Plato in A Single Nutshell - by Tim Addey

'Plato In A Single Nutshell'

 By Tim Addey of the Prometheus Trust

It is said, that when he was near his death, Plato had a dream in which he saw himself changed into a swan, and that as this swan he flew from tree to tree giving his pursuing followers the greatest difficulty in trying to net him: I don’t think we need much imagination to see that the symbolism of this romantic tale is most apt. Of all the philosophers whose writings have survived more or less intact, Plato is, I think, the most difficult to feel one has him and his meaning properly netted and secure. This is for three reasons: firstly, the presentation of his teachings in dialogue form gives a remarkable fluidity to the truths that Plato wants us to consider; secondly he writes as a poet, and has the same approach to words as the best of poets – compressing layers of meaning into seemingly simple sentences; thirdly, he makes it very clear in both the Phaedrus and his letters that he considers the written word to be inferior to that spoken between master and pupil – so that even when we feel that we have understood any particular written doctrine, we must still wonder whether or not this was Plato’s final position on the matter.

One further consideration is needed before I attempt to force Plato into my nutshell tonight: such is the extraordinary luminosity of this philosopher who after almost two and a half thousand years still speaks and questions his readers concerning the most fundamental matters of reality and selfhood, that it is all too easy to see him as a single isolated phenomena – in the same manner as the light of the sun blots out any view of its fellow stars during the day. But this is trap which will immediately run us into trouble: one thing is certain, Plato would not have considered himself a Platonist. Every dialogue pays tribute to earlier thinkers – some obviously, such as Socrates, Aristophanes, Zeno and Parmenides who are actually given parts in the dialogues, some less obviously, such as Anaxagoras and Empedocles who are named in passing, some largely by implication such as Pythagoras and his disciples, whose doctrines concerning number underlie such works as the Timaeus; and some much more mysteriously, such as the founders of the mystery cults, the tellers of mythic stories, and poets. When one steps back to see Plato within a pre-existing tradition, it then becomes equally obvious that he was also expecting his writings to be a part of a continuing tradition. So although I will concentrate upon trying to summarize Plato, I will allow myself a slightly wider focus and consider where two or three of his more puzzling assertions led ancient Platonists.

So much for my approach and excuses for not quite fitting Plato and only Plato into a nutshell tonight. I will divide the rest of my talk into three main sections: metaphysics, psychology and ethics.

Metaphysics

The orthodox view of Plato’s philosophy is that the whole scheme rests on a reasonably clear distinction between two kinds of reality – the intelligible and the sensible. This is an adequate starting point, but it will require important modifications if we are to grasp the full extent of his metaphysics, which is more subtle than such an over simplification allows: indeed we miss an all-important principle if we do not press further towards its half-hidden unity. But let us start with a twofold reality:

There are many places where Plato makes this distinction, and describes the characteristic of the two states. In the Timaeus, for example, when Timaeus himself introduces his teachings concerning the cosmos, he says "In the first place, therefore, as it appears to me, it is necessary to define what that is which is always real being, but is without generation; and what that is which is generated indeed, or consists in a state of becoming to be, but which never really is. The former of these indeed is apprehended by intelligence in conjunction with reason, since it always subsists according to same. But the latter is perceived by opinion in conjunction with irrational sense; since it subsists in a state of generation and corruption, and never truly is."

The intelligible, then, is that which is always the same, possesses real being, and is perceived by the mind; while the sensible is in a constant movement towards and away from being but never quite attains the status of real being, and is perceived by the sense. From one point of view this distinction is quite easy to understand: on the one hand the abstract idea of the even is always even, the abstract idea of straight is always absolutely straight, and the abstract idea of two is never varied; on the other hand, I can see two apple blossoms which will move through various states, budding and growing towards something which is recognisably two apples: but at no point are the apples perfect, for a microscopic examination of them will undoubtedly reveal flaws of disease or accidental damage. Of course we will call them apples, and communicate with each other using an approximation which allows everyday life to proceed – ignoring the fact that they are more properly speaking "almost apples" rather than true apples. In the Theaetetus, at (183a ff), Socrates makes this very point: if knowledge is based on sensible perception then true thought, and consequently language, is subverted. At what point in its movement towards appleness is an apple an apple, and at what point in its decay does it cease to be apple? How many defects are we to allow an apple before we deny the name to it? And why do we call one physical thing an apple when it is observably different from another physical thing which we will also call an apple? At best the application of a common name to a number of physical things is a useful lie, at worst a deception which avoids proper thought.

But our constant use of the intelligible two never wears it out – otherwise in our computing age it would now, surely, be more like 1.9, or perhaps it might have gathered accretions like an old boat, and be closer to 2.1. Mathematics was deemed useful by ancient Platonists as a way of introducing the would-be philosopher to an easily recognisable set of unchanging abstractions, and numbers and mathematical concepts are still the best way of avoiding controversy in the Platonic theory of intelligibles, since "twoness" can be agreed upon by all. This is not quite the case with other intelligibles which Plato puts forward as further examples – absolute justice, beauty, goodness, and so on. Once Plato suggests that justice is as constant as twoness we must look carefully at what he means by intelligible.

An intelligible is something which has real being. In other words it is, rather than something which is becoming. As a dynamic cause Plato calls this real being a form, or idea. But here we must make a clear distinction between a Platonic idea and a human concept: the former is unchanging and independent of human understanding or even recognition, the latter is a relative thing which is subject to modification. In other words the idea of justice is what it is, but the human concept of justice is a constantly shifting value judgment – a thing which may deem the execution of a person for petty theft to be just in one century, and may then deem all executions to be unjust no matter what the crime in the following century. I will return a little later to discuss our own relation to forms or eternal ideas when I cover Platonic psychology.

To understand what Plato means by Idea, we might usefully read Proclus here, in his Commentary on the Parmenides (at 731) where he writes, "By no means, therefore, must it be said, that forms which subsist by themselves, which are established on a sacred foundation, and are immaterial and eternal, are the same with material forms of posterior origin, and which are full of variety and habitude. . . But ideas subsist in energy always the same, and are essentially intellectual."

Now according to Plato there is a clear relationship of abstract forms (or intelligibles) to material things (or sensibles) – a relationship of cause to effect. Everything we sense in any way, either directly through our unaided senses, or indirectly through instruments which amplify sense data is, according to Plato, an image of one or more ideas – material instances of entirely immaterial paradigms. The form is a dynamic causal agent, the particular instance a receptive patient. The form is a universal in the sense that it can, under the right conditions and with the necessary material to hand, act as the model for numberless further copies, each adapted for the particular time, place and condition; it is not, however, a universal in the sense that this term has been used in more recent centuries – a product of a faculty of human mind which more or less arbitrarily groups sets of particulars into perceived genus and species.

The great Platonic description of the creation of the manifested universe in the Timaeus, has the divine intellect, or the Demiurge, creating all things from a pre-existing intelligible pattern, or Animal Itself as Plato calls it. And, indeed, when a human is attempting to be creative, he or she must follow the same path – that is to say, the human creator must in some way and at some level find within a form which will allow the construction of a society, a symphony, a business, a table or whatever which manifests an immaterial idea into the material. For Plato, it is the participation in an idea which allows a physical object to be what it is – an entirely top down relationship: thus a thing can only be a unity because the idea of unity is participated by it, a thing can only be beautiful because the idea of beauty is participated, it can only live because the idea of life is participated.

We need to be very clear, however, that there is no causal effect from the material back to the immaterial: the form is not affected in any way by its manifestations – two is always two, no matter how many instances of twoness there are in the universe, and no matter what happens to those instances. The idea is also unaffected by its own non-manifestation: that is to say, even if there were no instances of twoness, the idea of two would remain exactly what it is, and if there were no living things in the universe, there would still be the same idea of life, awaiting a suitable time, place and condition to manifest again.

This, then, in brief is an outline of the most obvious twofold division of reality for which Platonism is known, with its associated theory of forms. However, this is, as I have said, too simplified and will lead us to numerous inconsistencies if we consider this to be the complete Platonic metaphysics. There are three significant points we must explore before we can leave this outline to fend for itself:

By far the most important addition to this duadic plan is most clearly articulated in the sixth book of the Republic (509b-c) where in discussing being and the things that are intelligible because of their possession of being, Socrates points out that there is a overarching principle which gives things their intelligibility and essence – this first principle he calls The Good (and elsewhere he calls it The One). His words are, "We may say, therefore, that things which are known have not only this from The Good, that they are known, but likewise that their being and essence are thence derived, whilst The Good itself is not essence, but beyond essence, transcending it both in dignity and in power.

" This principle which is greater than being is compared to the sun, and in the same way that all visible things on earth are ruled over by the sun", so, he says, this super-essential One: "reigns over the intelligible genus and place."

The vast implications of this teaching are left largely unwritten by Plato, and it was not until a more pressing time arose when Platonic philosophy was facing a crisis caused by the rise of a form of Christianity which was both anti-philosophical and politically strong that the Platonists of late antiquity began to unfold these implications in their writings. The most complete formulation of Platonic metaphysics based on the truth that oneness is greater in dignity and power than being is to be found in the writings of Proclus – but others, such as Syrianus, Damascius, Olympiodorus and Simplicius took this as the basis for fifth and sixth century Platonism. If we take Plato’s second epistle as genuine, a matter of controversy amongst modern scholars, we will clearly see that this doctrine was primarily one of those of the oral variety, for he writes (312e):

"All things are situated about the king of all things; and all things subsist for his sake, and he is the cause of all beautiful things. But second things are situated about that which is second; and such as are third in gradation about that which is third." 

^{But whereas Plato’s writings are an extended discussion of things second (intelligibles) and third (sensibles), his epistle continues (314a) "as it appears to me, there are scarcely any particulars which will appear more ridiculous to the multitude than these [teachings about The One]; nor again, any which will appear more wonderful and enthusiastic to those that are well born. But when often repeated and continually heard, and this for many years, they are scarcely at length, with great labour, purified like gold. . . . Looking therefore to this, be careful lest you repent of what you have now unworthily uttered [concering this doctrine]. But the greatest means of defence in this case, consists not in writing, but learning: for things which are written cannot be kept from the public view. On this account, I have never at any time written any thing about these particulars. Nor is there any book [concerning them] professedly composed by Plato, nor will there be."}

To explore the writings of the late Platonists is well beyond the writ of this talk, although we should note especially here, the profound writings of Plotinus are entirely built upon what is commonly called the "three hypostases" of the One, Intellect and Soul – in which soul is seen as the principle of moving manifestation, intellect as that of stable being, and the One as the principle of principles. It was Plotinus who, in response to the circumstances of his era, began the written exposition of the One and explicitly draws attention to the pure unity that pervades all things, but yet transcends all things. So that, for example he says (En. III, viii, 10):

"Intellect indeed is beautiful, and the most beautiful of all things, being situated in a pure light and in a pure splendour, and comprehending in itself the nature of beings, of which indeed this our beautiful material world is but the shadow and image; but intellect, that true intelligible world, is situated in universal splendour, living in itself a blessed life, and containing nothing unintelligible, nothing dark, nothing without measure; which divine world whoever perceives, will be immediately astonished, if, as is requisite, he profoundly and intimately merges himself into its inmost recesses, and becomes one, with its all-beauteous nature. And as he who diligently surveys the heavens, and contemplates the splendour of the stars, should immediately think upon and search after their artificer, so it is requisite that he who beholds and admires the intelligible world, should diligently inquire after its author, investigating who he is, where he resides, and how he produced such an offspring as intellect, a son beautiful and pure, and full of his ineffable sire. But his father is neither intellect nor a son, but superior to both."

But to return to Plato and his writings: we can, I think, look at a couple of places where Plato finds in necessary to touch upon some initial implications of this more comprehensive "oneness-intelligible-sensisible" structure, even if his intention is to keep a fuller exposition to an inner oral tradition. In the Philebus, Plato explores how a simple transcendent one can give rise to being. For, he says (at 23c-d), we can see manifested two principles the bound and the infinite, the latter allows things to have an indefinite variety of degrees and expressions, the former gives them a stability and a permanent identity. When these two principles are mixed, he says (27c), they produce being. Thus intelligibles, or eternal forms, or real beings, are a result of combining bound and infinite: remove the infinite, and they would lose their power to manifest in unlimited ways in the world of becoming, remove the bound and they would lose their power to remain eternally what they are despite their infinite manifestations.

For Plato, then, we have a mathematical plan of reality: from the One arises the indefinite duad (bound and unbound), and when the One forces the duad to co-exist in one being we have the multiplicity of 'real' beings: its worth noting that in ancient Greek the plural was not used until three was reached, it having a singular and a duadic case. In other words the One gives rise to being through the principles of the bound and the infinite, and therefore each Platonic Idea is both transcendant (by virtue of the bound) and immanent (by virtue of the infinite).

The second place where Plato guardedly begins outlining the necessary metaphyisical consequences of The One being above being is in the Parmenides, where the attributes of being are removed from any accurate description of The One: fundamental ideas such as sameness, difference, motion, rest, essence, similarity and dissimilarity are all denied of The One. Plato poses a silent question in this dialogue – how does being acquire such attributes, if they are absent from The One; but in conformity to his assertion in the second epistle, not only is the question hidden under a game of logic, but the answer, too, is only to be discovered in the silence of the philosopher’s deepest meditations.

Two further factors must be seen in Plato’s metaphysical scheme: almost as difficult to fathom as the nature of the pre-ontological One, is the truth concerning matter. And just as every formal attribute must be taken away from The One, so every characteristic must be removed from matter – for all we ever perceive is matter informed by ideas, never the pure passivity of matter without form. The only thing we can say about this proto-matter is that it is infinitely receptive – Plato calls it the "nurse of all" in the Timaeus (at 52b) for referring back to passage in which he makes a division of all things into two types, Timaeus says:

"But it is necessary that the beginning of our present disputation should receive a more ample division than the former one. For then we made a distribution into two species: but now a third sort must be added. In the former disputation two species were sufficient; one of which was established as the form of an exemplar, intelligible and always subsisting according to same; but the other was nothing more than the imitation of the paradigm, generated and visible. But we did not then distribute a third, because we considered these two as sufficient. However, now reason seems to urge as a thing necessary, that we should endeavour to render apparent by our discourse the species which subsists as difficult and obscure. What apprehension then can we form of its power and nature? Shall we say that it is in an eminent degree the receptacle, and as it were nurse, of all generation?"

And later he expands on this by saying:

"For it never departs from its own proper power, but perpetually receives all things; and never contracts any form in any respect similar to any one of the intromitted forms. It lies indeed in subjection to the forming power of every nature, becoming agitated and figured through the supernally intromitted forms: and through these it exhibits a different appearance at different times. . . . and it is necessary, that the receptacle which is destined to receive all possible forms should itself be destitute of every form . . . we should call it a certain invisible species, and a formless universal recipient, which in the most dubious and scarcely explicable manner participates of an intelligible nature. Of itself, indeed, we cannot speak without deception. . ."

So we see that the whole of Platonic metaphysics is strung, so to speak, between two natures neither of which we can properly describe, or even think about, except in the most approximate manner. Above all, things arise from The One, ineffable, and superior to every characteristic of being, below all, things are settled upon pure matter, unthinkable, and inferior to every characteristic of being. It is the perfect receptivity of this last layer of reality which allows a reflection of the goodness of the One to be created and, in some mysterious manner, to complete the movement of the universe in a convertive re-ascent. As Proclus says in his 35th proposition in his Elements of Theology, "Every thing caused, abides in, proceeds from, and returns, or is converted to, its cause." The metaphysical universe Plato describes in not one of a merely downward and outward movement – a failing and ever-weakening procession ending in nothingness – but, rather, one that allows the infinite goodness of The Good to circulate (and pervade) down and back up through the levels of reality.

One final major component of this scheme remains to be put in place: soul. In the simple division between the eternal intelligibles and the temporal sensibles where does Plato place the soul – which is, after all, his point of focus? The answer is in neither set. In the Phaedo (79a ff) Socrates once again draws a distinction between intelligibles ("the invisible") and sensibles ("the visible") and then suggests that the soul is "most similar" to intelligibles – but notice he does not call it the same as intelligibles, merely most similar. This is in conformity to the Timaeus, which speaks of the soul being part of a temporal creation, but being woven from the "mortal and immortal" (41c). The soul, upon its creation, is shown the laws of fate and the nature of the universe (41e) – a vision that is only available to a creature which in some sense has the capacity to embrace the all of time.

We may say, therefore, that for Plato there exists between the eternal and the temporal states an intermediate state, the perpetual. The soul, being perpetual, has the everlastingness of the eternal, but not its immutability. The beauty of the Platonic tradition’s world view is that everything proceeds from transcendentally simple One to the inexhaustible multiplicity of the whole of manifestation through a series of ordered steps characterised by ratio – and it is the function of soul in the system of Plato to provide a middle term between the two ontological realms.

The whole system is succinctly summarised by the story of the cave, in which the mutable human self starts as a prisoner held by a illusion that the shadows projected before him on the cave wall are reality – but shadows have little substance, and the wall will take whatever shape is projected by the furniture and statues passing between it and the light from the fire. Once the prisoner is freed from his bench he can move outside the cave of shadows and see, eventually, not only the real things which exist outside the cave but also the ruling sun, from which, he realizes, "governs all things." Within the cave there are only shadows and copies of things (which stand for the world which is made of those things which are continually becoming but never are), above the cave real things (symbolising that which truly is) and their illuminating source. The prisoner is the intermediary which like the soul woven from the mortal and the immortal can perceive both sensible things and, when liberated from the false belief about the lower realm, intelligible things.

To summarize, the simple dualistic theory (ideas and material) beings attributed to Platonic metaphysics fails to take account of a number of unitive affirmations found within Plato’s writings: 

Firstly, that there is an overarching One which is no more confined to the world of ideas, or real beings, than it is to the world of generated material things.

Secondly, even in the twofold scheme, materiality is a reflection of the immaterial, and therefore there is a real relation connecting the two.

Thirdly, the lowest unfoldment of the One – pure passive uninformed matter – carries with it some profound likeness to the first principle, in that it cannot be described in terms of possessed qualities.

Fourthly, that there is a constant movement in the Platonic universe so that apart from an abiding stability in causes, there is also a procession outwards through similarity, and a return of all effects back to the original cause, also through similarity.

And fifthly, there is a intermediate actor which embraces both intellect and material, stability and movement – soul, which has true ratios as its very substance, whose function is to provide a living link between the worlds of eternity and time.

Psychology

This moves us on to a consideration of the psychology of Plato. What is the soul according to Plato and his tradition? We need to go back to the simplest terms here: psyche in Greek means breath – the signal of life, our earthly life is measured from the first breath to our last. So for the Greek psyche is the life giver, the thing which makes otherwise inanimate matter live. It is even more obvious in the Latin, for anima is what animates matter. There are clearly three forms of earthly life – that of plants, that of irrational animals, and that of rational human life. According to Aristotle’s De Anima, each form of life must have a different form of soul, for as the old Platonists point out, we must judge an essence by its energies, or the nature of a thing by its activities.

For a life to be rational, there must be a soul which is rational, for it is impossible for an essence to be less than its energies. Thus it is in the First Alcibiades when Alcibiades and Socrates are looking to come to a simple understanding of what is happening as they converse, Socrates says (at 130e) that, "This therefore was our meaning when we said a little before, that Socrates discoursed with Alcibiades, making use of reason: we meant, it seems, that he directed his words and arguments, not to your outward person, but to Alcibiades himself, that is to the soul."

Leaving aside then other forms of soul, let us survey what Plato says of the human soul, or, if you like, the rational soul. The soul is the self, not the possession of the self. It is the soul which possesses body, not the body which possesses the soul. According to Plato the soul may detach itself from the earthly body and remain a viable unity (see especially the Phaedo, 66b ff) – in fact he claims that the soul detached from body is more itself, and more rational, than when attached to body.

The rational soul has within itself, in some sense, all the reasons or forms which underlie the entire manifested universe, so that there is nothing it cannot understand, so long as it gives each thing the proper attention: Photius, in his Life of Pythagoras, asserts that it was one of the important teachings of Pythagoras that man is a microcosm, a compendium of the whole universe because "he contains all the powers of the cosmos."

This teaching is echoed in the Timaeus, where it said that "the motions which are allied to the divine part of our nature are the dianoetic energies and circulations of the universe" and that we should restore the "revolutions in our head through diligently considering the harmonies and circulations of the universe, that the intellective power may become assimilated to the object of intelligence, according to its original nature." Even if modern science no longer considers the mechanism of the manifested world to be driven by the circulations of the heavenly bodies, we can see that the underlying principle still holds: by studying the universe and its laws, we come to understand the self, or the soul which is a microcosm of the universe and which is governed by the same laws.

As I have said, the Timaeus presents the soul at its coming into being, as being shown the nature of the universe, and in the Phaedrus (at 246a ff) Socrates tells a story of how in her pristine condition the soul rides in her chariot in procession with the Gods through the heavens glimpsing the eternal ideas which are the lights of the heavens – but being of a mixed condition and driving two differing horses she is unable to sustain this flight and falls to earth, with but the faintest memory of the nature of eternal ideas, which are further obliterated by the confusion caused by her contact with materiality. For Plato learning is the recovery of these ideas: in other words the child is not a blank tablet upon which anything can be written but a soul with a host of beautiful reasons waiting to be reborn when introduced to the reflections of ideas in the material life.

This theory of innate ideas is explored and demonstrated in the Meno, where a slave boy with the minimum of mathematical learning is shown to have the knowledge how one may draw a rectangle double the area of an already existing one. At the start of Socrates’ examination of the boy’s knowledge the slave gave the wrong answer, but once he had been questioned in the right way the correct geometry emerge from him with no information being passed from Socrates to the boy. In other words we have a certain distant memory of such things as true justice and absolute beauty – both purely immaterial things – but require the experiences of earthly life to draw these memories into conscious possessions. The whole thrust of Plato’s philosophic system which asks every aspiring philosopher to look at examples of ideas in manifestation and then consider what is an adhering incidental to the idea itself, and what is truly the idea.

This theory is an elegant solution to the question of how it is we go through a process of learning: if we knew everything when born we would certainly not have to learn anything, on the other hand if we knew nothing, then how, when we discover a truth, would we know that it was a truth? How could we go through a process of classification – so basic to science as we know it – if we did not possess the ideas of sameness and difference, similarity and dissimilarity, the equal and the unequal? What is often missed when Plato’s theory of innate ideas is considered is the all-important view of the pristine station of the soul, in which pure forms are glimpsed: the reminiscence of ideas is the result of her life before conjunction with the earthly body, not, primarily, the result of previous earthly experiences. An obvious point, I think, and one that Plato makes clear – if this were not the case, the very problem of how it is we learn would not be addressed by the doctrine, and the scholars’ who claim that the theory is "mire in infinite regress" would be correct.

So starting with the first affirmation that human beings know the fundamental and universal ideas which underlie manifestation, Plato then goes through the different levels of reality and correlates different forms of perception to them. At the lowest level we have sense perception (together with a unifying faculty that allows a multitude of external perceptions to be considered as one thing); then we have doxa, or opinion, that allows us to affirm various facts (or supposed facts) – to say that a thing is, without being able to say why it is; then we have dianoia or ordinary reason, that allows us to investigate the relationship between abstract ideas and other abstract ideas and between abstract ideas and material things; finally we have intellect proper (or intuition) which knows pure ideas not in terms of process or in terms of relationships, but as themselves. It is the goal of Plato’s philosophical system to exercise this highest faculty which allows the soul to understand without being tied to external things which, as we have seen, he considers to be in a constant state of flux. At each succeeding level of knowledge the soul becomes more and more similar to the eternal which is beyond all change – both our knowledge and our very self becomes more unified, intelligible and stable as we rise up through these levels.

Even the form of the writings of Plato, where the emphasis is so often of question and answer, is designed, I would suggest, to stimulate reason and intellect. Socratic questioning, or if you like, Socratic dialectic, first liberates the reader from the worst of all ignorances – that of double ignorance, where we are ignorant of our own ignorance; it then excites the mind to investigate truth; it finally moves the dialectician to a new level of certainty, as it reawakens the soul to its own memory of those intelligibles which subsist according to the same – eternal ideas.

It is this essential core of unchanging knowledge, this "divine part" which defines the soul’s relationship with its eternal source. And it this essence which leads Plato to assert that the soul is immortal, able, in the closing words of the Republic, "to bear all evil and all good" – for that which is most similar to the eternal is indestructible, even though it may appear to go through decay and death. In the Phaedo Socrates, even as he takes the poison allotted to him by the Athenian court, has achieved a consciousness that shows birth and death not to be beginning and end, but a mere change of circumstance of something infinitely more endurable than the shadowy body which is sometimes mistaken for the self.

While the soul provides the inner unity for the whole human organism – it is the soul which thinks, feels, judges, wills – Plato also considers the soul to have three primary faculties: logos, thumos, and epithumos sometimes translated as reason, anger and desire. The reason is the faculty by which the soul learns and knows, desire is the faculty by which the soul moves towards what is identified as good and beautiful, and anger (sometimes translated as the spirited part) is the connecting faculty which endeavours to direct the activities set in motion by desire in the light of the knowledge held by reason. In theRepublic the initial discussion concerns how the different parts of the human whole act with justice, but the consideration of justice is expanded and transferred to how it acts within a city-state because a city provides a parallel which is easier to inspect. Plato divides the inhabitants of his ideal republic into governors, auxiliaries and producers: the governors are, like reason, those charged with pursuing wisdom; the auxiliaries are those who defend and enforce the laws enacted by the governors; the producers are those who pursue wealth.

The same pattern is used in the Phaedrus where the soul in its pristine condition is portrayed as a winged chariot processing through the heavens: the chariot has a charioteer (the reason), a well bred horse responsive to the reigns (the spirited part) and an ill bred horse which pulls against the reigns and makes the chariot move erratically (desire).

A superficial reading of the dialogues may lead the student to believe that Plato wishes the faculty of desire to be extinguished, and that he was the forerunner of the dualistic separation of body and mind which has so marked the past two thousand years. But this view cannot be sustained in a closer reading, in which we see that in the Phaedrus the horse of desire is the very thing which drags the whole chariot, charioteer and partner horse and all, towards the beautiful. Furthermore in the Symposium, Plato marks out a path to the final state of contemplation of absolute beauty starting with the love of one body. In other words Platonism does not reject materiality nor the body, but honours them because they are the recipient of eternal forms, and the means by which the pure form is remembered. Of course, where the material invades the essentially intellectual soul and overwhelms its ability to know and contemplate ideas, then Plato does seek purification.

There is, I think, an interesting passage in the ninth book of the Republic which shows how a balance between desire and reason is the practical ideal of our philosopher, rather than the repression of desires. It reads: "when a man is in health, and lives temperately, and goes to sleep, having excited the rational part, and feasted it with worthy reasonings and inquiries, coming to an unanimity with himself; and allowing that part of the soul which is desiderative neither to be starved nor glutted, that it may lie quiet, and give no disturbance to the part which is best, either by its joy or grief, but suffer it by itself alone and pure to inquire, and desire to apprehend what it knows not, either something of what has existed, or of what now exists, or what will exist hereafter; and having likewise soothed the irascible part, not suffering it to be hurried by any thing, to transports of anger, and to fall asleep with agitated passion: but having quieted these two parts of the soul, and excited the third part, in which wisdom resides, shall in this manner take rest; - by such an one you know the truth is chiefly apprehended . . ." So we must note that Plato does not recommend the suppression of the irrational faculties – but instead, seeks to bring them under the direction of reason, and allow them to act with temperance.  And, of course, in the Symposium Socrates is to be found describing Love – that is to say Eros, or desire – as a might semi-divine creature which connects us with the very highest. The transformative powers of love are underlined by this dialogue, in which the festival of Dionysus is celebrated by an evening during which speeches in praise of Love are to be given: it should not escape the notice of the perceptive reader that whereas the first six speeches do indeed praise Love, the seventh (from Alcibiades), given after Socrates has taken his listeners through a series of initiations concerning the reality of the "mighty daemon love", is a speech in praise of Socrates himself. Plato’s model philosopher, then, is portrayed as an embodiment of Eros. For those who read the speech of Alcibiades carefully, there are numerous clues to Plato’s serious intentions in the culmination of the dialogue, in which Alcibiades himself is seen as acting as the inspired mouthpiece of the God, Dionysus.

So the message of Platonic psychology is this: that the soul has within itself an essential correspondence to the eternal world of ideas, and to the divine; that its is also capable of being embodied; further, that these two things are not mutually exclusive – as rational souls we need to avoid an over-identification with the movement and changes of the body, but that the embodied Socrates passes through the initiation of the mysteries of love and appears as the paradigm of the enlightened soul, full of intellectual life.

As Proclus says, "Through the circular conversion therefore, of the soul to itself, its creator effected its gnostic peculiarity, and which Plato in what he says in the Timaeus, more clearly manifests. For in order to show how the soul knows all things, he says, that it revolves in itself, and thus revolving, began to live a wise and intellectual life. Hence, it is immediately evident, that the conversion to itself, is the knowledge of itself, and of every thing in, prior to and proceeding from itself. For all knowledge is a conversion to the object of knowledge, and an alliance and adaptation to it. And on this account also, truth is an agreement of that which knows with the thing known. Since however, conversion or regression is twofold, the one returning as to The Good, but the other as to being, hence the vital conversion of all things is directed to The Good, but the gnostic to being. Hence too, the former when converted, is said to have The Good, but the latter to have being."

Ethics

Finally let me turn to a brief consideration of Plato’s ethics. Of course the direction of his ethical system is based on Plato’s view of the nature of the human self and its destiny: if we are, as he thinks, immortal and intellectual creatures unfolding our potential in the world of time, then the pursuit of material wealth and temporal security is of little value. The whole of society and all aspects of human intercourse should be directed towards the goal of spiritual growth – or the full consciousness of our own immortal and intellectual nature. So even though enlightenment is of the philosophic individual, at no point does Plato advocate the removal of responsibility of those who are enlightened (or approaching that state) to serve their fellow citizens. Quite the reverse: after the description of how the former prisoner of the Cave has contemplated the highest vision of the ruling sun, this is what Socrates says of his plans for his Republic:

"It is our business then, said I, to oblige those of the inhabitants who have the best geniuses, to apply to that learning which we formerly said was the greatest, both to viewThe Good, and to ascend that ascent; and when they have ascended, and sufficiently viewed it, we are not to allow them what is now allowed them."

"What is that?"

"To continue there," said I, "and be unwilling to descend again to those fettered men, or share with them in their toils and honours, whether more trifling or more important."

"Shall we then," said he, "act unjustly towards them, and make them live a worse life when they have it in their power to live a better?"

"You have again forgot, friend," said I, "that this is not the legislator's concern, in what manner any one tribe in the city shall live remarkably happy; but this he endeavours to effectuate in the whole city, connecting the citizens together; and by necessity, and by persuasion, making them share the advantage with one another . ."

The life of the soul is not simply intellectual – if it were so, it would have no need to descend from its pristine state – but it is both gnostic and vital, and her purpose, as stated in the Timaeus, is to bring order and beauty to the manifest world. The path of the soul which has embraced philosophy is not only to contemplate beautiful ideas, but to attempt to make them a part of its life and a part of that portion of the universe over which it has an influence. The experience of this attempt is for its own sake, and this is a fundamental of Platonic ethics.

The Republic, an extended discourse on justice and the other virtues, continually emphases that living the good life – that is to say a life which is directed towards the true good, rather than its shadowy appearance – should be done because each just action is good in itself: all thoughts of future reward should be dismissed. Of course doing good does indeed tend towards future reward, and the final half of the final book of the Republicdoes explore the principles of what is now known as karma: but by the time the philosopher has followed the arguments of the Republic the intrinsic worth of justice should have been clearly established in his or her mind.

The aim, then, of Platonic ethics is a parallel to that of Platonic psychology – wherever there is a community there must be an exploration of the good, in order to disclose what is truly good rather than apparently good. After this every effort must be made to direct the whole towards the genuine good: Plato’s famous assertion that no community is happy unless philosophers become kings or kings become philosophers is equally applicable to the individual life: No one can become happy unless their ruling part, reason, become directive of the whole organism.

Every faculty of the soul has its virtue – in Greek the word is arête, or excellence – the unfoldment of which leads to its fullest manifestation. The four cardinal virtues for Plato are wisdom, fortitude, temperance and justice: by wisdom the rational faculty is perfected, and the governing powers of the community are enabled to discern the truly good; byfortitude the spirited part is perfected, and the ordinative powers of the community are enabled to fulfil their role; by temperance the faculty of desire is perfected, and the mercantile and productive class is enabled to pursue its goals within the confines of moderation; finally by justice the different faculties of the individual can work together exchanging their merits with each other in order to bring the whole into harmony, and in the community, too, the individual participants and the various classes and associations within the community can bring about a fair exchange of benefits, for the harmonious and progressive life of all.

The philosophy of Plato as presented in his dialogues, attempts to stimulate and awaken both the intellectual powers of the soul, as well as the living activities of virtue. As Hierocles of Alexandria says of this philosophy, "it is the purification and perfection of human life. It is the purification, indeed, from material irrationality, and the mortal body; but the perfection, in consequence of being the resumption of our proper felicity, and a reascent to the divine likeness. To effect these two is the province of Virtue and Truth; the former exterminating the immoderation of the passions; and the latter introducing the divine form to those who are naturally adapted to its reception."

The re-ascent to "divine likeness" is for the soul through intellect – but just as the metaphysics of Platonism is not dualistic, so neither is its ethics: the pursuit of true Platonic dialectic arrives not a separated out intellectualism, but at unity, for as the main speaker in the Sophist says, "For, O excellent young man, to endeavour to separate every thing from every thing, is both inelegant, and the province of one rude and destitute of philosophy."

In the love of wisdom, we cultivate our reasons as our own images of eternal ideas, which are the divine offspring of the Gods. As Proclus says: "For the soul when looking at things posterior to herself [i.e. at material things], beholds the shadows and images of beings, but when she converts herself to herself she evolves her own essence, and the reasons which she contains. And at first indeed, she only as it were beholds herself; but, when she penetrates more profoundly into the knowledge of herself, she finds in herself both intellect, and the orders of beings. When however, she proceeds into her interior recesses, and into the adytum as it were of the soul, she perceives with her eye closed, the genus of the Gods, and the unities of beings. For all things are in us psychically, and through this we are naturally capable of knowing all things, by exciting the powers and the images of wholes which we contain."

As a life-giving creature descending into the world of body, the soul’s task is to imitate the providence of the Gods, those unities above even eternity. In this ultimate ethical activity, says Proclus, "the providential energies of souls do not consist in reasonings conjectural of futurity, like those of human political characters, but in illuminations in the one of the soul derived from the Gods. Hence, being surrounded with the transcendently united splendour of deity, they see that which is in time untemporally, that which is divisible indivisibly, and everything which is in place unlocally; and they energise not from themselves, but from the powers by which they are illuminated."

Such, then, in an all too brief summary is an outline of Platonic teaching, so far as I have caught hold of a least a feather or two of that difficult-to-net swan.

Although from some points of view, human understanding has moved on in the last 2,400 years, yet I think that in the most important areas of philosophic enquiry, Plato still poses the questions that really stretch us, and points out the directions in which we may find satisfactory answers. Platonism was, I think, the greatest flowering of philosophy in the ancient west, and in late antiquity the only coherent voice raised against the anti-philosophical version of Christianity which took hold of the Europe. It sees every human being as a rational, self motive and self conscious creature – in potential, at least – and each human as a microcosm and so having a clear right to make its own place in the universe without the mediation of any institution. The counterbalance to this right, as far as Plato was concerned, was the responsibility of each individual to deal with the whole of manifestation in a just manner, in order to act as a part of a living universe. I think that this sunlit vision of humankind has much to commend it, and at the very least provides an intelligent alternative to the two great clashing movements of today’s world – that of blind mechanistic science, and that of religious literalism.

Platonic philosophy, when properly understood, is a path to the greatest possible life, the greatest possible happiness – beautifully indicated by these words of Proclus:

'And this is the best employment of our energy, to be extended to a divine nature itself, having our powers at rest, to revolve harmoniously round it, to excite all the multitude of the soul to this union, and laying aside all such things as are posterior to The One, to become seated and conjoined with that which is ineffable, and beyond all things.'