficult to separate the mythical and the philosophical elements
in this cosmogony of the Timæus, especially difficult to determine how
far the historical construction, which gives a succession in time to the
acts of creation, is only a formal one, and also how far the affirmation
that matter is absolutely a not-being can be harmonized with the general
tenor of Plato’s statements. The significance of the world-soul is
clearer. Since the soul in the Platonic system is the mean between
spirit and body, and as in the same way mathematical relations, in their
most universal expression as numbers, are the mean between mere sensuous
existence and the pure idea (between the one and the many as Plato
expresses it), it would seem clear that the world-soul, construed
according to the relation of numbers, must express the relation of the
world of ideas to that of sense, in other words, that it denotes the
sensible world as a thought represented in the form of material
existence. The Platonic view of nature, in opposition to the mechanical
attempts to explain it of the earlier philosophers, is entirely
teleological, and based upon the conception of the good, or, on the
moral idea. Plato conceives the world as the image of the good, as the
work of the divine munificence. As it is the image of the perfect it is
therefore only one, corresponding to the idea of the single
all-embracing substance, for an infinite number of worlds is not to be
conceived as actual. For the same reason the world is spherical, after
the most perfect and uniform structure, which embraces in itself all
other forms; its movement is in a circle, because this, by returning
into itself, is most like the movement of reason. The particular points
of the Timæus, the derivation of the four elements, the separation of
the seven planets according to the musical scale, the opinion that the
stars were immortal and heavenly substances, the affirmation that the
earth holds an abiding position in the middle of the world, a view which
subsequently became elaborated to the Ptolemaic system, the reference of
all material figures to the triangle as the simplest plane figure, the
division of inanimate nature, according to the four elements, into
creatures of earth, water, and air, his discussions respecting organic
nature, and especially respecting the construction of the human body—all
these we need here only mention. Their philosophical worth consists not
so much in their material content, but rather in their fundamental idea,
that the world should be conceived as the image and the work of reason,
as an organism of order, harmony, and beauty, as the good actualizing
itself.
2. THE SOUL.—The doctrine of the soul, considering it simply as the
basis of a moral action, and leaving out of view all questions of
concrete ethics, forms a constituent element in the Platonic physics.
Since the soul is united to the body, it participates in the motions and
changes of the body, and is, in this respect, related to the perishable.
But in so far as it participates in the knowledge of the eternal, _i.
e._ in so far as it knows ideas, does there live within it a divine
principle—reason. Accordingly, Plato distinguishes two components of the
soul—the divine and the mortal, the rational and the irrational. These
two are united by an intermediate link, which Plato calls θυμὸς or
spirit, and which, though allied to reason is not reason itself, since
it is often exhibited in children and also in brutes, and since even men
are often carried away by it without reflection. This threefoldness,
here exhibited psychologically, is found, in different applications,
through all the last general period of Plato’s literary life. Based upon
the anthropological triplicate of reason, soul and body, it corresponds
also to the division of theoretical knowledge into science (or
thinking), correct opinions (or sense-perception), and ignorance, to the
triple ladder of eroticism in the Symposium and the mythological
representation connected with this of Poros, Eros, and Penia; to the
metaphysical triplicate of the ideal world, mathematical relations and
the sensible world; and furnishes ground for deriving the ethical
division of virtue and the political division of ranks.
So far as the soul is a mean between the spiritual and corporeal, may we
connect the Phædon’s proofs of its immortality with the psychological
view now before us. The common thought of these arguments is that the
soul, in its capacity for thinking, participates in the reason, and
being thus of an opposite nature to, and uncontrolled by the corporeal,
it may have an independent existence. The arguments are wholly
analytical, and possess no valid and universal proof; they proceed
entirely upon a _petitio principii_, they are derived partly from
mythical philosophemes, and manifest not only an obscure conception of
the soul, but of its relations to the body and the reason, and, so far
as the relation of the soul to the ideal world is in view, they furnish
in the best case only some proof for the immortality of him who has
raised his soul to a pure spirit, _i. e._ the immortality of the
philosopher. Plato was not himself deceived as to the theoretical
insufficiency of his arguments. Their number would show this, and,
besides, he expressly calls them proofs which amount to only human
probability, and furnish practical postulates alone. With this view he
introduces at the close of his arguments the myth of the lower world,
and the state of departed souls, in order, by complying with the
religious notions, and traditions of his countrymen, to gain a positive
support for belief in the soul’s immortality. Elsewhere Plato also
speaks of the lower world, and of the future rewards and punishments of
the good and the evil, in accordance with the popular notions, as though
he saw the elements of a divine revelation therein; he tells of
purifying punishment in Hades, analogous to a purgatory; he avails
himself of the common notion to affirm that shades still subject to the
corporeal principle will hover after death over their graves, seeking to
recover their lifeless bodies, and at times he dilates upon the
migration of the soul to various human and brute forms. On the whole, we
find in Plato’s proofs of immortality, as in his psychology generally,
that dualism, which here expresses itself as hatred to the corporeal,
and is connected with the tendency to seek the ultimate ground of evil
in the nature of the “different” and the sensible world.
VI. THE PLATONIC ETHICS.—The ground idea of the good, which in physics
served only as an inventive conception, finds now, in the ethics, its
true exhibition. Plato has developed it prominently according to three
sides, as good, as individual virtue, and as ethical world in the state.
The conception of duty remains in the background with him as with the
older philosophers.
1. GOOD AND PLEASURE.—That the highest good can be nothing other than
the idea of the good itself, has already been shown in the dialectics,
where this idea was suffered to appear as the ultimate end of all our
striving. But since the dialectics represent the supreme good as
unattainable by human reason, and only cognizable in its different modes
of manifestation, we can, therefore, only follow these different
manifestations of the highest good, which represent not the good itself,
but the good in becoming, where it appears as science, truth, beauty,
virtue, &c. We are thus not required to be equal to God, but only like
him (_Theæt._) It is this point of view which lies at the basis of the
graduated table of good, given in the Philebus.
In seeking the highest good, the conception of pleasure must be
investigated. The Platonic standpoint here is the attempt to strike a
balance between Hedonism, (the Cyrenian theory that pleasure is the
highest good, _cf._ § XIII. 3), and Cynicism. While he will not admit
with Aristippus that pleasure is the true good, neither will he find it
as the Cynics maintain, simply in the negation of its contrary, pain,
and thus deny that it belongs to the good things of human life. He finds
his refutation of Hedonism in the indeterminateness and relativity of
all pleasure, since that which at one time may seem as pleasure, under
other circumstances may appear as pain; and since he who chooses
pleasure without distinction, will find impure pleasures always combined
in his life with more or less of pain; his refutation of Cynicism he
establishes by showing the necessary connection between virtue and true
pleasure, showing that there is a true and enduring pleasure, the
pleasure of reason, found in the possession of truth and of goodness,
while a rational condition separate from all pleasure, cannot be the
highest good of a finite being. It is most prominently by this
distinction of a true and false, of a pure and impure pleasure, that
Plato adjusts the controversy of the two Socratic schools.—A detailed
exhibition of the Philebus we must here omit.—On the whole, in the
Platonic apprehension of pleasure, we cannot but notice that same
vacillation with which Plato every where treats of the relation between
the corporeal and the spiritual, at one time considering the former as a
hindrance to the latter, and at another as its serving instrument; now,
regarding it as a concurring cause to the good, and then, as the ground
of all evil; here, as something purely negative, and there, as a
positive substratum which supports all the higher intellectual
developments; and in conformity with this, pleasure is also considered
at one time as something equivalent to a moral act, and to knowledge,
and at another as the means and accidental consequence of the good.
2. VIRTUE.—In his theory of virtue, Plato is wholly Socratic. He holds
fast to the opinion that it is science (_Protagoras_), and therefore,
teachable (_Meno_), and as to its unity, it follows from the dialectical
principle that the one can be manifold, or the manifold one, that,
therefore, virtue must both be regarded as one, and also in a different
respect, as many. Plato thus brings out prominently the union and
connection of all virtues, and is fond of painting, especially in the
introductory dialogues, some single virtue as comprising in itself the
sum of all the rest. Plato follows for the most part the fourfold
division of virtues, as popularly made; and first, in the Republic (IV.
441), he attempts a scientific derivation of them, by referring to each
of the three parts of the soul its appropriate virtue. The virtue of the
reason he calls prudence or wisdom, the directing or measuring virtue,
without whose activity valor would sink to brute impulse, and calm
endurance to stupid indifference; the virtue of spirit is valor, the
help-meet of reason, or spirit (θυμὸς) penetrated by science, which in
the struggle against pleasure and pain, desire and fear, preserves the
rational intelligence against the alarms with which sensuous desires,
would seek to sway the soul; the virtue of the sensuous desires, and
which has to reduce these within true and proper grounds, is temperance,
and that virtue in fine to which belong the due regulation and mutual
adjustment of the several powers of the soul, and which, therefore,
constitutes the bond and the unity of the three other virtues, is
justice.
In this last conception, that of justice, all the elements of moral
culture meet together and centre, exhibiting the moral life of the
individual as a perfect whole, and then, by requiring an application of
the same principle to communities, the moral consideration is advanced
beyond the narrow circle of individual life. Thus is established the
whole of the moral world—Justice “in great letters,” the moral life in
its complete totality, is the state. In this is first actualized the
demand for the complete harmony of the human life. In and through the
state comes the complete formation of matter for the reason.
3. THE STATE.—The Platonic state is generally regarded as an ideal or
chimera, which it is impracticable to realize among men. This view of
the case has even been ascribed to Plato, and it has been said that in
his _Republic_ he attempted to sketch only a fine ideal of a state
constitution, while in the _Laws_ he traced out a practicable philosophy
of the state from the standpoint of the common consciousness. But in the
first place, this was not Plato’s true meaning. Although he acknowledges
that the state he describes cannot be found on earth, and has its
archetype only in heaven, by which the philosopher ought to form himself
(IX. 592), still he demands that efforts should be made to realize it
here, and he even attempts to show the conditions and means under which
such a state could be made actual, not overlooking in all this the
defects arising from the different characters and temperaments of men. A
composition, dissociated from the idea, could only appear untrue to a
philosopher like Plato, who saw the actual and the true only in the
idea; and the common view which supposes that he wrote his Republic in
the full consciousness of its impracticability, mistakes entirely the
standpoint of the Platonic philosophy. Still farther the question
whether such a state as the Platonic is attainable and the best, is
generally perverted. The Platonic state is the Grecian state-idea given
in a narrative form. It is no vain and powerless ideal to picture the
idea as a rational principle in every moment of the world’s history,
since the idea itself is that which is absolutely actual, that which is
essential and necessary in existing things. The truly ideal _ought_ not
to be actual, but _is_ actual, and the only actual; if an idea were too
good for existence, or the empirical actuality too bad for it, then were
this a fault of the ideal itself. Plato has not given himself up merely
to abstract theories, the philosopher cannot leap beyond his age, but
can only see and grasp it in its true content. This Plato has done. His
standpoint is his own age. He looks upon the political life of the
Greeks as then existing, and it is this life, exalted to its idea, which
forms the real content of the Platonic Republic. Plato has here
represented the Grecian morality in its substantial condition, If the
Platonic Republic seems prominently an ideal which can never be
realized, this is owing much less to its ideality than to the defects of
the old political life. The most prominent characteristic of the
Hellenic conception of the state, before the Greeks began to fall into
unbridled licentiousness, was the constraint thrown upon personal
subjective freedom, in the sacrifice of every individual interest to the
absolute sovereignty of the state. With Plato also, the state is every
thing. His political institutions, so loudly ridiculed by the ancients,
are only the undeniable consequences following from the very idea of the
Grecian state, which allowed neither to the individual citizen nor to a
corporation, any lawful sphere of action independent of itself.
The grand feature of the Platonic state is, as has been said, the
exclusive sacrifice of the individual to the state, the reference of
moral to political virtue. Since man cannot reach his complete
development in isolation, but only as a member of an organic society
(the state), Plato therefore concludes that the individual purpose
should wholly conform to the general aim, and that the state must
represent a perfect and harmonious unity, and be a counterpart of the
moral life of the individual. In a perfect state all things, joy and
sorrow, and even eyes, ears and hands, must be common to all, so that
the social life would be as it were the life of one man. This perfect
universality and unity, can only be actualized when every thing
individual and particular falls away, and hence the difficulty of the
Platonic Republic. Private property and domestic life (in place of which
comes a community of goods and of wives), the duty of education, the
choice of rank and profession, the arts and sciences, all these must be
subjected and placed under the exclusive and absolute control of the
state. The individual may lay claim only to that happiness which belongs
to him as a constituent element of the state. From this point Plato goes
down into the minutest particulars, and gives the closest directions
respecting gymnastics and music, which form the two means of culture of
the higher ranks; respecting the study of mathematics, and philosophy,
the choice of stringed instruments, and the proper measure of verse;
respecting bodily exercise and the service of women in war; respecting
marriage settlements, and the age at which any one should study
dialectics, marry, and beget children. The state with him is only a
great educational establishment, a family in the mass.—Lyric poetry he
would allow only under the inspection of competent judges. Epic and
dramatic poetry, even Homer and Hesiod, should be banished from the
state, since they rouse and lead astray the passions, and give unworthy
representations of the gods. Exhibitions of physical degeneracy or
weakness should not be tolerated in the Platonic state; deformed and
sickly infants should be abandoned, and food and attention should be
denied to the sick.—In all this we find the chief antithesis of the
ancient to the modern state. Plato did not recognize the will and choice
of the individual, and yet the individual has a right to demand this.
The problem of the modern state has been to unite these two sides, to
bring the universal end and the particular end of the individual into
harmony, to reconcile the highest possible freedom of the conscious
individual will, with the highest possible supremacy of the state.
The political institutions of the Platonic state are decidedly
aristocratic. Grown up in opposition to the extravagances of the
Athenian democracy, Plato prefers an absolute monarchy to every other
constitution, though this should have as its absolute ruler only the
perfect philosopher. It is a well-known expression of his, that the
state can only attain its end when philosophers become its rulers, or
when its present rulers have carried their studies so far and so
accurately, that they can unite philosophy with a superintendence of
public affairs (V. 473). His reason for claiming that the sovereign
power should be vested only in one, is the fact that very few are
endowed with political wisdom. This ideal of an absolute ruler who
should be able to lead the state perfectly, Plato abandons in the
_Laws_, in which work he shows his preference for a mixed constitution,
embracing both a monarchical and an aristocratic element. From the
aristocratic tendency of the Platonic ideal of a state, follows farther
the sharp division of ranks, and the total exclusion of the third rank
from a proper political life. In reality Plato makes but two classes in
his state, the subjects and the sovereign, analogous to his twofold
psychological division of sensible and intellectual, mortal and
immortal, but as in psychology he had introduced a middle step, spirit,
to stand between his two divisions there, so in the state he brings in
the military class between the ruler and those intended to supply the
bodily wants of the community. We have thus three ranks, that of the
ruler, corresponding to the reason, that of the watcher or warrior,
answering to spirit, and that of the craftsman, which is made parallel
to the appetites or sensuous desires. To these three ranks belong three
separate functions: to the first, that of making the law and caring for
the general good; to the second, that of defending the public welfare
from attacks of external foes; and to the third, the care of separate
interests and wants, as agriculture, mechanics, &c. From each of these
three ranks and its functions the state derives a peculiar virtue—wisdom
from the ruler, bravery from the warrior, and temperance from the
craftsman, so far as he lives in obedience to his rulers. In the proper
union of these three virtues is found the justice of the state, a virtue
which is thus the sum of all other virtues. Plato pays little attention
to the lowest rank, that of the craftsman, who exists in the state only
as means. He held that it was not necessary to give laws and care for
the rights of this portion of the community. The separation between the
ruler and the warrior is not so broad. Plato suffers these two ranks to
interpenetrate each other, and analogous to his original psychological
division, as though the reason were but spirit in the highest step of
its development, he makes the oldest and the best of the warriors rise
to the dignity and power of the rulers. The education of its warriors
should therefore be a chief care of the state, in order that their
spirit, though losing none of its peculiar energy, may yet be penetrated
by reason. The best endowed by nature and culture among the warriors,
may be selected at the age of thirty, and put upon a course of careful
training. When he has reached the age of fifty and looked upon the idea
of the good, he may be bound to actualize this archetype in the state,
provided always that every one wait his turn, and spend his remaining
time in philosophy. Only thus can the state be raised to the
unconditioned rule of reason under the supremacy of the good.