Plato

by Roy Jackson

  Socrates now takes a different tack in this dialectic and considers what Callicles means by pleasure, for, Socrates wants to know, does Callicles say that pleasure and good are the same things, for surely there are ‘evil’ pleasures? It is at this point that Callicles becomes less confident in his assertions, for Callicles is no supporter of hedonism. He sees the implications of hedonism are that he would have to admit that, so long as someone is engaging in satisfying all of his desires, he is the kind of man that Callicles sees as his happy ideal. If this is the case, then we could all think of people who devote their lives to drinking, smoking, drugs and so on who we would certainly not consider as either happy individuals or role models!

  Callicles, so appalled with the conclusions of this argument, now retreats and goes into something of a sulk, giving simple ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘have it your way’ responses that are far removed from the confident oratory delivered earlier. While Callicles was certainly correct in his prediction that Socrates’ adherence to the philosophic life will lead to his death, this is not a sufficient reason to give up that life and engage in whatever happens to please you at that moment. This does not only apply to professional, full-time philosophers such as Socrates, but is a prescription for all to aim for at least some degree of the philosophic life, most especially the rulers: if philosophers cannot be kings, then kings must become philosophers; to be moderate and moral for the sake of the community as a whole.

  This wonderful dialogue concludes with Socrates having silenced his interlocutors, and he is left to make lengthy speeches rather than engage in dialectic. As Socrates says at the very end of Gorgias:

  ‘It would be shameful for men in our present condition, who are so ignorant that we never think the same for two moments together, even on subjects of the greatest importance, to give ourselves to be led by the truth now revealed to us, which teaches that the best way of life is to practise righteousness and virtue, whether living or dying; let us follow that way and urge others to follow it, instead of the way which you in mistaken confidence are urging upon me; it is quite worthless, Callicles.’

  Plato, Gorgias, 527

  Key terms

  Encomium: Literally means ‘the praise of a person or thing’, from the Greek enkomion.

  Hedonism: The view that the pursuit of pleasure is the most important intrinsic good.

  Oratory: A type of public speaking. Socrates is critical of oratory and is often synonymous with the term ‘rhetoric’ (see Chapter 7 for a definition).

  Panegyric: From the Greek panegyris, meaning ‘a speech fit for a general assembly’, thus a formal public speech.

  Teleological: From the Greek telos, meaning ‘end’ or ‘purpose’. Therefore, a teleological account of the universe is to argue that it has purpose.

  Dig deeper

  Wardy, R. (1996), The Birth of Rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato and their Successors. London: Routledge.

  Waterfield, R. (trans.) (2008), Plato: Gorgias. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  Fact check

  1 Which period in Plato’s dialogues is Gorgias considered to be written in?

  a Early

  b Middle

  c Late

  d Unknown

  2 Which one of the following is not a work by Gorgias?

  a The Encomium of Helen

  b On Non-Existence

  c Gorgias

  d Epitaphios

  3 Which one of the following is a word for ‘the praise of a person or thing’?

  a Encomium

  b Titanium

  c Hedonism

  d Humanism

  4 What is the name of Socrates’ young student in Gorgias?

  a Callicles

  b Chaerephon

  c Chorus

  d Lysis

  5 What is a panegyric?

  a Socratic dialectic

  b A speech designed to attack someone’s character

  c A formal public speech

  d A kind of poem

  6 Who is Socrates addressing in the following quote: ‘…when Chaerephon asks you what art Gorgias is master of, you embark on a panegyric of his art as if someone were attacking it, without, however, saying what it is.’?

  a Callicles

  b Polus

  c Protagoras

  d Pythagoras

  7 Which one of the following quotes, from Gorgias, can be attributed to Socrates?

  a ‘I would rather be good than bad’

  b ‘I would rather be ignorant than a philosopher’

  c ‘I would rather suffer wrong than do wrong’

  d ‘I would rather be man than a woman’

  8 Who asks if Socrates is joking?

  a Chaerephon

  b Protagoras

  c Polus

  d Callicles

  9 What is hedonism?

  a The view that the pursuit of pleasure is the most important intrinsic good

  b The view that it is important to refrain from pleasure

  c The view that pleasure and pain are irrelevant and what matters is reason

  d The view that pleasure and pain are an illusion

  10 Who, does Socrates argue, has the least power in a state?

  a The citizens

  b The Sophists

  c The philosopher

  d The dictator

  11

  Timaeus

  Plato’s dialogue Republic is the best-known of his works and we have devoted much space in this book to its contents and, indeed, will be coming back to it in the next chapter. However, we have seen that there are many other fascinating dialogues that Plato wrote which raise important philosophical questions. Also, Republic has not always been the most famous of Plato’s works; for many hundreds of years this accolade was given to his work Timaeus.

  The dialogue Timaeus is generally considered to be one of Plato’s later works. I say ‘dialogue’ but in actual fact it is unique for Plato as it is virtually a monologue. Socrates only appears briefly at the beginning before taking a back seat and allowing Timaeus centre-stage with a long speech. Why doesn’t Socrates engage in his usual dialectic? There has been much speculation concerning this and one possibility is that he was simply not all that interested! Timaeus is a 5th-century Pythagorean astronomer (though no evidence that he actually existed is available), but Socrates was far more interested in the human being, particularly what it means to be good, so perhaps speculation on the physical world was something that Socrates could not relate to his own philosophy. From Plato’s perspective it may well be that such speculation on natural phenomena did not, in a stylistic way, lend itself well to elenchus. Indeed, some scholars consider Timaeus to not be a work of philosophy at all, but more Plato’s desire to provide a cosmological story.

  The setting

  Timaeus and Christianity

  Historically, Timaeus is very important. If you look at the famous painting The School of Athens by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael (1483–1520), the central figure of Plato is pointing up at the heavens while holding in his hand the book Timaeus. This is because it was not Republic that was considered Plato’s greatest work during the Middle Ages in the Western world for, in fact, it was not so readily available, rather Timaeus was considered representative of Plato’s main views and so when people talked of Platonic philosophy it was Timaeus they were referring to. Therefore, it was also Timaeus that had a huge influence on Christian theology.

  Timaeus begins with a meeting of Socrates with three other people, Timaeus, Hermocrates and Critias. Socrates is asked to remind them all what he had been discussing with them the day before and what we are then presented with is essentially a summary of the political philosophy discussed in Republic. In this sense, Timaeus seems to carry on where Republic left off. Socrates, having recounted his speech of the day before, now asks the others for speeches from them in return. Critias then gives an account of an ancient city that reminds him of Socrates’ constitution, and this now-lost city was called Atlantis. In the s
hort, unfinished Platonic dialogue called Critias, he provides a more detailed account of this city. Following this, Timaeus now begins his monologue (Hermocrates seems to get away without having to make a speech!).

  Timaeus and organicism

  ‘I once heard someone reading from a book by Anaxagoras, and asserting that it is Mind that produces order and is the cause of everything. This explanation pleased me. Somehow it seemed right that Mind should be the cause of everything; and I reflected that if this is so, Mind in producing order sets everything in order and arranges each individual thing in the way that is best for it… These reflections made me suppose, to my delight, that in Anaxagoras I had found an authority on causation after my own heart. I assumed that he would begin by informing us whether the Earth is flat or round, and would then proceed to explain in detail the reason and logical necessity for this… It was a wonderful hope, my friend, but it was quickly dashed. As I read on I discovered that the fellow made no use of Mind and assigned it no causality for the order of the world, but adduced causes like air and ether and water and many other absurdities.’

  Plato, Phaedo, 97B, trans. Hugh Tredennick

  It is worth keeping the above quote in mind when looking at Plato’s philosophical views. As has been stressed throughout this book, no thinker works in a vacuum and Plato was inheriting a rich philosophical tradition from what are referred to as the Presocratics. These early philosophers were as much scientists in that they sought natural explanations for why the universe existed and how it functioned. They did not, of course, possess the empirical tools we have available to us today, so there was inevitably a high degree of speculation but, nonetheless, within the boundaries of knowledge available to them at the time, they sought the most rational explanation that they could.

  The Presocratic Anaxagoras (c. 510–428 BC), who travelled to Athens as a young man, saw, like Democritus, the universe as consisting of atoms, or ‘seeds’ as he prefer to call them, but Anaxagoras differed from Democritus in that the latter saw these elements as forming into the objects we see around us almost by accident, without any guiding principle behind it, whereas Anaxagoras suggests a ‘Mind’, a superior intellect. However, as the quote from Plato above states, it is not altogether clear what this Mind does, if anything at all, much to the frustration of Plato. This may have been somewhat unfair of Plato, for Anaxagoras did, in fact, reach the conclusion that Mind was necessary as some kind of controlling force for the elements.

  What both Plato and Anaxagoras share is the belief that the universe does not come about accidentally or without any purpose. What Plato sets out to do in Timaeus especially is to develop these ideas much further. In this work he expresses his dissatisfaction with Democritus’ notion (although does not mention him by name) of ‘like is moved by like’, illustrated by the doxographer Sextus Empiricus:

  ‘Democritus bases his argument on both animate and inanimate things. For animals, he says, congregate with animals of the same kind – doves with doves, cranes with cranes, and so with the other irrational animals. Similarly in the case of inanimate things, as we can see from seeds that are being riddled and from pebbles on the sea-shore. For in the one case the whirling of the sieve separately arranges lentils with lentils, barley with barley, wheat with wheat; and in the other case, by the motion of the waves, oval pebbles reformed into the same place as oval pebbles, and round pebbles as round pebbles, as though the similarity in things contained some sort of force for collecting things together.

  Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, VII 116–18

  It’s fascinating to read this as it is a clear example of empirical method in action; looking at the natural world and then seeking the most likely explanation. Why was Plato so dissatisfied with this notion of a ‘force’ that collects ‘like with like’? Plato believed that while this does explain how objects are formed or sorted, such as the elements of earth, water, air and fire, the cosmos is far more complex than that, and it is not a sufficient explanation; in other words it tells us so much, but not enough.

  In Plato’s Laws he notes that the universe is a ‘fitting and harmonious’ blend of opposites (Plato, Laws, 889b) such as hot and cold, soft and hard, dry and moist. That is to say, if the natural order is to seek like for like, the cosmos would be quite a boring place, consisting of nothing more than the basic elements. What Plato is doing here is not looking at things close-up, but rather at the ‘cosmic level’ and, from that perspective, the universe consisting of diversity and opposites all of which are being accommodated. As an analogy, it is rather like trying to understand complex sentences by breaking them down into their basic components, i.e. letters; it actually ceases to make any sense at all.

  It is likely not correct to see the Presocratics in the same way as modern materialist views of the universe, for although many did reduce matter to elements such as atoms they nonetheless saw matter as alive, not inanimate. Greek organicism views the cosmos as a living thing and the use of the Greek word physis is better translated as ‘life’ rather than ‘matter’, given the modern connotations of the latter word. Therefore, Plato follows on with this intellectual tradition in Timaeus by describing the cosmos as a created living thing. Being materialist is not the same as mechanist and, in fact, for the Ancient Greeks what mechanical devices that existed would hardly be regarded as reliable, regular or ordered; better to look to biological life.

  While the dialogue seems to follow on from Republic, its philosophical outlook differs considerably, at least if we are to take the views presented by Timaeus as representative of Plato’s own views, which is by no means certain. Whereas in Plato’s Republic the concern is more with the perfect Realm of the Forms than anything that this imperfect world has to offer, in Timaeus the focus is very much on this world. However, the differences are perhaps overemphasized by some scholars.

  The Demiurge

  In Chapter 5 we discussed how Socrates was fascinated by techne, or craftsmanship. In the same way as, say, a carpenter has a goal or function (ergon), so does (or, rather, should) the political ruler. The importance, then, of the Philosopher-King engaging in his ‘craft’ in creating and maintaining the state, which, in turn, is following the pattern of the Forms, is not that far removed from the notion presented in Timaeus of a divine craftsman, a Demiurge, who follows an ‘eternal pattern’ in the creation of the cosmos. The word ‘demiurge’ literally translates as ‘craftsman’ and it is certainly radical to Greek myth to envision a god who seemingly engages in what was considered the demeaning enterprise of manual labour! But, again, we need to keep in mind how important ‘craft’ is in this respect; the demiurge is much more than a god engaged in dull, laborious tasks; rather he is a ‘geometer god’, constructing the cosmos according to universal, geometric principles.

  The demiurge initially is the only god there is, for he is responsible for the creation of the other gods who assist him in the formation of the universe. So, at the ‘beginning’ there exists the demiurge, the eternal patterns or Forms, and the materials (referred to as ‘chaos’) out of which the cosmos is created. Presumably all of this has existed for eternity and it is only the actual crafting of the universe – from chaos into material objects – that occurred in time. Plato’s god is not like the omnipotent Christian God who creates the universe ex nihilo, ‘out of nothing’, because the demiurge is limited in what he can do by two things: the materials that already exist, and the necessity to follow the divine patterns, rather like someone who puts up a flatpack shelf with instructions. What the demiurge does is impose order upon the cosmos, but that order is a set of mathematical instructions that already exists.

  Ex nihilo

  Ex nihilo is a Latin term meaning ‘out of nothing’ and in theology there has been considerable debate over the centuries as to whether God created the universe out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) or, like in Timaeus, out of pre-existent matter (creatio ex materia). In Christianity, scholars point to biblical references that could defend either
view but, generally, the Platonic approach was rejected by most biblical scholars.

  Plato presents a teleological account of the universe. Like other crafts, there is purpose and necessity and, in this way, there is a clear link with Plato’s earlier philosophy in terms of the question of how we, as human beings, should live. For Plato, when we look to the heavens we do not see a blind, purposeless machine, but a purpose-driven, well-ordered, good and beautiful organism. As human beings we should strive to live in harmony with this, to be like gods ourselves, and to align our minds with this harmony.

  The demiurge, out of necessity, constructs the universe out of the pre-existing and universal principles of beauty, simplicity and order, and uses mathematics and geometry to construct this harmonious universe. This is, of course, far removed from our modern-day Darwinian picture of life and intelligence as accidents of evolution, but, for Plato, the universe has meaning and purpose in the same way a human being has meaning and purpose, and is not simply a collection of atoms.

  This all links with Plato’s epistemology, his theory of knowledge, and in considering the question of how we can know what is true in the universe. If we were to subscribe to the nihilistic view that the universe essentially is meaningless, then it follows that there is nothing we can truly know about it. Certainly, we can determine how the laws appear to operate, but that does not explain why things are the way they are. Plato’s cosmology, however, goes much further than the empirical approach. Given his portrayal of the universe as constructed through the principles of order, beauty, simplicity, mathematics and geometry, then it is conceivable for human beings to understand the universe by adopting these self-same principles in our own lives.