1.16 Puett丨Plato: Philosophy as Contemplation of Transcendental Forms

Hello. So in today's podcast, we willturn to arguably one of the most influential philosophers in the entire historyof the West, namely Plato. Let me begin by saying a few words about the wayPlato has been thought about by later thinkers, particularly in the paradigmswe've been discussing in criticizing, and then we will turn to Plato himselfand ask if perhaps we could rethink what he was doing from a larger comparativeperspective. But to begin with the later presentation of Plato. So, to go backto the paradigm that we have been discussing, Plato was consistently seen asthe key figure in classical Greek thought for one very key reason. Yes, as wediscussed in our last podcast, the pre-Socratics were seen as beginning thedevelopment of rationality in science, but Plato makes the key move of finallydeveloping a transcendental understanding of the world.

According to this perspective, Plato isthe first figure to realize there is a higher transcendental order above andbetter than the world of our experience and that true philosophy should befocused on that transcendental realm, and as such, he is seen as the key firstfigure that opens up the possibility for humans no longer being mired in thecommon day experiences of their everyday world and finally being able tounderstand the world from a grander transcendental perspective. Plato thereforeplays this key role in the development of Western philosophy because, from thisperspective, he does something, no other philosopher in any other civilization did,which is to proclaim such a dramatic transcend transcendental order.

Now, we will discuss all of this in thispodcast, but we will discuss it, not surprisingly, in a somewhat different way.So, what we will turn to here is to ask: What was Plato trying to do? Why doeshe assert what has come to be known as this transcendental order? What was heclaiming and trying to do so? And can we put those attempts that he was doingin a larger comparative perspective? Instead of simply the contrast that heasserts, a transcendence that others do not, can we see a common concernunderlying different philosophers of the time, and then see the specificpermutations that one finds in Plato and see their larger historicalsignificance?

So, let us turn to Plato, and let us turnto what Plato was truly trying to do. Now, the first key thing to remark aboutPlato is that he saw himself as continuing the traditions of his teacher. Histeacher, of course, was Socrates. As I'm sure you know, but it's nonethelessworth recounting, Socrates was a figure who lived in Athens and in Athens cameto be known as someone who was constantly questioning the customs of the day.So, he would constantly question why things like divination and sacrifice, forexample, were seen as so important. He would constantly question why customs ofthe day continued to be practiced. He was constantly questioning people tochallenge their most fundamental assumptions about the world. It's unclear ifSocrates had a larger philosophical vision underlying this, but what is clearis that he did have a belief that humans lived in a world that they were notsufficiently questioning, and he saw his goal, his life goal, to begin to forcethem to rethink the world around them.

This attempt, as we know well, was notwell received by his contemporaries. Socrates was ultimately arrested, chargedwith treason against the state, and ultimately was killed for his attempts toundermine the social order. Plato, his disciple, witnessed this, and Plato sawhis work very much continuing that of Socrates—in fact, most of what we knowabout Socrates is Plato's writings about him—but remember he also, having seenthe tragedy of Socrates' life, saw very much the dangers of what Socrates wastrying to do. I mention all of this as a background to emphasize a key point:Plato absolutely saw his work as an attempt to rethink the world around him, todramatically change that world, to dramatically rethink the very fundamentalassumptions underlying human society, and he indeed saw philosophy as anoccupation as precisely aimed at that goal.

He accordingly created an academy, anacademy that basically operated as much as humanly possible outside of theworkings of the city state, with an attempt, ultimately, to create an alternatecommunity. His goal was to create an alternate community of philosophers aimedat rethinking the world and creating a different, better world. This Plato sawas his goal, a goal, as we've already noted, that is comparable to all of theattempts by philosophers throughout Eurasia at precisely the same moment. Now,when Plato is formulating this ideal, he developed some key attempts to do so,some key ideas in doing so, that indeed, as we've already noted, will becomeextremely influential in later Western philosophy.

So, one of the key moves he will make isto say if Socrates was right to ask people to question their assumptions, isthere a way that we could gain access to a deeper, more fundamentalunderstanding of the world than common customs and common opinions (all ofwhich, following Socrates, he thought should be questioned)? And Plato'sanswer, not surprisingly, based upon what we have said, was a very strong yes.Plato's argument is that we should understand, if we are capable ofunderstanding anything, and he thinks we are, it could only be because thereexist pure forms of things that can be the objects of human understanding. So,we can look around and see beautiful things. We can term them beautiful, but ifwe can do so in a meaningful way, we could only do so if we had some concept ofbeauty, true beauty, what, in other words, a pure ideal beauty would be, thatwe would see variations, lesser variations, of in our daily experience. Beauty,therefore, would be the ideal form. Our thought is capable of understandingthat ideal form and hence seeing the lesser permutations in our commonexperience.

And this should be true of everything.Every single thing that we can make a meaningful statement about, we could onlymake a meaningful statement about because there is an ideal form that ourthought can understand, even if it is outside of our personal experience, andif our thought can understand it, it is what allows us to exist in this world.Why then, according to Plato, did Socrates feel that the world was so poorbecause it was so based on opinion and custom? From Plato's reformulation ofSocrates’ concern, the implication would be humans tend to be focused on theirimmediate experience and are not trying to think through the ideal forms.

Accordingly, the lesser, endlesslychanging world around them becomes the basis of their thoughts, the basis oftheir opinions, and that of course is the basis by which they can come up withthese false understandings, that for example, there are these gods andgoddesses that control natural phenomena that we have to be endlessly dividingand sacrificing to. This is based upon a poor understanding of the worldbecause it is focused explicitly and exclusively on the endlessly changingworld of our common experience. If, on the contrary, we try to conceptualize,to think about the ideal forms, then our opinions could no longer be dominatedby the common assumptions of this ever-changing world that we live in. The goalof philosophy for Plato is to contemplate these forms. Philosophers thereforeshould devote themselves to a life of discipline in which they are trainingthemselves to contemplate the forms, the higher forms, and if they do so, thosephilosophers would gain an understanding of the proper way to live, the proper wayto organize a social world, the proper way to organize a political worldbecause they would be based upon the ideal forms, not based upon commonopinion.

This of course is why Plato called uponhis practitioners to form this alternate community, a community devoted to thedevelopment of philosophers, the training and discipline required to becomephilosophers, and the Platonic academy would accordingly be devoted to theproduction of those philosophers. Ideally, for Plato, that would not always bean alternate community. The hope for Plato was perhaps people outside theacademy would realize the philosophers, so trained and so disciplined to thinkof the ideal forms, should be listened to, and the hope was they ultimatelywould become the ministers, if not actually the rulers themselves of new worldsto come.

And indeed, Plato himself was verypolitically active. Yes, he was creating an alternative community, but he wasvery active in seeking out leading figures who would hopefully listen to him asa minister, and, if they listened to him, would follow his teachings. He evenenvisaged entire new worlds that would be governed by what he called“philosopher kings,” where the rulers would themselves be philosophers. Inother words, not just the ministers, but the philosophers themselves. And thosephilosophers would create entirely new worlds based upon these teachings.

Now, once we’re formulating it this way,let us note some intriguing comparative implications. First of all, in terms ofthe very problem that he sees himself as trying to confront, deal with, andhopefully even solve, he's actually surprisingly similar to a figure that wesaw in our earlier podcast on cosmology in ancient Greece. Note how similar,despite the seemingly radical differences in philosophy, but note how similarin attempt and concerns and goals this actually is to Confucius, right?Confucius was a figure who also saw himself living in a time of decline. Healso saw himself as trying to question the customs of the day. He saw himselfas questioning the customs of the day by training disciples to have thetraining and discipline to rethink the world around them. And ideally he wantedthese disciples to be politically engaged, at the minimum being ministers forthe leaders of the states to begin to rethink the world around them.

In other words, the attempt of aConfucius and a Plato, the goal, the concern is surprisingly similar, but thatof course only makes the differences all the more intriguing as well.Confucius, as we saw, certainly did not assert that there were transcendentalforms that should be dominating our thinking. In fact, as we saw to the degreeto which Confucius even formulated a cosmology, it was often in a negativesense, right? Confucius was very opposed to any conception that was seen asenduringly true. For Confucius, it was all about ritual training to create abetter world in our everyday lives and slowly building better worlds fromthat—kind of the opposite move from a Plato.

So, let's look at Plato in terms of thispiece of what he is doing. If, like Confucius, he is trying to create analternate community that would open up a different way of rethinking the worldthat would ultimately be politically engaged, what are the implications of thefact that he did so through a claim about the world of forms? Well, it turnsout there were some rather significant implications, some of which frankly pushagainst a lot of our narratives about Plato. So, number one, Plato, to makethis argument, needs to claim, of course, that we are capable as humans ofcontemplating these forms. Yes, it takes discipline and training. A Confuciuswould agree with the discipline and training part, but Plato needs anotherside, too, because he wants to claim these forms really do exist. And if theyreally do exist, Plato needs to be committed to saying there's a piece ofhumans, namely our soul, that actually can experience, and fully understandeven, the world of the forms.

And this is an opposition to theendlessly changing world that we live in, which of course is a world of bodies.And so Plato is committed to a very strong differentiation between the soul andthe body, something that a Confucius never would have advocated. And there's afurther implication as well because Plato was also committed to the claim that,well, some souls have more access to the world of forms than others. And thiscommits him to a view that some of us are, well, better philosophers. In otherwords, some of us are naturally, at birth, more capable of philosophicalunderstanding. Those, of course, should be recognized for the philosophers thatthey are, and others are not so capable, and not only should they not beundergoing the rigorous training and discipline necessary to becomephilosophers, they, on the contrary, should be the workers. And Plato firmlycommits himself to a view that there is a differentiation of humans at birthbased upon their abilities to understand the world of forms, or if they areincapable of doing so, they are at birth committed to being lowly workers in afuture state.

This view, this radically hierarchicalview of the world, will be, it is important to note, one of the legacies ofPlato in Western thought. Yes, he is asserting a transcendental order, but notehow often in Western philosophy that claim of transcendence is based upon ahierarchical view, not the same hierarchy we saw in Bronze Age civilizations,but not that radically different from it either. It's simply a hierarchy basedupon philosophical acuity. And once you're committed to that claim, you commityourself to a view that there are certain people who are more deserving thanothers to hold positions of power, and this is, as we will see in our laterpodcasts, will have a huge impact on later Greek philosophy.

To continue with our comparison,Confucius by, in a sense, beginning his attempts to rethink the world at theopposite level, by, in other words, beginning with the common mundane worlds,the messy worlds we live in, note Confucius is equally committed to the view thatat birth we're all kind of equally messy figures and which ones of us becomecapable of creating better worlds comes, to Confucius, down simply to whichones of us begin the process of cultivating ourselves. Period. It's a messyworld. We're messy people. We cultivate ourselves and try to make a betterworld, and hopefully enough of us will be convinced to do so. This is, as wewill see in our podcast to come, will turn out to be one of the key divergencesbetween the early Greek and early Chinese traditions, both coming out of acommon concern to radically rethink the world around them, but, as we will see,in increasingly different ways as the divergence between these twophilosophical traditions will become more and more pronounced. Thank you somuch, and I very much look forward to the discussions to come.