Not really for this thread, but I understand Plato's notion of the Forms evolved throughout his writings and that he was sometimes 'self-critical' - there are explorations of the problems of participation (Phaedo) and the issue of infinite regress, 'the Third Man Argument' (Parmenides). But does Plato stop thinking of the Forms as a source of truth and ultimate reality?

But does Plato stop thinking of the Forms as a source of truth and ultimate reality? — Tom Storm

I don't know if he ever thought of them as a source of truth. Although Parmenides is generally considered a late dialogue, it is contextually an early dialogue based on the chronology of the dramatic settings of the dialogues. Socrates is a young man. What is the significance of this? Placing the dialogue at an early stage of Socrates journey suggests that he was from early on aware of the problems raised in the dialogues regarding Forms.

In Plato's Second Letter he says that his is a Socrates made young and beautiful.

In the Seventh Letter he says:

There is no treatise (suggramma) by me on these subjects, nor will there ever be. (341c)

In the Apology Socrates denies is having knowledge of anything "πολλὰ καὶ καλὰ", very much or great and good or beautiful. (21d)

In the Phaedo Socrates calls his hypothesis of the Forms "safe and ignorant". In addition to the Forms, he later recognizes the necessity of admitting physical causes such as fire and fever (105c)

In the Republic Socrates calls the Forms "stepping-stones and springboards" (511b). They are intended to free us from what has been hypothesized. But when asked he is circumspect but clear in stating that he does not actually have knowledge of the Forms:

"You will no longer be able to follow, my dear Glaucon," I said, "although there wouldn't be any lack of eagerness on my part. But you would no longer be seeing an image of what we are saying, but rather the truth itself, at least as it looks to me. Whether it is really so or not can no longer be properly insisted on. But that there is some such thing to see must be insisted on. Isn't it so?" (533a)

The truth as it looks to him may not be the truth, and he is not insisting that it is. But he insists that there is “some such thing to see”. What he shows us is a likeness of what the beings must be, that is, an image. The Forms are, ironically, images.

All of this is consistent with the many "likely stories (ton eikota mython)" in Timaeus. We are human beings, capable of telling likely stories, but incapable of discerning the truth of such things. Timaeus proposes it is best to accept likely stories and not search for what is beyond the limits of our understanding.

Socrates approves and urges him to perform the song (nomos). Nomos means not only song but law and custom or convention. In the absence of truth there is nomos. But not just any song, it is one that is regarded as best to accept because it is told with an eye to what is best. One that harmonizes being and becoming.

.

Plato has Socrates argue against the analogy in the Phaedo. — Count Timothy von Icarus

In order not to get too far off topic I will only say that Plato also gives us reason to doubt the argument provided.

Short answer begins here

A more adequate long answer here

It is clear from that thread that you disagree with my interpretation. If you wish to pursue this further please reopen that thread or begin a new one. — Fooloso4

Your quoted passages in the "short answer" are all before 92 in the text, which is where the argument against 'the soul is a harmony begins'. The issue I am addressing here is not whether Socrates provides a good argument for the immortality of the soul, as presented in the The Phaedo. Neither is the issue whether Plato believes that he or Socrates has provided a good argument for the immortality of the soul. The issue discussed here is whether or not Socrates provides a good argument against the theory 'the soul is a harmony'.

This position, 'the soul is a harmony' is very much similar to the modern physicalist position which apprehends ideas, concepts, mind and consciousness in general, as something distinct from the physical body (as the harmony is distinct from the lyre), but insists that these are dependent on the physical body as properties of it, or emergent from it, like the harmony is dependent on the lyre.

I believe Plato provides a very good refutation of this theory 'the soul is a harmony'. Regardless of what you think abut Socrates' arguments for the immortality of the soul, do you agree with me that the refutation of this theory is a sound one? If not, why not?

Plato doesn't like the analogy because it would imply that the soul (harmony) must disappear when the body (instrument) is destroyed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

While the importance of harmony can be confidently ascribed to Pythagoras, many other ideas are on shaky grounds. This SEP article gives a brief account of the centuries of dispute of who was or was not a Pythagorean. This is particularly a problem regarding the views of immortality and reincarnation being addressed in Phaedo.

When Aristotle discusses these matters, the role of what might be immortal or not is seen through the problem of agency and movement.

There is another absurdity, however, that follows both from this account and from most of the ones concerning the soul, since in fact they attach the soul to a body, and place it in a body, without |407b15| further determining the cause due to which this attachment comes about or the condition of the body required for it. Yet this would seem to be necessary. For it is because of their association that the one acts, whereas the other is acted upon, and the one is moved, whereas the other moves it. None of these relations, though, holds between things taken at random. These people, however, merely undertake to say what sort of thing the soul is, but about the |407b20| sort of body that is receptive of it they determine nothing further, as if it were possible, as in the Pythagorean stories, for any random soul to be inserted into any random body, whereas it seems that in fact each body has its own special form and shape.96 But what they say is somewhat like saying that the craft of {13} carpentry could be inserted into flutes, whereas in fact the |407b25| craft must use its instruments, and the soul its body. — Aristotle, De Anima, Bk 1:3, 407b14, translated by CDC Reeve

In the context of the mind/body distinction you made above, Aristotle is saying it is the "Pythagoreans" who devalue the 'body'.

You beat me to the punch citing Phaedo where Socrates asks what causes could be understood or claimed to be true. That bears directly upon the reference to generative power in the Republic and the passage I quoted earlier:

509B “I assume you will agree that the sun bestows not only the ability to be seen upon visible objects, but also their generation and increase and nurture, though the sun itself is not generation.” — ibid

We can recognize the generative power of the sun without doubting its presence or knowing how it is possible. If the sun analogy is to carry forward into the presence of the Good, a similar gap confronts us.
In the analogy of the divided line, the generation of the forms is not revealed by stating they were made by the Good. Presumably, by this account, no amount of getting better at getting closer to the 'real objects' will reveal how the generation occurs by itself.

The question of that creative power is interpreted in many ways. There are creation accounts and myths, such as those found in the Timaeus and other dialogues, which imagine how the world may be constituted. It is not an appeal to a 'materialist' set of principles to observe there is a difference when Plato is using those stories and drawing the limits to our explanations through arguments. We have been arguing about Gerson's thesis since I got here. Much of that dispute involves how to read that difference in Plato's language. In view of these years of wrangling over texts and their meaning, do you see the opposition to Gerson's thesis as only a part of this one?:

In all humility, I think this accounts for a lot of the outrage resistance that advocacy of philosophical idealism provokes. Moderns don't want the world to be like that. — Wayfarer

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. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Both terms 'zetetic' and 'skeptic' originally meant inquiry. It is not skepticism in the modern dogmatic sense, which denies the possibility of knowledge, but rather an acknowledgement that one does not possess knowledge. Hence, to proceed by inquiry, which in large part is dialectical, that is, via argument.

... he also seems to allow that they can point to, aid in the remembrance of, knowledge (e.g. the Meno teaching scene) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Recollection (anamnesis) is a myth. As a reasoned argument it suffers from the problem infinite regress. There must have been some previous life in which one learned what in later lives is recollected. In that case knowledge would not be recollection.

Recollection also plays a part in our life here and now. In the Phaedo Socrates gives the following example:

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)

There seems to be no distinction here between recollection and being reminded of something. In the example given recollection is independent of stories of death. Simmias must be reminded of the argument that learning is recollection. If he is to learn that learning is recollection he learns it by being reminded of the story, not by recollecting something from a previous life. As he says:

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

It should not escape notice that he says "undergo". Accepting the story is more like an indoctrination than simply hearing the story.

A person must be ruled over by the rational part of the soul to leave the cave — Count Timothy von Icarus

Reason functions in the same way in the cave:

And suppose they received certain honours and praises from one another, and there were privileges for whoever discerns the passing shadows most keenly, and is best at remembering which of them usually comes first or last, which are simultaneous, and on that basis is best able to predict what is going to happen next.

(Republic 516c-d)

Reason can rule even for us ignorant cave dwellers who are not ruled by the myth of transcendence.

In this context, do we really have a basis for making these judgements?

What context? Judging the various merits of historical lines of thought? I should hope we have some basis for making these judgements, or else philosophy doesn't really seem possible. I don't think we have to "go back," to say something like "well here the Stoics really got off track..." or "in retrospect Descartes' dualism has these issues," etc.

So perhaps we should be very careful, and sceptical of certainties

It's easier to have destructive certainties when you allow them to sit apart from one another, and so to selectively decide where reason applies. So, yes we should be skeptical of certainties, but we should also not be terrified of them.

Consider Plato's "noble risk" at the end of the Phaedo.

It is not fitting for a sensible man to affirm confidently that such things are just as I have described; but that this or something of this sort is what happens to our souls and their abodes, and since the soul is clearly immortal, that this is so seems proper and worth the risk of believing; for the risk is noble.

We should not want to reach the point where fear of error becomes fear of truth for us. We shall have to act anyhow or others will act for us. We don't want to end up in a situation where "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error introduces an element of distrust into science, which without any scruples of that sort goes to work and actually does know, it is not easy to understand why, conversely, a distrust should not be placed in this very distrust, and why we should not take care lest the fear of error is not just the initial error. As a matter of fact, this fear presupposes something, indeed a great deal, as truth, and supports its scruples and consequences on what should itself be examined beforehand to see whether it is truth.

Phenomenology of Spirit §74

In an exchange with Erasmus, Martin Luther allows that his predestinating vision of God "seems evil and cruel," but then states that this simply shows how degenerate man's sense of reason is after the Fall. That God should seem evil just shows that man is evil. Man cannot judge properly. Except Luther uses his judgement often and forcefully, in part, to articulate the very theology he his citing as evidence for his inability to reason.

Having read a number of Luther's letters, I feel they can oscillate between the sublime and the horrid. When he goes into his unhinged rant against the peasants "crush and stab them, kill them where you find them," and seems to embrace the political expediency of "every prince a Pope in his lands," this seems to flow from the fact that he has cut up reason. Now reason can stand in some places. In other places absolute certainty blocks its application and warrant. This leads to chaos.

Obviously, Catholics did this too, as did Calvin's tradition at times. They placed some dogmas outside the realm of reason, and in doing so ruined reason and faith. Erasmus was hated by both Protestants and Catholics at the time for refusing to do this, but I think time has proved him to be the wiser soul of this era. He was not too timid to risk certainty in some areas, but also unwilling to butcher reason for piecemeal consumption — a sin Plato puts a lot of focus on.

Aren't practices and ways of life ("This is what I do") foundations for Wittgenstein at least? If they are, your question does arise, as it always does for any foundation. For some, it leads us to a change of discourse, to naturalistic ideas about human beings, social animals finding their way through the "real" world. But that seems to be where we came in!

People take Wittgenstein many ways. If the ideas in PI around social practices are deflated enough, they begin to look trivial. Everyone knows that different peoples call different things by different words and that a child learns to speak by being around a given language. A Greek child raised in Latin society speaks Latin, an Arab raised in France comes to call things by French words. People who move to foreign countries come to refer to things by foreign words. Often, the sounds that represent words seem quiet arbitrary, and they change with social trends. All this was known and accepted since antiquity.

Did the verificationists and positivists Wittgenstein was speaking to forget this? At first glance it might seem this way, but I don't think they did. Rather, they abstracted the social variances away in their conception of abstract propositions to try to grasp the nature of meanings and reference.

What does Wittgenstein say to such attempts? Interpretation is very varied here. Kirpke moves past the trivial at the cost of advocating a theory of rule following that seems implausible even to other self-described Wittgensteineans. McDowell gets rid of interpretation, sort of turning it into an unanalyzable primitive grounded in practice IIRC. Point being, "rules all the way down," is saying something novel, although I don't think it works.

If we say, "well the natural world is involved in meanings, as well as human cognitive architecture, the phenomenology of human experience, intentionality, and purpose," though, which I think we must, then the role of social practices seems to slide back towards the merely obvious. Once we locate the proximate source of meaning in social practices, the obvious next question is "what causes those practices to be what they are?" I find some phenomenological explanations of how predication arises quite plausible, but then these lead to the question: "why is human phenomenology this way?"

This seems to lead back to the way the world is, the way objects of predication are, and the way human minds (part of the world) are, which seems to reintroduce the question of "how language hooks to the world," that some, such as Rorty, thinks Wittgenstein has proven to be unanswerable. I personally don't think Rorty is right here. The question of "where do rules come from," seems both possible to investigate and very relevant.

IDK, IMHO, what PI says about justification is more interesting than what it says about language.

Do their have to be general principles as such? Should we not change the model and think of something more dynamic, more evolutionary?

I don't see why not. I feel like too much is dismissed as unknowable because it can't be formalized in static systems, as if the limit of current modeling abilities is the limit of knowledge. Sort of like how many in physics say the universe must be computable because we lack an understanding of how things would be "decidable" otherwise.

He did, however, on Plato's telling have some concern for the welfare of his children. I don't know if there is a correlation with his teachings, but it does seem that he preferred to hang out in the marketplace rather than at home with her. — Fooloso4

There is a correlation in Laws, where the qualifications for a suitable bride is discussed:

So when any man, having turned twenty-five years of age, upon due consideration by himself and by others, believes 772E he has found a bride that suits him personally, and is also suitable for companionship and for begetting children, he should marry, indeed everyone should do so before they turn thirty-five. But first he should be told how to find a suitable and fitting bride, for as Cleinias says, every law should be preceded by an introductory preamble of its own. — Plato, Laws, Bk 6, 772D

The matter of a union beneficial to the City is discussed as a balance of dispositions of the couple as well as the development of the children:

Ath: It’s nice of you to say so. Now, to a young man, from 773A a good family we should say the following: you should enter into the sort of marriage that meets the approval of sensible folk. These people would advise you neither to shun marriage to a poor family, nor chase eagerly after wealthy connections and, all other considerations being equal, always prefer to enter a union with someone who has less resources. For this approach would be beneficial both to the city itself, and to the families involved, since balance and proportion are much more conducive to excellence than unbridled excess. And someone who realises that he himself is too impulsive and hasty in all his actions should look for 773B connections to a well behaved family, whereas someone with the opposite natural tendencies should pursue connections of the opposite sort. And there should be one rule for all marriages: each person is to seek a marriage that is beneficial to the city, not the one that pleases himself. Everyone is always drawn somehow, by nature, to a person who is most like himself, and so the city 773C as a whole develops an imbalance of wealth and character traits. That’s how the consequences we wish to avoid in our own city, certainly befall most other cities. Now to prescribe explicitly, by law, that the wealthy are not to marry the wealthy, the powerful are not to marry the powerful, that the slower characters have to look for marital unions with the quick witted, and the quicker with the slower, would not alone be ridiculous but would anger a lot of people. For it is not easy to appreciate that a city should be 773D blended after the manner of a wine bowl, in which the wine, when first poured, seethes madly, but when it is restrained by the good company of another, more sober god, it forms a good, duly measured drink. Now it is virtually impossible for anyone to discern that this is happening in the case of the blending of children, and that’s why we should omit such matters from our laws. We should try instead to charm each person into placing more value upon the equipoise of their own children, than the marital property equality which is insatiable, using words of reproach to deter anyone who is intent upon marrying for money, rather than forcing them via a written law. — ibid. 772E

The limits of legislation noted here is quite different from the language of the Republic. It does echo the concern for the children's well-being in Phaedo. It also points to the threshold separating the public and private aspects of marriage addressed by the OP.

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. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Knowledge of the Forms is the justification for the rule of the philosopher. The analogy with the soul is problematic absent knowledge in the soul. This is not to say that reason should not rule the soul but without knowledge we must rely on what seems best to us. Hence the emphasis on moderation developed through a musical education and upbringing.

What happens to Socrates as the hands of the city points to the importance of political philosophy. The city's animosity to philosophy means that the philosopher must receive a political education in the sense of learning how to live and philosophize within the city without invoking the wraith of the city. The philosopher must take on the role of benefactor. This includes telling stories about the good that are good for them.

Eidos shows up throughout the dialogues ... — Count Timothy von Icarus

It does, but the meaning of the term as it was commonly understood includes 'look', 'kind', and 'idea'. It is thus not some thing that exists on its own in some intelligible world but how something appears or seems to be for us. The myth of Forms attempts to resolve disagreement regarding opinions about things like justice, beauty, and the good by going beyond how they appear to us with claims about how they are in themselves as known to the philosophers. Such philosophers are not the philosophers of the Symposium who desire to be wise but are not. Philosophers who are in this regard not like Socrates.

Then those who are wise are wise by wisdom and all good things are good by the good … And these are somethings ... — Count Timothy von Icarus

Compare this to what he says in 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 calls the hypothesis of Forms (100a) simple, naive, and perhaps foolish, and later "safe and ignorant". (105 b)

This is surprising given that this occurs in a discussion in which he is attempting to persuade his friends that death is something good for those who are good in part based on recollection of the Forms.

After introducing the “Socratic Trinity”, the Just, the Beautiful, and the Good. (65d) But he says nothing of them, and for very good reason:

“… if we can know nothing purely in the body's company, then one of two things must be true: either knowledge is nowhere to be gained, or else it is for the dead.”

(66e)

In the Apology he says:

... 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).

If the dead are nothing then there is no recollection of the Forms. If knowledge is not for the dead because the dead are nothing then knowledge is nowhere to be gained.

If Plato intended to promulgate ἀπορία ... — Count Timothy von Icarus

He doesn't. Aporia is the result of our lack of knowledge. If one is to strive to know, however, coming face to face with one's lack of knowledge is a necessary step if one is to be disabused on the assumption that he already knows.

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. — Count Timothy von Icarus

To the contrary. I think he did understand him. He understood the difference and made use of the distinction between salutary public speech, which is to say political speech, and what those who were well suited discussed in private.

Thank you for the article. The play of tragic and comedic elements is important in Plato's work and life. I will try to address that later as I need to do chores soon. But I will say something quickly about the interesting idea of a denial of self-expression that Fraser brings forward.

The absence of Plato in the dialogues amongst people he lived with has a weird narrative effect. He is present throughout but hiding at the same time. In the Phaedo, the device is performed in front of us like a magic act. It is as if I handed you a photo album of my life events and you discover that I have used scissors to remove my image whenever I am in the shot.

Nostalgia must be involved but it does not give the Proustian vibe of 'remembrance of things past'.

Now to chores. My wife is asking for a greater display of practical reason over the theoretical for the coming week.

Interesting to note that one of the etymologies for 'mystic' and 'mysticism' was precisely 'an initiate into the Mysteries.'

I think scholarly opinion favours the view that Plato was an initiate, although as is well known, speaking about them was forbidden, they're secret rites (like Masonic rites in today's culture.) But many of the themes in the more spiritual of the dialogues - Phaedo, Phaedrus, and Symposium - are at least strongly suggestive of the soteriological beliefs of the that cult.

It is really not difficult to interpret the Analogy of the Cave as an analogy from ignorance (avidya in the Indian texts) to philosophical enlightenment although as always Plato's dialogues contain a strong rationalistic element which was not so pronounced in Eastern wisdom teachings.

When Socrates asks for a definition of a term that he and all the interlocutors believe is important but disagree about, he is surely trying to find the view from nowhere, the place where we transcend doxa and perhaps, eventually, dianoia as well, and can see the Good itself. — J

There are a few points that I disagree with. Socratic philosophy is rooted in opinion. The examination of opinion does not mean the transcendence of opinion. I take seriously the Socratic notion of human ignorance.In Plato's Apology he says that he does not know anything noble (or beautiful) and good. (kalos kai agathos) (21d)

From the Phaedo:

One day I heard someone reading, as he said, from a book of Anaxagoras, and saying that it is Mind that directs and is the cause of everything. I was delighted with this cause and it seemed to me good, in a way, that Mind should be the cause of all. I thought that if this were so, the directing Mind would direct everything and arrange each thing in the way that was best. If then one wished to know the cause of each thing, why it comes to be or perishes or exists, one had to find what was the best way for it to be, or to be acted upon, or to act. On these premises then it befitted a man to investigate only, about this and other things, what is best.

(97b-d)

Plato shifts between mind as the cause of the order of the cosmos and mind as what order and directs human inquiry. In our inquiry we must be guided by consideration of what is best. Accordingly, we accept those arguments that seem best. The question of what is best is inextricably linked to the question of the human good. About what is best we can only do our best to say what is best and why. The question of what is best turns from things in general to the human things and ultimately to the self for whom what is best is what matters most. The question of the good leads back to the problem of self-knowledge.

In another thread Socratic Philosophy I argued that because the Good is beyond being it cannot be known.

If the divided line isn't for would-be philosophers, I can't imagine who else it's for. — J

The lowest level of the divided line is not transcended or abandoned. It is our abode, the city, the cave. In the Phaedo Socrates calls Forms hypothesis. In the dialectic of the Republic too the Forms are hypothetical, and remain so unless or until one is able to free themself from hypothesis. In the dialogue Socrates is clear in stating that he has not done so.

In none of the dialogues do we find someone who has attained divine knowledge. Philosophy is, according to the Symposium, the desire for wisdom. They do not possess wisdom. The philosophers of the Republic stand in opposition to the philosophers of the Symposium.

... the idea that we are meant to go through aporia is so enticing. — J

Yes. And her Plato rivals the best of the poets in inflaming Eros. In this case the desire to be wise.

I suppose we could view Socrates as trying to block rational thought at these points of aporia, but I'm not sure that's his purpose — J

It is not that he blocks rational thought but that it has reached its limit.

We could look at specific dialogues for that, but we'd need a new OP. — J

If you do a search of the forum you will see that I started several threads that do just that.

I don't see this as being about the Forms themselves. — J

It is about knowledge of the forms, or lack of such knowledge.

But that there is some such thing to see must be insisted on. — J

He continues:

And should we not also insist that the power of dialectic alone would reveal this, to someone with experience in what we have been describing just now, and that this is not possible in any other way?

To which Glaucon agrees. Why does Glaucon agrees? Certainly not because this is something he knows. And Socrates does not know it either. He knows only how it looks to him. Why does Socrates insist? I think it is because he thinks that holding this opinion is better than the alternatives. It is a moment in the movement of dialectic, that is:

... 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.

They have not reached that point and will not reach it. They are thinking dialectically, via hypothesis.

With that said, we both know Plato well enough to be aware that, like the Bible, you can find support for diametrically opposed positions depending on what you quote! — J

Yes, but the goal is not simply to support a position but to consider different positions in order to find the one that seems best. But we may not always find one that seems best, and so, we leave things open and continue to think.

With regard to mysticism - there is a lot of different stuff called mysticism. — Fooloso4

I have read that the original meaning was to be an initiate of the mystery religions. If Plato was indeed an initiate it makes him a textbook example. If you read the history of Christian mysticism, Plato and Platonism are major sources of that although there has always been a tension between Semitic faith and Greek rationalism - 'what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?' Catholicism and Orthodoxy managed to synthesise them, but I don't know if Protestantism ever did. And, of course, mysticism has picked up many other meanings in the millenia since, not all of them salutary. But I'm someone with whom it has always resonated.

In the Phaedo, Socrates attributes causal power to the Forms: — Fooloso4

Right - but couldn't it be argued that this was to become part of the basis of Aristotle's fourfold causal schema, in the 'formal cause'? Which is just the kind of causal principle that fell ouf of favour with the decline of Aristotelian philosophy, although Aristotelian ideas seem to making something of a comeback in philosophy of biology.

If Plato was indeed an initiate it makes him a textbook example. — Wayfarer

I think Plato's cave mimics initiation into a mystery cult. There is, however, a notable exception. There is no secret initiation rite. According to the Phaedo:

... sound-mindedness, justice, courage, and wisdom itself are purifications ... And the Bacchae are, in my view, none other than those who have properly engaged in philosophy.

(69c-d)

I had the impression that Hadot sees Christianity as having appropriated the spiritual practices of 'pagan' philosophy and redirected them into a theological framework—ultimately subordinating philosophy to dogma. While Hadot respects many Christian thinkers, he is critical of the loss of philosophy’s independent role as a transformative way of life with its own internal plurality. (I think that is due to a kind of conflict between reason and faith, which the orthodox and Catholic traditions manage to reconcile (or believe they do), but which emerges again with Luther and reformed theology.)

I think that's a fair description from "Philosophy as a Way of Life." He doesn't spend that much time on Christianity and makes it seem largely just derivative. Maybe this is corrected elsewhere or maybe not, but in one of the other two books I mentioned (I think Michael Champion's) they review Hadot's stuff and say he never really gets beyond this (I think I saw this same opinion in a paper on the Philokalia as well).

Anyhow, what might be missed, depending on the value one sees in the later tradition is:
-Prayer as a distinct set of spiritual exercises

-The role of alms giving, works, the sacraments/mysteries, and communal activity (e.g. psalmody during the Liturgy of the Hours, the Eucharist, etc.)

- How the framing leads to asceticism, isolation as hermits, evangelism, and "infused contemplation" all taking on much wider roles. The Pagan philosophers embraced asceticism but they didn't produce dendrites (tree dwellers), stylites (pillar dwellers), or wild men.

-Hesychasm, stillness, as its own distinct goal with its own methods. It certainly shows up in Pagan thought, but not in the same way. The focus on total mental stillness as a prerequisite to "infused contemplation" (also more of a focus in the Christian tradition) led to different methodologies, particularly in terms of prayer and the recitation of short prayers (e.g. the Jesus Prayer, not unlike a mantra). The Desert Fathers themselves saw this as a difference, and in the Sayings there is a story where the Pagans come out to see them and they compare notes and they agree that they both fast, are chaste, spend time in solitude, study, meditate, etc. But the monks say "we can keep watch over our thoughts" (nepsis, the way to hesychasm) and the Pagan's admit "we cannot do this" (this is the monk's story afterall) and depart.

-That, although the Desert Fathers (and through them Christianity writ large) borrow terms from Pagan philosophy, they actually use them very differently. And actually, this is where the critique has most of its teeth. Hadot acts like Christians just copied and pasted ideas because the same Greek words get used, when rather it seems like they just borrowed the language. Most of the Desert Fathers were not educated. Those who were, like Evagrius, are using the established language of Greek thought to try to capture and organic and disorganized language. This, while both speak of dispassion or apatheia, or vanquishing "the passions," they mean very different things.

The Christian view has a much larger role for the appetites and passions in the "good life," and human perfection, and much more respect for the body in general. For them, the "Flesh" is not the body, but attachment to finite goods for their own sake. The goal of their asceticism is perhaps closer to Plato's original vision, the orientation of the appetites and passions by the nous (and their regeneration in grace with the nous). Apatheia isn't the death of passion and appetite, but their proper use in a sensible world where everything is a sign of God and part of a ladder up to God (a world that is "very good" Genesis 1). This is why the last step on St. Bernard of Clairvaux's "Ladder of Love" is "love of creatures for God's sake."

The other difference is that, while they see the human nous as divine, they see it as extremely damaged by sin at the outset of man's pilgrimage. So the battle they are engaged in is not so much against the appetites and passions (although it gets framed that way), but also a regeneration of the nous, will and intellect, as well. It isn't just about establishing proper ordering or leaving behind the material, but healing the former and properly using the latter. And sometimes even the material world is "healed" in some of the stories of the Fathers, as nature itself is regenerated around the holy man.

The goal of "becoming like God" is stated the same way as well, but is quite different because, while the Christian God is impassible and immutable, the model for man is the Incarnation, who was fully man and fully God. Hence again, the role of the body, senses, passions, etc. have a much wider role. And since "God is love" and love is ultimately what unifies and orients the person (not dispassioned nous, since the nous begins sick), emotion plays a much larger role.

Not that this is particularly obvious in every Christian text, particularly since terms are often translated with the philosophical Greek meaning in mind. But I think Nietzsche's criticism of asceticism (reading Plato entirely through the Phaedo) actually applies to the earlier late Pagan tradition much more than the early to medieval Christian one. Ultimately though, I don't think Nietzsche really looked into the history that deeply.

there are things that exist and things that do not exist. If those things do not exist, it might subsists [sic]. If it subsists, it is real. If it does not subsists [sic], it is not real. — Richard B

I’m differentiating the sense in which particulars exist from the sense in which universals are real. Particulars exist in a phenomenal sense, but universals are real in a different sense. I think Russell uses ‘subsist’ to try and articulate this distinction, and while I don’t think that term provides a very elegant way of expressing it, at least it recognises there is a distinction to be made.

An archetypal example of a universal can be found in the argument from equals in the Phaedo. You will recall that in it, Socrates discusses the nature of 'equals' with Simmias, saying that unless we grasped the idea of 'equals' then we wouldn't recognise that two things of different kinds were of equal lengths. (Of course in the context Socrates argues that this must be because of knowledge the soul has before birth, but that is not relevant for my purposes.) So one might feasibly imagine an addendum to that dialogue:

Socrates: “This 'Equal' that you agree is essential to our judgments — can you show it to me? Can you point to it as you would point to a piece of wood or a stone?”

Simmias: “No, Socrates. 'The Equal' is not something we perceive with our senses. It is something that only reason (nous) can grasp.”

Thus, Socrates draws Simmias to recognize that the Equal — and by analogy, all such intelligible Forms — does not exist as a physical thing, but subsists as an intelligible reality, knowable only to a rational soul (psuché).

A fuller elaboration of this point is provided by Eric D. Perl in "Thinking Being: An Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition":

Forms...are radically distinct, and in that sense ‘apart,’ in that they are not themselves sensible things. With our eyes we can see large things, but not largeness itself; healthy things, but not health itself. The latter, in each case, is an idea, an intelligible content, something to be apprehended by thought rather than sense, a ‘look’ not for the eyes but for the mind. This is precisely the point Plato is making when he characterizes forms as the reality of all things. “Have you ever seen any of these with your eyes?—In no way … Or by any other sense, through the body, have you grasped them? I am speaking about all things such as largeness, health, strength, and, in one word, the reality [οὐσίας, ouisia] of all other things, what each thing is” (Phd. 65d4–e1). Is there such a thing as health? Of course there is. Can you see it? Of course not. This does not mean that the forms are occult entities floating ‘somewhere else’ in ‘another world,’ a ‘Platonic heaven.’ It simply says that the intelligible identities which are the reality, the whatness, of things are not themselves physical things to be perceived by the senses, but must be grasped by reason. If, taking any of these examples—say, justice, health, or strength—we ask, “How big is it? What color is it? How much does it weigh?” we are obviously asking the wrong kind of question. Forms are ideas, not in the sense of concepts or abstractions, but in that they are realities apprehended by thought rather than by sense. They are thus‘separate’in that they are not additional members of the world of sensible things, but are known by a different mode of awareness. But this does not mean that they are ‘located elsewhere'... — Eric D Perl, Thinking Being, p28

Thus, when we distinguish between particulars that exist phenomenally and universals that are real intelligibly, we are making precisely the kind of distinction Plato articulates, and which later philosophy (including thinkers like Russell, despite his awkward terminology) recognizes as crucial to any coherent account of universals (not that he elsewhere defends scholastic realism).

As for Quine, that is a vulgar caricature.

Great post. I have brought up this issue many times. One neat historical point here is that Plato's last (and best) argument in the Phaedo against the Pythagorean view of soul as simply being akin to a tuning on a lyre (i.e. an emergent epiphenomena) closely mirrors a lot of modern discussions here. This isn't totally surprising since the Pythaogrean view that being somehow is mathematics is quite popular today (e.g. ontic structural realism, Max Tegmark's "Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, etc.).

Let's take the first option. I, like many other materialists, believe consciousness to be a higher-order, emergent informational property of some kind. There is nothing particularly special about the matter that composes the brain; instead, what is special about it is how one part interacts and relates to another. It suggests that consciousness is not related to the actual substance in and of itself, but is instead an interactional/relational/informational property that is neutral to whatever substrate it happens to occupy. The only way I can see mental causation, in this case, happening without violating or massively changing our understanding of physics is via some sort of top-down, constraint-based causation.

So would a carefully constructed neural network made from pipes and water wheels that is set up to process inputs and outputs like a human brain be conscious? Could we carefully set up toilet paper rolls to be conscious?

My take is that, while I think the computational theory of mind view gets something right, I am not sure it gets everything right. For one thing, the reduction of thought to computation (essentially discursive ratio without intellectus/noesis in medieval thought) seems to open up a host of epistemic challenges that undermine our very faith in reason or science itself.

Also, if one adopts the popular view in physics that the universe itself is essentially a computer (endorsed to varying degrees by a veritable whose who of physicists: Tegmark, Lloyd, Davies, Landauer, Vedral, etc.) then the brain's "being a computer" is nothing special and cannot explain its uniqueness: But it actually turns out to be very hard to define computation in physical systems. Tight definitions are hard to justify and loose ones make it so that anything with enough informational complexity can be said to be computing anything else.

Perhaps one easy way out here is to say that contemporary neuroscience simply makes too many simplifying assumptions. Steam pipes cannot become conscious by being set up as neural networks because human bodies do way more than our neural networks. Perhaps all the very small actions of cellular metabolism, glial cells, quantum scale behaviors, etc. all play a role such that substrate is important because pipes and toilet paper rolls cannot actually do what the human body does. That quantum behavior has been found in phenomena like photosynthesis seems to me to indicate that it would be more surprising than not if life didn't take advantage of it in some ways in the nervous system.

In this view, mental states are not pushing particles around like little ghostly levers, but rather they emerge from and constrain the lower-level dynamics. Just as the macroscopic structure of a dam constrains the flow of water without being “extra” to the laws of hydrodynamics, so too might conscious informational states constrain the behavior of underlying physical systems without overriding physical laws. This allows for a kind of causal relevance without direct physical intervention—more like shaping and filtering what’s already happening. Consciousness, then, would be a structural property with real organizational consequences, operating within physical law but not reducible to any single local interaction.

Are you familiar with Terrance Deacon's "Incomplete Nature" or his other work?

You might be interested in this introduction . His theory works similar to this but brings in semiotics to help, although I recall that it didn't seem to totally lean into the triadic semiotic view (as opposed to dyadic mechanism, which is so dominant). John Deely is another interesting guy here. Deacon also ties his constraint-based absential influence back to Aristotle's notion of formal causality.

As Deacon notes, Jaegwon Kim has some very strong arguments against any sort of emergence from the perspective of a substance metaphysics of supervenience (i.e. one where "things are what they are made of," a building block/bundle ontology). However, process metaphysics avoids this issue (Mark Bickhard has a good article on this, although it simplifies a bit too much). So, again, Aristotle is a nice example of a process metaphysics that doesn't run into the problem of collapsing all being into a single monoprocess and making all predication accidental (a particular vice of process metaphysics that is sort of the mirror image of the excesses of reductionism, a sort of "bigism," e.g. "only quantum fields exist, and they are unified, so only the field of fields—just one thing—exists"). One nice thing about process metaphysics is that it also seemingly incorporates information theory better in some ways (instead of having it reduced to mechanism).

Actually, I think Aristotle can be more useful here through the later development of his thought in Neoplatonism, Islamic thought, and Scholasticism, but those are sort of a dark zone in contemporary thought.

Although, I'm also partial to the idea, advanced by David Bentley Hart in "All Things are Full of Gods," D.C. Schindler, and others, that the problem also one of framing. Mechanistic philosophy is essentially a giant inversion, orienting higher levels towards the lower, act to potency, form to matter, etc. Historically, one can see how this shift was motivated by a number of theological and political concerns, as a sort of reaction against the existing model (e.g. describing nature in terms of "laws and obedience" isn't any less anthropomorphic than speaking of "desires and inclinations," it's just motivated by a particular sort of theology). Smallism and reductionism grow out of this moment and they seem to make a number of phenomena impossible to explain.

Alternatively, we could consider anthropic selection. Perhaps there are many possible physical-informational configurations in the universe, and only some give rise to conscious experiences. Of those, only a tiny subset might produce systems where consciousness is psychophysically harmonious—where experiences like pain and pleasure are meaningfully aligned with behavior. From this perspective, we happen to find ourselves in such a system precisely because only those systems would contain observers capable of reflecting on this harmony. But while this may explain *why* we observe harmony, it doesn’t explain *how* such a configuration comes to be. It risks treating consciousness as an unexplained brute feature of certain arrangements rather than something that follows naturally from the structure of the system.

Right, this seems very unpalatable. It's almost a non-answer. It seems similar to some responses to the Fine Tuning Problem. These sorts of answers are only accepted so long as better answers don't exist.

Indeed, this is one of the most common themes in philosophy, a Platonic theme that was taken up by Christianity: the fight against the passions

Well, that's Nietzsche's account. I think that, whatever his other merits, he is not a particularly accurate (or charitable) student of Plato, and especially not of the Christian Platonist tradition. This sounds to me more like the "buffered self" of the neostoicism of the German Protestant pietism that Nietzsche grew up with. The passions are morally neutral in the Christian Platonist tradition, and essential to the beatific vision. Their proper and harmonious orientation is what matters.

Not that Nietzsche is entirely wrong. The Phaedo could be read in this light. I think it's harder to make this case in light of the whole corpus though, and much harder for the Christian tradition generally, granted that some influential texts do seem to advocate for a sort of war against the body and passions. This is more a predilection of the late-antique Pagans though, particularly an ambivalence towards or neglect of embodiment (we're talking about a tradition that birthed a cult of bodily relics afterall, whose key focus is the resurrection of the body and the embodiment of God).

It would make just as much sense to say, “Occasionally I feel this strange impulse to stop smoking, but happily I've manage to combat that drive and pick up a cigarette whenever I want.”

Would it make just as much sense? People don't generally talk this way at least, right? And my exposure to the Eastern tradition makes me think that this is in not a distinctly Western, Platonist influenced tendency. The distinction between Ātman and Prakṛti for instance.

It would be sort of bizarre for someone to say: "I was tempted on my work trip, and unfortunately my sex drive was not strong enough to make me cheat on my spouse." To me at least, being hungry seems quite phenomenologically distinct as compared to intellectually willing something. There is also a passive element to some appetites; people often talk about the passions as something that happens to them, and I can think of examples of this from literature that spans a lot of different cultures and epochs.

Instinctively, Nietzsche says, we tend to take our predominant drive and for the moment turn it into the whole of our ego, placing all our weaker drives perspectivally farther away, as if those other drives weren't me but rather something else, something other inside me, a kind of “it” (hence Freud's idea of the “id,” the “it”—which he also derived from Nietzsche).

I am not sure about this part either. It seems fully possible to experience weakness of will and not to identify with the dominant desire in this manner. This gets back to the idea of the passions in some sense happening to us. I would hardly claim that literature has always described things thus, but it seems like it often has, perhaps even usually. Furor descends on Aeneas, a great rage "comes upon" the Trojan women when they decide to burn their own ships. Homer's Greeks are the same way.

Of course, Nietzsche also appeals to the Greeks on this point. I guess I'm just not sure if it might suggest a different take. Certainly other ancient lit does, e.g. Genesis 4:7 — "sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it," makes a pretty clear distinction (the passion in this case being wrath, the murder of Abel)—or maybe this merely explains why the Jewish tradition and Plato got on so well together.

You may not seek to impose a white nationalist Christian theocracy on the world, but many who benefit from undermining liberalism and secular culture certainly do. — Tom Storm

Right, but I think there is a quite robust argument to be made that it is secularism and liberalism that has spawned fundamentalism, elevated fideism, etc. The two are not unrelated. It's not unlike how the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism and the Gilded Age spawned socialism. Even if one sees socialism as largely or wholly negative (and many do not), it would still be the case that it is precisely deficiencies in the existing system that strengthened it. Addressing these deficiencies (e.g., the erection of the welfare state, etc.) ultimately went a long way to addressing the excesses of the socialist movement, where reforms were made. Invoking the specter of Christian nationalism here might thus be likened to invoking the threat of Stalinism to oppose the New Deal in that, arguably, the New Deal actually made a sort of American Stalinism less, not more likely precisely because it addressed the issues that motivated Stalinism.

Then tell me: On the grounds of what should one still have faith and still trust them, against facts? — baker

Well, consider you examples. Similar examples could be drawn up to undermine faith in the scientific establishment, modern medicine, the liberal state, Marxism, or Enlightenment rationalism itself. For instance, there is no shortage of examples of doctors treating patients for illnesses they know they do not have and killing them in the process, or knowingly prescribing them addictive drugs in order to make more money.

Yet none of these traditions claim they are immune to corruption, so these examples don't result in a contradiction of sorts. Hence, it seems to me that the more powerful claim would not be that some cases of corruption exist, but that no cases of spiritual progress exist or that such "progress" is actually itself undesirable (the latter being the more common modern argument, in part probably because the former seems difficult to prove). That is, not "there are people who pretend to be saints," but rather "there are no saints."

Or else it needs to be explained why corruption is a specifically unique problem only for specific sorts of religious/philosophical/spiritual traditions, but presumably not all (since all such traditions have examples of corruption). For instance, is Russellian style atheism and the appeal to "man against the darkness," i.e., being good in a meaningless universe obviated by Russell's sorted personal life (or those of other advocates)? This is precisely the sort of argument religious folks raise—"the degeneracy of key athiests displays the inherent folly of their claims to a morality without God," and yet I think this alone is a facile argument because it can be applied against any ideology or ethos, from Marxism to Buddhism to modern medicine.

One might say for instance that, because the Providential nature of the Church it should be immune to corruption. However, Christianity itself has not tended to claim this, in part because Christ and the Apostles repeatedly warn of false teachers and simony across the New Testament and similar sentiments can be found in the Hebrew scriptures.

Likewise, with a faculty of intellectus or noesis (or similar notions in the East), the mere presence of error cannot be decisive, or else it should be equally decisive in proving that we should have no faith in discursive ratio and argumentation. For instance, Plato's warning against misology in the Phaedo is focused on the repudiation of more discursive and formal argumentation, which can prove misleading at times, and yet ought not be disparaged simply because such bad exemplars exist. So too, if such claims are caricatured as a sort of magical, exceptional knowledge, we are essentially already accepting the Enlightenment framing since this is often not how philosophies that embrace them tend to explain them (e.g., as Robert Wallace points out, the sort of "mystical knowledge" Plato often invokes is generally accessible to all or almost all to some degree).

Can you show me the reasons given by Plato, to doubt the arguments presented by Socrates, as paraphrased above. — Metaphysician Undercover

Short answer begins here

A more adequate long answer here

It is clear from that thread that you disagree with my interpretation. If you wish to pursue this further please reopen that thread or begin a new one.

Or the intelligible is immaterial and eternal. Or the immaterial is eternal and intelligible. How do mortal beings connect to something immortal? Through some hidden immortal and immaterial part of themselves. — hanaH

There's been a very instructive thread on the Phaedo which discusses the immortality of the soul.

If, however, this organ is immaterial and private, we really can't be rational or scientific about it. I'm not saying that mind is only brain and behavior, but it makes sense that we'd prioritize those aspects of the concept in rational-scientific investigations — hanaH

I think the key thing that must elude, or precede, any science, is meaning. It's our capacity to interpret and discern meaning that differentiates us from other animals. That's why I'm coming to appreciated C S Peirce, about whom I've learned a ton on this forum. (We have a great exponent of Peircian biosemiotics on this forum.)

I know who to ask, but will Fooloso4 respond? — Amity

You came to the right place, for I too am an expert on love.

The article compares Socrates' claim in the Symposium with his claim in the Apology, but it is not only the seemingly contradictory claims but the occasions during which he made them that should be considered. Being on trial in a court of law and a contest of speeches about eros are very different occasions requiring different ways of speaking.

This contest mirrors that of the contest between philosophy and poetry. It is the poets who claim to be experts on love. For Socrates to claim to be an expert in the presence of highly regarded poets was both surprising and provocative. In addition, Socrates was not, as it is commonly understood, an erotic man.

But how different are Socrates' claims in the Apology and Symposium? As Socrates says in the Symposium, eros is the desire for what one does not possess. Philosophy is erotic in that it is the desire for wisdom. It is Socrates' lack of knowledge, as professed in the Apology, that is the basis of his knowledge of eros, the desire to know.

Knowledge of ignorance is not simply recognizing one does not know. Socrates' "human wisdom" is a matter of the examined life, of how best to live in the absence of knowledge of what is best. The "art of love", ta erôtika, is the art of living. Since we all desire what is good, the art of living cannot simply be the philosophical life.

In the Phaedo Socrates says that philosophy is the practice of death and dying, the separation of body and soul. The joke here being that the only good philosopher is a dead philosopher. More serious is the question of the relationship between life and death, body and soul. I have discussed this here

We are not souls temporarily attached to bodies. We are ensouled bodies. One thing not two. Desire does not cut along the distinction between body and soul. Since we know nothing of death, preparation for death turns from unanswerable questions of death back to life, to how we live, here and now.

What does that even mean?
To converse elenctically...especially on a philosophy forum? — Amity

In the cited article Reeve defines it as "how to ask and answer questions". We may ask, in turn, what is the goal and what is the result of such inquiry? Socrates used it to demonstrate that one does not know what he assumed to know. This may lead to quite different results - anger, shame, resentment, or, as Socrates hoped, the desire to know, to a dissatisfaction with opinions. But this, in turn, can lead to a dissatisfaction with philosophy itself, to misologic, when it fails to provide the answers expected of it.

Philosophy is often treated as the art of argumentation - making arguments that attempt to be least vulnerable to attack, while attacking opposing positions. The limits of argument, however, are not the limits of philosophy. It is here that the "ancient quarrel' between philosophy and poetry is reconfigured. This is why the dialogues often turn from logos to mythos. The promise of dialectic in the Republic, the use of hypothesis to become free of hypothesis is itself hypothetical. The image of transcendence, from opinion to the sight of the Forms, is just that, an image. The mythic philosopher of the Republic who possesses knowledge is no longer a philosopher, that is, one who desires to know. The philosopher, like the poet, is an image maker.

Nietzsche's interpretation is clearly not the one that Plato suggests in Phaedo though. Socrates wanted to ask the gods to aid him in his journey from this world to the next world. Hence the Asclepius comment, which referred to the God of healing and medicine.

As you can see above, I think anxiety can be somewhat useful. It can push you to learn a lot of useful information. Things that people should be taught at school - but they're not - instead they're taught how to solve second order differential equations, as if most of them are ever going to do that after they get out of there... Anyway.

My favorite philosophy piece on death are Plato's dialogues about the death of Socrates, especially the Phaedo and the Apology. I adopt the Socratic attitude. Either death is the end, or death is the continuation of life - the return to the gods. Like Socrates, I too hope, without knowing, that there is an afterlife - an afterlife in which I will get to meet all my loved ones, in which all the tears will be wiped away, and in which goodness will reign supreme. But it's my hope. Why do I hope? Because it's better to hope and go meet my death with goodness and gladness in my heart is it not? It's better to hope and be deceived than not to hope at all for fear of error. We can go wrong both in believing and in not believing - that's another lesson anxiety teaches. You go wrong when you don't believe that everything is fine with you, even though it is. By being uncertain you don't save yourself from error. You may actually be plunging head-on into error because you remain so attached to uncertainty. Even not making a choice is a choice. There really is no fence on which one can sit. That's why there always is some existential anxiety - one never knows if they are completely right. And yet one must choose - and not choosing is another choice. So there's another anxiety at play - the anxiety of not choosing, because you understand that that too is a choice. But time is running out - one must choose.

Now going back to Spinoza - yes I think his point is right. Our existence on this Earth isn't here for us to spend thinking about what is not in our control. The free man doesn't think on death at all - he is only concerned with what is in his freedom. You can't be concerned about your freedom and death at the same time - for if you were concerned with your freedom, then you would be concerned only with things that were in your control. But death is not in your control - for the most part. Thus, for the most part, if you are concerned about death you are not concerned about your freedom. The free man is the one who has understood that there exists a Natural Law which is above and beyond himself and loves this Natural Order because he understands that this Natural Order has arranged things for the best. He is only a small part of this Natural Order - he cannot hope to understand all its intricacies. He must obey it, because it knows better. Even if death ends all. Spinoza ends his Ethica totally courageous in the face of death:

Even if we did not know that our mind is eternal, we would still regard as of the first importance morality, religion, and absolutely all the things we have shown to be related to tenacity and nobility [...] The usual conviction of the multitude seems to be different. For most people apparently believe that they are free to the extent that they are permitted to yield to their lust, and that they give up their right to the extent that they are bound to live according to the rule of the divine law. Morality, then, and religion, and absolutely everything related to strength of character, they believe to be burdens, which they hope to put down after death, when they also hope to receive a reward for their bondage, that is, for their morality and religion. They are induced to live according to the rule of the divine law (as far as their weakness and lack of character allows) not only by this hope, but also, and especially, by the fear that they may be punished horribly after death. If men did not have this hope and fear, but believed instead that minds die with the body, and that the wretched, exhausted with the burden of morality, cannot look forward to a life to come, they would return to their natural disposition, and would prefer to govern all their actions according to lust, and to obey fortune rather than themselves. These opinions seem no less absurd to me than if someone, because he does not believe he can nourish his body with good food to eternity, should prefer to fill himself with poisons and other deadly things, or because he sees that the mind is not eternal, or immortal, should prefer to be mindless, and to live without reason. These [common beliefs] are so absurd they are hardly worth mentioning [...] Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; nor do we enjoy it because we restrain our lusts; on the contrary, because we enjoy it, we are able to restrain them — Benedictus de Spinoza

It allows us to 'become who we are' through the call of conscience, which can draw us away from the empty chatter and distractions of the anonymous crowd and towards possibilities of existing that we find more meaningful for ourselves. It has a positive function in that we no longer chase after the approval of others, and therefore gain a sense of freedom much more significant than the ability to do whatever we want, free of external constraints. In short, it makes life much more profound and meaningful, even in its seemingly mundane and trivial aspects. — Erik

I disagree very strongly about this. Death is not needed. One must not be moral out of fear. That is an inadequate idea per Spinoza. If one is moral because of death - because of fear, then one is just deceiving oneself - cheating himself that he is moral, when in fact he isn't. One must be moral because of one's love and thirst for the Good. Because of Amor Dei Intellectualis. Spinoza would disagree with the modern conception of freedom "doing whatever we want". That to him is bondage to our lusts - not freedom. The only freedom is the freedom to approach our fulfilment - which is precisely in Christian terms doing the will of God, ie being moral. We are all free to be moral - not all of us achieve that freedom though. We are all free to drop the chains of greed, of ambition, of lust, and to be entirely self-directed as Spinoza would say. And we are self directed when we act in accordance with the law in our hearts, which is the same law that governs the whole of nature. One Substance.

"Like children, you are haunted with a fear that when the soul leaves the body, the wind may really blow her away and scatter her; especially if a man should happen to die in stormy weather and not when the sky is calm."

- Plato, Phaedo.


"Time; cannot be kept, stored or saved. But the less you spend, the more you will have."

- Me

...but what would be a good way to get introduced to the discipline? — WolvesAtMyDoor

Well, it pays when you know philosophy is mostly about problems, so I suggest diving straight in with an easy one. The problem of the historical Socrates is a good place to start off since it doesn't require much reading to get a somewhat educated view on the matter. All it requires is some reading of Plato ("Apology", "Crito" and "Phaedo") and Xenophon ("Apology" and "Memorabilia"). Those two authors paint a different picture of Socrates, and knowing both allows you to piece together some understanding of the actual man on your own.

In the course of restating Thrasymachus' argument, Glaucon cites the story of the ring of Gyges which allows unjust actions to go unseen to introduce how "seeming to be just" can conceal crimes. Adimantus takes up the theme in regards to how that becomes an education of the young:

“Socrates, my friend,” he said, “when all these things of such a kind and in such quantity are said about virtue and vice, the sort of esteem in which human beings and gods hold them, what do we imagine it does to the souls of young people who hear them, all those with good natures and equal to the task, as if they were floating above all the things that are said in order to gather from them what sort of person [365B] to be and how to make one’s way through life so that one might go through it the best possible way? From what seems likely, that person would speak to himself as Pindar wrote, ‘Is it by justice or by crooked tricks that I make the wall rise higher’ so as to fortify myself to live my life? For the things that are said claim there’s no benefit for me to be just if I don’t also seem to be, but obvious burdens and penalties, while they describe a divine-sounding life for an unjust person provided with a reputation for justice. [365C] So, since, as those who’re wise show me, ‘the seeming overpowers even the truth’ and is what governs happiness, one should turn completely to that. It’s necessary for me to draw a two-dimensional illusion of virtue in a circle around myself as a front and a show, but drag along behind it the cunning and many-sided fox of the most wise Archilochus.14 “‘But,’ someone says, ‘it’s not easy always to go undetected in being evil.’ Well, we’ll tell him that no other great thing falls into one’s lap either, but [365D] still, if we’re going to be happy, this is the direction we’ve got to go, where the tracks of the argument take us. To go undetected, we’ll band together in conspiracies and secret brotherhoods, and there are teachers of persuasion who impart, for money, skill at speaking to assemblies and law courts, by means of which we’ll use persuasion about some things, but we’ll use force about others, so as to get more than our share of things without paying the penalty.
Plato. Republic (Focus Philosophical Library) 365a Translated by Joe Sachs

The need to find an understanding of justice that is truly beneficial to a person is the only way to counter this form of instruction and way of life.

Regarding the immortal soul, it is spoken of as living in bodies. In Phaedrus, it is put this way:

"And now that we have seen that that which is moved by itself is immortal, we shall feel no scruple in affirming that precisely that is the the essence and definition of soul, to wit, self-motion. Any body that has an external source of motion is soulless, but a body deriving its motion from a source within itself is animate or besouled, which implies that the nature of the soul is what has been said." 245e

This prefaces a discussion of the soul's nature that also uses "parts", namely, the analogy of the winged chariot made up of charioteer and two steeds:

"With us men, in the first place, it is a pair of steeds that the charioteer controls, moreover one of them is noble and good, and of good stock, while the other has the opposite character, and his stock is the opposite. Hence the task of our charioteer is difficult and troublesome." 246b Translated by R Hackworth.

The nature of the soul in someone who is alive is different than what it is in itself. The separability from the body is what is discussed in Phaedo.

Speaking of Plato, he was pretty chill with death too in fact, but for reasons almost diametrically opposite to Nietzsche. Thus, in one of the worst texts ever written in the history of philosophy, you can read this:

"Those who practice philosophy in the right way are in training for dying and they fear death least of all men. Consider it from this point of view: if they are altogether estranged from the body and desire to have their soul by itself, would it not be quite absurd for them to be afraid and resentful when this happens? If they did not gladly set out for a place, where, on arrival, they may hope to attain that for which they had yearned during their lifetime, that is, wisdom, and where they would be rid of the presence of that from which they are estranged?

...Will then a true lover of wisdom, who has a similar hope and knows that he will never find it to any extent except in Hades, be resentful of dying and not gladly undertake the journey thither? One must surely think so, my friend, if he is a true philosopher, for he is firmly convinced that he will not find pure knowledge anywhere except there. And if this is so, then, as I said just now, would it not be highly unreasonable for such a man to fear death? / It certainly would, by Zeus, [Simmias] said." (Phaedo)