Column Name: Mystic Thoughts
Who is a genuine student of Platonic philosophy? Taylor’s answer deserves cognizance
By a legitimate student, then, of the Platonic philosophy, I mean one who, both from nature and education, is properly qualified for such an arduous undertaking; that is one who possesses a naturally good disposition; is sagacious and acute, and is inflamed with an ardent desire for the acquisition of wisdom and truth; who from his childhood has been well instructed in the mathematical disciplines; who, besides this, has spent whole days, and frequently the greater part of the night, in profound meditation; and, like one triumphantly sailing over a raging sea, or skilfully piercing through an army of foes, has successfully encountered an hostile multitude of doubts;—in short, who has never considered wisdom as a thing of trifling estimation and easy access, but as that which cannot be obtained without the most generous and severe endurance, and the intrinsic worth of which surpasses all corporeal good, far more than the ocean the fleeting bubble which floats on its surface (Taylor, 2003: 45).
Plato makes radical claims for the importance of philosophy in human life. Richard Kraut sums it up so well:
Because philosophy scrutinizes assumptions that other studies merely take for granted, it alone can give us genuine understanding; since it discovers a realm of objects inaccessible to the senses and yields an organized system of truths that go far beyond and in some cases undermine common sense, it should lead to a transformation in the way we live our lives and arrange our political affairs.
It is an autonomous subject and not the instrument of any other discipline, power, or creed; on the contrary, because it alone can grasp what is most important in human life, all other human endeavors should be subordinate to it (Kraut, 1992: 1).
Charges against Plato
Plato scholars have amply shown untenability of such familiar charges as Plato’s doubt about the existence or disdain of the sensory or visible world. Plato is also accused of Utopian idealism. Plato has only expressed the point of relationship of dependency between the visible and intellectual/spiritual worlds. It is worth quoting Sworder here:
Plato’s theory of ideas expresses that view of the world around us where everything is very beautiful. The myths of the Phaedo and Republic, Phaedrus and Statesman spring from this same visionary power. This is the world of Parmenides’ chariot ride to the palace of a Goddess who reveals all things to him; the world of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Divine and mortal freely mix.
Everything is well made and performs at the limit of its potential; our everyday activities are archetypal. It is perhaps a greater injustice than Socrates suffered that Plato should ever be considered a Utopian idealist who despised the world.
Fully to understand how this world is the most perfect possible realization of the fullest totality of the most exquisite ideas is a Herculean education. The deepest seclusion is needed to complete a thorough study of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music and dialectic. After these come their applications to the natural sciences.
These studies are typically pursued through early adulthood to middle age. That done, the meaning of our human life emerges as a vision in which no further parting is possible between the absolute and the relative, the eternal and the temporal. There is apocatastasis. This is the goal of Plato’s theory.
Other charges of elitism through exclusion of nearly all citizens from political participation and state’s suppression of dissent or unorthodox ideas have also been addressed by many scholars and it has been pointed out that he took ample measures against possibility of corruption in the ruling elite and his objective is promoting well-being of all citizens and “if the citizens fail to understand where their own good lies, then it is the proper task of political leaders to educate them.”
One may also point out how little is Plato read as he deserves to be read – say be such people as Voegelin, Taylor and Simone Weil – before he is accused of this or that. The real meaning of aristocracy of Spirit is one of the notions in him that has been almost forgotten today. Noteworthy is also the point that Plato is concerned with fostering “a deep feeling of community among all the citizens, in spite of the fact that they cannot all share an equal understanding of the human good.”
Another important point to be noted in defense of Plato is his recourse to dialogue form that provides “a natural way to air challenges the reader might be expected to make to the theories under discussion; assigning an objection to a speaker is a vivid way of clarifying and defending the views being presented” (Kraut, 19992:12). And the point that is worth remembering in an age that takes pride in honouring books and cultivating literacy is that insight “comes through discussion with others and not through mere reading.” Indeed “what better way to give expression to this warning against the misuse of books than to make each of one’s works a dialogue?” (Karaut, 1992: 27).
Far from being an enemy of truly open society as likes of Popper would have us believe, it is “more plausible to take the Republic to contain a theory of what is good for any individual and to presuppose that an ideal state is one that best promotes the good of its individual citizens.”
Schofield, among others, has clarified the notion of noble lie in Plato in a manner that should warn against simplistic construal and consequent dismissal of Plato on moral grounds or reading him in Straussian fashion that questions the commitment of Plato to higher spiritual ideals.
One may here note that in Plato’s canon poets are censored for telling falsehoods, that trinity of truth, beauty and goodness is sacrosanct, that his insistence on the need for lying to sustain the political order is “all of a piece with his general treatment of culture and society more broadly.
The Cave analogy of Book …represents uneducated humanity as imprisoned by illusions, feeding uncritically on third-hand images of reality … philosophers must be compelled to return to the Cave to exercise their function as rulers, the implication is presumably that most of those they are to govern, although citizens of an ideal city, have very little ability to resist deception or to respond to anything better than images of truth” (Schofield, 2006: 296).
And that “Education has to begin with stories like this—‘broadly speaking false, though there is some truth in them.’ In other words, the culture is and must be saturated with myths that are literally false, and deceptive if believed to be factually true. But the deception is legitimate if like the Noble Lie and the stories Socrates wants the young to hear, they are morally admirable fictions that drug people into sound convictions and lead them to virtue.
What is wrong with Homer and Hesiod is not in the end that they lied, but that there was nothing morally admirable in most of the lies they told” (297).
We also need to note Socrates’ distinction between lies in the soul and lies in speech and his point that the true lie is to be abhorred and it is hated not only by gods but by humans. In contrast lying in speech has uses (for humans, not gods) that don’t merit hatred.
“Something false told by a doctor to his patient or a general to his troops is not a lie provided their intention is not bad. Just so, the Stoics’ wise person says false things from a morally good disposition. The implication of their radical conception of lying is the counter-intuitive proposition that the Platonic Socrates’ useful medicinal lies are not lies at all.” (299).
Schofield brings here our attention to Plato remark: “All I am saying is that to lie, and to be deceived, and to be ignorant about reality in one’s soul, to hold and possess the lie there, is the last thing anyone would want.’ And this—the true lie—is then defined as ‘the ignorance in the soul of the person who has been deceived.” (Schofield, 2006: 299).
Justification for lying for the benefit of the city or in special cases in war and healing relationships have been forthcoming across traditions while the absolutist position defended by Augustine that puts blanket ban on lying of any kind has had few defenders today as in ancient or medieval times.
A more important point to be noted may further help in putting things in perspective and explain the position of many Muslim philosophers/Sufis that echoes Plato.
This is the point implied in Plato’s dictum “Don’t take affairs of life too seriously.” Although they tell politically expedient lies, philosopher rulers will hate doing it. Socrates asks: ‘Do you think, then, that the a mind which can take a large view, and contemplate the whole of time and the whole of reality, is likely to regard human life as of any importance?’
Everything to do with ruling—as preoccupied exclusively with the affairs of humans—must for a philosopher be irksome triviality, and that presumably includes the need to tell lies.”
Plato bashing so common amongst moderns and postmodernists is thus not based on incontrovertible arguments. This is not to condone each and every view expressed in Plato but to note that Plato presents a sagely viewpoint that is not an individual’s viewpoint but of the tradition, of philosophy identified with rights of wisdom or intellect/spirit and to be treasured as far as it doesn’t deviate from .
Since nothing great has ever been thought outside Tradition as Heidegger noted, we need to restore the proper place for love of Tradition and Wisdom embodied in Tradition and then appraise Plato.
The attempts to make Plato and Aristotle rivals need to be put in perspective against the background of reading them as complementing each other represented by many classical figures. Islamic tradition has also emphasized this reconciliatory position. Al-Farabi represents one such great attempt.
Amongst first rate scholars of contemporary times, one may cite Eric Voegelin. We find major modern figures from Bradley to Kierkegaard to Schopenhauer to Wittgenstein to Heidegger attracted to many facets of Plato. When read with Taylor it is hard to see how one can disagree with the aspiration of Plato if not Plato as well. Both Wittgenstein and Heidegger present defense of Plato. We need to learn how to read Plato as Simone Weil said. This isn’t Platolatry but giving wisdom and the activity of pursuit of wisdom its true.
The essential Plato consists in recognizing the value of trinity of truth, goodness and beauty and thus invitation for moral discipline and preparation for death and dispassionate examination of life and its opinions. A life devoted to pursuit of spiritual, intellectual and moral excellence and cultivation of beauty and love and love of truth. Orienting life towards the Sun of the Good or with an eye to the great trinity of Truth, Beauty and Goodness is what Plato stands for and all philosophers worth the name. Here religion, mysticism, art, spirituality converge with the objectives or ends of philosophy. And if philosophy is understood as emphasizing wonder, science and art both have an interface with it.
Author can be mailed at marooof123@gmail.com
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