Plato's "Keep It Real" Philosophy

Plato. Marble, Roman copy after a Greek original from the last quarter of the 4th century. (credit: Wikipedia)

The Ancient Greek thinker Plato, is a philosopher who is today a prototype of modern higher education. Known as the "devine teacher" by contemporaries, he speaks of an ideal society structure and immortality of soul.

The ancient Greeks are the cornerstone of Western philosophy. If you were born in a country in Europe, a country settled by Europeans, or a country at any point ruled by a European power, the essence of Greek philosophy has found its way into your worldview in one way or the other, and that’s a fact. Capitalist or communist, liberal or conservative, Coke or Pepsi, the people who have had the greatest influence on the way we think and how we live in the Western world took their cues at some point from a Greek.

Over 9 times out of 10 this Greek will be Plato or Aristotle of Athens, the city-state which was to philosophy in ancient Greece what Sparta was to kicking b***tt.

"A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men." - Plato

Plato the Greek was born in 428-429 BC, though Plato was not his real name. In fact, Plato is Greek for “broad” or “flat,” a nom de guerre he gave himself as a wrestler in the Isthmian Games due to his unusually broad shoulders. Really. This makes him first on the list of celebrities with one-word aliases, way before the likes of Prince and Sting. Alas, history had other plans for The Broad, as his failure to qualify for the Olympic Games necessitated an immediate career change.

Plato fell in with a wandering philosopher by the name of Socrates, of whom you may have heard, who encouraged his students to challenge conventional wisdom to the point that he was finally executed in 399 BC for corrupting the youth. This, Plato would say, was a major turning point in his life, and he fled Athens to avoid a similar fate by association. He wound up in Sicily, where he joined an order of Pythagoreans (something along the line of celibate math mystics), whose fixation with numbers would inspire the cosmology Plato would become famous for.

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato

Truth with a capital T was abstract and eternal like numbers, which is to say it is immaterial and thus does not experience degeneration, and everything in the world was an expression of this abstract Truth. Plato effectively invented the word “perfection” as it is used today. A beer, for instance, was only a poor imitation of a beer; a mere knockoff of a more perfect beer that he called an ide (the Greek root of “idea”) that existed in the heavens. This is to say that these Ideas are literally up in the sky, among the stars, sun, and moon. In turn, that “more perfect” idea of a beer was a similarly cheap imitation of the even more perfect Idea of “Deliciousness.” Plato’s universe continues this way all the way up, up to the most perfect idea of “Goodness,” which was the common Idea in all things, including humans.

Plato also explains human existence in these terms, as humans are Good beings “fallen” from “the heavens” and trapped in the lowest, most imperfect level of the Universe, which is the world he and you and I and all of us live in. Plato believed that when a human being deduces or learns something they are in fact remembering something they already know by virtue of our eternal, divine nature, which is why we are attracted to certain things in this world; we recognize the Idea of “Goodness” in it from our time in the ether.

"There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands." - Plato

Thus, by denying our Passions with our Courage, which is governed by our Thinking (these three Plato believed to be the three levels of human nature), we could dust off all our Divine knowledge and return to the heavens upon death, avoiding another birth in the material world.

If all of this sounds strangely familiar to you, it ought to. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther are just some of the Neo-Platonists who borrowed from Plato when developing their worldview and theology. Another influential Neo-Platonist was the philosopher-psychologist Freud, who based his “Id, Ego, Superego” theory on Plato’s “Passion, Courage, Thinking” model.

What made them Neo-Platonists and not just plain old Platonists, you ask? Because they (or their teachers) all learned about Plato from Arab philosophers after the end of the Dark Ages – which, historically speaking, officially began when the early Christian Emperor Justinian closed Plato’s “Academy” in 529 A.D. Ironic, dontcha think?

"Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others." - Plato

Plato did have a way of overextending himself, however, which led him to apply the idea of the three separate levels of a human being to society in general. In The Republic he outlined a plan for what he believed to be a perfect society, one in which all children would be raised by the state, taught to see it as their only parent, and continuously evaluated and sorted as they grew up.

The weak and not-so-bright kids were allowed to live by their Passion. This group, which Plato called the Mob, were intended for unwitting servitude and strict control and assigned to be farmers and laborers. Distracted with jewelry and other frivolous things, they worked their lives away for the good of the whole society.

The strong and bright kids got to be warriors and live by their Courage. Without worldly possessions to distract them, these warriors would be able to focus on their duty of keeping order in society (they would be the only ones with swords or, say, MP40s). These Warrior-Guardians would be a completely male force. Plato did not have a high opinion of women.

"All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue." - Plato

The sharpest tools in the armory, meanwhile, would be promoted to the highest caste after demonstrating their superior intellectual ability and go on to study… you guessed it…

Philosophy! The Philosophers would live and love together, sharing all their belongings (and themselves) to keep free of corruption, and would be wise governors of a society ruled by pure thoughts.

Finally, from these specially selected philosopher-governors, a single Philosopher King would be chosen to act as the supreme authority over Plato’s fascist, homoerotic dystopia, in which the entire, perfect society was oriented to satisfy the will of the rulers in the way the entire soul should be oriented to satisfy the will of the rational mind.

"Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil." - Plato

This aspiration was more or less the end of Plato’s professional reputation. After failing in two separate stints as court philosopher to implement his Republic in the Kingdom of Syracuse, and ending up in prison both times, Plato retired from public life to the Academy, where he died in 347 BC.

 

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