Ancient Philosophy - Lectures 1 & 2 (Part one)
ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
Lectures 1 and 2 (Part One)
Plato’s Republic and Some Problems about Justice
Some Biographical Details about Plato
Reliable information about Plato’s life is fairly limited. Plato gives no substantial information about himself in any of his philosophical works: indeed he refers to himself on only two occasions, once in the Apology, when he is said to be one of those present at Socrates’ trial for blasphemy and corrupting the youth of Athens, and once in the Phaedo, set during Socrates’ last hours, when he is stated to be absent because of illness. And although there are plenty of stories in ancient biographies of Plato, these seem to have been composed at a time when authoritative access to the details of Plato’s life and views would have been difficult or impossible. Thus many scholars are inclined to treat these stories as inspired by and seeking to explain the positions that Plato seems to be arguing for in his philosophical writings rather than independent sources of information about Plato’s personal history.
There is, in fact, even some dispute about whether ‘Plato’ is actually the real name of the philosopher we conventionally refer to by that appellation. Plato’s writings have come down to us firmly under that name. But within the ancient biographical tradition there is a substantial minor tradition according to which ‘Plato’ was merely a nickname that stuck and subsequently obscured the philosopher’s real name of Aristocles. This suggestion would fit with the fact that Plato’s paternal grandfather was called Aristocles and the common practice in ancient Greece of naming the eldest son in a family after his father’s father. However we don’t have any independent evidence that Plato was his father’s eldest son, and the explanations for why ‘Plato’ might have been pressed into service as a nickname are distinctly unconvincing.
What we can confidently say about the author of the works collected together under the name ‘Plato’ is roughly as follows. He was born in the early 420s BC to a wealthy father called Ariston whose family claimed descent from the 6th-century statesman Solon, who was reputedly the person who brought about the reforms to the laws of Athens that put that city on the road to a democratic form of government. He was heavily influenced by the philosophical example provided by Socrates, with whom he was personally acquainted, and Socrates serves as the main speaker in the overwhelming majority of Plato’s dialogues. Despite the deeply anti-democratic nature of Plato’s extensive writings on political theory, he spent the larger part of his life in Athens without interference from the authorities; and he also founded a philosophical school, the Academy, which was to survive in Athens as a centre of teaching and research for at least three centuries. For the final twenty years of his life, Plato had Aristotle with him in the Academy as first a student and then a philosophical associate, and he died in 347 BC.
If we could rely upon the authenticity of the so-called Seventh Letter, we could fill in some more substantial details of Plato’s life. However Plato’s authorship of this letter is a topic of considerable scholarly controversy. On the other hand, the language used in this piece of writing does seem to justify us in supposing that it was written not substantially later than the time of Plato’s death by someone who was reasonably familiar with Plato’s philosophical views. So although it may be a suspect source of information about Plato’s motivations and inner thoughts, it seems unlikely that it blatantly misrepresents those aspects of Plato’s life that would have been a matter of public knowledge to his contemporaries in Athens. Thus we can probably add to the foregoing scant summary of biographical information, three visits to the Greek city of Syracuse in Sicily and some sort of ultimately unsuccessful political involvement there. The author of the letter echoes Socrates’ talk in the Republic of the need for philosophers to rule as kings or those commonly called kings to philosophise, and he represents Plato as unsuccessfully attempting to turn the young Syracusan tyrant Dionysius II into a philosopher.
The City-State of Athens
Source: The World of Athens, Joint Association of Classical Teachers, 1984
Population (at its peak around 431 BC):
Adult male citizens: 50,000
Women and children of Athenian citizens: 150,000
Free foreign residents: 25,000
Slaves: 100,000
Roughly a population equivalent to that of present-day Leicester
The population also declined substantially between 431 and the oligarchic counter-revolution of 411 as a result of the war with Sparta and a devastating plague, and it seems to have stayed at this level (c.200,000 – less than the population of Stoke-on-Trent) for most of the 4th Century.
Controls an area of territory stretching some 60 km from east to west at its widest and some 40 km from north to south.
From 508 to 322 BC (with brief interruptions in 411 and 404) Athens is governed as a democracy. Democratic government wasn’t unique in the Greek world, though Athenian democracy was supposed to have been the first example of this kind of government to emerge. Unlike present-day representative democracies, government was carried out not by elected representatives but by the citizens themselves through debates and collective votes. Many important state officials were chosen by a lottery.
Only adult males, of course, counted as citizens. Women were entirely excluded from political power, and amongst the more wealthy sections of Athenian society women were expected to spend virtually all of their lives inside their homes. And this social isolation would extend even to being excluded from evening meals when men brought friends home to dine. The women found at the ritualised male drinking parties (symposia) held in the men’s dining room would have been non-Athenian women or slaves brought in specially from outside the household (basically escorts hired, often from a pornoboskos, for conversation and music at the beginning of the party and sex at its end).
Generally at war with someone or other: from 497- 338 (the final capitulation to Philip of Macedon), Athens was at war for three years out of four. Citizens were liable for military service from 18 to 60, though at various times in its history most of the rowers in the Athenian battle-fleet seem to have been hired mercenaries.
Traditional Greek Moral Values
The moral background for Plato’s inquiries into values and the best way to live one’s life is rather different from the set of assumptions with which we are familiar today. Moral discourse for us tends to be built around a dichotomy between other-regarding moral virtues such as generosity, altruism, compassion, and charity, and an amoral life of selfishness and the pursuit of one’s own pleasures irrespective of the harm that may befall other people. Now the Greeks of Homer’s era (c.750 BC?) might well have condemned someone who is obsessed with his own pleasures and pays no heed to social responsibilities and obligations. However if the portrait of a great and good person in the Illiad and the Odyssey accurately reflects the moral framework endorsed by the upper echelons of Greek society and held up as a set of social ideals against which everyone could properly be judged, then it seems plain that this was not a moral framework that would have ascribed much value to the person who possesses the characteristics of today’s morally virtuous person.
What, then, makes a person good from the Homeric perspective? Crucially, a good person must be born into a family of high social status and must himself be rich and strong: Homer suggests that a person loses half of his goodness on the day he becomes a slave. And in this particular context the use of the masculine pronoun isn’t inclusive of both genders. There may be female gods who count as great and good, but mortal women are not generally seen as realistic candidates for such a status. These hereditary, social, and material components of a person’s goodness are so important that, if you possess them, you remain a good person even if you do not behave well. Paris, for example, is portrayed as behaving badly in the Illiad, but he continues to qualify as a good or noble person. Whereas we usually profess to evaluate a person morally on the basis of what lies within his or her control, the Greeks of Homer’s era had no qualms about placing great emphasis on factors over which a person has little or no control.
The Homeric good man does, however, normally combine his natural advantages with virtuous and appropriate behaviour. Excellence in action is expected; and its absence does lay the good man open to reproach. However these actions are characteristically those of a warrior and leader, and the required virtues are strength, skill in battle, and courage. The good man is born into a leading position in society and enjoys a large share of that society’s resources, and rather disconcertingly it emerges that his virtues seem to be predominantly the attributes he needs to defend his privileged place in that society against attack. Such self-defence also requires the intelligence to make plans and the rhetorical skill to persuade other people to co-operate in carrying them out. Nevertheless these are distinctly secondary virtues in the Homeric world-view (see, for example, the contrast between Achilles and Odysseus in the Illiad), presumably because they are supposed to be of little practical use without the traditional warrior virtues.
Moreover, when we reflect on what the Homeric good man characteristically aims at achieving, we find that the good of other people is not a major priority. The good man’s main aim is honour, where this includes both the good opinion of his social equals and the material and social advantages that are both the causes and the effects of this good opinion. This good opinion is supposed to be freely given by people who are aware of how things really stand. So favourable opinion obtained by underhand manipulation and deception is, officially at least, of no value. However the good man is mainly concerned with his own success and reputation; he is not expected to aim primarily at some collective goal that includes the well-being of other people or a whole society. Admittedly he is supposed to be moved to some extent by common human feelings, but even selfish indifference to the interests of other people is a minor flaw in a man’s personality when compared with his other virtues and his personal honour.
One problem with this moral perspective arises from the tension between the good man’s quest for his own personal advancement and the prominent place in his conception of his own flourishing that is accorded to the good opinion of other people. If other people of the appropriate social status cease to approve of his actions or way of life, then he cannot think of himself as resolutely following his own values against the expectations of others because his core values attach huge importance to securing the good opinion of just those people. And another problem is that it seems to give each supposedly good individual a reason for doing things that are bad for society as a whole. Each hero or good man wants to promote his own honour and status, and hence competes with other people of the same kind to secure this end. However this kind of competition is both inherently wasteful and naturally productive of violent conflict. Thus a society that condones such a value system may well find itself at a competitive disadvantage with societies that have internalised a view of human excellence that places less emphasis on self-promotion and the defence of personal honour.
In some ways, then, Plato’s discussion of justice can be seen as trying to accommodate elements of this traditional view of human excellence in a changed social context in which its practical shortcomings were increasingly exposed. Justice for Plato is an other-regarding virtue that facilitates social co-operation and mitigates the otherwise pernicious effects of more traditional values. Nevertheless Plato is concerned to present it as a virtue that intrinsically benefits the just man in much the same way that personal honour was supposed to be a good to the Homeric hero even if it led to his death in battle.
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