I think that to say that a Form is a kind, is a misunderstanding of Forms. I am not saying that a philosopher would not divide things into kinds. I am saying that an argument which proceeds in this way could be deceptive. Because of this we have to be very careful to analyze, and carefully understand the proposed divisions, and boundaries, to ensure that they are appropriately created. — Metaphysician Undercover

The misconception of Forms as “kinds” or even “universals” is a standard device employed by anti-Platonists who use Aristotle to attack Plato. Lloyd Gerson correctly calls it “an enduring urban myth in the history of philosophy”.

Moreover, if we pay attention to Plato’s wider theoretical framework we can see that he uses all fields of human knowledge and activity in the service of a higher goal, which is “to become godlike (homoiosis Theo) as far as possible”:

Therefore we ought to try to escape from earth to the dwelling of the gods as quickly as we can; and to escape is to become like God, so far as this is possible (Theaet. 176a – b)

Plato uses religious beliefs and ethical principles to elevate the would-be philosopher’s mind to an intellectual and moral level where he can begin his philosophical practice. Similarly, mathematical disciplines are not studied for empirical purposes, but with a view to acquiring an ability for ordered and abstract thinking. The same is true of logic or dialectic. The ultimate telos or goal is always the One. The philosopher can fully understand the world and himself only in the light of the One which is the source of all knowledge and all truth.

If the philosopher is to become “as godlike as possible”, then he must make his mind as similar to the mind of God as he can. The intellectual training he has undergone in the preparatory stages has served the purpose of lifting him out the morass of ordinary human condition. But that training itself must be transcended. He must leave logic and everything else behind in order to have an experience of intelligence itself.

We can see why some forms of logic may be fruitful. Trying to grasp how divine intelligence creates the world, for example, by means of Ideas or Forms that impart their properties and, therefore, being to particulars that make up the sensible world, may help the philosopher to understand how divine intelligence works.

But other forms of logic may be less helpful in what the Platonic philosopher is aiming to achieve. Doing too much dividing and classifying, asking too many questions, raising too many doubts, etc., does not seem to be the best way to make one’s mind godlike.

In other words, there must come a time when thinking or any other mental activity becomes counterproductive. If a higher intelligence does exist and it is changeless, then, in order to catch a glimpse of it, it is necessary to make our mind equally changeless and still, as Socrates says in the Phaedo:

But when the soul inquires alone by itself [i.e., undisturbed by body, sense-perceptions, and thoughts and emotions associated with these], it departs into the realm of the pure, the everlasting, the immortal and the changeless, and being akin to these it dwells always with them whenever it is by itself and is not hindered, and it has rest from its wanderings and remains always the same and unchanging with the changeless, since it is in communion therewith. And this state of the soul is called wisdom (phronesis) (Phaedo 79d)

It is the wisdom acquired through a grasp of the One that enables the philosopher to approach philosophical problems by appealing to first principles. And we can arrive at Plato’s One only through a process of simplification or reduction: the multiplicity of sensible particulars is reduced to intelligible Forms, and Forms are reduced to the One. This is the inner logic of Plato’s metaphysics. Hair-splitting mental exercises may be intellectually interesting, but they lead in the opposite direction, i.e., the direction aimed at by the sophist who (covertly or overtly) denies the existence of metaphysical realities ....

At Notre Dame Phil Reviews (NDPR), John Palmer responded to Rickless' Parmenides in some detail.

Socrates [... at Phaedo(76d7-e7)] marks the existence of forms as an unargued and as yet unsecured hypothesis — Palmer

Since the "theory of forms" is more accurately a hypothesis [... a hunch] under development in the Symposium, Phaedo, and Republic, Rickless's attempt to furnish a systematic reconstruction of the "theory" in would-be definitive fashion not only is misplaced but also makes it more difficult than necessary to understand what to make of Parmenides' criticisms. — Palmer

Don't get me wrong, I love modern logical reconstructions based on Plato's work because they make for fun reading. But that's not the same as reading and attempting to make sense of the original dialogue. Rickless's F and G only say what Rickless wants them to say.

I'd favour the reading that what is shown instead is that the arguments reach contrary conclusions, and hence that the One is an incoherent notion. — Banno

It would seem so.
Young Socrates fully agrees with the Parmenides character that particulars can't possibly exist but challenges Parmenides to show the same for the Forms. Part II is intended to prove that Forms are incoherent as well.

It is generally agreed that Plato was not fazed by this apparent debacle. That's because Plato had moved past these simple Aristotelian(!) modes of thought about the world, so that simple Aristotelian critique was no longer of direct concern to him. Correspondingly Plato wouldn't care what Rickless' logic said about a no longer Platonic "Theory of Forms".

We do see things differently, but I think it is safe to say that neither of us feel threatened by that or feels the need to convert the other. — Fooloso4

Well, I don't feel any sense of antagonism towards you, or from you, although I also feel as though our interpretation is poles apart. I do accept that there is a cognitive cognition which corresponds to what that article I linked calls 'divine illumination', and that this is what the 'ascent from the cave' is about. But I also note that the essay says 'For most people today it is hard to take divine illumination seriously, hard to view it as anything other than a quaint relic.'

Is this understanding the result of a realization or an experience or just something you believe to be true? — Fooloso4

If I had discovered a profound philosophical insight, or had such realisation, how could I convey that, or communicate it? What could be said?

he says in the Apology that his wisdom is human wisdom not divine wisdom. — Fooloso4

Recall that Plato is dualist. That comes across especially in the Phaedo where he discusses the separation of the body from the soul. I know your reading of the Phaedo will deprecate that interpretation. But when we say that something is 'human', I think the implicit meaning is 'as distinct from religious'. I think the current interpretation of Plato is colored by this implicit opposition, where the spiritual aspect is 'bracketed out', so to speak. But the intellect, nous, is equated in Greek philosophy with the capacity which percieves the Forms, and is the source of the idea of the 'rational soul' in the Western tradition.

I'm reading Pierre Hadot' Philosophy as a Way of Life:

For Hadot...the means for the philosophical student to achieve the “complete reversal of our usual ways of looking at things” epitomized by the Sage were...spiritual exercises. These exercises encompassed all of those practices still associated with philosophical teaching and study: reading, listening, dialogue, inquiry, and research. However, they also included practices deliberately aimed at addressing the student’s larger way of life, and demanding daily or continuous repetition: practices of attention (prosoche), meditations (meletai), memorizations of dogmata, self-mastery (enkrateia), the therapy of the passions, the remembrance of good things, the accomplishment of duties, and the cultivation of indifference towards indifferent things (PWL 84). Hadot acknowledges his use of the term “spiritual exercises” may create anxieties, by associating philosophical practices more closely with religious devotion than typically done. Hadot’s use of the adjective “spiritual” (or sometimes “existential”) indeed aims to capture how these practices, like devotional practices in the religious traditions are aimed at generating and reactivating a constant way of living and perceiving in prokopta, despite the distractions, temptations, and difficulties of life. For this reason, they call upon far more than “reason alone.”

I understand why this is out of keeping with the zeitgeist - it 'creates anxieties' - but I've gotten over that. Much work, however, remains to be done.

'greater than' and 'smaller than' are relative terms then everything and everyone participates in each of Greatness and Smallness to some degree. — magritte

Greater and smaller are relative terms when describing particular things, not the Forms themselves. Simmias is greater than Socrates and smaller than Phaedo, but Greatness itself is not greater or smaller.

What makes such problems especially challenging is that it is wise to assume that Plato's conception of participation to explain particulars and predication is fundamentally sound. — magritte

Plato raises serious doubt about this:

Socrates likens the Forms to originals or paradigms, and things of the world to images or copies. This raises several problems about the relation between Forms and particulars, the methexis problem. Socrates is well aware of the problem and admits that he cannot give an account of how particulars participate in Forms. — Fooloso4

In the Phaedo Socrates also says that the Forms are an hypothesis.

On each occasion I put down as hypothesis whatever account I judge to be mightiest; and whatever seems to me to be consonant with this, I put down as being true ...

And:

I no longer understand or recognize those other sophisticated causes, and if someone tells me that a thing is beautiful because it has a bright color or shape or any such thing, I ignore these other reasons—for all these confuse me—but I simply, naively and perhaps foolishly cling to this, that nothing else makes it beautiful other than the presence of, or the sharing in, or however you may describe its relationship to that Beautiful we mentioned, for I will not insist on the precise nature of the relationship, but that all beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful. That, I think, is the safest answer I can give myself or anyone else. (100c-e)

See also my discussion of the city at war in my discussion of Timaeus. The static Forms cannot account for a world that is active, a world in which there is chance and indeterminacy.

I think Plato reject this nonsensical sophistry concerning "the One" and moved on to a much more intuitive principle, "the good". — Metaphysician Undercover

You could be right. However, if Plato thinks it is “sophistry”, why would he write a whole dialogue on it? Why would Aristotle say that for Plato the One is the cause of the essence in the Forms and the Forms are the cause of the essence in the other things?

Moreover, how is it sophistry to say that the One and the Good are identical?

It is generally acknowledged that Plato is an eclectic writer and that much of his philosophy is borrowed from others.

I think the influence of Orphism, Pythagoreanism, Heracliteanism, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Socrates and others on Plato’s writings is quite clear.

It is true that Plato in the dialogues tends to be hostile toward the Sophists, but there is no reason to believe that his general rejection of Sophist teachings and practices means that he rejects absolutely everything they say.

Certainly, the Stranger’s claims in the Sophist are not refuted. His classification of things according to Being, Rest, Change, Sameness, and Difference, etc. is not unsound. This is what the mind does with things in general, anyway. There is no reason why it cannot be applied to Forms. Discussing the relation of Forms to one another is not “sophistry”. Becoming lost in endless discussions about the Forms is, of course, another story.

But the fact of the matter is that, though on the whole correct, Plato’s original Theory of Forms (as presented in the Phaedo) that defines particulars as things that participate in the properties of the Forms, is not sufficient to explain the exact nature of particulars. Plato, therefore, introduces new concepts like Limit, Matter, and Receptacle (Philebus, Timaeus).

There is no denying that Forms do have some common characteristics such as One and Being. So, it is not incorrect to say that the One is the cause of the essence in all Forms and, therefore, above both essence and Forms.

This also leads to the question of how the first principle of all can be both One and Many. The problem of One and Many is a key issue discussed in the Philebus. And the whole purpose of it is to explain how the Good, which is one, or undifferentiated unity, can generate multiplicity.

This is explained by introducing the Dyad of Limit and Unlimited that is at once “One and Many” and, through its interaction with the One, brings forth multiplicity. Limit being that which imposes form on what is unlimited, is the principle of Form. Unlimited is the principle of Matter. The two are used by Creative Intelligence (which is a manifestation of the One or the Good) to impose Form on Matter and thereby generate the Physical Universe.

Incidentally, Creative Intelligence itself is both one and many or “one-many”. As a self-directed activity proceeding from the One or the Good, it is one. As Intelligence consisting of many Forms and performing various acts of cognition in relation to the Forms, it is many.

Plato himself makes Socrates say:

A gift of Gods to men, as I believe, was tossed down from some divine source through the agency of a Prometheus together with a gleaming fire; and the ancients, who were better than we and lived nearer the Gods, handed down the tradition that all the things which are ever said to exist are sprung from one and many and have inherent in them the finite and the infinite (Phileb. 16c).

The Finite (peras) and the Infinite (apeiria) or Limit and Unlimited are later said to be the principles that Intelligence (Nous) uses to arrange and order the Universe (Phileb. 30c).

Plato here uses a Pythagorean theory that he barely modifies to fit his own system.

So, it is clear that when Plato takes up a theory that appears to be inconsistent with his own, he does not necessarily do so in order to eliminate one of those two theories. On the contrary, his tendency is to combine them into a new or improved theory that is superior to both and serves to provide additional support to the general Platonic framework.

The very same procedure is employed by Plato’s later followers like Plotinus in their attempt to develop and systematize Plato’s philosophy. We may or may not always and unreservedly agree with all their innovations, but we must concede that they are, after all, Platonists. And it is the Platonists, not the Sophists, that identify the One and the Good.

The fact is that one is prior to many. When we reduce a multiplicity to the absolute minimum, we reduce it to one, not to “good”.

So, Ultimate Reality is One.

The One is characterized by Being and Awareness. First is must Be, and second it must be Something. Prior to Universal Creation, when nothing else exists, the One cannot be anything else aside from Being and Awareness or Consciousness.

This is why Plotinus says that the One (or the Good) has (or is) a kind of awareness or consciousness. For the same reason, Plato calls it the source and cause of all knowledge: knowledge presupposes awareness or consciousness. This ultimate Awareness or Consciousness that is the source and cause of all knowledge, is the One or the Good.

Though being good, it is not the One (or the Good) that desires the Good. The Good has no reason to desire itself. It is the Intellect that, having proceeded from the Good, desires the Good and wishes to make the Universe as beautiful (and as good) as possible.

At the same time, though being beautiful and good, creation represents a departure from real being. Things can only be truly real when they are identical with the Real. Having proceeded from the Good or the One, all things ultimately desire to return to the Good or the One in accordance with the triadic cycle of abiding-procession-return (mone-proodos-epistrophe). The One always abides in itself. The Many proceed from the One and eventually return to the One which is their source.

The desire to return to the One is the root of “love”. We love things that make us feel one with them and with ourselves. This is why we call them “beautiful” and “good”. But their beauty and goodness come from the Forms which in turn come from the One. Therefore, our love must be redirected to its true object. Love of the beautiful and the good, when practiced as indicated in the Symposium, takes us to the direct vision or experience of the Good or the One that is the Higher Self of all.

In other words, intelligence comes to rest and is truly at peace and happy only when it is at one with itself.

As Socrates puts it:

And you will act with your eyes turned on what is divine and bright. And looking thereon you will behold and know both yourselves and your good. And so you will act aright and well. If you act in this way, I am ready to warrant that you must be happy (Alcibiades 1 134d).

There is no need to explicitly mention the One everywhere. The point is to follow the logical process suggested in the dialogues. Once a principle of inquiry has been established that reduces everything to a first principle, then we must logically arrive at an irreducible One. Of course, we are under no obligation to do so. It is a matter of personal choice. — Apollodorus

OK, so you define "the One" with "first principle", so that passages which are translated with the use of "first principle", you interpret as "the One".

A beautiful girl, a beautiful horse, and a beautiful lyre are beautiful by reason of their co-having, having a share, or participating in the Beautiful (or Beauty) itself (Hipp. Maj. 287e-289d).

The girl, horse, and lyre are things that participate; beauty is the property or attribute they participate in; Beauty itself is the unparticipated, transcendent Form to which the property or attribute properly belongs. — Apollodorus

Why do you first say here, that they are participating in Beauty itself, then you say Beauty itself is the unparticipated?

Plato distinguishes between a property, e.g. Beauty, “itself” (auto to kalon), and beauty in beautiful things or in us (en hemin kalon) (Phaedo 102d). Beauty itself is perfect, eternal, transcendent and “unparticipated”. It cannot be co-had. What is co-had is an imperfect, transient, immanent and “participated” or “shared in” version or likeness (homoiotes) of Beauty, also referred to as “enmattered form” (enulon eidos). — Apollodorus

I disagree with this. I think it's very clear in The Symposium that the Idea of Beauty, which is Beauty itself, is participated in. And I can't find your reference in Phaedo. In any case, this discrepancy points to the problems of the theory of participation which I described earlier.

Personally, I see the One as not comparable to a particular sensible object. To begin with, it is not an instance of a universal. So it is not a particular. :smile: — Apollodorus

A particular is not necessarily an instance of a universal. That is the conclusion of a judgement

We can try this one:

... each of the abstract qualities exists and that other things which participate in these get their names from them, then Socrates asked: “Now if you assent to this, do you not, when you say that Simmias is greater than Socrates and smaller than Phaedo, say that there is in Simmias greatness and smallness?” — [Phaedo,102b]

This is a crucial problem in the Forms. If the opposites (complements or contraries?) 'greater than' and 'smaller than' are relative terms then everything and everyone participates in each of Greatness and Smallness to some degree. But to what degree? Only in context can this be determined, otherwise these terms and all other Forms are in danger of collapsing.

[Edit] What makes such problems especially challenging is that it is wise to assume that Plato's conception of participation to explain particulars and predication is fundamentally sound. This way, the quest becomes more formal in search of gaps and logical flaws in his model.

Moreover, how is it sophistry to say that the One and the Good are identical? — Apollodorus

I might agree that the One is the same as the Good, in the sense of "the first" principle. This provides a clear defining feature of the One, as meaning the first. But Plato has Parmenides attributing all sorts of ridiculous properties to the One in the Parmenides. That's what happens if we just choose a name "the One" without any definition, and allow ourselves absolute freedom in describing it. We end up with a completely contradictory description. However, if we start with a limiting feature, such as "the first", or "the good", then we come up with a completely different description than the one which Plato represents Parmenides as providing.

Certainly, the Stranger’s claims in the Sophist are not refuted. — Apollodorus

Direct logical refutation was not Plato's method. His way was to provide a very clear and accurate description of different perspectives, revealing the flaws, and allowing the reader to determine the parts of the perspective which were inconsistent and problematic, thereby requiring replacement or revision. So it is definitely as you say, that we are not advised by Plato to reject everything a particular individual is saying, absolutely, but we are to analyze critically, and reject the parts which produce unresolvable logical problems, while accepting the parts which are reasonable.

But the fact of the matter is that, though on the whole correct, Plato’s original Theory of Forms (as presented in the Phaedo) that defines particulars as things that participate in the properties of the Forms, is not sufficient to explain the exact nature of particulars. Plato, therefore, introduces new concepts like Limit, Matter, and Receptacle (Philebus, Timaeus). — Apollodorus

Yes, that's what I said earlier in the thread. Plato reveals through the method described above, that the theory of participation, as presented, is deficient, flawed, and needs to be revised or rejected.

There is no denying that Forms do have some common characteristics such as One and Being. So, it is not incorrect to say that the One is the cause of the essence in all Forms and, therefore, above both essence and Forms. — Apollodorus

If One is defined as the first, then it can be the cause of others. But there is a problem here with a difference between logical priority and temporal priority, as the defining feature of "the first". Temporal priority is required for cause, as "cause" is a temporal concept. However, logical priority does not necessitate temporal priority. And the Forms are related through logical priority. So if "the One" is related to other Forms as "first" in the sense of logical priority, we cannot necessarily conclude that it is first in the temporal sense, therefore we cannot conclude necessarily that it is the cause of the others.

This also leads to the question of how the first principle of all can be both One and Many. The problem of One and Many is a key issue discussed in the Philebus. And the whole purpose of it is to explain how the Good, which is one, or undifferentiated unity, can generate multiplicity. — Apollodorus

Here, One is defined as distinct from Many, and that is a completely different definition from "first". To make the two consistent it is necessary to show how One is logically prior to Many. But the demonstration that One is logically prior to Many, does not show that One is temporally prior to Many, It is only through the introduction of "the Good", as a causal principle, in the sense of final cause, that we derive the temporal priority which is required for causation.

Now it is required to show whether the Good is more compatible with One or with Many. And as I explained earlier in the thread, I believe that The Good is better described as a multiplicity than as a single, the good being complicated and complex. Therefore Many appears to be temporally prior to One, when One is defined in relation to Many. So temporally, Many is first rather than One. But when we define Many logically, it must consist of individuals, so One is logically prior to Many. This implies that "Many" is not a good defining term for One, as that which One is distinct from or opposed to. We would be better to define One with unity, and the opposing term would be ununified, as this does not necessarily imply distinct particulars like Many does, making the Many dependent on One. It makes Many dependent on ununified instead, and the ununified are not necessarily distinct individuals, or ones.

This is explained by introducing the Dyad of Limit and Unlimited that is at once “One and Many” and, through its interaction with the One, brings forth multiplicity. Limit being that which imposes form on what is unlimited, is the principle of Form. Unlimited is the principle of Matter. The two are used by Creative Intelligence (which is a manifestation of the One or the Good) to impose Form on Matter and thereby generate the Physical Universe. — Apollodorus

Limit and Unlimited is another proposed way to deal with the difference between logical priority and temporal priority. But the mathematical conception of unlimited is distinct from the philosophical conception, and this method gets lost in sophisticated confusion. That's why Plato moved to "the Good" instead. And Aristotle demonstrated that "infinite" in the mathematical sense has the nature of "potential", while anything eternal must by "actual" which is a distinct category from "potential". This drives a wedge between "infinite" (unlimited), and "eternal" (the principle of temporal priority), making it impossible to speak of "unlimited" or "infinite" in a causal application.

So, it is clear that when Plato takes up a theory that appears to be inconsistent with his own, he does not necessarily do so in order to eliminate one of those two theories. On the contrary, his tendency is to combine them into a new or improved theory that is superior to both and serves to provide additional support to the general Platonic framework. — Apollodorus

Right, this is the matter of critically analyzing the theories, and accepting the good, while rejecting the bad.

The fact is that one is prior to many. When we reduce a multiplicity to the absolute minimum, we reduce it to one, not to “good”. — Apollodorus

This, what you call a "fact" provides a clear demonstration of what I described above, the division between logically prior and temporally prior. One is logically prior to many, as you say, a multiplicity is defined as consisting of ones. One is a defining feature of many, and is therefore logically prior. But this does not give us what is required to make any statements about causation, because of the gap between logically prior and temporally prior. If we want to make statements about causation we need principles of temporal priority rather than logical priority. This is where the principles derived from mathematics, one and many, limited and unlimited, fail us. They do not provide temporal principles.

So, to get a principle of temporal priority Plato turned to "good", as a motivating feature, the cause of activity. here we have the basis for a temporal priority. But now we have a problem of establishing compatibility, or commensurability, between temporal priority and logical priority. If, the real "fact" is, as it appears to me, that good is more compatible with many than with one, we have a reversal between temporal priority and logical priority.

This is why Plotinus says that the One (or the Good) has (or is) a kind of awareness or consciousness. For the same reason, Plato calls it the source and cause of all knowledge: knowledge presupposes awareness or consciousness. This ultimate Awareness or Consciousness that is the source and cause of all knowledge, is the One or the Good. — Apollodorus

Using your own common sense and intuition, don't you find that awareness and consciousness is more compatible with Many than with One? Isn't the world full of distinct instances of awareness and consciousness? Why would we say that the many consciousnesses which make up the reality of human existence is One, when it is very clear that it is Many?

The desire to return to the One is the root of “love”. We love things that make us feel one with them and with ourselves. This is why we call them “beautiful” and “good”. But their beauty and goodness come from the Forms which in turn come from the One. Therefore, our love must be redirected to its true object. Love of the beautiful and the good, when practiced as indicated in the Symposium, takes us to the direct vision or experience of the Good or the One that is the Higher Self of all. — Apollodorus

See, you have this backward. each of us is a one, an individual, a self. The desire is not to return to the One, because we already are, each one of us, the One. The desire is to return to the many. This is the problem with the theory of participation, as exposed by Plato. It is backward. It portrays the Many as actively participating in the One, which is a reversal of the active/passive reality. This is caused by the inversion between logical priority and temporal priority. When we turn this around, to give us the clearer perspective of reality, provided by giving the Good priority, we find that the One participates in the Many. Now the One is causally active within the Many, as participating in the Many, because the One is defined by temporal priority, (Good), rather than logical priority (mathematically One is prior to Many).

Using your own common sense and intuition, don't you find that awareness and consciousness is more compatible with Many than with One? Isn't the world full of distinct instances of awareness and consciousness? Why would we say that the many consciousnesses which make up the reality of human existence is One, when it is very clear that it is Many? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don’t find that “awareness and consciousness is more compatible with Many than with One” at all. On the contrary, my common sense and intuition is that awareness and consciousness is one, not many. So, unfortunately, this is where we will have to disagree.

Of course, we experience many moments of sensory perception that involve many brain cells, but the brain itself is one.

Similarly, there are many instances of awareness and consciousness, but they are at the level of human cognition. What I am talking about when I say “the One”, is the Divine Awareness or Consciousness prior to the creation of the universe, i.e., in its role as First Cause of all, when no world full of distinct instances of awareness or consciousness existed. At that stage, Knowledge itself is One as there is nothing to divide it into many.

As we have seen, philosophy for the Ancient Greeks in general, and for Plato in particular, is a quest for knowledge.

Knowledge is of three kinds (1) knowledge of the world, (2) knowledge of oneself, and (3) knowledge of a higher reality that may be referred to as “the Good”, “the One”, “the Highest”, “Truth”, etc.

Real knowledge starts with self-knowledge. Therefore, the “self” (2) and the “higher reality” (3) may be regarded as situated at the two extremities, one lower and one higher, of the same cognitive continuum.

Taking the “self” to be the lower extremity, we must ask the question of Who or What is the “self”?

Plato identifies the human self with the soul (psyche) which uses the body as an instrument.
The soul or self has three different aspects which in descending order are:

1. Noetic self or nous, the divine part of the self, which is the subject of intellection, intuition, and contemplation.
2. Dianoetic self or logismos, the reasoning “man within” (entos anthropos), the “we” of ordinary human identity.
3. Physical self or “beastly” (theriodes) aspect of the self, that is tied to the physical body and is the subject of bodily impulses and concerns.

Man’s true self is the noetic self which is essentially identical with the Divine Intellect.

As Socrates puts it:

There is in the universe a by no means feeble Cause which orders and arranges years and seasons and months, and may most justly be called Wisdom (sophia) and Intelligence (Nous) (Phileb. 30c)

And:

All the wise agree that Intelligence (Nous) is king of heaven and earth (Phileb. 28c)

Socrates next makes a very important point in which he connects human soul with Universal Intelligence.

In the Timaeus, it is said that God or Creative Intelligence created the Universe as a living being endowed with body and soul and that he made human soul from the same stuff as the Soul of the Universe:

God, however, constructed Soul to be older than Body and prior in birth and excellence, since she [the Soul] was to be the mistress and ruler and it the ruled … (Tim. 34c).

Socrates now draws attention to the fact that human soul derives from Universal Soul:

Shall we not say that our body has a soul? Where did it get it, unless the body of the universe had a soul, since that body has the same elements as ours [fire, water, air, and earth] only in every way superior? (Phileb. 30a)

Socrates also points out that Zeus himself, the supreme Olympian God, whose titles include “King of Kings” and “King of the Gods”, has a kingly soul (basilike psyche) and a kingly mind (basilikos nous) given to him by the Divine Creative Intelligence or Universal Cause:

Then in the nature of Zeus you would say that a kingly soul and a kingly mind were implanted through the power of the Cause, and in other deities other noble qualities from which they derive their favorite epithets (Phileb. 30c-d).

Plotinus (Enn.V.3(49)4,1) draws the logical conclusion by saying that “We, too, are kings” (or “We, too, rule”). In other words, we too are rulers of our own body and mind. This is the first lesson to learn. Equally important, however, given our descent from the King of the Universe, we too are royal and divine.

“Royal” (basilikos) and “divine” (theios) imply a higher nature or status. Moreover, our descent from the Universal Intelligence can only mean that our own intellect (our true self) is essentially identical with the Intelligence of the Universe.

It is worthwhile recalling at this point that according to Plato, the telos or goal of human life is to become as “godlike as possible” and that “to be godlike is to be righteous, holy, and wise”. The word “wise” connects us with the Universal Intelligence which is also said to be “Wisdom” (Sophia).

It is this essential identity of the personal and divine nous that makes it possible for man to elevate himself to the highest plane of experience or level of intelligence.

Plato uses similes, allegory, and myth, to constantly remind us of this fact.

The “Ladder of Love” of the Symposium, the “Allegory of the Sun”, “the Cave”, and the “Divided Line” of the Republic, etc., etc. all point in the same direction.

In the Republic Plato provides us with another illustration. Socrates and his interlocutors have come to the conclusion that their arguments and other proofs (discussed in the Phaedo, Phaedrus, etc.) have shown that the human soul is immortal. Socrates says that if we use our reason to consider the soul once it has been cleansed of all mental and physical impurities, it will be more beautiful than it currently appears.

He then compares the soul with the Sea-God Glaucus who is so covered in barnacles and seaweed and his body so mutilated by the waves that he appears much “wilder” than he actually is.

Similarly, Socrates says, the soul has been marred by countless evils. But if we consider its innate wisdom, its immortality, and its divinity, then we might see it as it really is.

Consider what it might be if it followed the gleam unreservedly and were raised by this impulse out of the depths of this sea in which it is now sunk, and were cleansed and scraped free of the rocks and barnacles which cling to it in wild profusion of earthy and stony accretion (Rep. 611e-612a).

The cleansing process consists in the development of basic civic virtues (self-control, courage, wisdom, righteousness), followed by intellectual virtues or skills such as discrimination or discernment (diakrisis), logic, intuition or insight, and contemplation.

For Plato, of course, the importance of virtues lies not only in their moral and civic value. They are a form of knowledge and, therefore, they are conducive to knowledge.

Plato tells us that material objects cannot be known because we know about them only through our senses and the senses are unreliable. He believes that the materialist approach that aims at attaining knowledge by studying matter proceeds in the wrong direction.

Therefore, the only way to attain knowledge is by turning our attention inward and examining the realities within us.

Initially, our thought processes turn out to be as chaotic and unreliable as our sense-perceptions. In order to see with any degree of clarity, we must first bring some order to our inner life. We must control our physical urges, our emotions, and our thoughts.

When we have done that, and the wilderness within has been cleared, we discover a totally new world illumined by a new light, and crucially, we acquire a new identity and a new experience of life. Our center of gravity shifts from physical objects and preoccupations with them to the intellect and abstract thought and, beyond that, to an intuitive grasp of the primary building-blocks of cognition (the Forms) and their source, Creative Intelligence (Nous Poietikos) itself.

So, starting from the level of sense-perception, the philosopher must rise to Awareness itself.

This is why it is important to understand that consciousness or awareness is higher than knowledge.

Not knowledge, but that which knows, the subject of the known objects (whatever and however many they happen to be, including Forms), is the highest reality which is One. This is the true focus of Plato’s philosophical quest and the true meaning of “source and cause of knowledge”.

The cleansing or purification process (katharsis) is nothing but the elimination of everything that is not “us”. This is the only way to discover our true self. If we mentally strip or chisel away all the accretions of sense-perceptions, emotions, and thoughts, we arrive at a new type of non-discursive, image- and concept-free, intuitive knowledge.

But it is important to understand that this knowledge itself must be transcended. And as we transcend it, we get to the consciousness we have of this knowledge, and beyond that, to pure awareness itself. It is this awareness that is the ultimate self, not the knowledge. The knowledge belongs to the self but is not the self. It is at the most an extension of the self in the same way thoughts, emotions, and sense-perceptions are extensions or “accretions” of the nous.

The key to the correct understanding of this is provided in the First Alcibiades.

Already in the Charmides (164d ff.) Socrates discusses the Delphic inscription “Know thyself” and the possibility of there being any such thing as knowledge of knowledge (episteme epistemes).

The discussion is carried on in the First Alcibiades (132c ff.) where Socrates proposes substituting “see” for “know” and gives the example of seeing oneself in a mirror.

He next compares this with seeing oneself in the eye of another, the only part of another person in which one can see oneself. The same is true of the soul: if it wishes to see itself in another soul, it must look at that part of it that most resembles it, namely the seat of wisdom (sophia).

Socrates and Alcibiades agree that the seat of wisdom (the nous) is the most divine part of the soul, and that a soul can truly know itself only by looking at God himself:

Then this part of her resembles God, and whoever looks at this, and comes to know all that is divine, will gain thereby the best knowledge of himself (Alc. 1 133c)

It follows that true knowledge of oneself is, in the first place, awareness of oneself as a divine soul, i.e., as a higher form of intelligence.

Indeed, if knowledge has a source, then the source is different from and higher than knowledge. This source can only be Intelligence. And Intelligence as the source of all knowledge is the Good or the One.

In itself, this supreme Intelligence that we call “the Good” or “the One” must be Awareness. Awareness on its own is motionless. However, when Awareness sees itself reflected in itself as in a mirror, it is stirred into activity that is creative, resulting in the Creative Intelligence that brings forth the Universe.

The Universe is brought into being by Creative Intelligence according to Forms or Ideas. The term “Form”, “Idea” or Eidos (lit. “thing seen”) suggests that the Universe is “seen” into existence by Creative Intelligence.

As Awareness, the supreme Intelligence is “the Same”. As its own reflection in the mirror of itself, it is “the Other”. Seeing oneself in the other is “the best knowledge of oneself”. And that self-knowledge is the source and cause of all knowledge and all things.

The concept of a pair of opposites resulting in a harmony that is creative is deeply ingrained in Ancient Greek thought. In Greek mythology, Ares, the God of War, is coupled with Aphrodite, the Goddess of Beauty and Love. Zeus and Mnemosyne beget Harmonia who in turn gives birth to the Muses, the Goddesses of artistic creativity, etc. (Different versions exist.)

Plato expresses the very same idea put in philosophical language. Ultimate Reality, Being or Existence, first manifests itself in two ways, as Unlimited and Limited, Indivisible and Divisible, Same and Other.

The same Reality next unifies Sameness and Otherness into a harmonious whole. As Plato states in the Timaeus, the Creator-God (Creative Intelligence) makes the Soul of the Universe and the human soul from a blend of “Same”, “Other”, and “Being” (Tim. 35a, 41d).

Intelligence (which is what Being or Reality ultimately is) itself is the medium that brings Sameness and Otherness together. Similarly, in the human soul, the rational part controls and organizes the emotional and sensual aspects (corresponding to the Same and Other on the Cosmic plane) into a harmonious, healthy, and happy whole. The human self, which is one in itself, is literally a mirror image of the Divine Self, which also is One.

As Plato says, the higher, rational aspect of the soul must rule over the other two (Rep. 441e). And in the Phaedrus he compares the intellect with a charioteer whose control over two winged horses (the emotional and sensual aspects) enables him to rise to the world of the Gods:

Now when the soul is perfect and fully winged, it mounts upward and governs the whole world … (Phaedr. 246c)

The ascent to a higher mode of experience enables the soul to attain to the Good or the One, which is One Reality.

Early Christians understood Plato well because they were Platonists. All educated citizens of the Roman Empire, especially in the East, spoke Greek and were familiar with Platonism. St Paul himself spoke Greek and was conversant with Greek philosophy.

It was the Platonist belief in the One that led Pagan intellectuals to Christianity, as stated by St Augustine (who had read Victorinus’ Latin translations of Plotinus and Porphyry).

Even though they embraced Christianity, Platonists remained Platonists at heart. When Synesius of Cyrene, originally a Platonist, was made bishop in 411 AD, he asked to be replaced by someone else because as a bishop he couldn’t find the time to practice contemplation as required by his Platonist beliefs.

Platonism did not, and could not, disappear, as there was nothing comparable in the whole Roman Empire to replace it. Instead, it persisted among the intellectual classes and was largely adopted by the upper echelons of the Church itself. Over the centuries that followed, however, Platonism became more and more Christianized and most Christians, especially in the Catholic and later Protestant West, ended up with a poor (if any) grasp of Plato’s teachings.

This is why, personally, I would recommend turning to Platonists and scholars of Plato for a better understanding. Gersons's From Plato to Platonism is a good start. I don't agree with everything he says - just as I don't agree with everything Platonists like Plotinus and Proclus say - but I think he understands the basics of what Plato and Platonism are about and can put readers of Plato on the right track. After that, they can work out the details themselves as they think best within the general Platonic framework.

It can be seen from Plato’s written works that his philosophy acquires an increasingly higher degree of sophistication over time. Plato’s Theory of Forms, for example, starts with the Meno and Phaedo where Forms are described as entities that exist as “themselves in themselves”, i.e., that are separate from the material world and from one another, and moves towards a description of Forms as blended with others and connected with the material world through copies of themselves.

Beauty and Good are not identical in every respect but they are closely interconnected, especially on higher levels of experience, with consciousness and experience becoming increasingly unified. In the Philebus, the Good is described as a mixture of three Forms, Beauty, Proportion, and Truth, and Beauty and Good appear together in other dialogues.

The combination and (partial) identification of Beauty with Good is particularly obvious in the Symposium.

To begin with, the dialogue takes place at the house of the “Good and Beautiful” Agathon. Beauty and Good are combined in Agathon himself, the party host, who is said to be “beautiful” and whose name means “good”. This could not have escaped Plato readers even under Roman rule when all educated citizens, including Christians, spoke Greek. Moreover, Socrates himself calls Agathon “very beautiful and of good nature and breeding” in the Protagoras (315d-e).

So, there can be no doubt that we are in the realm of the Good and Beautiful from the start. Socrates himself is dressed in beautiful clothes for the occasion.

Moreover, the Symposium consists of speeches dedicated to the God Eros. And, as Socrates states, Eros is the son of Aphrodite, the Goddess of Beauty and Love, and he is always “scheming for all that is beautiful and good” (Symp. 203d).

The best, most important, and most beautiful speeches in the Symposium are those of Agathon and Socrates - they are placed at the center of the dialogue and their authors are crowned by Alcibiades who has appointed himself judge over the contest.

Agathon and Socrates mirror each other in many ways. Agathon is young and beautiful, Socrates is older and not very good-looking. Agathon is a playwright who composes speeches for public consumption. Socrates is a philosopher who makes speeches addressed to small private groups. Their close connection is emphasized by the fact that they both are expressly dressed in beautiful attire for the party and they are seated together on the same couch: Agathon the Beautiful and Socrates the Good.

In particular, both value wisdom and expert knowledge above common opinion. Both view love of beauty and goodness as arising from a lack of these. And both agree that, in addition to beauty and goodness, what love lacks is truth – hence they both criticize poets for neglecting truth.

The triad of Beauty, Goodness, and Truth is an important one in Plato. All three appear together in the Phaedrus and now in Diotima’s Love Lesson. This should not be ignored.

Crucially, Agathon brings together beauty and good not only in himself but also in his speech, concluding that love of beauty brings good to both Gods and men:

And who, let me ask, will gainsay that the composing of all forms of life is Love's own craft, whereby all creatures are begotten and produced? … Since this God (Eros) arose, the loving of beautiful things has brought all kinds of benefits both to Gods and to men (Symp. 197a-b).

The connection between beauty and good is made explicit by Agathon when he brings into focus the concept of love of the Beautiful as conducive to Good. He thereby prepares the ground for Socrates’ own speech, in which Socrates takes the theme to the highest level where the philosopher who has set out on the quest for Beauty has found the Good and the Good and the Beautiful combine together with Truth to form one reality.

As already stated, the process implied in the Ladder of Love is one of inner transformation of the soul which involves interiorization, elevation, concentration and unification of consciousness.

The goal of this is nothing less than deification (theosis), i.e. “assimilation to the Divine” or “becoming godlike” (homoiosis Theo) which can only happen as a result of liberation of consciousness from the human condition.

This liberation involves the extrication of consciousness from the confines of human experience revolving on sense-perception and all the mental states based on it such as imagination, opinion, emotion, and thought, and turning our attention to higher realities.

The stages of this process are clearly outlined in the Ladder of Love. The turning of attention from one beautiful body to many beautiful bodies initiates the extrication of consciousness. The consideration of beauty in customs, laws, and knowledge brings about its interiorization and elevation. And the focus on one knowledge results in its concentration and unification.

When the extrication process has been completed, it is followed by a free, spontaneous, and sudden expansion of consciousness beyond anything known or imaginable. The philosopher no longer sees one beautiful body, or any body at all, but an infinite expanse or “sea” of ever-existing beauty (pelagos tou kalou) (Symp. 210d-e).

This is the final state of release or liberation (lysis). It is a state of absolutely free intelligence which is a state of absolute happiness which is nothing but absolute freedom and fullness or completeness and satisfaction.

When intelligence is in this state, it becomes truly creative and productive of things that are beautiful, good, and true. Of course, these beautiful things can be physical babies, who will grow to be like Agathon, beautiful and good. However, Diotima emphasises the beautiful production of poets, artists, craftsmen, architects, town planners, and law-makers who, being “pregnant in the soul” from contact with Beauty and Good, make themselves immortal by giving birth to things that are more beautiful and more deathless than man:

But pregnancy of soul—for there are persons,’ she declared, ‘who in their souls still more than in their bodies conceive those things which are proper for soul to conceive and bring forth … (209a).

This productive activity of the intelligence which has found its freedom and its true self, is not caused by any lack or need but by unceasing, overflowing and therefore creative, overabundance. Love itself is completely transformed. It is no longer motivated by a desire to acquire and possess things that we do not have, but by a desire to give things that we do have.

The key to understanding the Mystery of Eros, and to understanding Plato and Platonism in general, is the understanding of the fact that Eros here stands for the totality of states and activities of volition.

Eros refers not only to humans, but to all living beings including the Gods. Divine love or desire may seem different from human love or desire. The one stems from an awareness the Divine has of its own abundance. The other stems from an awareness (or perception) of absence of abundance. But human desire is ultimately an expression of divine desire, of the will of intelligence or spirit to be itself, i.e., to be happy and free, including free from desire.

The exchange between Diotima and Socrates is as follows:

D: You hold that love is directed to what is beautiful. But why does the lover desire the beautiful?
S: The lover desires the beautiful in order to possess it.
D: But what will the lover get by possessing beautiful things?
S: This question I am unable to answer offhand.
D: Well, let’s change the object of the question. Why does the lover desire good things?
S: In order to possess them.
D: But what will the lover get by possessing good things?
S: This I can answer easily, happiness.
D: Yes, this is the ultimate answer. We have no more need to ask for what end a man wishes to be happy (204b-205a)

Happiness (eudaimonia) is the ultimate end of all human endeavor. And we don’t need to ask why we wish to be happy because we know that to be happy means to be our real self. When we are happy, we are at peace, i.e., in harmony, with ourselves and the world.

Our real self is the intelligent spirit within us (nous) whose supreme happiness consists in contemplating the Divine within itself, i.e., itself as it really is on the highest level of existence. This is the meaning of contemplation (theoria). The divine is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and all such qualities (Phaedrus 246e). Contemplation of divine qualities, for example, beauty, elevates and refines consciousness until it acquires a direct vision of Beauty itself. The Gods themselves, who are supremely happy and blessed, derive their happiness from contemplation.

Indeed, if we are happy when we possess beautiful and good things, we can easily imagine how much happier we will be when we possess not only beautiful and good things, but the Beautiful and the Good themselves, and with them, Truth itself which is, above all, the truth about our true identity.

But happiness is of little value without the awareness of being happy. Where there is happiness, there is awareness. Awareness and happiness are the highest and most fundamental principles of intelligent life. Awareness and Happiness are the properties or faculties of Supreme Intelligence, along with Will-Power, Knowledge, and Action as indicated in the Timaeus.

Therefore, the imagery of the Sea of Beauty takes us sufficiently close to Ultimate Reality for us to conceptually grasp Plato’s Two Causes.

Though Beauty itself belongs to Ultimate Reality, the philosopher can have awareness of it because it is also within him and because his consciousness has sufficiently expanded to contain Beauty, at least partly, within its field of awareness.

These two elements of experience, (1) the Sea (or Ocean) of Infinite and Eternal Beauty, and (2) Awareness of it, are the objective and subjective aspects of consciousness, respectively, that correspond to the Dyad and the One. Awareness also corresponds to the One through its function of unifying experience.

The philosopher’s expanded consciousness and Ultimate Reality mirror one another. The philosopher arrives at Infinite Beauty and Awareness of it by a process of ascent or return (epistrophe) to the Ultimate Source and Cause of all. In contrast, Ultimate Reality arrives at the stage of the One and the Dyad by a process of descent or procession (proodos) from the Ultimate Source and Cause of all.

The stages of Consciousness prior to Creation are as follows:

1. Pure, Undivided Intelligence or Awareness (syneseis or synaesthesis) a.k.a. “the One”.
2. Self-Aware Intelligence, i.e., Intelligence with Consciousness (parakolouthesis) or Self-Awareness (parakolouthesis heauto) = Intelligence (subjective element) aware of itself (objective element) = “Indefinite Dyad”
3. Creative Intelligence (nous poietikos) = “Creator-God” = Intelligence containing Forms = Knowledge

Otherwise formulated:

(A). The good is defined by beauty (kallos), proportion (symmetria), and truth (aletheia) (Phileb. 65e).
(B). These properties depend on order which is a well-proportioned arrangement of parts in a harmonious whole.
(C). Therefore, the basis of order is unity or oneness.
(D). Therefore, Unity or Oneness is the cause of all good.
(E). But Order and Goodness in the world are not perfect.
(F). Therefore, a cause must exist that is opposed to Oneness and Goodness.
(G). Such a cause must be a principle of Division and Plurality.
(H). This cause is the Indefinite Dyad.
(I). Therefore, there are two causes, the One, and the Indefinite Dyad.
(J). But the Indefinite Dyad exists exclusively in opposition to the One.
(K). Therefore, the Indefinite Dyad is dependent on the One.
( L). Therefore, the One (= the Good) is the Ultimate Cause of all.

When the One, i.e., Supreme Intelligence, sets about to create the Universe, it limits its own powers by imposing Limit on the Unlimited, and thus produces (1) Spirit or Soul which possesses exactly the same powers as the Supreme but in limited degree and (2) Matter which is (almost) completely devoid of intelligence.

Were this not the case, the human soul would not have the powers of awareness, happiness, will, knowledge and action, and would be no better than inanimate objects. Indeed, it would be worse given that even inanimate matter, though devoid of higher intelligence, still possesses some powers as can be seen from the behavior of atomic particles, energy fields, etc. – which, at the very least, indicates the presence of a very limited power of action.

It follows that human love or desire for the beautiful and the good, and ultimately, for happiness, is really an expression of divine will, i.e., of the will of limited, individual intelligence to recover its original happiness and freedom which it once had before descending into particular existence.

This act of volition (boulesis) on the part of the human soul is triggered by the perception of beauty in objects other than itself.

The perception of objective beauty activates the soul’s innate memory of the “infinite Sea of Beauty” that was once part of its self-identity, and, through philosophic practice the soul gradually recovers its full awareness of its true identity. Having recovered its identity, it is once again complete, fully satisfied, self-sufficient, self-contained, full of Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, infinitely and eternally happy, and lacking in absolutely nothing. It has now attained ultimate perfection (and is welcomed into the company of Gods).

A particular is not necessarily an instance of a universal. — Metaphysician Undercover

But it can be one, no?

My point is that you choose to see the One as a “particular”. I choose not to. And I doubt that Plato does.

You asked me to “demonstrate” that the One is the Good.

I explained to you how I see it. And this is how it is normally seen in the Platonic tradition.

The One is mentioned in the dialogues and it was well-known within the Academy that Plato believed in a first principle of all called “the One”. We have the testimony of Plato’s successor Speusippus and Aristotle among others.

Aristotle himself says:

Now since the Forms are the causes of everything else, he supposed that their elements are the elements of all things. Accordingly, the material principle is the "Great and Small," and the essence <or formal principle> is the One, since the numbers are derived from the "Great and Small" by participation in the One … This, then, is Plato's verdict upon the question which we are investigating. From this account it is clear that he only employed two causes: that of the essence, and the material cause; for the Forms are the cause of the essence in everything else, and the One is the cause of it in the Forms. He also tells us what the material substrate is of which the Forms are predicated in the case of sensible things, and the One in that of the Forms—this is the Dyad, the "Great and Small" (Aristot. Meta. 987b19-988a14)

(A) The One is the cause of the Forms and the Forms are the cause of everything else.
(B) There are only two causes: that of the essence, and the material cause.
(C) There is a material principle called the “Great and Small” and an essence or formal principle called “the One”.
(D) The “Great and Small” or “Dyad” is traditionally identified with what is elsewhere called the “Unlimited and Limit” and with the One.
(E) Therefore the One is the ultimate cause of everything.

The mainstream Platonic position is that: (1) there is a first principle of all and (2) Plato reduces sensibles to Forms and Forms to a first principle called “the Good” or “the One”.

This is also the scholarly opinion:

Plato was in principle committed to the reductivist tendency found in all Pre-Socratic philosophy, and, indeed, in all theoretical natural science. This is the tendency to reduce the number of fundamental principles of explanation to the absolute minimum.

- L. Gerson*, From Plato to Platonism, p. 117

[* Executive Committee, International Plato Society (1998-2004); Board of Directors, International Society for Neoplatonic Studies (2004-2010); Board of Directors, Journal of the History of Philosophy, (2007- ).]

As regards the Divine Intelligence, Plato makes the following statements:

The Creator-God is ever-existing and possesses the powers of joy, will, thought, and action (Tim. 34a, 37c).

He is “good” and the “supreme originating principle of Becoming and the Cosmos” (29e).
He desires that all should be, so far as possible, “like unto Himself” (29e).
He uses an “Eternal Model” that is “self-identical and uniform” (29a) to create the Soul of the Cosmos from a mixture of the Same, the Other, and Being (35a) which are the basic ingredients of intellect.
Having created the Soul of the Cosmos, the Creator-God creates the Corporeal part and fits the two together. And the living Cosmos “began a divine beginning of unceasing and intelligent life lasting throughout all time” (36e).

So, to begin with, I think it is reasonable to regard the Creator-God as a form of Intelligence. And since he creates the Cosmos from the Same, Other, and Being, and according to certain eternal patterns such as Goodness, Order, and Beauty, it stands to reason that these patterns or Forms are within this very Intelligence itself.

The way I see it, it is the Divine Intellect that holds within itself all the Forms in a unified and ordered whole. Without this, the creation of a living, intelligent and ordered Universe emulating a perfect divine model, would be impossible.

As regards the identity of the One and the Good, both are described as “beyond being” or “beyond essence”.

In addition, Aristotle says:

“It is impossible not to include the Good among the first principles” (Aristot. Meta. 1092a14)

For it is said that the best of all things is the Absolute Good, and that the Absolute Good is that which has the attributes of being the first of goods and of being by its presence the cause to the other goods of their being good; and both of these attributes, it is said, belong to the Form of good (Eudemian Ethics 1217b4-5; cf. 1218b7-12)

(A) The Creator-God is above the Cosmos.
(B) The One/the Good is above the Creator-God.
(C) The One is the first principle and cause of all.
(D) Therefore the Creator-God is a manifestation of the One.

Of course, it is arguable that the One being ineffable, unfathomable, and above Being, the designation “the Good” is, strictly speaking, inappropriate for it and that the One becomes “the Good” only in relation to Being and Becoming. In this sense, the Good may logically be said to be subordinate to the One. Ultimately, however, the two are one and the same thing.

It follows that:

When we speak of the Ultimate on its own, we may refer to it as “the One”.
When we speak of the Ultimate in relation to Being and Becoming, we may refer to it as “the Good”.
When we speak of the Ultimate in relation to the Cosmos or Universe, we may refer to it as “Creative Intelligence”, “Divine Intellect”, Creator”, “Father”, etc.

Why do you first say here, that they are participating in Beauty itself, then you say Beauty itself is the unparticipated? — Metaphysician Undercover

They participate indirectly through the likeness of Beauty itself. Beauty itself remains unparticipated, in the realm of intelligibles. The only thing that is participated in in the sensible world is the visible likeness or "enmattered form".

Diotima in the Symposium is talking about the philosopher who has reached the highest level of knowledge. Only he can "see" Beauty itself.

And I can't find your reference in Phaedo. — Metaphysician Undercover

The reference was to the Quality "itself" (e.g. Greatness or Largeness) as opposed to the quality "in us".

Substitute Beauty for Greatness/Largeness.

A Form is not only "one over many" but also "one and many", hence its explanatory function. As itself in itself, the Form is one. As likenesses, copies or instantiations of itself in the particulars, it is many. By analogy, the Sun is one, the reflections of its light in water and other light-reflecting objects are many.

In the Timaeus, Plato clearly distinguishes between (1) imperceptible "self-subsisting Forms" that can be grasped by reason only and (2) their visible counterparts or "copies" (mimemata) in the sensible world that are accessible to the senses and to opinion based on sense-data. The original Forms are eternally unparticipated:

This being so, we must agree that One Kind is the self-identical Form, ungenerated and indestructible, neither receiving into itself any other from any quarter nor itself passing anywhither into another, invisible and in all ways imperceptible by sense, it being the object which it is the province of Reason to contemplate; and a second Kind is that which is named after the former and similar thereto, an object perceptible by sense, generated, ever carried about, becoming in a place and out of it again perishing, apprehensible by Opinion with the aid of Sensation (Tim. 52a).

Some potential is seen to be good, so it is brought into existence, caused to be. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. Seen to be good, brought into existence, caused to be, etc. by the same one Reality that acts as efficient, material, formal, and final causes. There is nothing else apart from that one Reality. Referring to the One as “formal cause” does not preclude the possibility of its being the other causes, including the ultimate cause.

We obviously have very different understandings of Plato. — Metaphysician Undercover

Agreed. Very different and very obvious. :smile:

You possibly read Plato through a more Aristotelian lens than I do.

Things have been caused to exits because their existence is good. — Metaphysician Undercover

Correct. They have been caused by the Good a.k.a. the One.

Anyway, as I was saying, it was a well-known fact among the Ancient Greeks that the essence of wisdom was knowledge of oneself. This was encapsulated in the celebrated maxim “Know thyself” (gnothi seauton) that was inscribed at the Apollo temple of Delphi.

Plato himself mentions the Delphic maxims in the Hipparchus (228e) and the Protagoras (343b), and says that they “are on every tongue”.

[Indeed, the Delphic maxims (numbering 147 in total) were known as “the Commandments of the Seven Wise Men” and were taken to other parts of the Greek-speaking world, as far as Egypt and Afghanistan, by none other than Aristotle’s notable pupil Klearchos of Soli. As a testimony to their enduring importance to Greeks, including Christians, the maxims served as a first school book for the Greek world into modern times. See Sentences of the Seven Sages]

The Platonic equivalent to the Delphic maxim, that itself became famous throughout the Greek and Roman world, is “to become as godlike (homoiosis Theo) as possible” (Theaet. 176b).

As Plato (through Socrates) explains, to be godlike means to be “righteous, holy (sinless), and wise”.
Being a thoroughly Greek philosophical school, Platonism combined the two goals into one: for Plato, to know oneself is to know the divine within us. To be truly good we need to know the Good. To know the Good absolutely means to be the Good. And the Good is God, the possessor and embodiment of all knowledge.

Therefore, the Platonic philosopher’s goal is to be righteous, holy, and wise like God himself. In the Greek tradition, all Gods are wise.

Accordingly, the philosophical quest in Platonism revolves on knowledge of the Good which in the absolute sense means being the Good.

As stated in the Republic, the Good is the source of all knowledge. Therefore the Good is the “highest lesson” or the “highest thing to learn”.

By definition, philosophy is love of wisdom (philo-sophia). This means that the philosopher is a lover of and seeker after wisdom or knowledge. The philosopher is one who, having become aware of his own ignorance of higher things, undertakes the journey from ignorance to the highest wisdom.

Similarly, in the Symposium, the goal of philosophy is to attain a vision of the highest. But the journey that takes the philosopher to his goal here is powered by the love of Beauty. Beauty evokes in us a feeling of wonder or amazement (thaumazein) and, as Socrates says, “wonder is the only beginning of philosophy” (Theaet. 155d). The love of Beauty is really an expression of the love of the Good which is the same as love of Knowledge or Truth.

The journey has six stages:

1. Love of one beautiful body.
2. Love of all beautiful bodies.
3. Love of beauty in souls.
4. Love of beauty in institutions and laws.
5. Love of beauty in sciences.
6. Love of beauty in one single knowledge.

This enables the philosopher to attain a vision of a single thing, Divine Beauty itself (Sym. 211c) which is the goal of the philosophical quest.

However, it is important to understand that the Greek word “beautiful” (kalos) also means “good”. The Greek ideal of human perfection is “good and beautiful” or, rather “beautiful and good” (kaloskagathos). Beauty is inseparably connected with Good and Good is inseparably connected with Knowledge. Beauty leads to the Good and the Good is Knowledge or Truth.

We can see that the philosopher’s ascent described in the Symposium takes a subtle turn from love of beauty (step one) to love of knowledge (step six). And Knowledge has the Good as its source (as has Beauty). Indeed, the Symposium’s subtitle proposed in antiquity was “On the Good” (Peri ton Agathon).

Contemplation or knowledge of Beauty itself enables the accomplished philosopher to know the Good. And knowing the Good itself in the absolute sense means being the Good. By being good as much as humanly possible, the philosopher “touches” or “grasps” the truth (cf. Timaeus 90c). He becomes good, real, and true, and everything he does from now on is by participation in the truth which is the Good.

He has achieved his goal and has become godlike and immortal. He is also perfectly happy, as the limited happiness he earlier derived from beautiful bodies has given way to the infinite and unceasing happiness derived from contemplating and being the Good. Human happiness has been replaced with divine Happiness. He is now perfectly and eternally happy like the Gods.

We can get an inkling of this from the psychological fact that when we are good in any sense, we feel good about ourselves and are accordingly happy. This happiness that derives from our own goodness is more direct, more powerful, and more real than happiness that is derived from any external things (i.e. things other than ourselves) such as material possessions.

As Socrates’ teacher Diotima puts it:

In that state of life above all others, a man finds it truly worth while to live, as he contemplates essential Beauty [lit. “Beauty itself”]. This, when once beheld, will outshine your gold, your vesture, and your beautiful boys … (Sym. 211d)

Incidentally, Greek telos (“goal” or “end”) is related to teleos (“accomplished” or “perfect”) which is what the mystery rites are called (telea or teletai, literally, “perfections”) that enable the initiated to attain perfection. (telos can also mean “death” in the literal sense or in the sense of “death to ignorance”.) Diotima refers to the philosopher ascending the ladder of philosophical love (the ladder to Truth) as one who is properly initiated in the rites (telea) and aims to attain the final goal (telos).

The Republic itself is constructed in the style of an Orphic mystery rite: it begins with Socrates’ descent to Piraeus and the vision of the Thracian Goddess, proceeds through several key allegories (of the Sun, the Divided Line, and the Cave), and ends with the uplifting vision of the column of light at the center of the world (616b).

Mystery rites are also mentioned in the Phaedo in connection with philosophy and are, of course, about union with the God or Truth which is one. Everything in Plato suggests a hierarchy of meaning, experience, and truth, culminating in the singular reality of the One.

The Republic’s Analogy of the Sun, that compares the Good with the Sun, points in the same direction of a single absolute Reality (one Sun, one Truth, one Ultimate Reality).

When Plato says that the Good is the “source of all knowledge”, or “above essence”, etc., this cannot be taken to mean that the Good is above the One, given that the One is not knowledge but pure, objectless Awareness, and as we have seen, the One is unlimited, without beginning or end, and without it nothing can exist (Parm. 137d, 166c).

This is also evident from the fact that One and Being are inseparable and that everything that has being participates in both Being and One, which includes all the Forms, even the Form of the Good.

So, I think there can be little doubt that the Good is just another name for the One, the ultimate first principle and supreme cause of all. The main difference is that “the One” properly applies to Ultimate Reality in and of itself, and “the Good” to Ultimate Reality in relation to Creation and the World of Becoming.

For Ultimate Reality to conceive the will to create a universe that is good like itself, this presupposes some form of consciousness or self-awareness and intelligent activity. But at the highest level of reality there is no such activity or consciousness, there is just pure, non-relational awareness, comparable to an infinite, perfectly still ocean of living light.

That infinite mass of luminous awareness must first become aware of itself. This is what produces the first subject-object dichotomy, or the One and the Dyad, where subject and object are experienced as one yet “distinct”.

Next, by the interaction of the One and the Dyad, the Forms are produced like currents within that ocean of awareness, and with them, the Divine Intellect or Creative Intelligence (Nous Poietikos) that contains, holds them together, and organizes them into a coherent whole that is to serve as a model for the Material World.

In the final phase, the Creative Intelligence produces the Material World shaped according to Forms, like waves on the surface of the ocean that are at once “separate” from it and one with it. “Separate” as seen from the “external” world of appearance or Becoming, one with it as seen from the inner world of reality or Being. And this means that the unity or oneness of Reality remains One at all times.

Plato has left us the sketch of a general metaphysics that is for us to complete by following its inner logic.

We could, of course, take the One and the Good to be two distinct realities if we really wanted to. But (a) there is no evidence that this is what Plato does and (b) I don’t see what could be gained from it.

Why would the plain of Lethe be given primacy? — Amity

In regard to our discussion of the meaning of the two different words, I was not arguing for primacy for either term. I was only arguing for a difference. We will have to agree to disagree that there can only be one meaning: per you saying: "I see only one river and one meaning or understanding, given the context."

Why do you use the word 'insistence'? — Amity

My beef with the translators is that a quality of the stream is overlooked in the interest of giving it only one function. The reference to Virgil is to a scene where the river only has the job of wiping the hard drive of mortals:

The souls that throng the flood
Are those to whom, by fate, are other bodies ow’d:
In Lethe’s lake they long oblivion taste,
Of future life secure, forgetful of the past. — Virgil, Aeneid

This view of processing the dead gives the water a role similar to references to the river Styx, a location firmly outside the realm of life. In the context of the story of Er, however, the stream is known in our lives by its effects. In the world of Hesiod, that makes Lethe a relative of Strife, Hardship, Starvation, Pains, Battles, Wars, Murders, Manslaughters, Disputes, Anarchy, Ruin, and Oaths.

We should not forget that in the Phaedrus there is the plain of Aletheia or truth. (248b) — Fooloso4

The mythos of the charioteer does speak of our soul's life beyond this mortal coil but provides a connection to it as well:

“The reason for the great eagerness to behold the plain of truth is that the nutriment appropriate to the best part of soul lies on the meadow 248C there, and the nature of the wing which lifts the soul upwards is nourished by this. And the ordinance of necessity is as follows: any soul that has become a companion to a god and has sight of any of the truths is safe until the next revolution, and if the soul can do this continually, it is always preserved from harm. But whenever it does not see, because it cannot keep up, and is filled with forgetfulness and vice and weighed down through some mischance and sheds its wings on account of the heaviness and falls to the ground, the law decrees that the soul be not implanted 248D in any beastly nature at its first birth. — Phaedrus, 248b, translated by Horan

This story varies sharply from the allotment of Fates depicted in the story of Er. The "plain of Aletheia" is set over against "forgetfulness and vice." This narrative is closer to the one given in Phaedo than Er:

“And if after we have acquired it we have not forgotten it every time, we must always be born with the knowledge and live with the knowledge throughout our lives. For that is what knowing is, the retention of knowledge, without loss, once it has been acquired. For we do refer to forgetting as the loss of knowledge, do we not, Simmias?” 75E

“Entirely so, Socrates, of course,” he replied.

“On the other hand, I presume that if we acquired knowledge before birth and lost it in the process of birth, but later on, by using the senses in this regard, we re-acquired the knowledge we previously possessed, then what we call learning would be a re-acquisition of our own knowledge. And wouldn’t we be right to call this recollection?” — Phaedo, 75d, translated by Horan

So, what to make of Er in light of these differences is the question for me. I think that likening the three sisters to spinners of thread is to look at mortality as a production. The experiences of the soul are seen through a "mechanism" of life coming into being. The souls may be immortal but the work of each daimon is complete when Atropos cuts the thread.

Knowledge and Freedom as Prerequisites for Ethics

Regardless of what "the Good" turns out to be, Plato has important things to say about what will be needed for any ethics. In order to "be good people," or "live good lives," we need to know what "good" is, and we need to be free (i.e., self-determining/continent enough) to act on this knowledge. Further, we will almost certainly need to know "how to do" various things to accomplish the good we identify. This will be true regardless of if our inquiry into the good leads us to deontological, consequentialist, or virtue-based theories of ethics.

Although Plato does not present "being ruled by the rational part of the soul," as a "virtue," it could rightly be considered one, as a "skill or disposition required to achieve eudaimonia." Moreover, it seems like a sort of meta-virtue. It is necessary for "discovering what the good is," since it is a prerequisite for the pursuit of knowledge. It is also an epistemic virtue, required for discovering "how to do," things. Lastly, it is also necessary for self-determination — for our knowledge to play a role in dictating our actions. If we are solely driven by passion and appetite, knowledge of the good can never result in us becoming good, or "living good lives."

Further, the general sense in which "being ruled over by our rationality," is a prerequisite for an ethical life would seem to hold up even if we do not embrace Plato's model of a tripartite soul. That is, what he is describing can be consistent with other forms of philosophical anthropology, without losing this key insight.

The Relationship of Knowledge and Freedom: Why Rorty's Proposal to "Substitute Freedom for Truth as the Goal of Thought" Makes No Sense

To be free, one must overcome the shackles of instinct, desire, and circumstance. How is this accomplished? In The Phaedo and Book IV of The Republic, Plato argues that this can only be accomplished by having our soul unified and harmonized by our rationality. Why should our rationality be "in charge?" Why not have reason be a "slave to the passions," as Hume would have it?

First, we might consider that only reason has the ability to rank the passions appetites pragmatically, and to bring together means and ends for their gratification. That is, it is the only part of the soul capable of such a "harmonization." But this is not Plato's justification, and indeed it would leave reason as a servant. Plato's justification has to do with authority. Reason has authority precisely because it can transcend itself, and in doing so determine itself rather than being determined by its current limitations.

In each human being, there is a desire for what is "truly good." That is, what is "truly good" is preferred to "what feels good," or "what others say is good."* Reason is transcendent in that it forces us to go beyond current beliefs and desires in our search for the "truly good." Most people, if asked, are not happy to live in a "fool's paradise." We want to know the truth of our situation, rather than to be kept happy by being continually mislead and manipulated. Indeed, if we are manipulated, it limits our freedom in ways relevant to ethics, for being manipulated, we shall only be "good" if whoever is manipulating us happens to make us so.

Freedom and knowledge are deeply related; we need not prioritize one over the other as Rorty suggests. If our actions are dictated by ignorance or by the manipulations of others, there is a sense in which they are not fully our own. When we our manipulated, our actions are being determined by things that lie outside of us; we thus become a mere effect of external causes. Likewise, when we act out of ignorance, our rationality is frustrated in fully determining our actions.

Further, it is clear that knowledge of the truth enhances our causal powers. It is only because we have learned the truth about things like lift and aerodynamics that we are free to traverse continents in airliners in a single day. It is only because our species has learned some essential truths about electricity and information that we are free to have this discussion over vast differences. It is only through discoveries surrounding the truth of agriculture that we can be free from spending most of our lives in toil.

Truth then, plays a very direct role in agency. What we can do is determined by our societies' knowledge and our access to technology. What we know we ought to do is likewise determined by our knowledge of the world. Expanding our knowledge requires continually transcending our current beliefs in search of what is "truly good." The agent's quest towards truth then is also the means through which they truly become an agent, a self-determining entity. Afterall, what are we to do with the lives we have been given? How do we act as "good people?" These are not easy questions to answer, and it is only through a collective investigation into truth that it seems possible to answer them. Hence, "being ruled over by the rational part of the soul," as a metavirtue and epistemic virtue.


The Social Dimension

As noted above, the enhancement of our causal powers (and thus freedom of action) in knowledge is a communal effort. Thus, it's worth considering, as Plato does, whether what is true of the proper ordering of the person is true of the proper ordering of society. We were not free to have almost all people go to school and learn to read until we discovered how to grow food much more efficiently for example.

I'll leave it there, but for now I think it's worth considering how much our society is driven by appetites (consider the electorate's response whenever consumption must decrease) and passions (consider the fractious, tribal political climate), as opposed to its rational part and how this constricts freedom of action on implementing ethically-minded policy.

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*We could consider here the distinction between things sought for their own sake, those sought for other thing's sake, and those that are both.

Even given that this is your topic I admire your courage to take up something this deep.

Metaphysical issues are strewn about throughout the Dialogues, seemingly after the fact as revisions of the initial publication perhaps to forestall facile reading and criticism (from within the Academy by people who thought they had better ideas). Everything must be read and remembered (haha) or else one must have an index of where relevant suggestions are hidden. To our great fortune, we have online search engines and easy access to professional explorations with bibliographies. With the aid of these, even we can take a stab at some of Plato's deepest thought.

The key to Plato's metaphysics is the Line. One must take seriously all four levels of division which are at a finer resolution than the two that are usually focused on by Aristotelian readings Plato. Four is minimal to allow sufficient intermediate steps required to get from the lowest level to the highest and back again, or as people would have it, the other way around.

It is hard to discover any description of the lowest level other than what Plato says dismissively, but this is the physical world, the one physics studied and studies, (see Kant's noumena). Participation connects this unknowable world to the real absolute Forms to momentarily produce ''objects' as appearances, (see Kant's phenomena). Since this is not logically possible then how can it be? That's the puzzle. Mathematicals can tell us about the Forms or some Forms, and about the physical world, but can they tell us what the connection is and how it might work?

Greater and smaller are relative terms when describing particular things, not the Forms themselves. Simmias is greater than Socrates and smaller than Phaedo, but Greatness itself is not greater or smaller. — Fooloso4

The Forms are not relative but absolute, Greatness and Smallness. Something greater has more Greatness and less Smallness, that's how Plato's relatives work. The conversion is flawed, as Plato knew, because Forms are point objects outside of space and time while relatives are along a common line. To work, an origin or standard for comparison would also be required. In the passage, Simmias is measured against two competing standards; at different times he is great and small. But if we lined all three up then Simmias would be both great and small at the same time.

Socrates also says that the Forms are an hypothesis — Fooloso4

And so they are. Forms cannot be deduced from any source nor can they be directly observed which leaves only scientific hypotheses by the way of divine inspiration which happen to be the 'likeliest' and therefore should not be doubted. This may seem farfetched until we recognize that modern theoretical science works the same way.

Socrates likens the Forms to originals or paradigms, and things of the world to images or copies. This raises several problems about the relation between Forms and particulars, the methexis problem. Socrates is well aware of the problem and admits that he cannot give an account of how particulars participate in Forms. — Fooloso4

A two-tier metaphysics can't work because it is static and too dissimilar to be directly related. The relationship top-down one-many lacks both motivation and mechanism therefore nothing can happen, nothing can be caused. Plato's particulars can be neither static (Aristotle) nor in flux (Heracliteans) but exist momentarily (Bradley).

See also my discussion of the city at war in my discussion of Timaeus. The static Forms cannot account for a world that is active, a world in which there is chance and indeterminacy. — Fooloso4

Agreed. Forms as simples cannot be causative in the world.

Nor is there any mention of "the One" here. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is no need to explicitly mention the One everywhere. The point is to follow the logical process suggested in the dialogues. Once a principle of inquiry has been established that reduces everything to a first principle, then we must logically arrive at an irreducible One. Of course, we are under no obligation to do so. It is a matter of personal choice.

In terms of the relation between intellect and Forms, the intelligibility of sensible objects consists in their samenesses and differences, and these are explained by Forms.

Plato defines the relation between sensible objects and intelligible Forms in terms of “to echein” (having) and “to metechein” (having a share in or “participating”), i.e., “having” and “co-having” (meta + echein, “to have with”).

A further distinction can be made between that which participates (to metechon), that which is participated in (to metechomenon), and that which is unparticipated (to amethekton).

A beautiful girl, a beautiful horse, and a beautiful lyre are beautiful by reason of their co-having, having a share, or participating in the Beautiful (or Beauty) itself (Hipp. Maj. 287e-289d).

The girl, horse, and lyre are things that participate; beauty is the property or attribute they participate in; Beauty itself is the unparticipated, transcendent Form to which the property or attribute properly belongs.

The difference between “having” and “co-having” or “sharing in”, is that (1) the properties that make up the co-having particulars do not belong to the particulars but to the Forms, and (2) the co-had properties are distinct from the Forms.

Plato distinguishes between a property, e.g. Beauty, “itself” (auto to kalon), and beauty in beautiful things or in us (en hemin kalon) (Phaedo 102d). Beauty itself is perfect, eternal, transcendent and “unparticipated”. It is not for having. It cannot be co-had. What is co-had is an imperfect, transient, immanent and “participated” or “shared in” version or likeness (homoiotes) of Beauty, also referred to as “enmattered form” (enulon eidos).

This explains how Forms can be at once transcendent to and immanent in sensible objects, and suggests how Forms play a role in creation: they are the paradigms used by the Divine Intellect to shape the objects of the Cosmos. In other words, sensibles are nothing but a blend of matter and likenesses of Forms formed into things by the Divine Intellect.

The Forms’ paradigmatic status also clearly shows that they are not universals. They are ontologically prior to the creation of the things that share in their properties.

We can also see why the objects presented to our senses have no existence of their own, being mere combinations of likenesses of Forms without which they would not exist. Therefore, they are “not real” (or “less real”) when compared to the eternal, unchanging, and therefore real Forms.

The distinction between the status of Forms and sensible objects is also reflected in the way we cognize them. As indicated by their designation, sensibles are things we perceive by means of sense-perception. We see things like “girl”, “horse”, “lyre”, and we see “beauty” in them. The process of cognition begins with the data presented to the mind by the faculties of sensory perception, e.g., “girl” and “beauty”. But when we make a predicative judgment as in the statement “the girl has beauty (or is beautiful)”, then we transcend the level of sense-perception and rise to the level of intellection.

It is this ability of the human mind to rise above the particularity of sensory data to the universality of thinking that enables us to use language and build thought constructs from the most simple to the most complex. And the mind does this on the basis of Sameness, Identity, and Difference, i.e., the Forms that Plato is talking about and without which thinking and communicating would be impossible.

So, Plato’s Forms perform a dual explanatory function in respect of both (1) human cognition and (2) cosmic creation. Human intellect generates predicative thought in conjunction with principles such as sameness, identity, difference. Divine Intellect generates the sensible world in conjunction with Forms of which the said principles are “likenesses”. This means that the Forms are the ontological basis for predicative thought. However, in both cases the creative agent or efficient cause is intelligence (nous).

If we use the four-stage model described in the Analogy of the Cave, we can identify four phases of cognition:

1. Eikasia (sensory data accepted uncritically): We see a beautiful girl.
2. Pistis (belief accepted on trust): The awareness arises in our mind that the girl’s beauty is not perfect and that a more perfect beauty must exist. (As Socrates puts it, even the most beautiful girl will be “ugly” when compared to the Gods (and Goddesses) - Hipp. Maj. 289b)
3. Dianoia (knowledge based on reason): We conceive in our mind the concept of perfect beauty.
4. Noesis (intuition or insight): We have a direct experience of the Form of Beauty itself.

We can see from this that all elements of cognition from sense-perception to Form are rungs in the ladder that takes us from the lowest forms of cognition to the highest and, ultimately, to Ultimate Reality (the One) itself. The agent of this process of ascent is intelligence, in the same way Intelligence was the agent in the process of descent (or cosmic creation).

This is the position normally taken in Platonism. But, as I said, it is by no means mandatory.

Don't you see this as a contradiction? The "One" by the fact that it is one, is a particular. So to say that Plato was interested in the One, but had no interest in particulars cannot be true. — Metaphysician Undercover

Personally, I see the One as not comparable to a particular sensible object. To begin with, it is not an instance of a universal. So it is not a particular. :smile:

The question of 'drinking too much' oblivion reminds me that the mythology of Hesiod and the Orphic mysteries have the role of Lethe set over against the role of Mnemosyne (or Memory). — Paine

I wish I had your knowledge! I had to look this up:

Mnemosyne also presided over a pool in Hades, a counterpart to the river Lethe, according to a series of 4th-century BC Greek funerary inscriptions in dactylic hexameter. Dead souls drank from Lethe so they would not remember their past lives when reincarnated. In Orphism, the initiated were taught to instead drink from the Mnemosyne, the river of memory, which would stop the transmigration of the soul [...]

Mnemosyne, on the other hand, traditionally appeared in the first few lines of many oral epic poems [8]—she appears in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, among others—as the speaker called upon her aid in accurately remembering and performing the poem they were about to recite. Mnemosyne is thought to have been given the distinction of "Titan" because memory was so important and basic to the oral culture of the Greeks that they deemed her one of the essential building blocks of civilization in their creation myth. — Wiki - Mnemosyne

Sipping the water of Mnemosyne is not given as one of the options in the Er account. That is interesting considering that Plato uses the mythos of Recollection (amnemesis) or call to mind, in different discussions of learning. That suggests to me that the role of recollection is principally the activity of the living soul. — Paine

Interesting, indeed! :up:

I wonder if Plato didn't include this as an option because he was arguing against the use of poetry?
And, yes, I did have a vague memory of Plato using recollection in the ways we learn...

In Plato's theory of epistemology, anamnesis (/ ˌænæmˈniːsɪs /; Ancient Greek: ἀνάμνησις) refers to the recollection of innate knowledge acquired before birth. The concept posits the claim that learning involves the act of rediscovering knowledge from within oneself...

Plato develops the theory of anamnesis in his Socratic dialogues: Meno, Phaedo, and Phaedrus. — Wiki - Anamnesis

But we're talking about "justice" here. Surely Plato didn't suggest that a philosopher might find the true form of justice via mathematics. Didn't he say that we need to apprehend "the good", and the good is analogous to the sun? The good makes intelligible objects intelligible, just like the sun makes visible objects visible. — Metaphysician Undercover

To be honest, I'm probably due for a refresher on the divided line. I've read the Republic twice, scrutinized books IV, V, and VI, , and written several lengthy papers on it, but it's been over a year since I picked it up and gave it a reread.

What most resonated with me concerning the book was the tripartite soul metaphor and the commentary on how political society regards true knowledge/the knowledgeable. (There are plenty of ideas in the Republic that I don't like, but I've always thought Plato might have intentionally made a book that welcomes disagreement, which is one of the Republic's charms.) Add to that the fact that I'm smack in the middle of Phaedo, and I ended up tossing "turning away from the body" in there. Oops.

As for mathematics, my mentioning of it has to do with some contemplation I did recently after reading Meno for the first time. I gave some thought to what Plato was trying to get at with his theory of forms. I don't really grasp the forms too well... it is unclear to me what Plato is trying to say by postulating their existence. Since Meno contains a lengthy discussion of geometry, I had been considering the forms as "real" in the same way mathematical concepts are real. Anyway, it was just another half-baked, half-developed thought. I'm pretty good for those, unfortunately. But thankfully, I'm occasionally on point to balance things out.

As a member of the Academy, Aristotle was in a position to know what the general view, including Plato’s own, was, and he clearly agrees with Plato that there are Forms of natural objects but not of artifacts: — Apollodorus

Aristotle makes a separation between "Platonists", and "Plato". I even saw at one point where he referred to. "some Platonists". Your quotes are quite questionable. Perhaps you could find the place in Phaedo which Aristotle refers to? My footnote says 100d, but I didn't find it.

Perhaps Aristotle is referring to the fact that Plato posited Forms for qualities, like Beauty and Just, not for particular things like a house or a ring. That of course was the big issue for Aristotle, particular things have substance, yet Platonists claimed Forms (as universals) were the the cause of substance. So there is a gap to bridge here.

The fact that Plato situates the dialogue at the time when Socrates was young suggests that the whole of the Socratic dialogues that take place after this early meeting were informed by the problem of the Forms raised in Parmenides. This is not to be understood historically but rather as a literary device. These are not problems that only occured to Plato at around the time Parmenides was written but rather that the problem of the Forms informed his writing of the dialogues from the beginning.

That the Forms are hypothesis should be understood in light of what is said about hypothesis in the Republic. They are "stepping-stones and springboards" (511b). They are intended to free us from what has been hypothesized. In the Phaedo Socrates calls the hypothesis of Forms “safe and ignorant” (105c).

Given all the problems with the Forms we might ask why Plato did not just abandon them. Plato gives us the answer in Parmenides: One who does not “allow that for each thing there is a character that is always the same" will “destroy the power of dialectic entirely” (135b8–c2). Something like the Forms underlies (hypo - under thesis - to place or set) thought and speech.

The problem is, despite the mythology of transcendence in the Republic, we cannot achieve transcendence through dialectic. This is why the dialogues frequently end in aporia. What is at issue is not simply the problem of Forms but the problematic nature of philosophy. It raises insoluble problems.

I wonder if it makes much difference to talk of Socrates' daimon or daimonion. Perhaps he has both.
I can't recall where he explicitly talks of either. — Amity

It seems it does make a difference. With explanations and excerpts related to the daemonion:

In some of his myths, Plato, our chief source of information (along with Xenophon) on the daimonion, also mentioned a tutelary daimon (something like a guardian angel) that accompanies human souls (Timaeus 90c–e, Phaedo 107d–108c, Republic 10.617e, 10.620d–e).
However Plato does not associate this daimon with Socrates in particular or directly imply it is the source of Socrates' special sense. While the two words are etymologically related, daimonion conveys a more general sense than that associated with daimones, which are entities. The difference is analogous to the distinction we might in English make between "the spiritual" and a "spirit [...]

there are practical reasons for us today to study Socrates' daimonion. As each one may readily observe, in the course of any day we frequently experience inner 'voices' of doubt, caution and hesitation...

This presents us with a task of discernment — often difficult: should we act as originally planned, or heed the voice of warning. And on what basis do we decide? [...]

...listing excerpts from ancient philosophical literature on the subject. These are supplied, grouped by authors, oldest to most recent. To further aid personal study, a bibliography of main ancient and modern sources is follows. — Socrates and the Daimonion

To be free, one must overcome the shackles of instinct, desire, and circumstance. How is this accomplished? In The Phaedo and Book IV of The Republic, Plato argues that this can only be accomplished by having our soul unified and harmonized by our rationality. Why should our rationality be "in charge?" Why not have reason be a "slave to the passions," as Hume would have it? — Count Timothy von Icarus

A well written OP. You’ve touched upon passion vs. reason. Here only want to present the case that Hume’s stipulation that “reason is a slave to the passions” is not necessarily contrary to the overall gist of the OP, at least as I currently interpret the OP.

It can be upheld that whereas passions in themselves always addressed ends (passions always being in some way wants and that wanted being the end pursued), reasoning (even when human reasoning is construed to be a part of the universal logos) will always strictly be a means toward the ends pursued—including potentially those ends of discerning what is true or, else, the end of a maximal eudemonia.

Hence, without any held ends, reasoning is useless and thereby devoid of meaning. On the other hand, ends held and pursued without reasoning can be likened to a headless chicken’s moving to and fro (this metaphor here primarily addressing the inability of obtaining the ends pursued in the absence of any and all reasoning).

At which point lesser lifeform’s reasoning changes from reasoning that is in some way human-like in being consciously appraised to being purely that of the universal logos (which applies to rocks and to automata alike) is of course not something that can be definitively delimitated. That aside, were there to be a universal logos, it than stands to the reason here presented that it too would hold its own end toward which it only serves as a means. For example:

The OP references the Platonic notion of the Good. Here, a somewhat subtle but important change in focus can be found occurring between Platonism and Neoplatonism: wherein, tmk, the first addressed the Good as that upon which all else is contingent on (only implicitly at best upholding that the Good is to be pursued as an end), the latter furthers this by explicitly framing the Good as also being that which is to be pursued as end in the form of henosis with the One. In at least this latter conceptualization, then, the universal logos is not equivalent to the Good / the One but is that which emanates from it and which is reconciled in it—with logos being here considered the intermediary between soul, nous, and highest level of reality: the One. My point here being, in this case as example, the logos (universal reasoning) is still a means toward the One, with henosis (unification with the One) being of itself a passion: here again making reasoning subordinate to (end-driven) passion(s), albeit at a more universal level of contemplation.

Going back to Plato as you’ve mentioned in the quote, reasoning here is also only a means to the end of freedom and the related eudemonia that results from a unified and harmonized soul. The want for this end is then a passion, to which reasoning is then again subservient to.

I know its not a definitive argument and there are alternative ways of interpretation. All the same, that reason is subordinate to passion—either on an individual basis or on a global scale—seems to me an important observation, and one which in no way contradicts the authority of reasoning per se. Granted, to avoid radical relativism, these very observations would then need to be embedded within the very metaphysics here addressed: wherein “the Good” is an absolute end (and is absolute in so being).

I'll leave it there, but for now I think it's worth considering how much our society is driven by appetites (consider the electorate's response whenever consumption must decrease) and passions (consider the fractious, tribal political climate), as opposed to its rational part and how this constricts freedom of action on implementing ethically-minded policy. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This implicitly presumes that individuals are goal-driven and hence hold desires that they want satisfied. In which case, the question isn’t one of whether reasoning is subservient to passion but, instead, whether the reasoning being employed satisfies the very core passions addressed. Judging by the ever increasing rates and depression, suicide, and related issues, they give no indication of so doing.

p.s. This is a topic that gets complicated very easily by our having predominant passions to subordinate passions. But I find that it is precisely reasoning which facilitates all our subordinate passions optimally satisfying our predominant passion(s). Again, serving as a means toward (desired) ends.

There are the accounts of Socrates' daimon giving him warnings. In Phaedo, the voice said he should set poetry to music. Plato shows him as withdrawn from others before going to the party in Symposium. Plato keeps pointing to these personal experiences but does not turn them into a single story. They seem to vary as much as the different myths that are used throughout his works.

That is a contrast to Xenophon who does speak of 'conversations' with a divine agent in his Apology.

As for introducing ‘new divinities,’ how could I be guilty of that merely in asserting that a god’s voice is made manifest to me indicating what I should do? Surely those who take their omens from the cries of birds and the utterances of humans form their judgments on ‘voices.’ Will any one dispute either that thunder utters its ‘voice’ or that it is an omen of the greatest moment? Does not the very priestess who sits on the tripod at Pytho divulge the god’s will through a ‘voice’? But more than that, in regard to the god’s foreknowledge of the future and his forewarning of it to whomever he wishes, these are the same terms, I assert, that all people use and credit. The only difference between them and me is that whereas they call the sources of their forewarning ‘birds,’ ‘utterances,’ ‘chance meetings,’ ‘prophets,’ I call mine a ‘divine’ thing, and I think that in using such a term I am speaking with greater truth and piety than those who ascribe the gods’ power to birds. That I do not lie against the god I have this further proof: I have revealed to many of my friends the counsels which the god has given me, and in no instance has the event shown that I was mistaken.” — Xenophon, Apology, 12, translated by Marchant and Todd

No court reporters at the time so verification of who is closer to what was said is not possible.

Basically, the world is chaotic, pulling us in all directions. — TheMadFool

The sensible world certainly seems to be fairly chaotic and confusing. This is why Socrates says:

Now we have also been saying for a long time, have we not, that, when the soul makes use of the body for any inquiry, either through seeing or hearing or any of the other senses—for inquiry through the body means inquiry through the senses,—then it is dragged by the body to things which never remain the same, and it wanders about and is confused and dizzy like a drunken man because it lays hold upon such things.
But when the soul inquires alone by itself, it departs into the realm of the pure, the everlasting, the immortal and the changeless, and being akin to these it dwells always with them whenever it is by itself and is not hindered, and it has rest from its wanderings and remains always the same and unchanging with the changeless, since it is in communion therewith (Phaedo 79c-d).

I think there is an element of Heraclitus there.

Awareness of the confusing chaos of ordinary experience must have been what has led philosophers like Socrates and Plato to look to a more stable reality that can bring some order, stability, focus, and sanity to everyday life ....

I think we are generally in agreement.

Plato was a sceptic. — Jackson

It is important to distinguish Socratic skepticism from other types, both ancient and modern. It is zetetic - it proceeds by way of inquiry based on the knowledge that one does not know.

An aporia is because you believe a total compression is possible — Jackson

An aporia is an impasse. If, as in the Republic, there is a movement from hypothesis to knowledge, an aporia represents the failure of that movement. But zetetic skepticism is not the claim that total comprehension is not possible, but simply that it is not something that anyone possesses. The problem this raises, as described in the Phaedo, is "misologic" (89d-e). With the failure of logos Socrates turns to mythos. In terms of the image of the divided line in the Republic, it is recognition of the importance of eikasia, that is, the use of the imagination and image making.

Although things are said to be images of Forms, the Forms are themselves images. A kind of philosophical poiesis. What it seems must be if there is to be knowledge of things such as Justice, Beauty, and the Good.

Forms are thus mind-independent entities: their existence and nature is independent of our beliefs and judgments about them.

The Phaedo contains an extended description of the characteristics and functions of the forms:
Unchangeable (78c10-d9)

Eternal (79d2)
Intelligible, not perceptible (79a1-5)
Divine (80a3, b1)
Incorporeal (passim)
Causes of being (“The one over the many”) (100c)
Are unqualifiedly what their instances are only with qualification (75b)

The forms make sense when we begin with our Source or Plotinus ONE as the eternal unchanging. The universe or the body of God is in constant change. It serves the process of existence while the ONE IS. The forms then are the initial intelligence within the limits of creation emanating from the ONE.

The forms are the "one over the many." Man on earth is limited to contemplating the "many." Deductive reason begins with the premise of the intelligible which is not perceptible. It begins with the ONE and INVOLVES into creation and its many variations. Inductive reason begins with the many within creation and EVOLVES in the attempt to experience the ONE.

Can a human being through efforts of conscious contemplation begin to remember the forms or is it just a waste of time and nothing but fantasy?

I took Lachesis' role to be that once the choice of a daimon and of a life is made by the soul, that choice becomes part of the fate of that soul. There is a connection here with something Socrates tells his friends in the Phaedo:

... all who actually engage in philosophy aright are practising nothing other than dying and being dead.

(64a)

The best preparation for making that fateful choice is something you can do now.

With regard to virtue or excellence, it too is a choice:

... each will have more of her or less of her, as he honours her or dishonours her.

(617e)

the role of Lethe set over against the role of Mnemosyne (or Memory). — Paine

We should not forget that in the Phaedrus there is the plain of Aletheia or truth. (248b)

That suggests to me that the role of recollection is principally the activity of the living soul. — Paine

I agree. In the Phaedo the distinction between recollection and being reminded are blurred:

'Yes, and besides, Socrates,' Cebes replied, 'there's also that argument you're always putting forward, that our learning is actually nothing but recollection; according to that too, if it's true, what we are now reminded of we must have learned at some former time. (72e)

'But if that doesn't convince you, Simmias, then see whether maybe you agree if you look at it this way. Apparently you doubt whether what is called "learning" is recollection?'

'I don't doubt it,' said Simmias; 'but I do need to undergo just what the argument is about, to be "reminded"

...

'Then do we also agree on this point: that whenever knowledge comes to be present in this sort of way, it is recollection?”

He goes on to give an example of recollection:

'

Well now, you know what happens to lovers, whenever they see a lyre or cloak or anything else their loves are accustomed to use: they recognize the lyre, and they get in their mind, don't they, the form of the boy whose lyre it is? And that is recollection. Likewise, someone seeing Simmias is often reminded of Cebes, and there'd surely be countless other such cases.'

(73b-d)

A Catholic intellectual. It seems to me that many of the prominent advocates of Platonism and traditional philosophy generally are Catholic. This is something I wrestle with, as I'm not Catholic, rather more a lapsed Anglican. But the metaphysics of 'the Good' seems to me to imply a real qualitative dimension, a true good or summum bonum. That will fit naturally with belief in God but rather uneasily with cosmopolitan secularism, I would have thought.

I think this is partly an accident. There are still a large number of Catholic universities with large philosophy programs, and that's where a lot of this sort of work gets done and where it is more popular/not met with disapproval. So you get a system where Catholics are introduced to it more and where non-Catholics go to Catholic settings to work in the area and become Catholic. Either process tends to make the the area of study more dominated by Catholics. Given trends in Orthodoxy, and podcast guests I've heard, I would imagine we would see a not dissimilar phenomena in Eastern European/Middle Eastern Christian-university scholarship but for the fact that they publish in a plethora of different languages and so end up more divided.

Robert Wallace (at Cornell, a secular land-grant college) hits on some extremely similar themes but doesn't seem to identify with organized religion at all. Indeed, his big point is that organized religion, particularly Christianity tends to make God non-trancendent (pace the Patristics and Medievals).

It seems to me that a major part of what’s going on in the world of “religion” and “spirituality,” in our time, is a sorting out of the issue of what is genuinely transcendent. Much conventional religion seems to be stuck in the habit of conceiving of God as a separate being, despite the fact that when it’s carefully examined, such a being would be finite and thus wouldn’t really transcend the world at all. Plus, it’s hard to know how we would know anything about such a being, which is defined as being both separate from us and inaccessible to our physical senses. In response to these difficulties, more or less clearly understood, many people have ceased to believe in such a being, and ceased to support whole-heartedly the institutions that appear to preach such a being. Thus we have the apparent “secularization” of major parts of (at least) European and North American societies.

Wallace - on his blog

But he identifies a number of religious thinkers with his conception of the truly transcendent and transcendent love/reason tied to the Good. "Plato, Plotinus, St Paul, St Athanasius, St Augustine, Meister Eckhart, Rumi, Hegel, Emerson, Whitman, Whitehead, Tillich, Rahner." I would add Merton here, who is probably the biggest English-speaking Catholic intellectual in the past century, and John Paul II, probably the biggest recent Catholic intellectual period (IDK, maybe Edith Stein?)

Some of his key points re Plato and Hegel are quite similar to Schindler it seems though:

Further, in contrast to the presumptuous self-limitation of reason within modernity, Schindler avers that reason is ecstatic, that it is “always out beyond itself” and “always already with the whole.” The result of this ek-stasis is that reason is already intimately related to beings through the intelligibility of the whole; thus, reason is catholic.

Review of Schindler's "The Catholicity of Reason" (small c "catholic" here, not "Roman Catholic.")

But nothing in Schindler's framing really seems to point towards political conservatism or necessarily just Roman Catholicism.

Is their error the same as the undergraduate's error?

Broadly speaking yes, although each thinker has their own unique attack on reason and it comes into their thought in different ways.

I have seen a lot of very flattering analyses of Hume. I don't think I've ever seen one on his moral philosophy that wasn't highly critical. For example:

Hume's answers to these questions [about why to be moral] reveal the underlying weakness of his account.For he tries to conclude in the Treatise that it is to our long­ term advantage to be just, when all that his premises warrant is the younger Rameau's [Diderot] conclusion that it is often to our long-term advantage that people in general should be just.And he has to invoke, to some degree in the Treatise and more strongly in the Enquiry, what he calls 'the communicated passion of sympathy': we find it agreeable that some quality is agreeable to others because we are so constructed that we naturally sym­pathize with those others. The younger Rameau's answer would have been: 'Sometimes we do, sometimes we do not; and when we do not, why should we?'

Once reason is made "a slave of the passions," it can no longer get round the passions and appetites to decide moral issues. Aristotle's idea of the virtues as a habit or skill that can be trained (to some degree) or educated has the weight of common sense and empirical experience behind it. We might have a talent for some virtues, but we also can build on those talents. But if passion comes first, then the idea of discourse in the "good human life," or "the political ideal," loses purchase on its ability to dictate which virtues we should like to develop.

Nietzsche's attack on reason is different, and leads to different problems. In the final book added to the Gay Science in later additions, he is focused on the tyranny of old ideas on us. The rule of reason becomes a sort of tyranny across his work, and there is a great focus on a sort of freedom that must be sought (within the confines of a sort of classical fatalism).

But how might our freedom be properly expressed and executed? Here is where the "no true Nietzschean," problem springs up, for followers on the left and right are sure that the other's moral standpoints are incompatible with Nietzsche, but seem unable to articulate why in any sort of a systematic manner (e.g. "anti-Semitism isn't Nietzschean because he didn't like it.") The separation of reason from the will, and the adoption of Hume's bundle of drives ("congress of souls" in BG&E) makes it unclear exactly who or what is being freed, and how this avoids being just another sort of tyranny, even if it is a temporary one.

The identity movements of the recent epoch run into similar problems. I recall a textbook on psychology that claimed that a focus on quantitative methodology represented "male dominance," and that the sciences as a whole must be more open to qualitative, "female oriented," methods as an equally valid way of knowing. The problem here is not that a greater focus on qualitative methods might not be warranted, it's the grounding of the argument in identity as opposed to reason. For it seems to imply that if we are men, or if the field is dominated by men, that there is in fact no reason to shift to qualitative methods, because each sex has their preferred methodology grounded solely in identity, making both equally valid.

Rawls might be another example. In grounding social morality in the desired of the abstract "rational agent," debates become interminable. We might try to imagine ourselves "behind the viel of ignorance," but we can't actually place ourselves there. Thus, we all come to it with different desires, and since desires determine justice, we still end up with many "justices." The debate then, becomes unending, since reason is only a tool, and everything must circle back to conflicting desires. Argumentation becomes, at best, a power move to try to corral others' desires to our position.

Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were zetetic skeptics.

I don't know what this is supposed to mean. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle didn't think rational inquiry was useful? Is Plato sceptical of the dialectical having any utility? This would seem strange.

Plato (I wouldn't lump Aristotle in here) does seem to imply at times that words deal with the realm of appearances, but he also seems to allow that they can point to, aid in the remembrance of, knowledge (e.g. the Meno teaching scene). A person must be ruled over by the rational part of the soul to leave the cave, but they can also be assisted in leaving if they are willing. Plato never gets around to an inquiry on semiotics, but I would imagine he would agree with something like the early Augustine, where signs are reminders pointing back to our essential connection with the proper subjects of "knowledge."

I would tend to agree with assessments that the divided line is not a demarcation of a dichotomy, opinion lying discrete from knowledge. Being in Plato is a unity. The appearance is still part of the whole; there is a strong non-dualism in Plato brought out in Plotinus, Eckhart, etc. And this is why we are not cut off completely in a world of appearances. Indeed, the appearance/reality distinction has no content if all we ever can experience/intuit/know is appearance. Then appearance is just reality.

The problem of misologic is raised at the center or heart of Plato's Phaedo. Simply put, Socrates wants to provide his friends with arguments to support belief in the immortality of the soul. The arguments fail to accomplish this. Those whose trust in reasoned argument is excessive and unreasonable are shattered. They may become haters of argument because it has failed them.

The interlude on misology is a warning against abandoning reason when one has discovered that what has seemed to be a good argument turns out to be a bad one. To drive this home, Plato next has Socrates advance three (arguably four) arguments about why the soul is not like a harmony, which are of varying quality.

I don't get how you get a reading out the interlude to the effect of "don't trust reason to much, or be lovers of wisdom, because then you will get let down." It is "if you get let down, don't stop being lovers of reason."

The cure involves, as the action of the dialogue shows, a shift from logos to mythos. Socrates turns from the problem of sound arguments to the soundness of those who make and judge arguments. Socrates human wisdom, his knowledge of his ignorance, is more than just knowing that he is ignorant. It is knowing how to think and live in ignorance.

Plato uses mythos for a number of reasons. At the end of the Republic, it is arguably a nice story for those who failed to grasp the full import of the dialogue. Sometimes he uses it to demonstrate the essentially ecstatic and transcendent nature of reason (the Phaedrus), and sometimes it is as you say, a way around an insoluble problem (the Phaedo).

This move in the Phaedo and other places often is refered to as the "second sailing." Being unable to catch the right "wind" to resolve the appearance/reality distinction and explain the forms, Plato switches to another form of communication. He likens this to how sailors who cannot catch the wind must sometimes pull out the oars.

But Plato seems to catch the wind in The Republic, where this subject is tackled more head on.

To the point, consider the following:

...is the man who holds that there are fair things but doesn’t hold that there is beauty itself and who, if someone leads him to the knowledge of it, isn’t able to follow—is he, in your opinion, living in a dream or is he awake?

Does Plato think it is impossible to learn of beauty itself or for someone to be led to it?

First off a simple summary of my understanding of the topic. I believe Plato argued that there was a material reality (the world of becoming) that was indeed "real," but that there was a deeper--immaterial--nature of reality (the world of being) that was more real. — Carmaris19

That is the story, but we should not read Plato as we would a discourse on metaphysics. There must be an art of reading that corresponds to his art of writing. See the Phaedrus.

The argument for why this world of being is more real than the world of being is in essence this: the ultimate reality should first of all be unchanging (perhaps I guess because if something can readily be given up, i.e changed, then it is not essential to reality? IDK not the interesting part to me except in setting up the basis for more ponderings). The world of becoming (material world) is in constant change though--so it cannot be the "essential" reality. — Carmaris19

That is part of it. It is also a matter of truth and knowledge. If I am to know what is just then I must know something that is timeless and unchanging, otherwise what is just here and now may be unjust at some other time and place. In other words, it cannot be a matter of convention.

The world of being though is a world of "perfect forms) however--or rather ideas. Ideas do not change. I will give 2 examples. The first is that of the perfect right triangle. He argues that it does not exist in the world of becoming because there will always be imperfections from a shakey hand or imperfect drawing surface. The "true" right triangle lies in the world of being. — Carmaris19

“Form” translates ‘eidos’, which is the look or kind of a thing. The term ‘idea’ comes from eidos and has an interesting philosophical history that includes a turn from universality to subjectivity, from something independent of the human mind to something that is of or from the mind. The triangles we draw are images of the triangle “itself”.

The second example is of a chair. Chairs exist in the material world, but they vary in shape, color, comfort, etc. You can change just about any detail of a chair--but ultimately those details are just ideas we have applied to the chair. The ideas themselves--say wheels on the bottom, or lumbar support--are immaterial "forms" that do not change. Lumbar support, no matter what it's called or how it is implemented, will always be the same--and a right triangle will always have 3 sides and a 90 degree angle, regardless of any changing material details. For this reason, the world of being is argued to be the truest reality. — Carmaris19

Whether there are Forms of such things as chairs is problematic for Plato. See Parmenides. But then again, the Forms themselves are problematic for Plato. We may have an idea of a chair, a universal, but this does not mean that this idea has the ontological status of the eidos such as the Good, Justice, and Beauty. In all cases we do refer to some idea, but the Forms themselves are said to be beyond our knowledge.

I assume we all experience having a mind--but what does it mean in regard to Plato's worlds that the mind we experience is not immune to change? Perhaps it means that besides our bodies being a part of the world of becoming, so too is our mind. Perhaps it means that not only can we never truly experience the mind of another, but that we can never even accurately experience our own mind (which means we can never fully claim to know even our own self). I argue it could even possibly mean that experiencing material reality is experiencing the formation of your own mind. — Carmaris19

The analogy that Plato uses is to sight. Noesis, seeing the Forms, is passive. It is not like dianoia or reason with is active or constructive. In other words, there is no changing mind corresponding to the changing world. Knowledge of the Forms is stasis, or more precisely, exstatis.

Here's my thinking: if what is ultimately real does not change--then an ultimately real mind cannot change. If your mind changes-- then what you are experiencing as your mind cannot be the ultimate reality of your mind. — Carmaris19

It is interesting, although Plato does talk about Mind, I do not think that he ever talks about Mind as a Form in the Republic, which is his most sustained discussion of such things. Although in the Phaedo he does talk about soul as Form.

After your death, as far as we can tell in the world of becoming, your mind does not change. — Carmaris19

We do find in Plato the myth of recollection, of what learns in death when the soul is separated from the body, that is, knowledge of the Forms. In the Phaedo he uses this as one of his “proofs” of the immortality of the soul.

Do others know you better than you know yourself? I can't find a truly satisfying answer in my understanding of Plato's world's. — Carmaris19

Plato’s Socrates calls himself a physician of the soul. In knowing what medicine his interlocutors need to cure their illness he knows them better than they know themselves. He frequently cited the motto “know thyself”.