platonism

Raphael, "School of Athens" (Detail of Plato & Aristotle) 1511
Vatican Palace, Rome

The philosopher Plato (left above with his student Aristotle) did not write views under his own name (his writings are mainly in the form of conversations called 'Dialogues', between Socrates and other Greek philosophers of the fifth century B.C.). Nevertheless certain views are attributed to Plato as being his own.

Many classical theories assume that if we know what good is we will naturally act to try to achieve it. If we can discover what is right, Plato believes, we will never act wickedly. Evil is due to lack of knowledge. Do you think this is true? Give reasons for your answer.

But the problem is to discover what is right, or as Plato called it, 'the good'. How can this be done when we differ so greatly in our opinions about the good life? Plato's answer is that finding the nature of the good life is an intellectual task similar to the discovery of mathematical truths. Just as the latter cannot be discovered by untrained people, so the former cannot be either.

In order to discover what the good life is we must first acquire certain kinds of knowledge. Such knowledge can be arrived at only if we are carefully schooled in various disciplines, such as mathematics, philosophy, and so on. Only when we have been through the long period of intellectual training that Plato suggested, would we have the capacity to know the nature of the good life.

lt is important for an understanding of Plato to make a distinction at this point. Plato did not maintain that we must have knowledge in order to lead the good life. He maintained the weaker doctrine that if we did have knowledge we would lead the good life. Even without the possession of knowledge it is possible for some people to lead the good life, but they will do so haphazardly or blindly. It is only if we have knowledge that we can be assured of leading such an existence.

This is why Plato believed that we must be instructed in two different ways. We must develop, on the one hand, virtuous habits of behaviour, and on the other, we must develop our mental powers through the study of such disciplines as mathematics and philosophy. Both of these types of instruction are necessary.

First, some of us may not have the intellectual capacity to get knowledge. But if we are guided by those people who have knowledge of the good, and who accordingly act virtuously, we, too, will act virtuously even though we do not understand the essential nature of the good life.

On the basis of this sort of reasoning, Plato went on to advocate the neccssity of censorship in what he called an 'ideal society' - the society which is portrayed in his famous book, The Republic.

Plato felt that it was necessary to prevent young people from being exposed to certain sorts of experiences if they were to develop virtuous habits & thus lead the good life. Secondly, it was necessary for some people to develop their mental powers & undergo rigorous intellectual training which will do more than develop virtuous habits. These exceptional people, Plato thought, must finally be the rulers of the ideal society. In such a society, the rulers, having developed their intellectual capacities, would also have acquired knowledge. And having acquired knowledge they would understand the nature of the good life. This would guarantee their acting rightly or morally, & hence would ensure their being good rulers. For, as we have seen, it was Plato's belief that if we can acquire knowledge, in particular knowledge of what was good, then we would never act evilly.

A second basic element in Plato's philosophy is what modern scholars term his "absolutism". According to Plato, there is fundamentally one & only one good life for all people to lead. This is because goodness is something which is not dependent upon people's inclinations, desires, wishes, or upon their opinions. Goodness in this respect resembles the mathematical truth that two plus two equal four. This is a truth which is absolute; it exists whether anyone likes such a fact or not, or even whether s/he knows mathematics or not. It is not dependent upon our opinions about the nature of mathematics or the world.

This can be put in another way. Plato is arguing for the objectivity of moral principles as opposed to other philosophies which contend that morality is merely a "matter of opinion" or "preference". It is an absolute]y objective moral law that "Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder".

Platonism had a tremendous impact upon religious philosophy. Most theologians believ that moral laws such as "Thou Shalt Not Steal", or "Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder" are absolute & objective in the Platonic sense.

The development of Plato's philosophy (known as Neo-Platonism) was the nearest Greek philosophy came to itself becoming religion & had a direct influence on the development of Christian theology. But it should be pointed out that although Platonism & most theologies agree in contending that moral standards are objective, there is a basic difference between them. Plato himself believed that moral standards were superior even to God, & God is good if & only if s/he acts in accordance with such a standard. This is very different from the Judaeo-Christian view that God creates goodness.

criticisms of platonism

As we have seen, Platonism as a moral philosophy rests upon two basic assumptions. One is the assumption that if a man has knowledge of the good life, he will never knowingly act immorally. The other is that there is one & only one good life for all humans; just as there is no moral alternative to the command: "Thou Shalt Not Steal".

Most philosophers who criticize Plato have interpreted this as expressing a psychological judgment about how we act under certain conditions. The conditions are that if we have a certain kind of knowledge, we will behave in a certain way.

Interpreted as a psychological account of how we behave in every case, the theory seems to have problems. For some of us may well understand that stealing is wrong (for example) but we may still persist in stealing. Plato would say of such people that they really do not understand what is meant by "stealing" since no-one willingly will do what they know to be wrong. But if we talk to such people & if they give the usual signs of understanding what it means to steal, and further, if they admit it to be morally wrong but still steal, it appears as if Plato's account must be rejected, since it seems that some of us will act wrongly while knowing what the right course of action is. This was the view of human nature taken by Aristotle.

But what makes Plato's account attractive is that it attempts to supply a general solution to a common type of difficulty which arises in daily life. We often find ourselves in situations where we do not know how to behave because we do not know what the right course of action would be in those circumstances. Is it right to defend my country if this means killing someone, or is it right never to kill anyone?

What Plato suggests is that if we had more information, if we had been more carefully trained, we could discover the answer. We would know what the right course of action would be in those circumstances & thus our perplexity would be relieved. The situation seems analogous to many problems which a doctor faces: Should he operate now or wait until tomorrow? Should he administer this drug or not? These are problems which would be hopelessly difficult to the average person since s/he does not have the training & hence the knowledge to solve them. But to a trained person, the difficulty is reduced or overcome.

Plato's point is that moral difficulties are often theoretically solvable by the gaining of further knowledge - and this is a point of view which cannot be lightly dismissed. The major objection to it, however, is this. Moral problems are not the same as scientific questions. When all the relevant facts have been gathered in a scientific issue, we can in principle always decide the issue. But this is not so in a moral situation. We may know all the relevant facts in a given situation. We may know, for instance, that the effect of dropping a bomb on a certain area will be to kill 1,000 people, and, on the other hand, we may also know that if we drop the bomb, a disastrous war will be shortened. But our perplexity still exists. Should we or should we not drop the bomb? Although the acquisition of further information about a situation will solve some difficulties we have about acting in that situation, this is not always so. Platonism cannot be accepted without considerable qualification. Moral knowledge is not analogous to scientific or mathematical knowledge & Plato's mistake was to think that it is.

A further criticism that arises from this is that, since Plato regards morality as being a matter of knowledge, he almost excludes the possibility of fully moral behaviour for all but a few intellectually gifted people. It is not sufficient to say that those of us who do not have this ability can live good lives by allowing ourselves to be ruled by those who have, since to behave morally presupposes that one has responsibility for one's actions. An action is not truly moral (or immoral) unless it is the result of the free choice of the individual performing it. To make this choice the individual needs the kind of moral understanding that Plato says is possible only for a few. Again, we shall find Aristotle shows a clearer awareness of this basic feature of moral behaviour than Plato.

The second basic assumption of Platonism is that there is one and only one right course of action for all people - this is his "absolutism". Even in ancient times this view was strongly criticized, again by Plato's greatest pupil, Aristotle. Aristotle's moral philosophy rejects Platonic ideas that there is one & only one right course of action in a given moral situation, that good behaviour is not possible without moral understanding, and that knowledge of the good will necessarily lead to virtuous behaviour.