Lecture 2

Plato (c. 428-348 BC)

  • Student of Socrates, whom he made a character in philosophical dialogues.

Patterson claimed Rome did not produce any original philosophers of the calibre of Socrates or Plato - is this truly the case?

  • Plato was anti-materialistic, anti-mechanistic, anti-normalist, anti-relativist (was an absolutist).
  • Prior to Plato was the Sophists - teaching how to conduct eloquent speech with little content.
  • Anti-skeptic.

Theory of Ideas / Forms

  • Postulated two worlds: visible (changing, mutable) and intelligible (eternally unchanging).
    • Intelligible is unreachable physically, but we interact with it with ideas of things (i.e. intelligible is the concept).
    • Visible is the form, which is the instanced versions of the intelligible.

I.e. Plato's cave:

  • Shadows on the wall are the Visible World.
  • The cave outside the cave = the Ideas (true reality).
  • Persons within the cave = non-philosophers.

Plato and Freedom

  • Plato grapples philosophically with freedom
  • In 375 BC, wrote Republic
    • Attempts to define the idea & form of justice, leading to other high-level stuff and things and thusly attempts to reach some 'ideal state in which justice is promoted' sort of like an absolute vacuum for photons to scoot through.
  • Plato proposes three classes: drones, guardians, governing class (philosopher king).

Plato's five regimes:

  • Aristocracy (rule by the best): ruled by philosopher-kings who display wisdom and seek the common good.
  • Timocracy (rule by honor): rulers are ambitious and honor-focused, pursuing glory rather than wisdom.
  • Oligarchy (rule by the few): wealthy few rule, valuing money over virtue.
  • Democracy (rule by the people): all desires given equal weight.
  • Tyranny (rule by a tyrant): single ruler seizes power and presents own desires as overriding to all others.

This is a subsequence, like a decaying element - aristocracy inevitably decays into a timocracy, which decays into an oligarchy, then democracy, then into tyranny.

Worrisome, in the right now.

Plato worries democracy would inevitably lead to every individual trying to get more than their fair share - until one single individual with 'sovereignal freedom' uses the democracy's institutions against its citizens.

  • Thought aristocracy was the best government, but internal flaws (improper education of the youth) would inevitably lead to deterioration into a timocracy (honor over reason).
  • Plato cites two fundamental key issues with different government:
    • Money (and unstable accumulations of it, like trash heaps) (lead to individuals respecting money more than virtue)
    • Factionalism
  • Proposed human soul has three main parts: reason, spiritedness, appetites.
    • Aristocracy keeps all three in harmony
    • Timocracy emphasizes spiritedness
    • Oligarchy appetites
    • Democracy is a chaotic free-for-all where all three desires are given free reign
    • Tyranny - individual is slave to appetites, own reason, own spiritedness, otherwise unmoored from regulatory counsel.

Q: Do you, Dr. Bringman, have any opinions on this? Recent events, Red Rising & your class have me considering the virtues of other political systems.

Frustration with difference between eloquent appetites/spirit and perhaps ineloquent reasoning, and it's

Tyranny vs aristocracy requires (most) participants believe in the same fundamental concept of absolute good? Platonic society.

Computer thing?