--- date: '2023-11-08' description: fathers of Western philosophical tradition. id: Plato modified: 2026-06-05 15:08:05 GMT-04:00 seealso: - '[[thoughts/Socrates|Socrates]]' tags: - philosophy - philos1aa3 title: Plato created: '2023-11-08' published: '2023-11-08' pageLayout: default slug: thoughts/Plato permalink: https://aarnphm.xyz/thoughts/Plato.md generator: quartz: v4.6.0 hostedProvider: Cloudflare baseUrl: aarnphm.xyz full: https://aarnphm.xyz/llms-full.txt --- # Apology Plato presents Socrates’ defence at his trial in Athens in 399 BCE. This is a composed account of the speech, so Socrates here means Plato’s Socrates. Two sets of accusations matter ([_Apology_ 18a–24b](https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html)): - The old public image: a natural philosopher who studies the sky and the earth, makes weak arguments defeat strong ones, and charges for teaching. Socrates denies that this describes his activity. - The formal indictment: corrupting the young and failing to acknowledge the city’s gods while introducing new divine beings. Socrates says that anyone can listen to him, rich or poor, without paying. He denies having a body of instruction that makes him responsible for everything a listener later does (33a–b). The oracle at Delphi said that nobody was wiser than Socrates. He tests this by questioning people reputed to be wise (20e–23b): 1. Politicians appear knowledgeable until they have to give an account of what they claim to know. 2. Poets produce fine work, yet cannot adequately explain it. Socrates attributes their success to inspiration and questions the further wisdom they claim on its strength. 3. Craftsmen really do know things he does not. Their mistake is treating expertise in a craft as authority about the most important human questions. His advantage is limited: where he lacks knowledge, he does not suppose that he possesses it. The oracle gives him a reason to keep examining people. It also explains the resentment: an audience may enjoy someone’s embarrassment while the person being questioned blames Socrates. Does the examination need to embarrass people? What makes wisdom so good? ### Dialog The _dikasts_ are the citizen jurors. Socrates argues that Meletus has not thought through the charge of corrupting the young. Meletus first treats practically everyone except Socrates as an improving influence; Socrates challenges this using the example of the few people capable of training horses. He then argues that deliberate corruption would expose him to harm from those around him (24c–26a). Socrates says that he would continue philosophising even if acquittal required him to stop. His divine obligation takes priority over that demand (29c–30b). He also refuses to obtain acquittal by bringing his children before the jury to solicit pity: the jury should decide according to justice and its oath (34b–35d). The doctor prosecuted by a pastry-cook before children belongs to [_Gorgias_ 521e–522a](https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.html). It describes the political vulnerability of someone who improves people through unpleasant treatment. It is not a quotation from the _Apology_. #### Context of the trial The trial follows Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian War and the rule of the Thirty. Socrates’ associations with Alcibiades and Critias form part of that political background. Calling him a scapegoat does not, by itself, establish why the jurors convicted him. His own defence includes resistance to two regimes. Under the democracy, he opposed an illegal collective trial of generals; under the Thirty, he refused an order to help arrest Leon for execution (_Apology_ 32a–e). His stated rule is to avoid injustice even when an authority demands it. _Reaction_: Convicted by the stupidity of them all. The wider proposal that philosophers should rule belongs to the _Republic_ (473c–e). It requires education and knowledge of the good; inherited rank does not supply that knowledge. Keep this proposal separate from the defence speech and its particular jury. [[thoughts/Nietzsche|Nietzsche]] questions Socrates’ commitment to reason. The unexamined life is not worth living (_Apology_ 38a): what makes examination worth this much? ## Socratic Idea of Good The recurring demand is care for the soul: examine whether one’s judgments and actions are just, instead of letting money, reputation or power decide what matters (_Apology_ 29d–30b). What does wisdom do for us? In [_Euthydemus_ 278e–282d](https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthydemus.html), possessions and abilities benefit us through their right use. Wisdom directs that use. Merely having more resources does not settle whether they make a life go well. What is not good might not be wise? If Socrates really cares about Athens, why does he avoid its public debates? He says his divine sign, the _daimonion_, turns him away from proposed actions and has kept him from a political career. Someone consistently resisting public injustice would soon be killed (31c–32a). His examples of resisting both regimes also limit the claim that he never participated in public affairs. At the trial the sign is silent, including during his defence. Socrates takes this as a reason to hope that the outcome is good (40a–c). His refusal to escape is argued separately in [_Crito_ 46b–54d](https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/crito.html), through the question of whether escape would be just. He knows there is a life after death? The _Apology_ leaves two possibilities: dreamless unconsciousness or a migration of the soul (40c–41c). His claim that a good person cannot be harmed (41c–d) therefore needs its ethical sense kept in view: execution cannot force him to commit injustice. The trial plainly can kill him. Doing wrong is worse than suffering wrong is defended in _Gorgias_ 469b–c. The further claim that wrongdoing comes from ignorance concerns what an agent takes to be good; knowing a rule is not yet the wisdom Socrates seeks. These claims need arguments of their own. # Phaedo Socrates spends his last day discussing the soul with friends in prison. The sacred mission to Delos has delayed his execution (_Phaedo_ 58a–c). In prison he has composed a hymn to Apollo and put Aesop’s fables into verse, responding to a recurring dream that told him to practise music (60d–61b). Death is the separation of soul and body. Philosophical training prepares for it by disciplining bodily desires and reasoning about things such as equality or justice themselves (64c–67e). This account depends on the soul being capable of thought apart from the body. Calling the body a distraction does not establish that independence. Is there another side? Life after death? The arguments seem contrived and unconvincing; identify the premise being asked for each time. 1. **Opposites** (70c–72e). Waking comes from sleeping, and sleeping from waking. Socrates extends this pattern to life and death: the living must also come from the dead. The disputed step is whether that cycle applies to death and requires surviving souls. 2. **Recollection** (72e–77a). Equal-looking sticks can fall short of Equality itself. Socrates argues that judging the shortfall requires prior acquaintance with Equality, acquired before birth. This assumes that sensory learning cannot explain the standard. Pre-existence would still leave survival after death to be shown. 3. **Affinity** (78b–80b). Bodies resemble visible, changing, composite things; souls resemble intelligible and stable things. Socrates infers that a soul is less liable to dissolution. Resemblance to an indissoluble thing does not yet prove that a soul is indissoluble. Simmias’ harmony and Cebes’ weaver objections press the possibility that a soul could still perish (85e–88b). 4. **Life-bearing soul** (102a–107b). What necessarily brings a property excludes its opposite: three brings oddness, fire brings heat, and soul brings life. Socrates argues that soul therefore excludes death. To establish survival he also needs the deathless to be indestructible, a further premise explicitly accepted in the dialogue. The argument depends on these Forms and their relation to souls, not merely on the definition of a living body. [_Phaedo_, full text](https://www.platonicfoundation.org/translation/phaedo/), especially 105c–107b for the final distinction between excluding death and surviving destruction. Socrates drinks the poison calmly. His final instruction to Crito concerns a cock owed to Asclepius (118a), the healing god. Reading this as gratitude for release from bodily life is an interpretation; the line does not state which illness has been cured. The dialogue ends with Phaedo’s praise of his friend, rather than an independent confirmation of the afterlife. ### Symposium The banquet at Agathon’s house takes place while Socrates is alive. A later narrator recounts it from another participant’s report (_Symposium_ 172a–173b). Alcibiades describes the conflict Socrates produces in him: he is ashamed of neglecting his soul, then returns to the public approval he wants (215a–216c). His attempted seduction treats his beauty as something to exchange for Socrates’ wisdom. Socrates questions both the exchange and Alcibiades’ estimate of what he would receive (217a–219d). Alcibiades’ frustration does not establish that Socrates regards him as incapable of learning. Socratic irony needs attention to the particular exchange. In [_Euthyphro_ 4e–5a](https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthyfro.html), Socrates invites the man confidently prosecuting his own father to teach him what piety is. The invitation exposes Euthyphro’s claim to knowledge to questioning. Calling everything Socrates says insincere would erase the inquiry along with the mockery. Love must be more than intense alliances with others. Diotima’s account moves from attachment to one beautiful body toward beautiful souls, practices, knowledge and Beauty itself (_Symposium_ 210a–212a). Alcibiades’ speech brings that account back to a particular attachment that remains unresolved. [_Symposium_, full text](https://www.platonicfoundation.org/translation/symposium/). ## Republic Metaphysics asks what there is and what it is. Plato’s Forms are intelligible objects, such as Beauty itself, distinguished from the many beautiful things we perceive (_Republic_ 475e–480a). A sensible thing may appear beautiful in one respect and ugly in another; the Form supplies the stable object of inquiry. Socrates makes knowledge of the Good necessary for the education of the rulers (504d–506b). Everyone pursues what they take to be good, so mistaken judgments about the good can misdirect a whole life or city. His claim still leaves the problem of explaining what the Good is. He offers the sun analogy because he is not giving a direct account of it (506d–e). Satisfied with opinion where knowledge is out there to be found? _Doxa_ is opinion; _epistēmē_ is knowledge. Their distinction concerns their objects and the understanding one can give of them. A belief can happen to be true while its holder lacks an account of why it is true. The _Republic_’s divided line develops a more specific hierarchy of cognitive states (509d–511e). ### Sun: Visible Things : Sight The analogy has two corresponding relations ([_Republic_ 507b–509c](https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.7.vi.html)): - The sun makes visible things visible and enables the eye to see them. - The Good makes intelligible things knowable and enables the mind to know them. Socrates extends the relation: the sun sustains growth, and the Good gives the objects of knowledge their being and essence. He places the Good beyond being in dignity and power (509b). The divided line distinguishes four states (509d–511e): 1. _Eikasia_: apprehension of images, shadows and reflections. 2. _Pistis_: belief concerning the visible things those images depict. 3. _Dianoia_: reasoning from hypotheses, exemplified by mathematics. 4. _Noēsis_: dialectical understanding that examines those hypotheses and seeks a first principle. The mathematical diagram is visible; the square being studied is intelligible. Mathematical reasoning remains hypothetical when it takes its starting points for granted. Perception alone therefore does not name every state below philosophical understanding. ## Dialetic Dialectic seeks an account of what each thing is and tests that account through objections. In [_Republic_ 532a–534c](https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.8.vii.html), it examines the hypotheses the mathematical disciplines leave standing and aims to reach an unhypothetical first principle. A person who claims knowledge of the Good must be able to defend an account of it. How do we understand philosophy? Here the demand is to explain and defend one’s starting points as well as the conclusions drawn from them. Whether Plato’s proposed ascent reaches a secure first principle remains a question for the argument.