Back

LECTURE 3: ANCIENT ETHICS OF PLATO

BEING GOOD AND BEING PIOUS: THE EUTHYPHRO
This dialogue is a troublemaker, because it challenges not only the
existing religion of Socrate's time (and got him into trouble) but the
mode of thinking of any religion, namely faith, and replaces it with a
new mode of faith: logical reasoning. He was a man teaching not a new
religion, but a new kind of religion, the religion of the pursuit of
truth by reason. The athenians knew deep down that this was a threat
against their existing religion, which was totally irrational. The
conflict was between faith and reason: religion and philosophy. What's
going on? Socrates is being arrest and on his way to court for being
an atheist because he cannot profess his faith in any of the gods
approved by the state. He was actually a pious agnostic, not an
atheist. But, on his way he met an arrogant young man named Ethyphro,
who is going to court to prosecute his father for acidentally killing
a manservant. That was not normal. Religion and family always go
together, and the greeks regarded something vs your mom and dad as
impious. So, Socrates asks him why. He is doing it out of piety.

Socrates turns on the irony: "you must be an expert on piety to be so
sure you are doing the right thing..." yes i am. the socratic method
continues: a definition: "what is piety?" "doing what the gods do and
loving what the gods love". Well, there is a myth that says that a god
prosecutes his father. Socrates: are you pious in relation to ALL the
gods? 'yes'. But the gods contradict each other in our religious
tales, in fact, they fight with each other. At that moment, if you
were pious to one, it would be impious to the other. A single act
would be pious and impious at the same time, which is illogical. So,
you have not defined piety, and is therefore not just in acting on a
false idea of piety, as if you know what it is. Euthyphro redefines
it: Its doing what all the gods agree.

Hmm... well, even if all the gods agree, is a thing pious because the
gods will it, or is it Good because the gods will it? "uhh, its Good
because they will it". This is the divine command theory. If god
commanded us to eat our neighbor's ears and give ours for the eating,
that would no longer be bad.

The problem here is that it makes god arbitrary, to be obeyed not
because god is Good, but because he is the boss. Luther, Calvin and
Kirkegaard all agreed with this. In "fear and trembling," Kirkegaard
sees the sacrafice of isaac as a 'teleological suspension of the
ethical' by god, a purposful setting aside by god of morality. Now,
morality is known by reason, and God is known by faith. Kirk says
reason is low down. Reason should not be confused with faith, which is
the greatest Good. Not moral reason, because if moral reason is
greater, Abraham is not a hero but a murderer. Kirk had a point. If
God wills a thing and it is Good, that SEEMS to put Goodness above
god, and therefore we can judge God by this standard of Good. We can
turn around and judge God by the Good that is done. Now, Socrates says
that a thing is not Good because the gods will it, but that god wills
Good things. Unlike the greek gods who are less than Good, the God of
the bible cannot be judged. Socrates is saying that morality is higher
than religion, and that religions can be judged by moral standards.
And, if we find morals through reason, ad religioun by faith, than we
place reason over  reason over faith to judge it, not faith over
reason. So, should we put morality over religion or vice versa? does
god command Goodness, or is Goodness above god? the traditional answer
is neither. God and Goodness are equally absoulute, because God's
essence is Goodness. Add an o to god and you get Goodness. Add a zero
to any number, and you get that same number.

Then what about the Abraham / Isaac story in gen. 22?

Well, God is teaching Abraham the exact opposite lesson from what
Kirkegaard thinks: that human sacrifice is wrong, and that this new
religion that God is revealing to Abraham will be the first one in
history that will be completely moral. And therefore will not have
human sacrifice. The lesson comes at the END of the story, when God's
angel intervenes and forbids the sacrifice. And provides a ram
instead. The ritual sacrifice of animals was a central event in
judaism until the destruction of the second temple in 70. Christians
believe the slaughter of Jesus, the lamb of God, was the historical
fulfillment of that symbolic pattern, or type. Kirkgaard is ignoring
the historical context. He is also ignoring the historical difference
between Socrates, who saw real contradictions between reality and the
dying greek religion, and started the philosophy movement which grew
into the hole it was leaving (because it was dying, because it was
immoral and irrational). In Christianity, we have the opposite
situation. Religion and philosophy were married in a synthesis,
instead of contradicted.  In Greece, the priests and philosophers were
enemies, and one could tell which they were by their clothes. In the
Christian middle ages, almost all the philosophers were priests.

Kirkgaard is in the minority of Christians, along with William of
Ockham, Martin Luther, Calvin etc. and fundamentalists today agree
with Eutheryo and usually believe in the divine command theory. They
have a low conception in human reason. But the mainline Christian
position, that of church fathers east and west, Augustine, Acquinas,
CS Lewis, Vatican Council I and II is that human reason can know God,
and know the Good. Can know that a thing is Good in itself and not
just that God commands it. It it Good and that is why God commands it.
That it is Good in itself because it is like God, like God's
character. We can know something about God's character by our reason.
Reason is our tool for this.

Acquinas puts the relation between our reason and faith very clearly:
there are two kinds of truths: those we can know just by reason, and
those we can know by revelation by the supernatural God. These truths
cannot contradict themselves, what we discover by reason is truth, and
what we believe in by faith is truth. Reason and faith are like two
books from the same author, God, who never contradicts. What reason
discovers when it is properly used, is truth, what faith believes,
when it is properly understood, is truth. And truth can never
contradict truth.

This cannot be argued against, except of course if you do not believe
that the faith is true. If your religion taught something that reason
proves false, because if it did then you cannot believe it, because
you cannot honestly believe in something you know it is false. Mark
Twain jokingly defined faith: the art of believing something you know
isn't true. Its funny only because it is not true. You can't believe
in something you know isn't true.

Socrates vs. Dostoyevsky: D says "if god does not exist, everything is
permissible." Socrates says that ethics is not based in religion, but
knowable without it. So? Is this a real contradiction? Who is right?
This is important because historically, ethics nearly always comes
from religion. Since most people have some religion, and all religions
having some morality.

Religions have three facets:
teaching about gods and ultimate reality
commandments or ideals for moral living and
liturgy and public worship.

Creed, code and cult (words, works and worship). So a moral code is
part of all religions... and they are strikingly similar across all
religions. Surprising because theologies are hugely different, so are
liturgies. But they share a nearly common morality. And this is not
just common sense morality: we can group all moralities in the world
into 3 kinds:

lowest kind: calculated self interest (you don't bash my head in if I
don't bash yours, and we both save on doctor bills). Purely pragmatic.
A business deal. But if it doesn't work, its over. If one party thinks
they can get what they want without the deal, its junked. The
deterrent is shame, if you get caught, or fear of punishment.
better kind: morality of justice: do Good deeds because its the right
thing to do. There are some things like moral laws, virtues,
responsibilities that have a claim on you, and you ought to follow
them. Its just, fair and Good. The deterrent is guilt. It is not
external and public, but internal and individual.
the highest and rarest: you must go beyond justice, to self sacrifice,
to unselfishness, to mercy, to forgiveness. The remarkable thing is
that every single major religion teaches this highest 3rd level
morality, as if they had a peephole into the curtain, that allows them
to see the same hidden secret. For outside religion, this secret is
rarely seen. In the West, secularists who claim to have lost religion
still often say they believe in this morality, but they are almost
always remembering it from the religion they or their family or their
culture once believed. Almost no one ever came up with this third
level on their own, independently of religion. Thats the subjective
personal connection with morality and religion. There is also an
objective, logical and impersonal connection: most people turn to
religion when asked to justify their morality:

Why should we treat all people as intrinsically valuable?
Why should we not use people and love things, but love people and use things?

most people say "because we are all god's children, or created in
god's image. or because that is what god wants." So, back to the
question: is religion the ONLY justification for ethics? Dostoyovsky
says yes. Socrates says no, because "a thing isn't Good because the
gods will it, but the gods will it because it is Good."

Dostoyevsky is christian
Sartre is atheist
Socrates is agnostic (one who does not know),

The dislexic, agnostic, insomniac stayed up all night imagining "is
there a dog?".

These three are talking about the "everything is permissible"
statement. D says "if there is no God, there is no real Goodness, and
no answer to the simple question "why can't be whatever ass monger I
want to be" No reason for me not to be whatever egotistical pig I want
to be". So, there must be a god, and some of us who are skeptical
about Him are just fooling ourselves and suppressing the knowledge
because we don't want to know it.

Sartre: In the brothers karamazov, dostoyevsky puts his saying in the
mouth of the athiest Ivan Kramazov, who is honest and a Good man, but
who wants to kill his horrible father. God and morality stood in the
way of killing him. So Ivan has to kill God first. Freud loved this
book, the oedipus complex is right there! Sartre identifies not with
Dostoyevsky but with Ivan the new athiest, who now believes everything
is permissible. Sartre does not want to kill anybody but the
conclusion of Bros. Kraramazov filled him with distress because it so
powerfully made clear that without God, life is meaningless and
"everything is permissible." There is no higher standard to judge Good
and bad. Sartre was sad, but Neitzsche was exhilirated, because now
that God is gone, Man can be Superman. Can become Uberman, the new man
without religion or morality. Without restraint. When God dies, man
becomes the new god.

So, but both Sartre and Neitzche agree with Dostoyevsky: without god,
everything is permissible. If there is no god, there is no morality.
Its a package deal.

Enter Socrates: S disagrees that if there is no God, there is no
morality. Dosotyevsky's saying sounds like Eyuthpro, who said that an
act is right or wrong because the gods will it. But this is not quite
the same thing, cause Dostoyevsky was saying that if God did not
EXIST, then there would be no morality. D was not a pagan polytheist,
but a Russian orthodox monotheist, who believe in the one perfect
ultimate God. God is the ultimate standard for Good and evil. So, why
didn't Socrates see this? Well, because they did not have this one
God! They didn't posit that God created the universe out of nothing,
and is not the creator of the universe, earth, man and man's morality.
That was a Jewish idea only. For us, God created Goodness.

Enter Albert Camus, athiest. in "The Plague," Dr. Rue who goes about
helping people does so because he knows he 'has to be a saint, a moral
hero.' He believed in morality even though not in religion. This dr
agonizes over this dilemma. He believes in 3 things that can't all be
true: 1. the meaning of life is to be a saint. 2. you can't be a saint
without God. 3. there is no God. oops. something is wrong, and he
never figured it out.

FOUR RESPONSES TO DOSTOYEVSKY'S POSIT: THERE IS NO MORALITY WITHOUT GOD.
the saying is true, and there is no god, so no morality (Neitzsche, Sartre)
the saying is true, and there is a God, and so there is morality
(Judeo-Christianity)
there is no god, but there is morality anyway (Plato)
believes in a single perfect God, but never tells us the connection
between this god and morality (Socrates)
yes a god exists, but everything is still permissible, God don't care
too much (millions of americans) people who don't want to be athiests,
they want the comfort of believing in a god of love, but who also
don't want to be saints, and don't want to feel guilty about anything.
So they use pop-psychology and condemn traditional morality for being
repressive. So they judge morality for being judgmental, and tolerate
only tolerance but are intolerant of intolerance, and are dogmatically
opposed to dogma, and absolutely opposed to absolutes, and they say
its true there is no truth. Philosophy can show what a fool you are,
and can make you feel very uncomfortable.

Believers in God use Doystevesky's phrase to make an argument; the
moral argument for God: since not everything is permissible, there
must be a God. The distinction between Good and evil means there is a
God. But this assumes that Good and evil are objectively real. Some
people do not believe in this premise, they say that Good and evil's
rules are sort of arbitrary. Not real. made up by us, like the rules
of a game.

But, when you ask these people if they really believe its ok to rape,
or cannibalism or burn the rain forest, they don't say then that
morality is subjective. When they tell you not to push their morality
on them, suppose you say "that's your morality." But, imposing
morality on other people, that's my morality." "So, don't impose your
morality of tolerance and respect and justice on me." Then you will
find out that they are not moral relativists, but
selective-relativists. They are relativist about sex but that may be
all. The moral argument for God says "if there is a real morality,
where does it come from?" From a godless universe that is made up from
a bunch of atoms and chance? how do you get a real Good and evil from
molecules and kinetic energy and quanta and force...? And if the voice
of conscience is not God, but your parents or society or genes, then
why do we believe its always wrong to disobey your conscience? To
deliberately do something we honestly believe is evil... we really
think that. Even moral relativists who say different strokes for
different folks have one absolute: although its not ok to sin against
society, religion, and the ten commandments and all that, its never
right to sin against your own conscience! Why? Why do you treat your
conscience like a prophet or a divine deity? Perhaps it is.

So we have an argument from conscience for the existence of God. The
evidence is the absolute authority of conscience. But nothing has that
authority. So there must be an absolute Good.

We started this with Socrates substituting rational thought for
religion, and ended it with an argument FROM rational thought FOR
religion. Are we confused now?

So, do you need God to be moral? Well, if there is a God who is
absolutely Good, he HAS to be, in the ontological sense (the fact)
sense, yes. In psychological terms, no, you can be a virtuous person
without God.

LECTURE 5: BEING GOOD AND BEING HAPPY: THE REPUBLIC
Like Jesus and Buddha, Socrates wrote nothing at all. By luck or
divine providence, that one of his deciples happened to be the
greatest writer in the history of philosophy. Plato. Before he met
Socrates, he was a poet, hoping to compete in the same competitions of
drama and poetry that were won by aescylus and sophocles... but then
he met socrates. He had something like a religious conversion. He
publicly burned all his poetry, and devoted all his energy to writing
up the conversations of Socrates.

Philosophy was meant to be a life-changing experience in the ancient
world. If Socrates came to our time, he would no doubt ask if we had
philosophers in our culture. He would be told that there are
professional philosophers working at university departments of
philosophy. He would laugh, or probably weep. Philosophy was not a
department to socrates, but a way of life. And professional? selling
wisdom for money? The professor is an intellectual prostitute, and the
university would be their pimps.

Plato and St. Augustine sing philosophy. Its worth learning Greek to
read plato, and latin just for Augustine. Plato's ideas are incarnated
in characters. He puts legs under his ideas. Whitehead: the whole
history of philosophy can be a series of footnotes of Plato. Plato
wrote 30 dialogues, and the greatest is the Republic. It is about
ethics. Everyone thinks its about politics, and it is but thats
secondary. The bottom line of it is a thesis of ethics: that justice
is always more profitable than injustice. And Justice meant more than
'rights', its broader: its almost the whole of ethics. All values stem
from it. More than giving and getting rights, it means a cosmic order,
a harmony, a music.

Don't think of justice like you were an accountant working out debts
and payments. In Republic: politics is there as a MEANS TO AN END:
Ethics. Moral values for the state and for the individual both, are
analogues of each other. Politics, justice, think not of the
accountant but of those old coins with walking liberty on them. Much
more moral, much more idealistic. Politics was about the Good life,
the Good community, the moral life. The Polis was not the bureaucratic
state, but the human community. Communities are made by and for
individuals. Lincoln said the same: Government was of the people, by
the people for the people. Plato agrees, but didn't believe in
democracy. Heck, democracy just executed the wisest man in the world.

CHAPTERS 1-3 OF THE REPUBLIC
3 conversations on what justice is. Socrates talks to three
generations, grandpa, papa and young man. Sephalus, Polymarchus and
Thrusimicus. Wants a real definition of justice, so he can have
certainty on what it is. What it is ALL the time. Sephalus says: It is
paying back what you owe. But that's not it because we don't give the
weapon we borrowed to a lunatic. So, Polymarchus says that "Justice is
giving people what they deserve." Socrates reminds him that sometimes
we are wrong on who our friends and enemies are. So Polymarchus says
"Ok, its doing Good to the Good guys and bad to the bad guys."
Socrates criticizes this as well, and says something amazing: that
justice should do Good to the bad guys too!  Because justice is a
virtue, it can do only Good, not harm, all the time. Jesus said the
same thing. Now, Thrusimicus barges in and bullies Socrates: "Justice
is what the strongman says it is." If Germany won WWII, he is a hero
and Chruchill is a goat. We might say this sucks, but this is what
Maciavelli, Neitzsche and many of us say today too! The rest of the
Republic tries to refute it.

This philosophy is familiar to us today: the consequence of it though,
is that it is naive and foolish to be just. Go the the root of the
matter and for the power. Justice is NOT the way to the happy life,
according to Thrusimicus, and sometimes injustice is more profitable
than Justice. So, do justice when it profits you, and injustice when
that does. So, the end justifies the means. There is no moral
absolute. Morality is just a set of words or values, something
abstract in human minds. Its NOT REAL. This moral relativism was rare
among the ancients (except for the Sophists) but it is far from rare
today. In ancient culture the teachers were more moralisic than their
students, today its the opposite. Opinion polls reveal a morality gap
between the intellectuals and the peasants. Thrucimicus writes the
books today. His two major claims are big: "Justice is based on
power". Well, this one is not accepted today much, even among
intellectuals. Too much like crass totalitarianism. The other claim,
moral subjectivism, is much more popular. There is no universal,
timeless objective truth to find. Morals are an art like building
bridges, or a game, like baseball, to make and do. Manmade, not
discovered like the laws of physics.

What led men to create morality, Thrusimicus? "Weakness. It was the
weak not the strong who did it, who created justice. Why would the
strong man lower himself to equality with the others? it was the weak
who banded together and as the majority forced justice, a false
unnatural equality." And if that is so, there is not reason to be
moral, except for your own punishment. There is no problem with doing
whatever you want, as long as you get away with it.

Prof: Why should you not do anything wrong?
St. Because you might get caught
P: suppose you don't?
S:  Well, people will hate you.
P: suppose they won't- suppose you can con them, your power includes
propaganda, power of their minds? Or suppose you just don't care what
they think. Why not do evil if you can get away with it and get what
you want? Why is Thrusimicus wrong? Why is justice not just power?

Its surprisingly hard to find an answer for students. Although its the
most basic question in ethics. Thrusimicus goes home pissed off.

But Socrates is not satisfied. Glaucon, Plato's brother, takes up
Thrusimics' line (becoming a devils advocate) using a mythological
image that is famous in the West- Old in Plato's day, no one knows its
origin, and used again in the medieval epic of the Niebelungs, and
again by Richard (Rihkhard) Wagner in the great opera cycle, and
finally by the book that 5 separate opinion polls chose as the
greatest of the 20th Century: Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Its the
image of the ring of power. In it, Gaiges, like Gollum, is a loser, He
finds a ring that makes him a winner: he can do whatever he wants and
the ring will make him invisible. So, he kills the king, marries the
queen, rules the kingdom and cons the people. Isn't the power the way
to happiness? Gaiges used it wouldn't you? Tolkien, like Plato, said
no. The quest is to get rid of the ring. If a genie came out of a
lamp, Plato would say "wish 1: destroy the lamp". Power corrupts.

Everybody wants happiness. Not everybody wants happiness or justice,
or even power, but everyone wants happiness. So, how do you attain it?
How shall we then live? Through justice- or through injustice with the
power to do whatever you want to "get it"? Now, ok, we are not all
doing Thrucimicus' bidding, we are not crass enough. But whenever we
think its ok to cheat a little, or lie a little, or be unfaithful a
little, we really do believe it. If we didn't believe doing wrong
would make us happy, we wouldn't do it. If sin didn't look like fun,
we'd all be saints. So, Plato's high aim in the republic, is to
convince us that sin isn't fun. Injustice is never profitable. And,
really convince us. Not just give us a logical reasoning about it. And
that aim, so high, make it one of the greatest books ever written,
whether it succeeds or not. Its politics are full of rather rediculous
things, so ignore it.  Its superb on ethics, crap on philosophy. It
never worked, and don't let it prejudice you against plato. Hegel
thought the kingdom of God came to earth with Bismarks Prussia, and
Heidegger, best philospher of the 20th C, joined the nazi party and
proclaimed Hitler the new god. Plato wasn't that stupid.

!Plato's goal in the Republic is to say that "Justice is always more
profitable than injustice. That being Good is the best way to be
Happy." Now, this road has four steps, in book 6,7's elucidation of
the theory of the process of education. A line is divided into four
parts, and the image is of a prisoner escaping from a cave. The  cave
of ignorance.

Step 1. Tradition and Authority. Accepting conventional opinoins,
others opinions, just as your eyes accept images reflected in the
mirror, or in the water's reflection. But not seeing them in reality.

Step 2: Experience. Seeing the images yourself.

Step 3: Logical Reasoning, being able to prove what you see.

Step 4: Wisdom. Understanding them, like justice, the essence of things.

The Republic follows its own path, it goes through each of the four
steps itself. It starts in book one when Steps 1-3 are done through
Socrates arguments about justice. 1. Cephalus' conventional
authoritarian and traditional definition of justice. Then 2. testing
it with concrete examples through experience (the knife and the
madman) and 3. logical reasoning, showing Cepthalus and Polymarchus
that their definitions have self-contradidictions in them. Then book 1
ends. But Socrates is not satisfied because step 4 has not been
completed: understanding the essence of what Justice is. The rest of
the Republic is dealing with this last step.

Plato's strategy: We want to prove that justice is better than
injustice. And we want to reach certainty on this, so we want to know
their essences are. We need a real definition. Well, how to find them?
Justice and injustice exist in 2 places: in the individual soul, and
in the state. Which is harder to find the essence in? The soul,
because they are small, invisible and not easy to get at. But the
state? yes, that is examinable. Like reading a large print book.  What
is the history of the rise of justice in the state? What is the
pattern of justice and injustice in states? Well, Plato begins with
the history of the rise of the just state, which is a natural thing,
because a state naturally arises from the fact of specialization.
Division of labor kind of thing. This efficiency in specialization
creates wealth, then they invent medium of exchange. Divide of classes
now, rich and poorer. Then, a police/military must be created to
protect the wealth of the wealthier (and the state, against neighbors
who want the wealth). They need someone to supervise them: wise
legislators. So, three classes naturally develop: producers of wealth,
supervisors (keepers of order) and the rulers (the legislators). The
law abiders, law enforcers, and law makers. The people, the
warriors/police and the legislators. Each class needs a specific
virtue a Good habit: What the producers need most is moderation, what
the soldiers need is courage, and what the legislators need most is
wisdom. Wisdom, courage, moderation, with justice as the harmonious
force making them all work together.

Where is justice in all this? Its not in any one of the classes by
itself, but in the harmonious functioning of all these together. So,
justice in a community is what health is in a body. These 3 classes in
Plato's community... are very interesting. They seem to have existed
all throughout human society's history! In the details, Plato's off,
but in this structure, he seems to have hit something powerful.

And, Plato brings it back now to the soul. The same pattern exists in
the soul, and Plato makes a map of the soul. The experience of an
inner conflict: desire vs. reason. The conflict is resolved by a third
power: Will (Spirit). This third takes the side of one or the other,
depending on which is best. A spiritually healthy soul, the just soul,
is like a just state; where the 3 powers do their job with their
proper virtue: AND THE SAME VIRTUES ARE NEEDED: Reason by the Mind,
Courage is needed by the Will, Moderation is needed by the Desires
(the body, the inner producers), and Justice is the harmony of all
three working together doing their proper job. Like a car is the
extension of the human body, the state is as well.

These virtues have been adopted as the "4 Cardinal Virtues" ever since
Plato. Freud's id, ego, superego correspond to them.

Now, Plato has found what justice is, and now he must find what
injustice is. But before that, a digression: who would rule a utopian
just republic? Well. PKs. "Until philosophers becomes kings, or kings
become philosophers, there will be no rest from trouble in the world!
Well, so what is a philosopher? What kind? No surprise: Someone like
Socrates. Someone who can achieve that 4th level of education. Someone
who can know the essences of things. The kind of question that
Socrates is always asking. Abstract theoretical wisdom is the key to
practical ethical wisdom. Cause, if you know succeed in knowing what
justice and injustice are, then you will KNOW that justice and virtue
are better, and more profitable than injustice, and that moral virtue
will always make you happy and not vice. The only way to be certain of
this is to know the essence of both. You are CERTAIN that a circle
can't be a square. You know the simple essence of what they are. You
are not totally sure that a quasar is not an angel.

In order be certain that justice is more profitable than injustice,
you must understand their essences. A Socratic philosopher knows
these, and if not, at least knows what he has to search for. That is
why a philo should rule the state. The other details in Republic are
silly, like relations between the sexes. "There is no difference
between men and women, and men are better at everything". So, Plato is
both a radical left wing unisexist, and a radical right wing male
chauvenist.

But, Plato did contribute something else: the idea that the single
most important thing in a Republic is education. He invented
university education. He founded the first university in the world:
the Academy. Even though education has not brought us utopia, or
solved all world problems, we are further along than without it.

Something else, Plato emphasizes the power of music: for education, it
is imperative. A whole book devoted to music, one paragraph on
economics. Music is powerful, it puts order or disorder into your
soul. Even as an adult, it gets into your soul without passing the
guard-gate of reason. Its the water that seeps under castle walls no
matter how strong they are. It connects you to the patterns of harmony
of the cosmos, and makes you happy by this cosmic connection to its
harmony. And harmony is a result of justice. So, music is a key for
morality. Justice is the key virtue for Plato, and if you know
justice, you know the other three cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage,
and moderation too.

But there is something even greater than justice and the cardinal
virtues. The Platonic form of the idea of the Good. Goodness itself.
It cannot be defined because it is not in everybody's mind, Its the
eternal form, the infinite, known by a mind. If we cannot define this
absolute ideal, we can define it through parables, like Jesus when he
was defining the kingdom of God.

The Good, he says, is like the Sun. You can't stare at it without
going blind, you can't see the sun directly, but you need the sun to
see by its light. You need the light to see everything else, and is
only by that light that you can know what you know. Same with the
Good, absolute Good. You can't know the absolute Good like you can
know finite things like justice. Though undefinable, the Good is the
origin of all order, all intellegibility, both physical and spiritual.
Everything is known by its end, its design, what it is Good for.

Plato's Cave is a story of the steps of the philosopher's education.
It is the most famous thing anyone has ever written. Read the first
few pages of Book VII of the Republic.

Plato defines then INJUSTICE. Both in the STATE and in the SOUL. He
finds four forms of injustice in the two places, when the natural
order is turned upside down.

Five Forms of Government
1 Aristocracy: rule by the best
2 Timocracy: rule by the brave
3 Plutocracy: rule by the rich few
4 Democracy: rule by the masses (anarchy)
5 Tyranny: rule by one asshole

Plato had no idea of the rule of law, rather than the rule of
arbitrary will. The only democracy he saw rule was the passionate mob
that executed socrates. He also knew democracy led to dictatorship
after order is restored when the mob screws it up. 2,3,4,5 are
perverted. 1 is sublime. Same with the soul.

What about in the soul?
1 Reason = a just soul
2 Will (like soldiers)
3 Desires (the elite few desires you have)
4 All desires (chaos) like the masses
5 Inner tyrant of obsession and addiction

So, by this, we can SEE that justice must always be more profitable
than injustice. We can TELL that it is, and we need not rely on the
lower three:

1 authority telling us it is so
2 our own ever-changing sense experience
3 clever logical reasoning

But now we are at stage 4: we can see that the soul of an unjust man
is like a zoo, where the zoo animals rule the zookeeper. So, what's
wrong then? Why does not everyone who reads the Republic become so
convinced of Plato's conclusion that they become saints?!?

Well, maybe there is something wrong with Plato's argument? But maybe
its something else. Maybe we are not swayed into being saints by
argument alone. Maybe there is something Plato didn't figure on: that
our psychology is darker and more irrational than he thought: maybe we
can actually understand that justice makes us happy, with certainty,
and yet pick injustice instead. Last time you did something bad, was
it only an intellectual mistake? Didn't you really know it would not
make you happy, and you did it anyway? First in the Meno, Plato asked
if Virtue could be taught. The Republic taught what it was, and why it
is profitable. But maybe, that's just not Good enough. Maybe Plato was
wrong, and you do not get virtue by just being taught it. He did
mention another way, after all, in the Meno, to get virtue: by
practice. For us it is hindsight. It was for his pupil, the
philosopher who was for Western Civilization what Confucius was for
Chinese Civilization. Very practical, less mystical, more common
sense, less intellecticalistic. Paragon of common sense, and most of
us are Aristotilians.

READING FOR THE NEXT LECTURE

Return to PHL 100

     Prof. N. Rensberg