I've discovered some books on it (e.g this. — Wayfarer

I took a look at what was available to read on Amazon. The only thing "Look Inside" reveals is the forward by Hedley on the legacy of the Parmenides. There is an introductory essay of readers and interpreters. I wonder what he has to say about the problem of interpreting Plato. Hedley sees the dialogue as the legacy of Parmenides as interpreted by Plato. That legacy includes the influence on Socrates and Plato. And this raises the question of why Plato's Socrates continued to talk about Forms after this encounter with Parmenides when he was young.

I think it has something to do with Socrates "second sailing" (Phaedo 99d). After the criticisms of the Forms Parmenides says that 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). In his search for the causes of all things he undertakes a second sailing, a turning away from what the eye sees and toward speech, logos. In other words, contrary to the myth of Forms in the Republic, the Forms are not discovered through transcendent mystical experience. They are that which for each thing must remain the same if there is to be dialectical speech.

As you can see, @Fooloso4 is using Cicero to interpret Plato. :grin:

My own suggestion would be to read Plato's own statements according to which the soul is immortal and divine and therefore the most important part of man.

Plato's theory of soul

"However, since the soul turns out to be immortal ... these are the reasons why a man should be confident about his own soul ... if he is one who in his life ignored bodily pleasures and adorned his soul not with an adornment that belongs to something else, but with the soul's own adornment, namely, temperance, justice, courage, freedom, and truth, and thus awaits the journey to Hades as one who will make it whenever destiny calls ..." (Phaedo 114d - 115a).

I don't know if the oral tradition or traditions were ever written down — Fooloso4

Aristotle alludes to them. But you are right that these unwritten doctrines are impossible to reconstruct. Plotinus claims to record these oral platonic traditions but wrote 500 years after Plato. The school founded by Plato, the Academia, had several twists and turns in terms of doctrine over the centuries, as one would expect; it's all muddled.

It is dubious whether Socrates himself had any positive doctrine whatsoever, hence 'he doesn't know'. His singularity was in his approach to questions. A method, but not a doctrine; which is I think what you are saying.

Still, he was accused on doctrinal matters too: his so-called religious innovations. Doesn't mean the accusers were correct of course, but in my mind there must have been some context here, some irksome ideas at play, some kind of metaphysical ideas circulating around Socrates that tended to piss off the average Athenian.

Hypothesis 1: it was his radical doctrinal doubt itself that was irksome; i.e. his absence of doctrine may have been seen as a rejection of all doctrines, and hence as a doctrine itself (like the empty set is a set).

Hypothesis 2: he may have indeed expressed doubt or joked about certain naïve beliefs of his time. He might even have seen some of them as pretty ridiculous.

The two are not mutually exclusive and in my mind, H1 is almost certainly true.

H2 rests on scant evidence but I think Euthyphro does contain a critique of naïve transactional piety, and points to holiness as something higher than the gods.

There are also contextual historical elements, e g. the story of the desecration of the herms In 415, or the natural philosophy of Anaxagoras, which I think can bring some light on this issue.

One morning in the spring of 415 B.C., a short time before the Sicilian expedition was to set sail, it was discovered that all the herms -- busts of Hermes graced with an erect phallus -- dotting the city of Athens had been vandalized. Apparently the phalluses were broken as well as the faces. This created a furor and a period of religious McCartyism, so to speak, to identify the hermokopidai (“herm-choppers”). Bribes were offered for information. Other acts came to be denounced such as an alledged profanation of the Eleusian mysteries during some symposium (perhaps little more than a prank, or a themed orgy) in which Alcibiades—a student and friend of Socrates and one of the three Athenian generals appointed to command the Sicilian expedition—was implicated.

One theory is that the new generation, trained by Socrates and other philosophers, had little respect for these symbols of old time religion, seen as crude, and was prone to poke fun at them.

The other historical fact that I would like to bring up for context, relates to the nature of the sun and moon, whether they are deities or natural objects. You quoted one apology (don't remember which of Plato or Xenophon, where Socrates says in essences: "don't we all agree that the sun and the moon are gods?"

And yet Anaxagoras, a Ionian who brought philosophy and the spirit of scientific inquiry to Athens, had written about the heavenly bodies, which he asserted were masses of stone torn from the Earth. He said the moon had mountains and believed that it was inhabited, that the sun was a very large and very hot stone ("larger than the Peloponnese")... He predicted that sooner or later a piece of the sun would break off and fall to earth.

According to Pliny the Elder and Aristotle, in 467 BC a large meteorite landed near Aegospotami, an Athenian colony in the Hellespont. When the fiery fragment cooled, it was found to be some large brown stone. This gave credence to Anaxagoras' theories.

Diogenes Laertius reports that Anaxagoras was charge with impiety circa 450 BC and forced to flee the city.

Anaxagoras is said to have remained in Athens for thirty years. He was a well-known intellectual. And in the Phaedo, Plato portrays Socrates saying that as a young man: 'I eagerly acquired his [Anaxagoras'] books and read them as quickly as I could'. Therefore Socrates could not have ignored Anaxagoras' cosmology. He was about 20 when Anaxagoras was trialed.

So what is he really saying when he pretends 50 years later, at his own trial, to agree that the moon and the sun are deities? Isn't he saying, under the guise of irony, that it's highly debatable that they are deities?

The way I see it, the fundamental problem with using Straussianism to interpret Plato in an anti-Platonist sense, is that Strauss was controversial from the start (in the 1930s) and continues to be controversial even now.

“I do not think Strauss’s influence is as great in this country as some of Burnyeat’s remarks might suggest. It is no more “discernible” in our mainstream scholarship than in that of Britain. (Three good books on Socrates’ political thought have appeared during the last six years, one of them in the UK, two in the US; all three ignore Strauss completely: his name does not appear in their index.)” – Further Lessons of Leo Strauss: An Exchange, The New York Review, April 24 1986

“Strauss’s reading of the Symposium, like his reading of the Republic, is remarkable for its own “demotion of metaphysics” in Plato, and in my concluding remarks, I will question this status, or disappearance, of metaphysics in Strauss’s Platonism … Readers of On Plato’s “Symposium” can be left wondering about how Strauss can metaphilosophically ground his elevated claims on behalf of philosophy versus the poets and to what extent his own work remains a decisively rhetorical or poetic presentation of philosophy.” Matthew Sharpe, The Poetic Presentation of Philosophy: Leo Strauss on Plato’s “Symposium”2013

https://read.dukeupress.edu/poetics-today/article-abstract/34/4/563/21103/The-Poetic-Presentation-of-Philosophy-Leo-Strauss?redirectedFrom=fulltext

“It is hardly a secret that the figure and thought of Leo Strauss continues to provoke impassioned reactions from advocates and critics” J Bernstein 2014

Etc. etc.

So, for nearly a century, Strauss has been controversial and remains so to this day. He is not mainstream at all.

Be that as it may, here is an illustrative example of how Straussian influence can lead to flawed interpretive methodology.

Starting from an anti-metaphysical position, someone may be tempted to claim that Socrates’ statement “you must chant this to yourself” (Phaedo 114d) somehow proves that he is telling lies and, by extension, that everything that is being said in this and other dialogues is just “myths”.

However, the objective reading of the dialogue suggests that Socrates is doing his best to convince his friends of the immortality of the soul and of a happy afterlife for the virtuous (or righteous) in order to comfort them in the face of his imminent death. “Chant to yourself” means nothing else than “convince yourself”, i.e., “take comfort in my words”.

On reflection, it would make little sense for Socrates to tell a long story to comfort his friends only for him to say at the very end “actually, this is just a myth”.

When we start with unexamined (and I think unsubstantiated) assumptions of this kind for the sake of taking all metaphysical content out of the text, and use them to build an interpretive structure in the name of “Socratic skepticism” then we build a very shaky structure indeed that is no better than a house of cards.

IMHO such an approach is neither philosophically nor logically sound, but ideologically motivated. Strauss, after all, was not a scholar of Platonism. He taught political philosophy and he was influenced by anti-Platonists like Heidegger. So, Straussianism is not only controversial but positively biased and, as can be seen, can easily lead to unsubstantiated conclusions.

It has been amusing to spar with you over your Karate Kid version of Plato. But now that you are using it to determine who is Christian or not, it is time to take the matter more seriously.

First of all, Socrates questions ideas and develops the best opinions he can in each of his inquiries. That is what he is saying in the Phaedo about what he calls true and what he calls false. He operates with those sets of opinions but doesn't say that operation is the equivalence of knowing the truth. He doesn't abandon his opinions from one day to the next but doesn't say they amount to the end of his inquiries.

The vision of a Socrates who cannot say what anything is from one day to the next is entirely an invention of your own making. He expresses a lot more certainty about some things than others. When he encounters sophistry, he doesn't agonize over whether his perception can be trusted or not.

What you have done, in your version of Plato, is to take this realm of better opinions and equate them with knowledge that requires no further verification. What it means for Socrates to question everything is that having the best opinion one can establish does not mean it is free from the need for verification. If any opinion did rise to the level where it could stand above all the contingencies that went into forming it, that starts to sound like knowledge.

One of the many problems that appear after collapsing the two realms into one is that it turns Socrates' declarations of ignorance into a pretense. Now if it is a pretense, does that mean it works like the "noble lie" in the Republic? That would be a nefarious vision I can scarcely imagine. It would turn Socrates' demand for righteousness, based upon seeking the Good, into some agenda he is hiding from us.

When I challenge you to defend your idea that Socrates is only pretending to be ignorant, you reply by insisting that Socrates is not a skeptic who is unable to affirm or deny anything. My previous efforts to explain that such a character is not my understanding of Socrates' endeavor has fallen upon deaf ears. But the problem with your view is not addressed by your definition of my view. Your version of Plato turns the distinctions Plato is making into a meaningless puree of theological goo.

What are the 'objects of the mind' ? — Amity

They are not objects of the mind in the sense of being products of the mind, but of being known by the mind. They include at the lower level of the divide line mathematical objects and at thehigher level the Forms. But since the Forms are hypotheticals, they are products of the mind. Further they are products of the imagination. The divided line turns out to be not so neatly divided.

[Edit : The way the Forms are presented, as existing independent of but known by the mind, is problematic since they are also said to be hypotheticals. Once again we see here that we cannot simply take things at face value but must follow the argument if we are not content with blindly affirming what we have no knowledge of. We also see one way in which Plato is addressing two different types of readers. On the one hand he says that there are independent Forms, but on the other he indicates that things are not quite so simple. We are left to ask about the origin of the Forms. We are also compelled to consider in what way things would be able to "participate" in the Form. Socrates raises the question in the "Second Sailing" section of the Phaedo:

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.” (100e)

He raises the question of the relationship between things and Forms, but does not insist on the precise nature of that relationship. Why? It he had a coherent argument why wouldn't he present it here or elsewhere? He calls the hypothesis of Forms (100a) simple, naive, and perhaps foolish, and later "safe and ignorant". (105 b)

Now some will try to defend the idea of transcendent Forms with accusations of bias against those who question it, but in that case it would seem that Plato is biased against Plato.]

Sounds like abstract mental concepts. — Amity

They are said to exist independently. But Socrates, who presents these ideas, denies having any knowledge of them. They are part of Plato's philosophical poetry.

The body and the mind are inter-related. It's a 2-way process. — Amity

In some places Socrates talks as if they are independent, but in others he acknowledges that they are not.

Humans are the creators. — Amity

To use the Greek terminology in translations, the poets or makers.

How best to live in the absence of knowledge of what is best. That is the question.
The examined life provides the answer? — Amity

No. The examined life is the life of questioning, including questioning our opinions about what is best.

To give serious consideration to different views on e.g. what constitutes philosophy. — Amity

Or, perhaps giving serious consideration to different views is what constitutes philosophy, at least in the tradition of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. That is, the tradition of zetetic skepticism.

What made you bring that into this conversation about opinion? — Amity

The article you cited on Plato, friendship, and eros. Eros is typically regarded as being about bodily desires, but Plato treats it more broadly to include desires of the soul. To the casual reader it may appear that he makes it about desires that are not of or are separate from the body, but the division of one (a person or individual) into two entities (body and soul) is problematic.

Misology is defined as the hatred of reasoning; the revulsion or distrust of logical debate, argumentation, or the Socratic method.

Is that what you mean?
Basically, people expect answers or solutions from philosophy. When it fails to deliver certainty, then they see no use for it. Indeed, it is despised as a waste of time. Navel-gazing? — Amity

Yes, the term appears in the Phaedo. I arises from a love of philosophy that expects too much from it. In this case the failure of philosophy to give answers about death that will alleviate the fear of death. Not only their own death but Socrates death, who was sentenced to death for his life of philosophical inquiry. Not only a waste of time but dangerous.

Plato or Socrates used dialogue to question assumptions on which opinions are based? — Amity

Yes, and @Michael that is why a thread on opinion (onions) does not belong in the Lounge. It is of central philosophical concern.

IMHO the specifics don't matter too much. — Moses

What I was responding to is this:

But upon further scrutiny Jesus logic dictates that this life matters immensely because it determines where one ends up. — Moses

It may be that the specifics of an afterlife don't matter too much, but whether or not there is an afterlife does. But logic does not dictate that there is an afterlife. It is because we do not know that there are no agreed upon specifics. In my opinion, logic dictates that we should not live in accordance with something that may not be. That this life matters immensely because for all we know there is only this life.

I'm curious as to why Plato isn't ancient Greek. — Moses

Plato was an ancient Greek. He was not "the ancient Greeks", any more than you are the contemporary Americans or Europeans or Chinese. Your views need not be the same as those of where you are from. In the case of Plato they were not.

I've considered his doctrine of forms to be a bit ableist — Moses

Plato did not have a doctrine of forms. The Forms are identified in the Phaedo as hypothetical. They are the result of what Socrates calls his second sailing.

I'm referring to the beautiful dialogue on disability that occurs in Exodus 4 where God affirms disability instead of treating it as a deficiency. — Moses

Does he? God acknowledges the deficiency and says:

I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him.(4:15-16)

It is wonderful that the mythology of the Jews would choose a disabled person as their main prophet and his partnership with Aaron signifies a union between abled and disabled. — Moses

I read this in light of the question of authority, who is to lead the people. See Numbers 12. One aspect of this theme is the relation of brothers and birthright. Traditionally it is the older brother who inherits the birthright, but in several stories it is the younger brother, who by one means or another, takes the birthright. Aaron was the older brother. Even though Moses had a speech impediment and Aaron speaks well, Aaron plays a subordinate and spoke on Moses' behalf as his assistant. This is related to the question of the authority of the Levites and Aaron the Levite (4:14) The union of Moses and Aaron seems to be a symbolic representation of the union of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The differing beliefs were united. The gods of their fathers were identified as the same god. See the question regarding god's name.

Whether ordinary language misleads us is precisely the question. Though there's no doubt that language can mislead - as it is clearly misleading Plato when he concludes that all we see is shadows. — Ludwig V

The irony here is that those who rely on what you go on to call the "traditional view" are chasing shadows. The shadows are the opinions that influence how and what we see, including what we see when we read Plato through the lens of the opinions of this tradition.

Surely Plato does differentiate between the Forms and the ordinary world? — Ludwig V

The distinction is between what is and what things seem to be for us. The ordinary world is the world of our opinions. Ontology determined by epistemology, or, as the problem has been articulated at least since Parmenides, the problem of thinking and being. Although the term 'ontology' is a modern neologism, its etymology points not to what is, but to what we say and think about what is. The Forms are hypothetical:

So I thought I must take refuge in discussions and investigate the truth of beings by means of accounts [logoi] … 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, both about cause and about all the rest, while what isn’t, I put down as not true.

(Phaedo 99d-100a)

See also the discussion of dialectic in the Republic:

Well, then, go on to understand that by the other segment of the intelligible I mean that which argument itself grasps with the power of dialectic, making the hypotheses not beginnings but really hypotheses—that is, steppingstones and springboards—in order to reach what is free from hypothesis at the beginning of the whole.

(Republic 511b)

We are, however, never free from hypotheses. We remain in the realm of opinion. We never attain knowledge of the beginning (arche) of the whole. It is not that Plato is misled by language. Quite the opposite. He recognizes the limits of what can be said. The Forms are philosophical poiesis, images of the truth and knowledge that those who desire wisdom strive for.

The modern period is defined by the success of applying mathematics to the world, and over time Plato gets inverted. Now there is no problem with the world, it exemplifies perfect mathematical beauty, but with the the mind.
— Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps a relevant aspect of the inversion - I'd say contra Plato's anamnesis, that we are all born ignorant and we are all going to die only somewhat less ignorant.

(Not that I know much about Plato's thinking that hasn't come from secondary and tertiary sources.)
@Fooloso4 — wonderer1

Since I was flagged I'll jump in. Much is made of the Forms, but they are posited as hypothetical, and inadequate as explanations. They are “safe and ignorant” (Phaedo 105c). An adequate explanation is in need of physical causes as well.

So why does he make such extensive use of them?

The problem is that 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” (Parmenides, 135b8–c2). Something like the Forms underlies (hypo - under thesis - to place or set) thought and speech. Perhaps Plato intends here to reconcile Parmenides and Heraclitus.

Socrates references Anaxagoras, who says that it is Mind that directs and is the cause of everything. In Socrates' discussion of this he shifts from Mind as prior to what is ordered to how his own mind makes sense of and orders things.

If the reasons are external, and preprogrammed, it would be incorrect to call them "one's own" reasons. I think that the "reasons" in the form in which they are attributed to the individual, would be distinctly different from the "reasons" which were prior to the individual, so we could not say that these are "the same reasons" in a different form. They would be distinctly different reasons. And if they are by any means "the same reasons", then we cannot attribute them to the individual.

It seems to me that in many ancient and medieval ethical systems it would be both. There is on the one hand man's telos, which is internal to man (plural), but determined prior to any individual man. On the other hand, there is free man's own reasons for doing what he does, being who he is etc. The whole reason ethics is difficult is that these two can vary from one another in practice. Man can fail to fulfill his telos and fail to flourish, through his own choices.

The ideal situation is where man's free choice synchs up to mankind's telos. But there is a wrinkle here in that these thinkers were generally not free will libertarians. However, neither were they modern fatalists. Rather, they embrace a certain sort of "classical fatalism." "Character is destiny," Heraclitus says. They embrace the concepts of "fate" and "divine providence," and elucidate the ways in which man is a slave to circumstance, desire, and instinct, and yet allow that man, both individually and as a society, can manage to become more or less free / self-determining. Part of fulfilling man's telos is precisely becoming more self-determining and more "one's self," rather than being a mere effect of external causes. (Modern existentialism recapitulates part of this, while missing crucial elements)

This is why an overflowing love is important in Plato and the Patristics. To hate something to be controlled by it. To be indifferent to something is still to be defined by what one is not. Only love, the identification of the self in the other, allows one to avoid being determined by what is external to personal identity. This translates into a "love of fate," that must accompany the entity that will not be mere effect.

Plato's early-mid works are instructive here. The Phaedo and Republic goes into how man becomes more self-determining by overcoming desire, instinct, and circumstance, a view we also see particularly well elucidated by Saint Paul in Romans 7. For both Paul and Plato, Logos plays an essential role in the resurrection of the "slave to sin," to true personhood. However, in Plato there is also more of a recognition of the ways in which we enable each other's freedom, and in how society can enhance or fail to enhance to fulfillment of man's telos (the Apology and Crito get at this social dimension).

I think the social view moves towards a climax in Eusebius, who has a proto-Hegelian view of how history can act as an engine spurring man on towards the greater fulfillment of human purpose at the world-historical scale. With the medievals, you also start to see the acknowledgement that, while human telos has certain unchanging elements, it is also shaped by the social-historical conditions man finds himself in.

So individual man's reasons are not identical with the the global telos of man. This is precisely because man is not free, and being enslaved to desire, ignorance, and circumstance , man lacks the knowledge and means of fulfilling his purpose. Even modern existentialists seem to recognize the need for some level of self-determination to make life meaningful, although they deny the global telos.

The shift to emotivism is important here. For the existenialist, moral freedom can't be the crowing achievement of man because moral freedom is simply reducible to desire. Due to their focus on the individual, they often lack the same focus on social freedom as well, but not always. Without these, the idea of a telos for mankind does indeed become incoherent and reduce to a single "internal" purpose defined only by the the individual.

Interesting that he converted to Catholicism from having been a convinced Marxist.

Interesting, but not totally surprising. There is this whole huge area of Catholic philosophy that sits sort of free floating from the rest of academic philosophy. It tends to be far more focused on ancient/ medieval philosophy, but unlike secular academic philosophy re ancient/medieval philosophy, it is also intent on updating these for modern times.

This camp does produce a lot of good philosophy. E.g., Nathan Lyons "Signs in the Dust," is the best theory of pansemiosis I've found, and is far more grounded in the natural sciences and much less "heavily continental," than anything else I've seen attempt this sort of thing. Sokolowski's "Phenomenology of the Human Person," a blend of Aristotle and Husserl, that also takes the natural sciences and modern linguistics seriously is another example. It's one of the better articulations of a "(more) direct realism."


Unfortunately, the conversation between these camps seems to mostly go one way ("After Virtue" being an exception), without much back and forth.

But just quickly: can you sketch how ones read between the lines? I've read some of what you have written about Plato - in what sense can this (between the lines) be applied to his understanding of the good, for instance? — Tom Storm

One does it by the example of others and practice. In the Phaedrus Socrates says:

... every speech must be constructed just like a living creature with a body of its own, so that it is neither headless nor footless; instead it should be written possessing middle and extremities suited to one another and to the whole.

(264c)

Plato is telling us how to read him. His dialogues are like living creatures. Each part has a function and plays a role within the whole. He is to be read accordingly. As with a living creature, it moves. There are no fixed doctrines in Plato. The movement is dialectical. From hypothesis to hypothesis. "Stepping stones and springboards (Republic 511b). The Forms are these hypotheses.(Phaedo 105c)

But as any reader off the Republic knows the Forms are presented as the fixed unchanging truth. Clearly, we have not arrived at the truth. And that, odd as it may seem, is the key. Socrates, who tells this story of transcendent knowledge, does not know. His human wisdom is his knowledge of ignorance.

in what sense can this (between the lines) be applied to his understanding of the good, for instance? — Tom Storm

Quick answer, the Good cannot be known. The best we can do is determine what through inquiry and examination seems best to us while remaining open to the fact that we do not know.

Not so quick answer:

Socrates Argument For Why the Good Cannot Be Known

The argument is not easily seen because it stretches over three books of the Republic, as if Plato wanted only those who are sufficiently attentive to see it.

I begin by collecting the releverent statements. Bloom translation.

"So, do we have an adequate grasp of the fact—even if we should consider it in many ways—that what is entirely, is entirely knowable; and what in no way is, is in every way unknowable?" (477a)

"Knowledge is presumably dependent on what is, to know of what is that it is and how it is?"
"Yes."
"While opinion, we say, opines." (478a)

"If what is, is knowable, then wouldn't something other than that which is be opinable?" (478b)

"To that which is not, we were compelled to assign ignorance, and to that which is, knowledge."

"Opinion, therefore, opines neither that which is nor that which is not." (478c)

“... although the good isn't being but is still beyond being, exceeding it in dignity (age) and power."(509b)

"You," I said, "are responsible for compelling me to tell my opinions about it." (509c)

“... in applying the going up and the seeing of what's above to the soul's journey up to the intelligible place, you'll not mistake my expectation, since you desire to hear it. A god doubtless knows if it happens to be true. At all events, this is the way the phenomena look to me: in the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable effort, is the idea of the good …” (517b-c)

He makes a threefold distinction -

Being or what is
Something other than that which is
What is not

And corresponding to them

Knowledge
Opinion
Ignorance


The middle term is somewhat ambiguous. What is not is something other than that which is, but to what is not he assigns ignorance. Opinion opines neither what is nor what is not. Between what is entirely, the beings or Forms, and what is not, is becoming, that is, the visible world. Opinion opines about the visible world. But the good is beyond being. It is the cause of being, the cause of what is. It too is something other than what is and what is not.

What is entirely is entirely knowable. The good, being beyond being, is not something that is entirely. The good is then not entirely knowable. As if to confirm this Socrates says that he is giving his opinions about the good, but that what is knowable and unknowable is a matter of fact. As to the soul’s journey to the intelligible and the sight of the idea of the good, he says that a god knows if it happens to be true, but this is how it looks to him. He plays on the meaning of the cognate terms idea and look, which can be translated as Form. A god knows if it “happens to be true” but we are not gods, and what may happen to be true might also happen to be false.

The quote at 517 continues:

"… but once seen, it must be concluded that this is in fact the cause of all that is right and fair in everything—in the visible it gave birth to light and its sovereign; in the intelligible, itself sovereign, it provided truth and intelligence —and that the man who is going to act prudently in private or in public must see it." (517c)

But it is not seen, for it is not something that is and thus not something knowable, and so no conclusion must follow. In order to act prudently, he says, one must see the good itself. Whether one is acting prudently then, remains an open question. The examined life remains the primary, continuous way of life of the Socratic philosopher. A way of life that rejects the complacency and false piety of believing one knows the divine answers.

Both Plato's and Xenophon's Socrates look forward to his death. — Fooloso4

That's perfectly true. What's interesting is the different take on the trial.

I sympathize with him. Seventy was a great age in those days. It is still well over the hill, and for most, in sight of the end. One does get more concerned and pessimistic about one's health as the years tick by.

Plato's Socrates is the founding myth of philosophy. Naturally, Plato smoothed out, - tidied up - the story and, equally naturally, I like anything that gives me a sense of something more real. Xenophon gives me that sense. So does the scene with Xanthippe at the trial.

As I said before, it's perfectly possible - even likely - that Socrates did what he did for both reasons. After all, given that they were very likely to impose impossible conditions on him even if they didn't kill him, it was win/win. It was a great opportunity to send his message to the city, and even to posterity and he wasn't that bothered about staying alive.

PS. As an example of Plato's editing of the story, why don't you read the end of the Phaedo and then look up the symptoms of hemlock poisoning?

But eidos isn't invoked as an expedient for justifying a political system. Quite the opposite, Socrates only looks at justice within the context of a city to help pull out the nature of justice vis-á-vis the individual, and the philosopher king is analogous to the rule of the rational part of the soul. The exposition begins as a response to Glaucon's challenge re the "good in itself," not as a means of advancing a political position.

Eidos is also key to the explanation in Letter VII of why metaphysics cannot be written about in the way that Dionysius of Syracuse is attempting. In context, Plato is clearly not making a blanket pronouncement against anything that might be considered a "doctrine." You can hardly come away from his corpus with the idea that he thinks, "well, being led by the pleasures of the flesh and ruled over instinct is all well and good. After all, we cannot know the Good, so we cannot really say that the rational part of the soul has greater authority." He is instead referring to the core of his metaphysics, which the following paragraphs reference directly in explaining why he cannot produce a dissertation on such things. Nonetheless, such things may indeed be shared "after much converse about the matter itself and a life lived together," when "suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself."

Eidos shows up throughout the dialogues, in the Euthyphro, the Meno, Greater Hippias, Phaedo, etc. and relates to the core issue brought up by Parmenides re the Many and the One/the intelligibility of being. E.g., "Are not those who are just, just by justice? … Therefore this, justice, is something [ἔστι τι τοῦτο,
ἡ δικαιοσύνη]? … Then those who are wise are wise by wisdom and all good things are good by the good … And these are somethings [οὖσί γέ τισι τούτοις]? For indeed it can’t be that they are not … Then are not all beautiful things beautiful by the beautiful? … And this is something [ὄντι γέ τινι τούτῳ]” (Gr. Hip. 287c1–d2)." It is not something invoked as a political expedient.


Anyhow, to quote Gerald Press: “We can surely say that if Plato did not intend for his readers to attribute to him belief in the truth of these and many other propositions [e.g., that pleasure is not the good or that forms are objects of knowledge] then he failed miserably… The anti mouthpiece camp must hold that the history of Platonism rests upon a colossal mistake … If Plato intended to promulgate ἀπορία or suspension of belief based upon balanced opposite assertions, he was a spectacular failure." We can add here that this view also entails that Aristotle, Plato's prize pupil who studied closely with the man for two decades, would then also have completely misunderstood him.

All of my other words left like deer hit on the side of the road. — Paine

Look, I didn't intend it that way. I will try and elaborate. I've been a particpant in many discussions about interpretation of Plato's texts on this forum, one in particular being Phaedo, a few years ago, and I've learned from them. That became quite vituperative in places - there was a participant, Apollodorus, who doesn't seem to be around any more. Overall I didn't much care for his verbal aggression, but I also didn't think his criticisms entirely mistaken, either. I find @Fooloso4 interpretations invariably deflationary - they seem, as @Leontiskos says, to equate Socrates' 'wise ignorance', to ignorance, tout courte. We've discussed, for example, the allegory of the Cave, which I had rather thought contained at least a hint of something like 'spiritual illumination'. But no, apparently, it's also an edifying myth, and Plato is, along with all of us, a prisoner, for whom there is no liberation. Or something like that.

I'm still interested in Plato, but I have inclinations towards 'the spiritual Plato' (not that 'spiritual' is a very satisfactory word, but what are the alternatives in our impoverished modern lexicon?) But why I respond to Gerson, is that he seems to confirm my belief that modern philosophy, overall, is antagonistic to, or incompatible with, the Platonic tradition, construed broadly.

So, in one sense Socrates was guilty of impiety, but if being pious requires being just then Socrates, by heeding his daimonion, was just. — Fooloso4

Yes, I'm sure that is what Plato wanted us to draw from the Euthyphro. Though Euthyphro's account of his just action in prosecuting his father seems odd to me. I don't understand it, and I think there's a big metaphor going on there.

One might flee, but there is a lesson here for the next generation of law-makers, — Fooloso4

Yes, the Crito is certainly a warning to law-makers, and enforcers. It does seem a bit odd that Socrates doesn't show any sign of concluding that rebellion against unjust laws is justified. It wasn't till much, much later (I'm not sure when, but at least 1,000 years later) that the doctrine that rebellion against an unjust tyrant was justified was developed.

Yet, should the day come when he knows what “speaking ill” means, his anger will cease; at present he does not know. — Plato, Meno, 94e, translated by Lamb

Yes. Anytus' attitude is still quite common, alas. People hate being corrected. Socrates thinks they should be grateful. That's a nice example of Socrates' total faith in his values and his astonishing naivete in the face of the situation he faced.

It's worth adding that the Phaedo concludes Plato's story. It shows him in his death cell, talking to his friends about the immortality of the soul, and finally drinking the hemlock and dying peacefully after remembering to ask one of his friends - I forget which - to pay Ascelpius the cock he owes him. This amplifies and justifies one of the prominent themes of the Apology, that he does not fear death, because no harm can touch a good person. It is a radical and new thesis in Greek times, and completely counter-intuitive in that culture (and pretty astonishing in this one). Aristotle takes a different view, in the Nicomachaean Ethics.
BTW, if you have not already taken on board that Plato is not writing history, look up the symptoms of hemlock poisoning and compare them to the picture he gives us of Socrates' death.

I think Rorty's explanation of poetry shows he has no real grasp of how it works or what it does. — T Clark

His use of the extended sense of poetry is in line with the way the term was used prior to its modern restrictive sense. Poetry comes from the Greek term poiesis ποίησις. It means to make.They were makers of images, of stories, of what he calls the "paths of the imagination". They were the principle educators of the Greeks. The makers of the puppets that cast shadows on the walls of Plato's cave.

Modern translators must make the choice to render their works in verse or prose.

This is so arrogant and pompous - to claim that we are, that he is, somehow intellectually and spiritually more advanced than Plato and Aristotle (or for me, Lao Tzu). — T Clark

Rorty does not claim that we are intellectually and spiritually more advanced. Perhaps there are other reasons why Plato was not able to acknowledge our finitude.

In the Apology Socrates acknowledges the possibility of our finitude.

... to be dead is one of two things: either the dead person is nothing and has no perception of anything, or [death] happens to be, as it is said, a change and a relocation or the soul from this place here to another place.

(40c).

In the Phaedo and elsewhere, however, rather than acknowledging our finitude he tells stories of the afterlife, obscuring the possibility of our finitude. This was not because of a limit of Plato's intellectual or spiritual abilities, but a limit of what could in his time be freely acknowledged. Rorty argues that things had changed by the time of Shelley.

Whose direct, unmediated apprehension? — Corvus

The philosophers of the Republic.

Are we able to apprehend them via direct unmediated apprehension — Corvus

I don't think we are, but according to the mythology of the Republic, some humans are.

If we can apprehend them, then it seems to be a bridgeable gap between the world of the Forms and the world of materials. Why was your reply a negative? — Corvus

My argument is that we cannot apprehend the Forms. This is a rejection of Platonism, but not of Plato. The Platonists believe in the reality of Forms. On my reading, Plato does not.

The Forms are hypotheticals.
— Fooloso4
In what sense? Is it what Plato said? — Corvus

From the Phaedo:

... I feared that my soul would be altogether blinded if I looked at things with my eyes and tried to grasp them with each of my senses. So I thought I must take refuge in discussions and investigate the truth of beings by means of accounts [logoi] … 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, both about cause and about all the rest, while what isn’t, I put down as not true.

(99d-100a)

We don't know if the gods are noble and good.

Right. You said:

[/quote — Corvus

So it seems clear that they are claiming the existence of the gods, and the knowledge of the gods — Corvus

I should have asked who they are. I don't think there is anywhere in the dialogues that Socrates makes any claim about the gods. He does, however, refer to common beliefs about the gods.

The transcendent realm of Forms from the Republic were the founding principles of the later occultism, Gnosticism, mysticism, and the Hermetic Kabbalists in the medieval times. There seems to be far more implications to the concept than just a philosophical poetry. — Corvus

There were many in Plato's time who believed the poet's myths. The Forms are not presented as poesis, that is, image making. Many then and now believe there is a transcendent realm of Forms as presented in the Republic. If Socrates had presented them as stories they would not have the power they do.

Who are the "Others"? — Corvus

Don't those you just listed believe in a transcendent realm that can be known directly? Isn't that a feature of mysticism?

I'm saying he's making an advance in ethical thinking in pointing out how is/ought frequently get conflated as if they have the same import.

I'd say it's question begging sophistry (in precisely the way Plato frames sophistry). To make the distinction is to have already presupposed that there are not facts about what is good. Now, thanks to the theological issues I mentioned earlier in this thread, such a position was already common by Hume's time. It went along with fideism and a sort of anti-rationalism and general backlash against the involvement of philosophy in faith (and so in questions of value), all a century before Hume.

Hume argues to this position by setting up a false dichotomy. Either passions (and we should suppose the appetites) are involved in morality or reason, but not both. Yet I certainly don't think he ever gives a proper explanation of why it can't be both (univocity is a culprit here of course). For most of the history of philosophy, the answer was always both (granted, Hume seems somewhat unaware of much past philosophy, and his successor Nietzsche seems to get his entire view of it from a particularly bad reading of the Phaedo and not much else from Plato).

It's sophistry because it turns philosophy into power relations and dominance. Hume admits as much. "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions” (T 2.3. 3.4)." This is Socrates fighting with Thacymachus, Protagoras, and that one guy who suggests that "justice" is "whatever we currently prefer" in the Republic (his name escapes me because he has just one line and everyone ignores him, since, were he right, even the sophists would lose, since there is no need for their services when being wrong is impossible). The only difference is that now the struggle is internalized. This certainly goes along with Hume (and Nietzsche's) view of the self as a "bundle of sensations" (or "congress of souls"). Yet, Plato's reply is that this is simply what the soul is like when it is sick, morbid.

Just from the point of view of the philosophy of language it seems pretty far-fetched. Imagine someone yelling:

"Your hair is on fire."
"You are going to be late for work."
"You're hurting her."
"Keep doing that and you'll break the car."
"You forgot to carry the remainder in that calculation."
"You are lying."
"You didn't do what I asked you to."
"That's illegal."
"You're going to hurt yourself doing that."
"There is a typoo in this sentence."

...or any other such statements. There are all fact claims. They are all normally fact claims people make in order to spur some sort of action, and this is precisely because the facts (generally) imply oughts. "Your hair is on fire," implies "put the fire on your head out." And such an ought is justifiable by the appetites (desire to avoid pain), passions (desire to avoid the opinions of others related to be disfigured or seen to be stupid), and reason (the desire to fullfil rationally held goals, which burning alive is rarely conducive to).

At least on the classical view, the division is incoherent. There are facts about what are good or bad for us. To say "x is better than what I have/am, but why ought I seek it?" is incoherent. What is "truly good" is truly good precisely because it is desirable, choice-worthy, what "ought to be chosen" (of course, things can merely appear choice-worthy, just as they can merely appear true). Why should we choose the most truly choice-worthy? We might as well ask why we should prefer truth to falsity, or beauty to ugliness or why 1 is greater than 0.

For the second, could you perhaps say briefly how analogous predication would apply here, in the case of what looks like two usages of "good"? It's quite possible I don't yet understand how that would work.

Short answer: just as the measure of a "good car" differs from the measure of a "good nurse" (the same things do not make them good) the measure of a "good act" or "good event" will differ from that of a "good human being" (and in this case the former are not even things, not discrete unities at all, which is precisely why focusing on them leads to things like analyzing an unending chain of consequences).

I can share a long (but still cursory) explanation when I get to my PC, but the basic idea is that "good" is said many ways. The "good" of a "good car," a "good student," and a/the "good life" are not the same thing. Yet a good car certainly relates to human well-being, as any

More specifically, to make these sorts of comparisons/predications requires a measure. This is in Book 10 and 14 of the Metaphysics I think (and Thomas' commentaries are always helpful). Easiest way to see what a measure is it to see that to speak of a "half meter" or "quarter note" requires some whole by which the reference to multitude is intelligible. Likewise, for "three ducks" to be intelligible one must have a whole duck as the unit measure.

For anything to be any thing is must have some measure of unity. We cannot even tell what the dimensive quantities related to some abstract body are unless that body is somehow set off from "everything else" (i.e., one cannot measure a white triangle on a white background—there are a lot of interesting parallels to information theory in St. Thomas).

I think I already explained Plato's thing about how the "rule of reason" makes us more unified and self-determining (self-determining because we are oriented beyond what already are and have, beyond current beliefs and desires). Next, consider that organisms are proper beings because they have a nature, because they are the source of their own production and movement (not absolutely of course, they are not subsistent). Some non-living systems are self-organizing to some degree (and stars, hurricanes, etc. have "life cycles").The scientific literature on complexity and dissipative, self-organizing systems is decent at picking up on Aristotle here, but largely ignores later Patristic, Islamic, and medieval extensions.

Yet non-living things lack the same unity because they don't have aims (goal-directedness, teleonomy) unifying their parts (human institutions do).

The goodness for organisms is tightly related to their unity. In general, it is not good for an organism to lose its unity and die. "Ok, but sometimes they do this on purpose, bees sting and stinging kills them."

Exactly! Because what ultimately drives an organism is its goals. Brutes can't ask what is "truly good" but they can pursue ends that lie beyond them. And note, bees sacrifice themselves because they are oriented towards the whole, just as Boethius and Socrates do. This is because goodness always relates to the whole (because of this tight relationship with unity).

So to return to how goodness is said in many ways, goodness is said as respect to a measure. The measure of a "good house" is a house fulfilling it ends (artifacts are a little tricky though since they lack intrinsic aims and essences; people want different things in a house). The measure of the "good duck" is the paradigmatic flourishing duck (no need to posit independent forms existing apart from particulars here BTW).

Because equivocity is so rampant in our day, essentially the norm, let's not use "good person." Let's use "excellent person." The excellent person has perfected all the human excellences, the virtues. "It is good for you to be excellent." Or "it is excellent for you to be good." In either case the measure for "you," as a human, is human excellence, flourishing.

But because reason is transcedent, we can aim at "the best thing possible," which is to be like God. God wants nothing, lacks nothing, and fears nothing. Yet God is not indifferent to creatures, for a few reasons but the most obvious is that the "best" lack no good, and love is one of these.

God can also just be the rational limit case of perfection, having the best life conceivable. We might miss much in this deflation, but it still works.

We want to be the best person and live the best life possible. At the same time, goodness always relates to the whole, to unity. No doubt, we can usefully predicate "good" of events, but this goodness is parasitic on things. There is no good or bad in a godless world without any organisms (anything directed by aims). You can't have goodness without wholes with aims.

The predication vis-á-vis some good event has to be analagous because nothing can be "good for an event." The event is good or bad for some thing, according to its measure.




In the 19th century there were many competing theories of heat and electromagnetism. There was phlogiston, caloric, aether, etc. Are we best of returning to the specific, isolated theories, or looking at how what is good in each can be unified?

You might say "but the natural sciences are different, they make progress." And I would agree. It's easier to make progress when one studies less general principles. Yet they don't always make progress. Recall the Nazi's "Aryan physics" or Stalin's "communist genetics." The natural sciences can backslide into bad ideas and blind allies. It is easier for philosophy to do so.

Plotinus' matter is devoid of form. It's also evil: — frank

Matter, for Plotinus is the receptacle of form, just like in Plato's Timaeus. And, we can talk about matter devoid of form, but Aristotle demonstrated that this is impossible in reality

"Considered abstractly and from within Plotinus' system it should be no surprise that matter is the ultimate evil: matter is at the bottom, the Good is at the top. They are opposites. What could matter be, then, other than evil? Matter is not, by consequence, an independent power opposing the Good, however: Plotinus' whole approach to the question of evil consists in explaining its evil nature as its lack of goodness and being, its powerlessness, indefinitenesss..." -- Plotinus, Eyjolfur K Emilsson, 194 — frank

Matter and form are categorically separated, even for Plotinus. So good and lack of good are in the same category, as being proper to the form. These are the degrees of good and privation. Evil, he describes in the First Ennead, Eight Tractate, as a complete lack of any good, and this makes it a sot of non-being:

There remains, only, if Evil exist at all, that it be situate in the realm
of Non-Being, that it be some mode, as it were, of the Non-Being, that
it have its seat in something in touch with Non-Being or to a certain
degree communicate in Non-Being.

This is why evil becomes associated with formless matter. But formless matter, as demonstrated by Aristotle's cosmological argument is an impossibility, it's a nonsensical, incomprehensible proposition. Plotinus calls this an "Absolute Formlessness", or "Absolute Evil". So if we relegate Good to the category of Form and Privation, such that Good exists by degree relative to privation, we have no longer any need for Absolute Evil because there is no such thing as absolute Good, good exists by degree.

If matter or evil is ultimately caused by the One, then is not the One, as the Good, the cause of evil? In one sense, the answer is definitely yes. — frank

This cannot be the case, because "evil" in Plotinus' sense, is an absolute, non-being, so it cannot be caused. Causation is reserved to the realm of individual forms, and within this realm there are only varying degrees of good and privation, not evil, which is an absolute lack of good. We must recognize that privation is distinct from evil, the latter being an absolute, the former being relative to good.

Did you read Phaedo? Based on what you're saying, I don't know what you would make of the argument for the immortality of the Soul. — frank

I haven't read Phaedo recently, so you'd have to refresh my memory of the argument you refer to. I do remember one strong argument for the soul being prior to the body, but I cannot remember the specifics of it. I believe it says basically that the body is organized, and does not exist as anything other than being organized. So the body does not exist prior to being organized. However, the cause of its organization, as cause, is necessarily prior to it, and therefore prior to the body as well.

Who says? I mean, which character, and where does Socrates take the discussion from there? In Phaedo, Socrates is spending his final hour doing what he thinks is most important, critiquing ideas. He is also reassuring his friends by offering reasons not to fer death, and offering them a chance to show him how much they have learned from him by refuting him. Phaedo himself isn't buying and grieves. Plato, of course, is too sickened to even show. It is absurd, of course, to be afraid of being dead. But we do fear dying because it is too real, and what we most fear is being real. That fear is why we accept as axiomatic what we fear is just not in us to critique.

Political language is a case where we have no opportunity to respond to and to prompt a response from a speaker determined to create an impression their words imply but do not guarantee. An example, what is JFK saying in "Ask not what your country can do for you!" Who can say this is not a 'dog whistle' promise to the south that he would not move aggressively against Jim Crow?

If reason is reductive the relation between 'axiom' or idea and individual real things, participant to it, is purgative. The question is, is it purgative of the particular from the general, or of the general from the particular? My favorite analogy is to ask 'Which one of us is us?' If "us" is some real thing of which each is an inadequate or fraudulent example, the purge is of each. If "us" is just a trope by which we know ourselves, each other, and the category itself by proving to each other it is not who we are. And if that proof is a community in contrariety, as contrary between us as together in a complementary contrariety to the category, then not only do we get to know "us" and what "us" really is in differing from it, but we really do get to know ourselves and each other in the drama of that contrariety. If the purge goes the wrong way, expelling the person and conserving the conventional term, it can only mean to enslave. If the right way, we die in a world we can recognize, but more completely know ourselves because of this. Note, complement with an 'e', not an 'i'.

With these set of conditions being put forth as an explanation of our experience, "divine illumination" seems to be the only light bulb around. — Valentinus

Wikipedia and Aristotle may say many things. However, just because they say something, it doesn’t follow that Plato and Platonism are wrong.

The soul’s intelligence operates on different levels from sense perception to emotions to discursive thought to non-discursive (or intuitive) perception. Socrates in the Phaedo says very clearly that true knowledge and experience of reality is attained when the soul is alone by itself and gathered into itself without body, sense perceptions, or anything else apart from pure reason:

Would not that man do this most perfectly who approaches each thing, so far as possible, with the reason alone, not introducing sight into his reasoning nor dragging in any of the other senses along with his thinking, but who employs pure, absolute reason in his attempt to search out the pure, absolute essence of things, and who removes himself, so far as possible, from eyes and ears, and, in a word, from his whole body, because he feels that its companionship disturbs the soul and hinders it from attaining truth and wisdom? Is not this the man, Simmias, if anyone, to attain to the knowledge of reality?”
“That is true as true can be, Socrates,” said Simmias (65e-66a)

Divine illumination comes from the fact that the Forms are divine and that contemplation of them by means of pure reason (logismos) or intellect (nous) logically leads to the inner illumination (photismos or ellampsis) of the soul with the light of truth. This is why the soul must turn away from the body and the material world, and look on the intelligible world of realities that are divine like itself:

“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?”
“Certainly.”
“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. And this state of the soul is called wisdom. Is it not so?”
“Socrates,” said he, “what you say is perfectly right and true” (Phaedo 79c-d)

In none of the references I have read in the subsequent discussion has the 'noble lie' been said to describe the arguments for the immortality of the soul. — Wayfarer

You are right, what is said in the Meno and Phaedo are not identified as noble lies, but as was also pointed out, you don't tell someone you are trying to persuade that what you are saying is not the truth. As always with Plato, it is important to keep in mind who Socrates is talking to and what the setting is. In both cases, the argument fails and is replaced by myth.

The myth of the metals in the Republic is called a noble lie, but it is not the only one of its kind. Once again:

Could we," I said, "somehow contrive one of those lies that come into being in case of need ...(414b)

Even if Socrates believed in the immortality of the soul, presenting that opinion as the truth is a lie. Following the closing myth in the Phaedo he says:

“No sensible man would insist that these things are as I have described them, but I think it is fitting for a man to risk the belief—for the risk is a noble one—that this, or something like this, is true about our souls and their dwelling places …” (114d)

His myths do not reveal the truth, they provide something he thinks it is beneficial for them to believe is true. But what they may believe to be true is not the same as what is true

There is much to be said in response, but will limit it to a few remarks. They are not intended to argue against but to elaborate on what you said.

In contrast to the abstract nature of much of contemporary philosophy as well as Plato's own abstractions, it should be emphasized just how rooted his work is in our everyday life and concerns.

What he means by ἀνάγκης or necessity is not what we typically think of as necessity. What is by necessity is without nous or intellect. It covers such things as physical processes, contingency, chance, motion, power, and the chora. That evil is a necessity means it is without intelligible explanation.

The place of mortal men is not the place of the gods where good and evil are separate "Forms".

The passage from Theaetetus continues:

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 ...

But this is the exact opposite of what this escape is. To escape our place is to die, and to die is not to be like the immortal gods.

In contrast to the question of why Socrates did not attempt to escape death, here and elsewhere (Phaedo) he proposes we escape life "as quickly as we can". But of course this is not to be taken literally. It is evident that at age 70 he did not take this advice literally. In any case, this raises doubts about martyrdom. And in the Phaedo he raises doubts about hims motivation being suicide because he says it is prohibited.

The dialogue ends with Socrates saying he must go to answer the charges against him.

if rationality emerges from how our mental structures organize and interpret our sensory experiences, leading to consistent and coherent knowledge, then isn't rationality contingent? — Tom Storm

No, because it has to exist in the first place, in order for us to know anything. It's 'transcendental' in Kant's sense that it is implicit in knowledge but not revealed in experience. Accordingly, It's not emergent but pre-supposed.

I think the precursor to that argument is the Argument from Equality in the Phaedo. You will recall that Socrates says that in order to know that two things are exactly equal, we already must possess the idea of equality as the basis for such judgements. I think the principle can be extended to all manner of judgements concerning 'it is', 'it is not', etc. We don't notice that in all such judgements, abstraction is involved. We don't notice it, because judgement relies on it. That is why natural science can't account for reason - because it has already incorporated many such grounding assumptions in its fundamental axioms. That is the source of 'the blind spot of science'. Few see it, and advocating it generally provokes a furious response, which indicates that it's a hot-button issue.

I think the overwhelming tendency in philosophy generally is to vaccilate between 'the world is real' (the objective stance, scientism) and the mind is real (subjective idealism). I think the right balance is to understand that experiential insight has both subjective and objective poles - which is the phenomenological analysis in a nutshell. And even though phenomenology differs from Kant, I still see Kant - and Plato - as the starting point.

↪Gnomon
(1) If, as you claim, energy is not material, then how does it interact with the material (e.g. mass-energy equivalence) without violating fundamental conservation laws?
(2) And the philosophical corollary to the physics question: how does a non-material substance3 interact with material substance (re: substance duality)? — 180 Proof

Off Topic : You ask good philosophical questions, but you seem to expect Materialistic answers to Abstract inquiries. You expect 17th century deterministic answers, even though the foundations of post-classical physics are indeterminate. My understanding of Physics is post-classical, and entangled with Meta-Physics (the observer effect). Apparently, post-classical philosophy doesn't "make sense" to you. And your snarky (passive aggressive "sir") presentation is not good for communication.

(1) According to physicists, Energy acts on Matter because it has that "ability" --- by definition. Do you have a better answer to the "how" question? Apparently, the scientists don't.

(2) According to Einstein, Matter is a form of Energy*1 (monistic). Energy is Causation, and Matter is one of its effects : Noumenal Energy transforms into Phenomenal Matter. So, Energy is the fundamental "substance" (essence)*2 of the physical world. But "essence" is a philosophical concept, not a physical thing. It's similar to Kant's ding an sich. It's similar to Plato's Form*3, in the sense that it is pre-material.

Even more off-topic : Is your world view Nietzschean*4, in that you want to substitute phenomenal Will (local) for noumenal Essences (universal)? :nerd:


*1. Matter = Energy/C^2
"Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared." On the most basic level, the equation says that energy and mass (matter) are interchangeable; they are different forms of the same thing. Under the right conditions, energy can become mass, and vice versa.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/lrk-hand-emc2expl.html

*2. What is essence function in philosophy? : (Eastern Philosophy)
Essence is Absolute Reality, the fundamental "cause" or origin, while Function is manifest or relative reality, the discernible effects or manifestations of Essence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiyong

*3. Form = Essence
One of the elements in Plato's theory of Forms is the claim that essences, or Forms, are necessary for, and provide the basis of, all causation and explanation; a claim that, famously, he makes and defends towards the end of Phaedo (95e ff.).
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/platos-essentialism/introduction/3DA8714A3BCF69E17E6AD7B6B41615E6

*4. Nietzsche’s criticism of the Thing-in-itself :
Nietzsche's first disagreement is with Plato's ideal forms. In the parable of the cave, these forms were the ideals illuminated by the sun. Nietzsche claimed that rather than values illuminated from without, each person should make their own determination of values.
The idea that the value of something subsists in itself is Kant's thing-in-itself (das Ding an sich): noumenal essences that exist beyond human knowledge, like the forms, only shadows of which are seen in the cave.
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/88781/what-exactly-is-nietzsche-s-criticism-of-the-thing-in-itself-and-is-it-supplante

The last couple days I kept finding myself thinking about the Phaedo, because there's a passage there about losing faith in arguments. The way I remembered it was something like Socrates saying, don't let my death cause you to lose faith in discussion and argument — Srap Tasmaner

What is at issue is the fate of the soul. Socrates' attempts to "charm away" Simmias' and Cebes' fear of death.

The discussion has reached this point:

Phaedo:
“ Who knows, we might be worthless judges, or these matters themselves might even be beyond trust.” (88c)

Echecrates:
“'What argument shall we ever trust now?” (88d)

It is called misologic. More than losing faith in argument it is more strongly hatred of argument. (89d) Socrates addresses this in two related ways. By giving up the pretense that philosophical argument will give the former lover of argument the answers about death he desires and returning to mythology. The other is to move from sound arguments to the soundness of the soul and sound judgment, in a word phronesis, that is developed by the cultivation of certain beliefs about life and death. Or, as Gadamer might put it, a way of being.

We are familiar with this kind of thing from the Greek sophists, whose inner hollowness Plato demonstrated. It was also he who saw clearly that there is no argumentatively adequate criterion to distinguish truly between philosophical and sophistic discourse. — Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 308-9

What distinguishes the philosopher from the sophist, according to Gadamer, is a matter of intent. A difference in a way of being. (The Idea of the Good, 39.)

Something (i.e. a number) can be real without being material? How can that be? I'm admittedly a scientific materialist. — Arcane Sandwich

Well, I think we have - no offense or anything - a flawed understanding of what is real. (After all, it's the business of philosophy to make such judgements.)

He says that the number 3, for example, is just a brain process. — Arcane Sandwich

This is 'brain-mind identity theory' which was prominent in the work of a couple of Australian philosophers, J J C Smart and D M Armstrong.

The fly in the ointment here is what exactly is meant by 'the same'. When you say that a brain process is 'the same as' a number then you're already well into the symbolic domain. There's no feasible way to demonstrate that a particular brain process - in fact, there are no particular brain processes, as brains are fiendishly irregular and unpredictable - 'means' or 'is' or 'equates to' anything like a number (or any other discrete idea.) And indeed an argument of this type has an ancient provenance. It appears in Plato's dialogue The Phaedo, in which Socrates makes a vital point about the implication of our ability to perceive the nature of 'equals'. When we see two things that are of equal dimensions, say, two stones or two pieces of wood, we are able to discern that they are equal - but only because we innately possess the idea of 'equals':

Socrates: "We say, I presume, that there is something equal, not of wood to wood, or stone to stone, or anything else of that sort, but the equal itself, something different besides all these. May we say that there is such a thing or not?"

Simmias: "Indeed, let us say most certainly that there is. It is amazing, by Zeus."

"And do we know what it is?"

"Certainly," he replied.

"From where did we obtain the knowledge of this? Isn't it as we just said? From seeing pieces of wood or stone or other equals, we have brought that equal to mind from these, and that (i.e. 'the idea of equals') is different from these (i.e. specific things that are equal)".

The Phaedo 74a ff

Another argument is a version of Putnam's multiple realisability - that a number (or any item of information) can be realised in any number of ways by different brains (or in different media or symbolic types, for that matter.) Neuroplasticity demonstrates the brains of injured subjects can be re-configured to grasp language or number with neural areas not usually associated with those functions. That's also a version of multiple realisability.

And in even thinking about these problems, you're all the time making judgements and reasoned inferences ('if this, then that', 'this must be the same as that' etc.) You can't even define what is physical without relying on those rational faculties, yet brain-mind identity claims that they are somehow the same.

So my view would be that, wherever rational sentient beings exist, there must be a core of real ideas that they are able to grasp, and these are discovered, not invented.

Body and soul are one. There is no seperation as in Plato. I prefer the view of Walt Whitman on this:
"Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far"

And in Phaedo Plato through Socrates speaks about the evil body that causes man to be sick etc. And the convienience of dying so that the virtuos soul, the philosopher, can be freed from it.
One problem with Plato is that he speaks of the soul as trapped, imprisoned in the body and yet there is no clear account of what binds a particular soul to a certain body. Their difference makes the union a mystery.

So "it" can't be written or shouldn't be written? — ZhouBoTong

Not everything is said and what is is written in such a way that the reader must read between the lines, connect the dots, note and reconcile contradictions.

I am sure I am one of those for "whom it is not fitting", but what would be the danger in writing it? — ZhouBoTong

On one hand, it could be dangerous to the author. Consider the fate of Socrates. The things that Socrates was accused of - atheism and corrupting the youth, are some of the things that Plato wanted to protect himself from being found guilty of; but, on the other hand, they are things he sought to protect the reader from. He recognized the importance of religious belief and so provided a salutary, exoteric, quasi-religious teaching that would be beneficial to the well-being of the soul and the city. At the same time it gives the appearance of harmonizing philosophy and theology. Then and now, rather than noting the absence of gods in the realm of truth, the theologically inclined conflate the Good with God.

Why wouldn't he (god) or they (socrates, plato, etc) just write the truth — ZhouBoTong

Socrates was a skeptic. Knowing that he and everyone else does not know the truth of such matters poses a threat. If the truth is not known then everything and nothing can fill the gap. So Plato provides a salutary teaching in place of the unknown and perhaps unknowable truth. But in order for this teaching to be accepted it must appear to be the truth itself.

In the dialogue Phaedo, which takes place when Socrates is about to die, the discussion turns to the fate of the soul. Although he is not afraid to die, some of his friends are fearful of death and so he attempts, as he says, to "charm away their childish fears". Someone objects that what he want is the truth. He offers various proofs and stories about the immortality of the soul, and while the careful reader is led to see that all of them fail, to this day some still believe that here we find the truth of the soul's immortality. But no one knows the truth of what happens to the soul at death or even what the soul is. This leads to what is called "misologic". Socrates says that there are some who fall in love with philosophy because they believe it will make them wise, but when it becomes clear to them that philosophy is unable to answer such questions they come to despise it for what they see as its failure. Socrates did not, so to speak, want philosophy to die with him. Those who are to philosophize must eschew childish stories but must not expect philosophy to do what it cannot do.