Dr Greg Bahnsen - Ancient & Medieval Philosophy: Plato's Philosophy Part 2 (Part 10)

As we continue our discussion of Plato, just let me remind you where we are in our outline. A was Plato's troubled context. B was his life and relation to Socrates. And we've just finished a discussion of C, Plato's metaphysics, his view of reality, and his corresponding epistemology, his theory of knowledge. Now, this is a particular philosophical outlook, a model that will be used over and over and over again through the history of philosophy. So we're taking as much time as we have on Plato. This is one of the standard configurations, one of the recurring answers then to the nature of reality and how we know. What we know is a generally Platonic approach. There are disembodied ideas that the mind knows, and that's where we get certainty and we cannot trust our senses. They are misleading. They give us some knowledge, but not the ultimate truth. And now D, in our outline, we want to discuss Plato's ethics, politics. According to Plato, there are three divisions of man's soul. Man's inner life really has three divisions or functions. There is his reasoning ability. There is his appetites, his desires, his drives, and then his temperament, reason, appetite and temperament. And a good man is a man who has reason governing his emotions and his will. Reason must govern the other parts of the soul. Here's the famous image of the charioteer, where if reason controls the chariot and the two horses that are pulling it, then everything works out well. But when reason is not in control, then the chariot's out of control. So people who live by emotion tend not to be stable and wise and not reliable. People who are just aggressive and impulsive, live by volition, are not to be trusted. The we will not be just and ethically good people if we don't let reason dominate in our personality. Obviously, reason is closer to the forms. It's closer to ultimate truth and reality. So it only stands to reason that, pardon me, it only is to be expected that Plato is going to make reason the highest good for man. Now, Plato aimed to refute traditionalism. On the one hand, traditionalism found goodness in what we have experienced are always done. The traditionalists would say, it's good to follow the Homeric epic, It's good to follow the traditional values of Athens. Plato aimed to refute that, but at the same time wanted to refute skepticism as it was seen in the sophist. The sophist said, nobody can know what absolute goodness is. It's all relative. Now, how can Plato find a way between traditionalism and skepticism? Well, he held, as I taught you in the last hour that the form or idea of all things existed in a realm separate from the natural world and existed separate from the mind of the individual. There's a form of catness and dogness, and a form of goodness, a form of justice, a form of love, that are disembodied apart from the natural world, unchanging and eternal. Indeed, every instance, every event that we experience as an experience of love or justice or goodness is in this world, somehow imperfect. The paradigm of goodness, the perfect form of goodness, love or justice, is the idea of it which is beyond this material, physical world of nature. And so, according to Plato's ethic, the unchanging standard of goodness is not to be found through our sensations, not to be found through our experience of the natural world. But rather, the unchanging standard of goodness is to be found by recollecting a life among the forms, or to put it in our way today, is to be found intuitively. We intuit the essence or form or formula for goodness. We don't learn it through experience. We don't learn it by abstracting or generalizing from particular instances. We know it by intuition. We recollect a previous life. This form of goodness is even beyond the gods, according to Plato. This is one of his most famous points made in the dialogue Euthyphro. In the Euthyphro, what Plato points out is that piety, or any other form, it could be justice, it could be love, goodness. Piety must either be something separate from the gods that they recognize, they identify and commend because it is pious, or it's something that depends upon the whim and the word of the gods. That is to say, if murder is impious, it's either impious because the gods say so, or the gods say that murder is impious because murder answers to some higher form of piety and impiety. Now, if what we call good or pious or just or loving is simply dependent on the word of the gods, then of course it could change from day to day. It could be the opposite of what it is now. The gods could have said that murder is good or pious, rather than impious, because it's just dependent upon whatever they say. On the other hand, if the gods can't say just anything about murder, that is, they aren't free to say that it's good or it's bad, it's pious, it's impious, then the form of goodness or the standard of goodness must be outside of the gods and their will. It must be something that they answer to as well, in which case you don't need the gods in order to know it. And so Plato wants an autonomous. He wants an ethic that is not dependent upon the declaration of the gods. He sees the gods as really irrelevant to ethical judgments. Ethical judgments are according to the eternal, unchanging form of goodness or piety or justice, which even the gods must look up to and must speak according to. So the word of the gods or the word of God is not basic to Plato's ethic. It's an autonomous ethic. As an aside, let me say as a Christian theologian, that what Plato did not consider is the Tertian quid, that is, there's another option. It isn't that the gods have to answer to the form of the good, or good is whatever the gods. There's another option, and that is that good is God's own character. It's not something apart from God, it is God's character. And what God does is he declares what is good or bad by looking at himself, not at something beyond him or higher than him. You all follow that. So the Christian is not stuck with voluntarism on the one hand, or autonomy on the other. Volunteerism is the idea that the will is higher than reason, so that if God simply wills something, there doesn't have to be a reason for it or a rationale for it. That is what Plato was ridiculing, the notion that goodness can be just anything. Well, if it can't be just anything, then Plato said, then you have to have an autonomous ethic where you don't go to the word of the gods. You study the very character of the goodness. The Christian says, no, goodness is the character of God. So when he declares what's right or wrong, he's declaring his own character. Well, Plato at least was correct in saying that the standard of goodness is not determined by human needs. It's not determined by beneficial consequences. It's not determined by traditional opinions. Goodness does have an unchanging, absolute character. He was completely wrong, however, in thinking that goodness was apart from the divine. What other criticisms could we make of Plato's ethic? The idea that goodness is an unchanging form that we know by intuition and according to which we evaluate the experiences and events in our lives as good or bad. And also the idea that the highest good for man is to pursue the life of reason, of intellect? To be philosophical, yes. Wouldn't goodness change from person to person depending how you define it? You see, now that's what Plato was trying to have an answer for. And escape is the notion that good is relative to individual. Plato would say the good is unchanging. It's beyond this natural physical world. It's beyond the particulars of any individual or the particular acts and events that we see in this world. Goodness is absolute, universal and unchanging. So you wouldn't say goodness is different from person to person. He'd say it's the same. Justice is the same for everybody. How does he arrive at saying that this particular idea, that this particular group of people has, is the right ideal? Exactly. This is the first criticism that we want to make of Plato's ethic. He does say the absoluteness or universality and objectivity of ethics. But it is at quite a price. The form of the good is so heavenly that it's of no earthly benefit to us. Nobody can define specifically what the content, the specific content of this absolute goodness is for daily experience and guidance. Put it very simply, Plato has an absolute authoritative ethic, but he has no relevance for human life, because who can say that they have intuited properly the form of the good and they're going to be different intuitions aren't there? Another criticism that can be made of Plato is his intellectualist view that wrongdoing arises from ignorance. That if people would make reasons dominant in their personalities, if they would come to know the truth, the absolute truth found in the realm of the forms, if they only knew the truth, then they would do the truth. So Plato thought that men were pretty degenerate round about him, and he didn't have a high regard for the opinion of the masses. But he did believe that if we educate people, then they'll do what is right. And I think that this flat out has to be rejected and indeed ridiculed as a naive intellectualist view of human nature. We know from experience that teaching people what is right, what is wrong, what's good for them, what's not good for them, is not sufficient to make them do what is good. Are we to believe that every single individual who has a life that's given over to drugs, every single individual who knows the degenerative process of addiction because they're hooked on drugs, that every single one of them was ignorant, that that kind of thing could happen if they started taking drugs? People sometimes know very well the consequences, know the risk and the threats, and they do it anyway? There is what I've called in our ethics class previously, the forbidden fruit syndrome. In human psychology, people sometimes do what is wrong because it's wrong. Augustine confesses his sin that he stole pears, not because he liked pears, but because it was wicked to do the forbidden fruit syndrome. And so Plato does not understand human nature. He doesn't understand this inner depravity that does things which are wrong for their wrongness. Sometimes education is not the answer to man's problems and social ills. I'm not against education. Education can help in many ways, but education can't change people, can't change the rebellion and depravity of the human heart. We've had far more education, widespread use of the public schools in our country in the last 100 years than we had in the 100 years previously. Would we say that with all of this knowledge and education, our culture is better off and is a more noble and just and loving ethical culture? No. Plato's just wrong. And yet it is a basic Platonic idea that we see worked out over and over again in human cultures and in our own, that we can get rid of evil and crime and drugs and so forth if we just teach people better, we educate them. A third criticism of Plato's ethic kind of combines the previous two. If human nature is not morally good at base, then how can anyone rely upon his intuitions about the form of goodness? Now, would Plato say that human nature is morally good at base? On the one hand, yes. That's why he thought education is all the masses needed in order to get them to do what is right and just. But we know that that's naive. We could say, well, Plato, you may think people are basically good, but history tells us otherwise. And so there's an inadequacy. If people are not basically good, why do you trust them? Their intuition or recollection of the form of the good. But another approach would be to say, well, Plato, you may say that you think people are basically good, but even you know that they are not basically good because you think they need to be educated. Why do they need to be educated? Plato, previous to your reforming work as an educator, would you say they were good people? No. You think that their goodness comes through education, which is simply to say you begin with them as not basically good people. Well, if they begin as not basically good people, then at that point they can't be counted on to intuit the form of the good. And if they can only be counted on to intuit the form of the good after they've been reformed and educated, then it all depends on who does the reforming and educating. That leads us very naturally then, into a discussion of Plato's political ethic. What is his view of politics. Well, I told you that Plato held there were three divisions of the soul. According to him, the three, he says there are three divisions of society. And lo and behold, the three divisions of society reflect the three divisions of the soul. As within the individual, we see an expression of reason, appetite and temperament. So within society we have people that are more characteristically reasonable, people who are more characteristically expressing their appetites, and people who are more characteristically expressing temperament. That is the three parts of the soul, or not always equally powerful within the individual. And the good man has reason dominated, but not all men have reason that way. There are others who are dominated by appetites. And in society, they're the merchants. They're the people who are out to make a killing. They produce things and they want to satisfy their appetites by getting ahead, selling things to people. So the merchant class corresponds to appetite within man's soul. But then there are others who are controlled by will and volition or temperament. They're the soldiers, they're the ones in the slaves. They're the ones who are good at taking orders, to being subject to volition. They exercise their will subject to someone else's will. So we have soldiers and slaves, society. We have merchants in society. But then we've got to have a class of people that corresponds to the dominance of reason too. They are the intellects, or better, the philosophers. So according to Plato, society is basically divided between philosophers, merchants and soldiers. What would be justice for a society? Well, let's stop and ask, what is justice for the individual? The microcosm of society is the individual soul. And we learned earlier that justice or goodness for the individual is to have reason dominate over temperament and appetite. Likewise, Plato says, within society, justice is the harmonious interplay of these three divisions of mankind with reason, or the philosophers governing the other two kinds of social class or social division, the merchants and the soldiers. The just society, then, will be the society where philosophers govern the merchants, the soldiers. Just like the just man is the one in whom reason governs his temperament and his appetite. The title of Plato's key political treatise, I've already told you, is the Republic. It's in that particular work that we see Plato's relating of his metaphysical doctrines to his view of politics and how the reform in one area is necessary to reforming the other. The only way the harmony of the city state would be saved, according to Plato, is not by giving it over to the masses who are ignorant, not by giving it over to the oligarchs who are elitist. And selfish. The only way to save the harmony of the city state is to have each citizen accept his allocation of function according to his character and capacity. That is, functions must be allocated to people in society, and they must be allocated according to the character and capacity of the person. If the person is ruled by appetite, then he should function as a merchant. If the person is governed by temperament, then he should be allocated the job of soldier or even slave. On the other hand, if this individual shows a proclivity for intellectual matters, for the exercise of reason, he should be allocated rule and guidance in society. Remember the winged chariot with a two horses? For the individual, reason must be the charioteer, then the horses will stay in line. Likewise, in society, reason must be the king, the philosopher must be the king. The intellectual must give us our guidance or will not have a good society characterized by justice. Remember the effect that Socrates death had on Plato. It was very dramatic. The death of Socrates illustrates that in Greek culture, the one, the political unity is more important than the many. Individual freedom. Plato agrees with that. The one is more important than the many. You understand how that's illustrated. Socrates accepted an unjust death sentence because it was more important to be in harmony with political authority. The unity, law and order, if you will. More important to submit to the One than to exercise his freedom as the many. As one of the many citizens who can defy the One, the political order. So the one is more important than the many. If you stop and think about that, we've illustrated that on the board already, right? In his epistemology, Plato says the one duckness is more important than the many ducks, you know, in the world of sensation, the natural world. And so it is in his ethic and in his politics as well, his political philosophy. When Socrates questioned the outlook of the democracy, when he undermined the views, the common sense views of his fellow citizens, he was considered an irreligious man. Because the state was identified with religion, Plato moves away from this. He wants the state to be identified with reason and with philosophy. That will be the salvation for the state. So when I was talking about his ethic, I brought up the problem that if human nature is not morally good at base, then our intuitions are not necessarily reliable as a source for knowing what is good. Plato's answer is education. But then that raises the question, who should do the educating? And now you know the answer. Given his view of society, philosophers should do the educating. So philosophy becomes the salvation for the individual and salvation for the culture of the state as well. Now you've Read your reading, and I'm not going to bore you to tears by going over the details. You know, what kind of state Plato would establish doesn't look very appealing to anybody who respects individual freedom. The state becomes a dominant institution because it knows better. After all, it is the one that controls the raising of children and marriages. Basically, the state becomes communistic despotism. And to that I think we have the right to say, if that's what your concept of reason leads to, a state like that, then no, thanks. You may think that's for the good of humanity. I think that's the source of all of our problems, statism. When the state tries to perform a task that God has never given it to do, it does it very poorly, and we all suffer for it. And so the Christian view would be more that the state should be connected with religion, not in the ancient Greek sense that religion is whatever the state says we ought to turn it around. We'd say the state ought to be doing what the religious authority, God revealing himself in his Word, tells it to do. The state should be subject to God rather than be subject, controlled by the philosophers. And in that way we will have law and order balanced with individual freedom and creativity. The right to make your own decisions within boundaries. But I leave that to the other courses in political philosophy and ethics that you have here at the college. Do you have any questions about Plato's ethic or political philosophy before he ends today? Don't forget the microcosm. The idea that the individual and the state are really a reflection of each other, divided into three parts. And the harmonious function of them comes from reason dominating in both. That's crucial. Anything else? Yes. The state is a macrocosm of the human soul. And the human soul is a microcosm. Microcosm of the state and justice is the same for both of them. A harmonious functioning of the three divisions when reason dominates. Okay, when we come back together, we'll move to Plato's strongest critic and his best student, who, in the same general period of Greek history, started another systematic approach to philosophy which has dominated Western culture. It really is remarkable that you have the two basic philosophies, systematic philosophies, coming out of the same generation, that of Plato and Aristotle. And they will for at least a thousand years govern the development of Western thought. When we come back, then, we'll be prepared to talk about Aristotle.