The Philosophy Book

by DK Publishing

  The purpose of life

  Socrates lived in Athens in the second half of the 5th century BCE. As a young man he is believed to have studied natural philosophy, looking at the various explanations of the nature of the universe, but then became involved in the politics of the city-state and concerned with more down-to-earth ethical issues, such as the nature of justice. However, he was not interested in winning arguments, or arguing for the sake of making money—a charge that was leveled at many of his contemporaries. Nor was he seeking answers or explanations—he was simply examining the basis of the concepts we apply to ourselves (such as “good”, “bad”, and “just”), for he believed that understanding what we are is the first task of philosophy.

  Socrates’ central concern, then, was the examination of life, and it was his ruthless questioning of people’s most cherished beliefs (largely about themselves) that earned him his enemies—but he remained committed to his task until the very end. According to the account of his defence at his trial, recorded by Plato, Socrates chose death rather than face a life of ignorance: “The life which is unexamined is not worth living.”

  But what exactly is involved in this examination of life? For Socrates it was a process of questioning the meaning of essential concepts that we use every day but have never really thought about, thereby revealing their real meaning and our own knowledge or ignorance. Socrates was one of the first philosophers to consider what it was that constituted a “good” life; for him it meant achieving peace of mind as a result of doing the right thing, rather than living according to the moral codes of society. And the “right thing” can only be determined through rigorous examination.

  Socrates rejected the notion that concepts such as virtue were relative, insisting instead that they were absolutes, applicable not just to citizens of Athens, or Greece, but to all people in the world. He believed that virtue (areté in Greek, which at the time implied excellence and fulfilment) was “the most valuable of possessions”, and that no-one actually desires to do evil. Anyone performing evil actions would be acting against their conscience and would therefore feel uncomfortable; and as we all strive for peace of mind it is not something we would do willingly. Evil, he thought, was done because of lack of wisdom and knowledge. From this he concluded that “there is only one good: knowledge; and one evil: ignorance.” Knowledge is inextricably bound to morality—it is the “only one good”—and for this reason we must continually “examine” our lives.

  "I am a citizen of the world."

  Socrates

  Socrates’ dialectical method was a simple method of questioning that brought to light the often false assumptions on which particular claims to knowledge are based.

  Care of the soul

  For Socrates, knowledge may also play a part in life after death. In the Apology, Plato’s Socrates prefaces his famous quote about the unexamined life by saying: “I tell you that to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking, and that examining both myself and others is really the very best thing a man can do.” This gaining of knowledge, rather than wealth or high status, is the ultimate goal of life. It is not a matter of entertainment or curiosity—it is the reason why we exist. Moreover, all knowledge is ultimately self-knowledge, for it creates the person you are within this world, and fosters the care of the immortal soul.

  In Phaedo, Socrates says that an unexamined life leads the soul to be “confused and dizzy, as if it were drunk”, while the wise soul achieves stability, its straying finally brought to an end.

  Dialectical method

  Socrates quickly became a well-known figure in Athens, with a reputation for an enquiring mind. A friend of his, so the story goes, asked the priestess of Apollo at Delphi who the wisest man in the world was: the oracular reply was that there was no-one wiser than Socrates. When Socrates heard about this, he was astounded, and went to the most knowledgeable people he could find to try to disprove it. What he discovered was that these people only thought they knew a great deal; under examination, their knowledge was proved to be either limited or false.

  What was more important, however, was the method he used to question their knowledge. He took the standpoint of someone who knew nothing, and merely asked questions, exposing contradictions in arguments and gaps in knowledge to gradually elicit insights. He likened the process to his mother’s profession of midwife, assisting in the birth of ideas.

  Through these discussions, Socrates came to realize that the Delphic oracle had been right—he was the wisest man in Athens, not because of his knowledge but because he professed to know nothing. He also saw that the inscription on the entrance to the temple at Delphi, gnothi seauton (“know thyself”), was just as significant. To gain knowledge of the world and oneself it was necessary to realize the limits of one’s own ignorance and to remove all preconceptions. Only then could one hope to determine the truth.

  Socrates set about engaging the people of Athens in discussion on topics such as the nature of love, justice, and loyalty. His mission, misunderstood at the time as a dangerous form of Sophistry—or cleverness for the sake of it—was not to instruct the people, nor even simply to learn what they knew, but to explore the ideas that they had. It was the conversation itself, with Socrates guiding it, that provided him with insights. Through a series of questions, he revealed the ideas and assumptions his opponent held, then exposed the contradictions within them and brought them to agree to a new set of conclusions.

  This method of examining an argument by rational discussion from a position of ignorance marked a complete change in philosophical thinking. It was the first known use of inductive argument, in which a set of premises based on experience is first established to be true, and then shown to lead to a universal truth in conclusion. This powerful form of argument was developed by Aristotle, and later by Francis Bacon, who used it as the starting point of his scientific method. It became, therefore, the foundation not only of Western philosophy, but of all the empirical sciences.

  "I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance."

  Socrates

  Socrates was put to death in 399 BCE, ultimately for questioning the basis of Athenian morality. Here he accepts the bowl of hemlock that will kill him, and gestures defiantly at the heavens.

  SOCRATES

  Born in Athens in 469 BCE, Socrates was the son of a stonemason and a midwife. It is likely that he pursued his father’s profession, and had the opportunity to study philosophy, before he was called up for military service. After distinguishing himself during the Peloponnesian War, he returned to Athens, and for a while involved himself in politics. However, when his father died he inherited enough money to live with his wife Xanthippe without having to work.

  From then on, Socrates became a familiar sight around Athens, involving himself in philosophical discussions with fellow citizens and gaining a following of young students. He was eventually accused of corrupting the minds of young Athenians, and was sentenced to death. Although he was offered the choice of exile, he accepted the guilty verdict and was given a fatal dose of hemlock in 399 BCE.

  Key works

  4th–3rd century BCE Plato’s record of Socrates’ life and philosophy in the Apology and numerous dialogues.

  See also: Thales of Miletus • Pythagoras • Heraclitus • Parmenides • Protagoras • Plato • Aristotle

  IN CONTEXT

  BRANCH

  Epistemology

  APPROACH

  Epistemology

  BEFORE

  6th century BCE The
Milesian philosophers propose theories to explain the nature and substance of the cosmos.

  c.500 BCE Heraclitus argues that everything is constantly in a state of flux or change.

  c.450 BCE Protagoras says that truth is relative.

  AFTER

  c.335 BCE Aristotle teaches that we can find truth by observing the world around us.

  c.250 CE Plotinus founds the Neo-Platonist school, a religious take on Plato’s ideas.

  386 St. Augustine of Hippo integrates Plato’s theories into Christian doctrine.

  In 399 BCE, Plato’s mentor Socrates was condemned to death. Socrates had left no writings, and Plato took it upon himself to preserve what he had learnt from his master for posterity—first in the Apology, his retelling of Socrates’ defense at his trial, and later by using Socrates as a character in a series of dialogues. In these dialogues, it is sometimes difficult to untangle which are Socrates’ thoughts and which are the original thoughts of Plato, but a picture emerges of Plato using the methods of his master to explore and explain his own ideas.

  Initially Plato’s concerns were very much those of his mentor: to search for definitions of abstract moral values such as “justice” and “virtue”, and to refute Protagoras’s notion that right and wrong are relative terms. In the Republic, Plato set out his vision of the ideal city-state and explored aspects of virtue. But in the process, he also tackled subjects outside moral philosophy. Like earlier Greek thinkers, he questioned the nature and substance of the cosmos, and explored how the immutable and eternal could exist in a seemingly changing world. However, unlike his predecessors, Plato concluded that the “unchanging” in nature is the same as the “unchanging” in morals and society.

  Seeking the Ideal

  In the Republic, Plato describes Socrates posing questions about the virtues, or moral concepts, in order to establish clear and precise definitions of them. Socrates had famously said that “virtue is knowledge”, and that to act justly, for example, you must first ask what justice is. Plato decides that before referring to any moral concept in our thinking or reasoning, we must first explore both what we mean by that concept and what makes it precisely the kind of thing that it is. He raises the question of how we would recognize the correct, or perfect, form of anything—a form that is true for all societies and for all time. By doing so, Plato is implying that he thinks some kind of ideal form of things in the world we inhabit—whether those things are moral concepts or physical objects—must actually exist, of which we are in some way aware.

  Plato talks about objects in the world around us, such as beds. When we see a bed, he states, we know that it is a bed and we can recognize all beds, even though they may differ in numerous ways. Dogs in their many species are even more varied, yet all dogs share the characteristic of “dogginess”, which is something we can recognize, and that allows us to say we know what a dog is. Plato argues that it is not just that a shared “dogginess” or “bedness” exists, but that we all have in our minds an idea of an ideal bed or dog, which we use to recognize any particular instance.

  Taking a mathematical example to further his argument, Plato shows that true knowledge is reached by reasoning, rather than through our senses. He states that we can work out in logical steps that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, or that the sum of the three interior angles of any triangle is always 180 degrees. We know the truth of these statements, even though the perfect triangle does not exist anywhere in the natural world. Yet we are able to perceive the perfect triangle—or the perfect straight line or circle—in our minds, using our reason. Plato, therefore, asks whether such perfect forms can exist anywhere.

  World of Ideas

  Reasoning brings Plato to only one conclusion—that there must be a world of Ideas, or Forms, which is totally separate from the material world. It is there that the Idea of the perfect “triangle”, along with the Idea of the perfect “bed” and “dog” exists. He concludes that human senses cannot perceive this place directly—it is only perceptible to us through reason. Plato even goes on to state that this realm of Ideas is “reality”, and that the world around us is merely modelled upon it.

  To illustrate his theory, Plato presents what has become known as the “Allegory of the Cave.” He asks us to imagine a cave in which people have been imprisoned since birth, tied up facing the back wall in the darkness. They can only face straight ahead. Behind the prisoners is a bright fire, which casts shadows onto the wall they are facing. There is also a rampart between the fire and the prisoners along which people walk and hold up various objects from time to time, so that the shadows of these objects are cast on the wall. These shadows are all the prisoners know of the world; they have no concept of the actual objects themselves. If one of the prisoners manages to untie himself and turn around, he will see the objects themselves. But after a lifetime of entrapment, he is likely to be confused, as well as dazzled by the fire, and will most likely turn back toward the wall and the only reality he knows.

  Plato believes that everything that our senses perceive in the material world is like the images on the cave wall, merely shadows of reality. This belief is the basis of his theory of Forms, which is that for every earthly thing that we have the power to perceive with our senses, there is a corresponding “Form” (or “Idea”)—an eternal and perfect reality of that thing—in the world of Ideas. Because what we perceive via our senses is based on an experience of imperfect or incomplete “shadows” of reality, we can have no real knowledge of those things. At best, we may have opinions, but genuine knowledge can only come from study of the Ideas, and that can only ever be achieved through reason, rather than through our deceptive senses.

  This separation of two distinct worlds, one of appearance, the other of what Plato considers to be reality, also solves the problem of finding constants in an apparently changing world. The material world may be subject to change, but Plato’s world of Ideas is eternal and immutable. Plato applies his theory not just to concrete things, such as beds and dogs, but also to abstract concepts. In Plato’s world of Ideas, there is an Idea of justice, which is true justice, and all the instances of justice in the material world around us are models, or lesser variants, of it. The same is true of the concept of goodness, which Plato considers to be the ultimate Idea—and the goal of all philosophical enquiry.

  "If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals."

  Plato

  The Allegory of the Cave, in which knowledge of the world is limited to mere shadows of reality and truth, is used by Plato to explain his idea of a world of perfect Forms, or Ideas.

  According to Plato’s theory of Forms, every horse that we encounter in the world around us is a lesser version of an “ideal”, or perfect, horse that exists in a world of Forms or Ideas—a realm that humans can only access through their ability to reason.

  Innate knowledge

  The problem remains of how we can come to know these Ideas, so that we have the ability to recognize the imperfect instances of them in the world we inhabit. Plato argues that our conception of Ideal Forms must be innate, even if we are not aware of this. He believes that human beings are divided into two parts: the body and the soul. Our bodies possess the senses, through which we are able to perceive the material world, while the soul possesses the reason with which we can perceive the realm of Ideas. Plato concludes that our soul, which is immortal and eternal, must have inhabited the world of Ideas before our birth, and still yearns to return to that r
ealm after our death. So when we see variations of the Ideas in the world with our senses, we recognize them as a sort of recollection. Recalling the innate memories of these Ideas requires reason—an attribute of the soul.

  For Plato, the philosopher’s job is to use reason to discover the Ideal Forms or Ideas. In the Republic, he also argues that it is philosophers, or rather those who are true to the philosopher’s calling, who should be the ruling class. This is because only the true philosopher can understand the exact nature of the world and the truth of moral values. However, just like a prisoner in the “Allegory of the Cave” who sees the real objects rather than their shadows, many will just turn back to the only world they feel comfortable with. Plato often found it difficult to convince his fellow philosophers of the true nature of their calling.