Hughlings Himwich

Some issues in Plato

 

 

1) How are the dialogues to be read?  Are the dialogues a compendium of philosophical doctrines in which the dialogue form is a convenient and entertaining way of expressing those theories or is the dialogue form itself essential to Plato’s philosophical doctrine?  If the dialogues are a compendium, then we need only select out doctrines like recollection and the theory of forms to arrive at Plato’s philosophy.  If the dialogue form itself is essential to Plato’s philosophical doctrine, then we may conclude we are being invited into a conversation about the questions that recollection and the theory of forms seek to answer and that we are not expected to take these doctrines as settled positions.

 

 

 

 

2) Plato lectured directly to students and colleagues in his Academy concerning his philosophical doctrines.   Unfortunately, these lectures have been lost and we have only his dialogues, which were intended for a more general audience than his immediate philosophical associates. Aristotle does report on one such lecture, “On the Good,” in which he has Plato speak of the Good as the number One and the indefinite dyad as the source of all becoming and passing away in the universe.  Indeed, it may be that Plato’s real doctrines are Pythagorean and mathematical in nature and were expressly withheld from those outside of the Academy.

 

 

 

 

3) For Plato, the most fundamental philosophical error is to mistake the image for what it represents. This is the mistake of the prisoners in Plato’s cave.  For Plato, images are necessary for thought, but there is the danger that we will settle for the image as the reality instead of moving past it to the reality it represents.   A good image is one that points beyond itself.  You will decide for yourselves whether the doctrine of recollection and theory of the forms are such images. 

 

 

 

 

4) In the Apology, Socrates tells us that he knew early on that had he engaged in politics as a philosopher he would have long since been executed.  Thus, Socrates raises the question of whether a philosopher, by the very nature of his activity, stands in opposition to the state since he would naturally question the assumptions upon which the state rests.  In the Republic, Plato tries to solve this problem by making philosophers the rulers of the state but concludes that no philosopher worthy of the name would be willing to do the dirty work required of a ruler. What remains is for the philosopher to build the ideal city within himself.  This is what Socrates does in the Crito, where it is the laws of an ideal city of Athens that persuade him not to escape the actual, historical Athens

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What it means to be a good person . . . .

I. What it means to me to be a good person:

a) To be a good person is to act in accordance with what you most value within yourself.

b) What I most value within myself is that capacity that allows me to do what cannot literally be done: to put myself in the place of another person and to create something out of nothing. That capacity is my imagination. It is through the imagination that there is something it is like to be another person, and it is through the imagination that there is something beautiful when there need not be anything at all. If I come to end of my life and know that I have lived my life in as full a consciousness of the lives of others as possible and that I have created something of beauty, it will have been a good life.

c) What you most value within yourself may be very different. It may also be that what you most value is something outside of yourself, e.g. God, Truth, etc. I would argue that you love God or Truth because of the image of God or Truth that exists within you. In any case, whatever it is that you do most value will determine what it means to you to be a good person. What the value is or whether the value comes from within or without is not critical to my argument.

2. What it means to Aristotle to be a good person:

a) For Aristotle, to be a good person means to act in accordance with man’s defining virtue, his rational capacity. The rational capacity, however, has two actions, practical reasoning and contemplation, and so there are two ways in which a man can be said to be good: one by the action of his practical reason to make the right choice among alternatives, to achieve what Aristotle calls the mean, and the other by the activity of the mind itself to achieve philosophical understanding. The happiest life would be that of a man like Socrates, who exhibits throughout his life the highest excellence of both activities of our rational capacity.

b) For Aristotle, what you should value most within yourself is your rational capacity.

III. How Aristotle was helpful in thinking out what it means to be a good person:

a) Aristotle was helpful in thinking out my own idea of what it is to be a good person. I essentially substituted the imagination for Aristotle’s rational capacity. As Aristotle finds two different actions of the rational capacity, one moral and one purely philosophical, I also found two different actions of the imagination, one moral, compassion, and one purely imaginative, the creation of something beautiful.

b) It may be that what we value most within ourselves will characteristically have a dual aspect: one that relates to others and one that relates only to the activity itself.

Our Biotech Future by Freeman Dyson

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