1. Expansion of education: the traditional subjects were only grammar, music, poetry, and athletics. The Sophists were traveling teachers who offered instruction on any topic, including virtue, for a fee.
2. Philosophy moves from theories of the universe to questions of how to live oneâs life.
3. Athens becomes the intellectual/ cultural center of the Mediterranean (no longer Ionia in the east or Elea in the west).
~ Plato the man: 466-347 BC. He was an Athenian aristocrat. He was a pupil of Socrates.
~ Relation between Plato and Socrates: Socrates wrote nothing. Plato wrote many dialogues, almost all of which feature Socrates as the main character. However, Plato was not simply reporting the words and ideas of Socrates. Often in the dialogues, Plato just uses Socrates as a mouthpiece for Plato's own views, which may differ from Socratesâ views.
~Overall goal of the Republic (we only read a fraction). This book is a description of Plato's ideal city-state, a society which is completely just. Plato also tells us how we could achieve this utopia. In this ideal polis, the whole society is ruled by a group of very intelligent, very virtuous leaders; they are experts in justice (the so-called "philosopher-kings"). To make such great leaders, Plato believes a lengthy and demanding education is necessary. This rigorous education aims to teach the leaders-to-be what GOOD and JUSTICE really are; for once they know what justice is, they will be able to MAKE the city as good and just as possible (since they are the rulers). So, the stuff in Book 7 about math and astronomy (which we read) comes in the context of how best to educate these super-leaders (521 d).
~ Platoâs Forms: motivation/ questions.
1. How is the sentence ãAll triangles sum to 180 degreesä true? What objects are we talking about that make that sentence true?
2. What makes a Beethoven symphony, a Picasso painting, and Brad Pitt all "beautiful"? How can we say they are the same?
3. The senses are unreliable and relative: what appears red in one light may appear black in another. How can we decide which of these is the RIGHT one?
[*4* Platoâs own short (and unclear) justification in the Timaeus (51d): If knowledge and true belief are two different things, and knowledge is attained by something other than mere sense-perception, then Forms exist. If there is no knowledge above true belief, Forms donât exist. My re-phrase: if we can Îperceiveâ without using the 5 senses, there must be some object we are perceiving. *]
Plato will answer all of these worries by appealing to the Forms. But what are these?
~ The cave (tell the story) as allegory for the Forms: the distinction between the ãvisibleä and the ãintelligibleä worlds. (Is this a myth? Socrates admits it is unverifiable (517 b).)
~ So, to answer the above 3 worries:
1. It is the FORM of the triangle whose angles sum to 180 degrees, not any particular object in our physical world.
2. A symphony and a painting share in the FORM of beauty, which is itself neither visual nor audio.
3. We do not have to decide which of the conflicting sensations is the correct one, since sensations are not the source of truth, the Forms are. (Parmenidesâ influence)
1. Paradigms/ models: The Form of a triangle is Îthe perfect triangleâ
2. Universals: What is shared between Audrey Hepburn and a Renoir painting is: both Îparticipateâ in the Form of Beauty
3. Forms are CAUSES of visible phenomena (like in cave): the reason this painting is beautiful (= what makes it beautiful) is its participation in the Form of beauty
4. Ontologically basic or fundamental
5. Eternal and unchanging
Realm: Becoming (changing) vs. Being/ reality (unchangeable) = Forms
Known via: senses vs. reason (see 527 d-e)
Epistemic status: belief vs. knowledge
Ontological status: imperfect copy vs. Primary original
Temporal status: ephemeral vs. eternal
~ Visible and intelligible from a modern viewpoint: look back to the Kosso reading, pp. 13-15. ãScience aims to provide an account of whatâs going on behind the phenomena we experienceä (13). ãThis account of what is happening beyond what is directly apparent is the product of scienceä (14).
And on the causal role of the Forms, compare pp. 17-18: ãwhat we experience, the streak in the cloud chamber·, is an informative image of its causal predecessor, the // particle. It is a distorted image in the sense that protons donât look like vapor trails, and of course some information about the proton does not show up in the image, but the distortions are taken into consideration. As long as we know they are there, · they can be taken into account and they will not deceive.ä
~ How do we get ourselves, or our future leaders, out of the sensible world and into the world of true knowledge? By what sort of education? See 521d: ãWhat study· draws the soul from the world of that which becomes to the world of that which is?ä These sciences are merely ãassistants and helpersä (533d) to help one reach the realm of the Forms. How can we tell whether a particular subject is useful toward this end? (526d): ãif it compels the soul to contemplate reality it is suitable, if to see only what comes to be, it is not.ä
1. Arithmetic (522c-523a): it ãleads to intelligent thought·in every way it draws one to reality.ä It is useful for education because it involves ãthings which can only be grasped by thought and which cannot be dealt with in any other way·it appears to compel the soul to use intelligence alone to discover truth itselfä (526a-b)
2. Geometry. (527b): ãGeometry is knowledge of that which exists forever,ä as opposed to what comes into being and passes away. (3. Three-dimensional geometry)
4. Astronomy.
~ Not because it helps ãthe farmer and the navigatorä and ãthe generalä (527d).
~ Furthermore, as it is ãpracticed today, it certainly makes one look downwardä (529a); ãastronomy must be studied in a different way·to be useful for our purposeä (529c). The stars above ãfall far short of true existencesä (529d) presumably in the same way that a visible drawing of a triangle falls short of the truly existing Form of a triangle.
~ Platoâs reformation (530b): ãLet us then study astronomy by means of problems and let the things in the sky go,ä in order to make the soul better able to see the Forms.
5. Harmonics and Acoustics. Octave is in 2:1 ratio, the Fifth is 3:2.
But these 5 studies are merely instrumental, merely tools: (531d) ãall these studies are but preludes to the song that must be learned.ä
~ This highest study is DIALECTIC. Dialectic is what will help us out of the cave of visible things, into the realm of reality and forms (532a-b). It proceeds ãwithout any help from the senses but by means of reason.ä And (533b): ãdialectic·attempts to apprehend methodically, with regard to each thing, what each really is.ä
~ Dialectic is somehow UNHYPOTHETICAL (533c), unlike geometry. Somehow, though the process is unclear in the text, dialectic will ãdo away with hypotheses and proceeding to the first principle where it will find certainty.ä
~ This leads us to the question: on Platoâs view, why should we study the natural world at all, if all visible, sensible things are imperfect and flawed? We find the answer in the Timaeus.
~ The Timaeus is an account of creation. That is, it is a cosmogony, like many of the creation myths we have encountered earlier in the class.
~ Plato thinks the true and valuable world is NOT the material world we see and touch, but the world of the Forms, which are apprehended only through thought. So why would Plato write the Timaeus, since it is an account of how the material, perceptible world came into being?
~ First, Plato does think that claims about the origin of the perceptible world are not absolutely certain knowledge; this is because there is absolutely certain knowledge only of the Forms. That is, Plato does admit that the Timaeus is only a ãlikely story,ä but it is ãno less likely than any otherä (29c). This is the best we can do, given that our subject matter is the world of becoming. There is just no true knowledge about the material world, no matter how much evidence we assemble, and no matter what experiments we conduct. This leads us back to the earlier question·
~ Why bother doing cosmology (or any other sort of natural science)? The short answer: it is the product of a supremely intelligent and beneficent goal-directed agent, who used the Forms as models to create the world. Put otherwise, Plato wants to (Lloyd 72) ãreveal the operations of reason in the universe.ä
~ Before Plato gets into the cosmology, he does two other things. First, he summarizes the features of the ideal society described in the Republic. Second, he gives us a legend about ancient Athens (more than 9,000 years before Plato), and her conquest of Atlantis.
~Plato gives us two versions of his cosmological story:
The eternal creator (the demiurge) wanted to make the world like himself, because he is Good and wants the world to be good like him. Thus, he changes disorder into order (and this aspect is in a lot of the myths we read earlier). He made this world (30c) ãa living creature with soul and reasonä in ãwhich all other living creatures·are parts.ä (This sounds like the famous Gaia hypothesis to me.) The creator made the world out of earth, air, fire, and water. This world is shaped like a sphere, it rotates, and it is self-sufficient. For reasons unclear to me, Plato concludes that the world is ãa blessed godä (p. 24).
We have this second version because (48a) ãthe generation of this universe was a mixed result of the combination of necessity and reason.ä Fortunately for us, though, reason ãoverruled necessityä and there was the ãvictory of reason.ä
We need to add in the RECEPTACLE to our story, plus the creator and Forms.
~ Fire, earth, air and water are not really real, since they change into and out of each other. Rather, they are qualities of that which is really real, the receptacle, since it remains the same throughout the changes. The receptacle must have no characteristics of its own (GF: Then why think thereâs anything there at all?)
~ The receptacle began in chaos and disorder. [Reminiscent of earlier myths] The god imposed order via ãshapes and numbersä (53b). [Here we find a sharp difference with earlier myth patterns.]
the ultimate building blocks of the physical universe are triangles (of various sizes, 63d). For ãevery surface that is rectilinear is composed of triangles,ä and thus every solid figure is built up out of triangles. So now our question is this: what 4 solid bodies are the most perfect? These will correspond to the four elements. And there are five so-called perfect solids in geometry: a perfect solid is one which has the same shape on all of its faces. (So, pyramids and cubes are perfect solids; the list is on p. 58.) The fifth solid, the dodecahedron, is used for the whole Heaven, since it is most like a sphere.
~ Earth: cube; pyramid: fire; octahedron: air; icosohedron: water.
~ Now we have a fairly plausible account of how things change their state: their triangles are rearranged from water-shaped to air-shaped, for example.