Plato the Athenian was the philosopher who founded the Academy and whose brilliant writings are the foundation texts of the entire western philosophical tradition
Sophie Armitage, a Year 13 Classics student, reviews Professor Edith Hall’s Gresham College lecture on Plato which is part of a series entitled “Great Thinkers”
What is beauty? What is true knowledge? What different kinds of love are there? What is the relationship between names and people, words and things? These are the questions Plato set out to answer according to Professor Edith Hall.
Born around 427 BCE into a wealthy and distinguished Athenian family, “Plato erupts into the history of human thought”, challenging the way the world is perceived and how it is conceived. A man who was not only radical in his time, but who, according to Professor Edith Hall, “fundamentally informed the entire philosophical tradition.”
Considered the “inventor” or “founder” of philosophy, Plato (along with his student Aristotle), laid the groundwork “for the contents and methods of intellectual inquiry into the three great questions that underpin the main branches of ancient philosophy”. How should we live? What is being and what lies beyond human experience? How can we sure of what we know?
Hall’s focus is Plato’s most famous dialogue, The Republic, which concerns justice in the context of the character of the “just man” and the order of a “just city-state”. The dialogue reflects Plato’s perception of politics, a business he felt was sought mainly to manipulate society. Plato argues that one’s soul comprises of three parts; the rational, which represents the truth-seeking, philosophical inclination, the spirited and the appetitive, which combines all human lusts, primarily financial. According to Plato, the most “just men” are Guardians, rational and philosophical individuals who would make the best rulers of society. Philosophers understand true goodness and justice, acting morally and not out of self-interest, hence his idea of the Philosopher King.
Having studied Classics at Oxford, the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson appears to be modelling himself on the platonic ideal of the Philosopher King. To be sure in such unprecedented and uncertain times we could all do with a spiritual and thoughtful leader. However, Plato’s description of “the man of the people”, seems more appropriate to Johnson. These are the dangerous demagogues who play to the gallery, “gratify[ing] the desire of the moment” and “do whatever comes into their head”. Plato warns us that a man ruled by passion rather than reason is a recipe for disaster in a political leader.
Plato also warns us about the dangers of art. In his ideal society he wants to banish poets because he thinks they lie. In his view, art was simply an imitation of an imitation and posed a threat to society. Such a notion is underpinned in the Republic by his Theory of Forms. Hall gave a concise and thought-provoking overview of this complex theory which is arguably Plato’s most influential contribution to philosophy. In Plato’s conception the world is composed of two realms. Firstly, there is the visible which is what we perceive with our senses; however, this is ‘faulty and changeable’.
The second realm is the intelligible, a “perfect realm beyond our physical world”, where “eternal, unchanging entities called forms or ideas reside”. This “Realm of Forms” constitutes a sort of ideal model for the world in which we live. In the lecture Hall comments on its necessity as the bases to several of Plato’s works, including his Theory of Love, which poses the question: what is the object of love?
With reference to the sceptics out there, Hall affirms that whatever one thinks of Plato’s Theory of Forms, the power of this “experimental, thrilling and graceful prose writer” cannot be denied. Writing in the form of dialogues, Plato brought to life many influential and controversial figures in contemporary Athens, and to this day, is considered to have “exerted incalculable influences on literature, not just philosophy”.
Take his attitude to homosexuality, best demonstrated in his work the Symposium. According to Hall, this is nothing less than a “manifesto for gay rights”. Nowadays, a symposium is an academic conference. However, originally a symposium referred to an all-male drinking party, the modern-day equivalent being pre-match drinks down the pub before a football match. Of course, the nature of the debate in the platonic symposium was nothing like pub-talk. The classical symposium was a very ritualised event, attended only by the intellectual elite of the day. Instead of discussing the players or the opposition, the select few would have conversations regarding philosophical matters, such as the nature of erôs (love), which is the main subject of the Symposium.
Whilst the relationships described between young boys and older men would be illegal today, in Plato’s world such activity was viewed as natural and beneficial to the city-state. Hall describes Plato’s concept of the “Ladder of Love”, explaining how erôs drives one to find beauty in its purest essence. First, there is the desire for beauty in its physical form. But then, as one ascends the ladder, the lover gains in spiritual wisdom as he journeys towards the divine and the transcendental realm. Plato’s concept of erôs was not primarily a desire for sexual contact as in the modern-day English word “erotic”. In fact, as Edith Hall makes clear, erôs was first and foremost a love of moral and intellectual excellence. In 1895 at his trial, Oscar Wilde used this platonic spiritualised conception of love as a way of defending himself from the charge of illegal sexual activity with a younger man.
Hall comments on Socrates’ influence on the development of Plato’s thoughts touched on a recurring problem for classical scholars– that of distinguishing their ideas from each other. Plato use of the myth of Atlantis to demonstrate the use of military and scientific power seems especially relevant today. A concentric-ringed island in the Atlantic, Atlantis was supposed to have sunk under the sea. For Plato, Atlantis is a parable about how a sophisticated and technologically advanced society used its power wrongly to wage war against its neighbours.
Edith Hall’s lecture provides a thought-provoking insight into the life of Plato. He emerges as a figure of incredible intellectual power who is intrinsic to the entire western philosophical tradition. In this troubled time, listening to Hall expound Plato’s thoughts and theories about ideal reality, or the Philosopher King or what constitutes a just
society, helps us see beyond the darkness of the “Cave” we currently find ourselves in. A new perspective, a new outlook: click on the link below if that sounds like a good tonic.