PLATO , History, philosophy

[EAGLEeye]

PLATO (427 to 3347 BC)

Plato´s real name was Aritocle, but he came to be called Plato, meaning huge or broad because of his tallness and broad shoulders. He was one of the youngest disciples of Socrates, the great. He belonged to higher aristocratic class and one of the old ruling families of Athens, the queen city-state of he ancient Greece and the center of Greek Philosophy, arts and science. He had an intense respect and an emotional love for Socrates, who, according to Plato, was the wisest and the noblest man he ever met and ever saw.
Although in his philosophy Plato was impressed not only by Socrates, but the greatest philosophical influence on Plato was, beyond all doubt, that of Socrates who according to G.H. Sabine was an immense personality. As a result of his family background and his early association with Socrates, Plato intended to enter practical politics as his life-career. But Socrates devotion to philosophy, love and search for the truth and then the assassination of Socrates veered him away from the practical politics and turned him to philosophy. So, he decided to devote all his life to philosophy.
He opened his famous Academy at Athens and taught there as its head or Principal for nearly a quarter of century; and wrote a large number of dialogues, in every one of which he spoke not as plato , but Socrates. All the critics, however, agree that Plato´s dialogues show Plato´s own philosophy more than that of Socrates. So, without doubting Plato´s sincerity, we must not think that the philosophy of Socrates was really what we find in Plato´s dialogues. Plato´s dialogues , however, prove him one of the few most fascinating writers ever born.


Que: what are the main or salient features of Plato´s Political Philosophy as depicted in his “ Republic”?
Or
What are the main features of Plato´s ideal State as found in his “Republic”?

Ans: Platos´s main political works are three. “ The Republic”, “ The Statesman” and “ The Laws”. In his “ Statesman” and “ Laws” Plato gives his ripe views about the possible state. But in his “ Republic” ( the first political work) in which he depicts his ideal State regardless of the fact whether it can be created in the actual world, and by the actual human beings or not! In “ The Republic” he also defends his great Master, Socrates, and condemns his assassination. His name and fame rest mainly on “The Republic”, which is the first serious and systematic work on Politics, though, a utopian one.
The following are its main and ever-glowing features:
1. The dialogue form
2. Justice
3. Relation of Justice with Good or Virtue
4. Three Parts or Faculties of Soul
5. Class Division or Professional Specialization
6. Communism of Property and Family
7. Rule by the philosophers
8. Feminism
9. No Rights of People and No Individual Liberty
10. Education
11. Censorship


· THE DIALOGUE FORM:---
Like all other works of Plato, “ The Republic”, too, is in the form of dialogues, and a long systematic discussion among the great intellectuals of the time, in which Plato participates not as Plato, but as Socrates, who drank hemlock for the sake of Truth, and who was the wisest and the most virtuous man, i.e, the greatest Philosopher in Plato´s opinion.

· JUSTICE :-----
Justice is the subject matter of “The Republic”. First, some fascistic theories about justice are proved to be wrong. Then taking the state as a human being writ-large, it is decided to find justice in the state before man to make it easy to find it in man. It is the definition of justice which links politics to ethics and ethics to “good” or “virtue” on the one hand, and leads to three fold division of the soul, stratification of the ideal state into three classes, the professional specialization , rule by the philosophers, equality of men and women, and communism of property and wives in the two upper classes on the other hand. The whole work is a masterpiece of deductive reasoning, and all the features are logically inter-connected.
To be continued........................

[Greatniazi]

Its a nice post . Can you plz discuss Plato's "allegory of cave"?

[EAGLEeye]

here is the expalnation i collected over the internet
The Allegory of the Cave—also known as the Analogy of the Cave, Plato's Cave, or the Parable of the Cave—is an allegory used by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work The Republic to illustrate "our nature in its education and want of education" (514a). It is written as a dialogue narrated by Plato's friend Socrates and Plato's brother Glaucon at the beginning of Book VII(514a–520a). The Allegory of the Cave is presented after the metaphor of the sun (507b–509c) and the analogy of the divided line (509d–513e). All three are characterized in relation to dialectic at the end of Book VII and VIII (531d–534e).
Plato lets Socrates describe a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Plato's Socrates, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.
The Allegory may be related to Plato's Theory of Forms, according to which the "Forms" (or "Ideas"), and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. Only knowledge of the Forms constitutes real knowledge.[1] In addition, the Allegory of the Cave is an attempt to explain the philosopher's place in society: to attempt to enlighten the "prisoners".
Inside the cave
In Plato's fictional dialogue, Socrates begins by describing a scenario in which what people take to be real would in fact be an illusion. He asks Glaucon to imagine a cave inhabited by prisoners who have been chained and held immobile since childhood: not only are their arms and legs held in place, but their heads are also fixed, compelled to gaze at a wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which people walk carrying things on their heads "including figures of men and animals made of wood, stone and other materials". The prisoners watch the shadows cast by the men, not knowing they are shadows. There are also echoes off the wall from the noise produced from the walkway.
Socrates suggests the prisoners would take the shadows to be real things and the echoes to be real sounds, not just reflections of reality, since they are all they had ever seen or heard. They would praise as clever, whoever could best guess which shadow would come next, as someone who understood the nature of the world, and the whole of their society would depend on the shadows on the wall.
Release from the cave
Socrates then supposes that a prisoner is freed and permitted to stand up. If someone were to show him the things that had cast the shadows, he would not recognize them for what they were and could not name them; he would believe the shadows on the wall to be more real than what he sees.
"Suppose further," Socrates says, "that the man was compelled to look at the fire: wouldn't he be struck blind and try to turn his gaze back toward the shadows, as toward what he can see clearly and hold to be real? What if someone forcibly dragged such a man upward, out of the cave: wouldn't the man be angry at the one doing this to him? And if dragged all the way out into the sunlight, wouldn't he be distressed and unable to see "even one of the things now said to be true," viz. the shadows on the wall (516a)?
After some time on the surface, however, the freed prisoner would acclimate. He would see more and more things around him, until he could look upon the Sun. He would understand that the Sun is the "source of the seasons and the years, and is the steward of all things in the visible place, and is in a certain way the cause of all those things he and his companions had been seeing" (516b–c). (See also Plato's metaphor of the Sun, which occurs near the end of The Republic, Book VI)[2]
Return to the cave
Socrates next asks Glaucon to consider the condition of this man. "Wouldn't he remember his first home, what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow prisoners, and consider himself happy and them pitiable? And wouldn't he disdain whatever honors, praises, and prizes were awarded there to the ones who guessed best which shadows followed which? Moreover, were he to return there, wouldn't he be rather bad at their game, no longer being accustomed to the darkness? Wouldn't it be said of him that he went up and came back with his eyes corrupted, and that it's not even worth trying to go up? And if they were somehow able to get their hands on and kill the man who attempts to release and lead them up, wouldn't they kill him?" (517a) The prisoners, ignorant of the world behind them, would see the freed man with his corrupted eyes and be afraid of anything but what they already know. Philosophers analyzing the allegory argue that the prisoners would ironically find the freed man stupid due to the current state of his eyes and temporarily not being able to see the shadows, which are the world to the prisoners.
Remarks on the allegory
Socrates remarks that this allegory can be taken with what was said before, namely the metaphor of the Sun, and the divided line. In particular, he likens
"the region revealed through sight"—the ordinary objects we see around us—"to the prison home, and the light of the fire in it to the power of the Sun. And in applying the going up and the seeing of what's above to the soul's journey to the intelligible place, you not mistake my expectation, since you desire to hear it. A god doubtless knows if it happens to be true. At all events, this is the way the phenomena look to me: in the region of the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable effort, is the idea of good; but once seen, it must be concluded that this is indeed the cause for all things of all that is right and beautiful—in the visible realm it gives birth to light and its sovereign; in the intelligible realm, itself sovereign, it provided truth and intelligence—and that the man who is going to act prudently in private or in public must see it" (517b–c).
After "returning from divine contemplations to human evils", a man
"is graceless and looks quite ridiculous when—with his sight still dim and before he has gotten sufficiently accustomed to the surrounding darkness—he is compelled in courtrooms or elsewhere to contend about the shadows of justice or the representations of which they are the shadows, and to dispute about the way these things are understood by men who have never seen justice itself?" (517d–e)

[EAGLEeye]

· THREE PARTS OR FACULTIES OF SOUL
In a fine, long discussion, Plato proves that the soul of every male and female human being is like a three storey building, i.e, has three parts or faculties. The lowest part is the appetitive part, in which lives the love of worldly goods and wealth. The second part is the spirited part in which resides courage and love of fame and glory. The third part the highest part is the rational part, which is the home of reason or wisdom, i.e, that mental capacity which enables one to know the ultimate meaning of justice, Good, Virtue and Beauty in their abstract form. He further holds and proves that the whole personality of every male and female human being is predominated by one of the three parts of his or her soul.

· CLASS DIVISION OR PROFESSIONAL SPECIALIZATION.
It is on the basis of the above mentioned three-fold division of human-soul that he logically comes to the professional specialization, for the sake of which he divides his ideal state into three classes quite in accordance with the three fold division of human soul. Firstly, all the male and female citizens who are predominated by the appetitive part of their soul, are to constitute the lowest or the huge majority class of the Artisans, which includes merchants, traders, farmers, shopkeepers and other manual workers. This class is to provide the Ideal state its material needs and is allowed to have private property and family. Secondly, all those citizens (male as well as females) who are predominated by the spirited part of their soul are to constitute the Auxillary class, i.e; the military officers and soldiers, as well as administrators. Thirdly, all the male as well as female citizens who are predominated by the rational part of their soul are naturally to be few in number, are to form the GuARDIAN class of the philosopher rulers.

· COMMUNISM OF PROPERTY AND FAMILY
The upper two classes of the ideal state are to forgo private property and family, because private property and family hinder devotion to the service of the state. Hence the males and females of the upper two classes are to live a collective life in the state barracks, and are to be very simply fed and clothed by the huge artisan class. Besides, they are to mate without any traditional or formal marriage. They are to mate under the state-supervision in special seasons. Surely the Platonic Communism is totally different from that of Karl Marx.
· Rule BY The Philosophers.
The greatest lesson that Plato learnt from Socrates, was that “VIRTUE IS KNOWLEDGE”. But virtue is not the ordinary type of knowledge, i.e the knowledge based on fallacious common beliefs and prejudices or the knowledge of perishable material things. Virtue is knowledge of Universal Facts and Eternal Truths; it is the knowledge of abstract Forms or Ideas behind material things, which never change. By this he means the knowledge not, for instance, of actual states, but of the idea of state behind them; the knowledge not of beautiful things, but of the Idea of Beauty behind etc. Hence virtue is that knowledge which is above time and place, it not only deepens mind and widens the vision, but also purifies and ennobles heart.it is this knowledge which enables one to know that justice, Good and beauty exist independently of who is just, good and beautiful. It is with the help of this knowledge that one can distinguish the just from the unjust, and th good from the evil in the ultimate sense. But this knowledge can be acquired, through a long necessary education and training, by only those few males and females whose soul´s rational part predominates the appetitive and spirited part, i.e, the born and natural philosophers. And if the ultimate purpose of the state is good and if this aim can be achieved only when the state is based on justice, then the philosophers who can know the good and the justice in the ultimate sense. Not only this, but they must be above formal laws and foolish or biased traditions also to be able to use their wisdom and virtue freely in the service of the state!

· FEMINISM
Feminism is also a salient feature of Plato´s Ideal State. In his Ideal State women enjoy full equality with men in all the three classes, because the female souls like the male ones also contain the same three parts or faculties. His feminism began under the Spartan influence, but went logically much farther than the position of the Spartan women.