Plato discourse was considered most important at Plato’s Academy. So it was not purely by chance that Plato’s Plato (428-347 b.c.) was twenty-nine years old writings took the form of dialogues. when Socrates drank the hemlock. He had been a pupil of Socrates for some time and had followed his trial very The Eternally True, Eternally Beautiful, and Eternally closely. The fact that Athens could condemn its noblest Good citizen to death did more than make a profound With what philosophical problems Plato was impression on him. It was to shape the course of his concerned? Briefly, we can establish that Plato was entire philosophic endeavor. concerned with the relationship between what is eternal To Plato, the death of Socrates was a striking and immutable, on the one hand, and what “flows,” on example of the conflict that can exist between society as it the other. (Just like the pre-Socratics, in fact.) We’ve seen really is and the true or ideal society. Plato’s first deed as how the Sophists and Socrates turned their attention a philosopher was to publish Socrates’ Apology, an from questions of natural philosophy to problems related account of his plea to the large jury. to man and society. And yet in one sense, even Socrates As you will no doubt recall, Socrates never wrote and the Sophists were preoccupied with the relationship anything down, although many of the pre-Socratics did. between the eternal and immutable, and the “flowing.” The problem is that hardly any of their written material They were interested in the problem as it related to remains. But in the case of Plato, we believe that all his human morals and society’s ideals or virtues. Very principal works have been preserved. (In addition to briefly, the Sophists thought that perceptions of what Socrates’ Apology, Plato wrote a collection of Epistles and was right or wrong varied from one city-state to another about twenty-five philosophical Dialogues.) That we and from one generation to the next. So right and wrong have these works today is due not least to the fact that was something that “flowed.” This was totally Plato set up his own school of philosophy in a grove not unacceptable to Socrates. He believed in the existence of far from Athens, named after the legendary Greek hero eternal and absolute rules for what was right or wrong. Academus. The school was therefore known as the By using our common sense we can all arrive at these Academy. (Since then, many thousands of “academies” immutable norms, since human reason is in fact eternal have been established all over the world. We still speak and immutable. of “academics” and “academic subjects.”) Then along comes Plato. He is concerned with The subjects taught at Plato’s Academy were both what is eternal and immutable in nature and what is philosophy, mathematics, and gymnastics—although eternal and immutable as regards morals and society. To perhaps “taught” is hardly the right word. Lively 1 Plato, these two problems were one and the same. He them as horses. A particular horse “flows,” naturally. It tried to grasp a “reality” that was eternal and immutable. might be old and lame, and in time it will die. But the And to be quite frank, that is precisely what we “form” of the horse is eternal and immutable. need philosophers for. We do not need them to choose a That which is eternal and immutable, to Plato, is beauty queen or the day’s bargain in tomatoes. (This is therefore not a physical “basic substance,” as it was for why they are often unpopular!) Philosophers will try to Empedocles and Democritus. Plato’s conception was of ignore highly topical affairs and instead try to draw eternal and immutable patterns, spiritual and abstract in people’s attention to what is eternally “true,” eternally their nature, that all things are fashioned after. “beautiful,” and eternally “good.” Let me put it like this: The pre-Socratics had given We can thus begin to glimpse at least the outline a reasonably good explanation of natural change without of Plato’s philosophical project. But let’s take one thing at having to presuppose that anything actually “changed.” a time. We are attempting to understand an In the midst of nature’s cycle there were some eternal extraordinary mind, a mind that was to have a profound and immutable smallest elements that did not dissolve, influence on all subsequent European thought. they thought. Fair enough. But they had no reasonable explanation for how these “smallest elements” that were The World of Ideas once building blocks in a horse could suddenly whirl Both Empedocles and Democritus had drawn together four or five hundred years later and fashion attention to the fact that although in the natural world themselves into a completely new horse—or an elephant everything “flows,” there must nevertheless be or a crocodile, for that matter. Plato’s point was that “something” that never changes (the “four roots,” or the Democritus’ atoms never fashioned themselves into an “atoms”). Plato agreed with the proposition as such—but “eledile” or a “crocophant.” This was what set his in quite a different way. philosophical reflections going. Plato believed that everything tangible in nature If you already understand what I am getting at, “flows.” So there are no “substances” that do not you may skip this next paragraph. But just in case, I will dissolve. Absolutely everything that belongs to the clarify: You have a box of Lego and you build a Lego “material world” is made of a material that time can horse. You then take it apart and put the blocks back in erode, but everything is made after a timeless “mold” or the box. You cannot expect to make a new horse just by “form” that is eternal and immutable. shaking the box. How could Lego blocks of their own Why are horses the same? You probably don’t accord find each other and become a new horse again? think they are at all. But there is something that all horses No, you have to rebuild the horse. And the reason you have in common, something that enables us to identify can do it is that you have a picture in your mind of what 2 the horse looked like. The Lego horse is made from a gingerbread pigs. Because every self-respecting bakery model that remains unchanged from horse to horse. has more than one mold. But one mold is enough for Let us assume that you have dropped in from each type of gingerbread cookie.) outer space and have never seen a baker before. You Plato came to the conclusion that there must be a stumble into a tempting bakery—and there you catch reality behind the “material world.” He called this reality sight of fifty identical gingerbread men on a shelf. I the world of ideas; it contained the eternal and imagine you would wonder how they could be exactly immutable “patterns” behind the various phenomena we alike. It might well be that one of them has an arm come across in nature. This remarkable view is known as missing, another has lost a bit of its head, and a third has Plato’s theory of ideas. a funny bump on its stomach. But after careful thought, you would nevertheless conclude that all gingerbread True Knowledge men have something in common. Although none of them I’m sure you’ve been following me. But you may is perfect, you would suspect that they had a common be wondering whether Plato was being serious. Did he origin. You would realize that all the cookies were really believe that forms like these actually existed in a formed in the same mold. And what is more, you are completely different reality? now seized by the irresistible desire to see this mold. He probably didn’t believe it literally in the same Because clearly, the mold itself must be utter perfection— way for all his life, but in some of his dialogues that is and in a sense, more beautiful—in comparison with these certainly how he means to be understood. Let us try to crude copies. follow his train of thought. If you solved this problem all by yourself, you A philosopher, as we have seen, tries to grasp arrived at the philosophical solution in exactly the same something that is eternal and immutable. It would serve way that Plato did. no purpose, for instance, to write a philosophic treatise Like most philosophers, he “dropped in from on the existence of a particular soap bubble. Partly outer space.” He was astonished at the way all natural because one would hardly have time to study it in depth phenomena could be so alike, and he concluded that it before it burst, and partly because it would probably be had to be because there are a limited number of forms rather difficult to find a market for a philosophic treatise “behind” everything we see around us. Plato called these on something nobody has ever seen, and which only forms ideas. Behind every horse, pig, or human being, existed for five seconds. there is the “idea horse,” “idea pig,” and “idea human Plato believed that everything we see around us in being.” (In the same way, the bakery we spoke of can nature, everything tangible, can be likened to a soap have gingerbread men, gingerbread horses, and bubble, since nothing that exists in the world of the 3 senses is lasting.