When1: -400
When2: -348
Who: Plato
What: philosopher
Where: Greece
works\ Hippias Minor [-400: dialog of Socrates and Hippias]; Alcibiades [-400: dialog of Socrates and Alcibiades]; Apology [-399: Socrates' defense against charges of treason]; Euthyphro [-380: Are morals good because commanded by God, or does God command them because they are good? Euthyphro was an expert on religion.]; Crito [-380: dialog of Socrates and Crito about ethical ideas and virtue]; Hippias Major [-380: dialog of Socrates and Hippias about aesthetics and law]; Charmides or Temperance [-380: dialog of Socrates and Charmides]; Laches or Equity [-380: dialog of Socrates and Laches]; Lysis or Friendship [-380: dialog of Socrates and Lysis]; Protagoras [-380: dialog of Socrates and Protagoras]; Gorgias [-380: dialog of Socrates and Gorgias]; Meno [-380: dialog of Socrates and Meno about a-priori knowledge]; Phaedo [-360: dialog of Socrates and Phaedo about immortality and the Forms, which people can recollect]; Symposium [-360: love]; Phaedrus [-360: dialog of Socrates and Phaedrus about love]; Ion [-380: dialog of Socrates and Ion about]; Menexenus [-380: dialog of Socrates and Menexenus]; Euthydemus [-380: dialog of Socrates and Euthydemus]; Cratylus [-360: Dialog of Socrates and Cratylus is about language. Words are conventions, but concepts are true or false in reality. Language should be able to convey concepts. Language or thought corresponds to reality.]; Republic [-360: justice and three soul types in ideal government]; Parmenides [-370: Dialog of Socrates and Parmenides includes dialectic on the One. Forms are both universals and essences.]; Theaetetus [-360: dialog of Socrates and Theaetetus about perception and objects]; Sophist [-360: dialog of Socrates and Sophists about being and not being and differences between subjects or names and predicates or properties]; Politics or Statesman [-360: law and rulers]; Philebus [-360: Dialog of Socrates and Philebus discusses pleasure and knowledge. The weak are targets of humor.]; Timaeus [-360: dialog of Socrates and Timaeus about metaphysics]; Critias [-360: dialog of Socrates and Critias]; Laws [-348: ideal state, best government, and laws]
Detail: He lived -427 to -347, founded the Academy [-387], wrote about Socrates, studied grammar, solved law problems, and helped draft laws.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is about the beautiful and the good. The beautiful is good. Beautiful things approximate their Idea or true Form closely.
Art imitates nature {mimesis, Plato}.
Epistemology
Minds can be aware of the ideal forms {Idea, Plato} of objects or object groups. Whenever one term can apply to a group of particular things, the corresponding Idea exists in mind. True, clear, and stable knowledge is about Ideas. Mind does not create the Ideas. Ideas are innate. People can discover or remember the Ideas in themselves {anamnesis, Ideas}, using intellect, not senses.
Unlike Ideas, opinion and perception are confused, unclear, imitative, and changeable. An analogy {cave analogy} is prisoners in a cave, who see only shadows on the wall, perceptions instead of reality.
Material motions cause thoughts and perceptions.
Things can be unlearnable, because people need them to learn {Meno's puzzle}.
Hypotheses or making categories and distinctions can define things.
Education
Education is important for everyone because knowledge leads to excellence and virtue. Education builds character. Knowledge is about Ideas, and so curriculum is unchanging.
All children should receive practical knowledge. Social classes receive education suited to purposes. People learn virtue and should be happy, because they reach the greatest virtue they can have.
Education is also to make good state. Society selects some boys and girls to become soldiers. Future soldiers should learn arts and physical education and live together in school community in which they share everything. From future soldiers, society selects some to become rulers. Future rulers should learn philosophy.
Educators have special duty and should not try to be like or coddle pupils.
Ethics
Personal virtues are industry, achievement, knowledge, honor, autonomy, courage, temperance, and piety. Other-directed virtues are justice, benevolence, and fidelity. People can acquire virtues by becoming aware of the Ideas. However, people can refuse to acquire knowledge and virtue and so reject freedom, responsibility, and control.
The three parts of mind {psyche, Plato} should be in harmony. Reason should be for wisdom, spirit for courage and striving, and appetite for moderation and control. Psyche harmony makes life good, virtuous, happy, and prosperous.
The psyche's duty is to be just and upright.
Joy in the beautiful, pleasure in good artistic Idea-of-the-Good imitations, understanding of math, practical skill, general knowledge, and well-ordered life are proper Reason uses.
Highest life state is to contemplate the Ideas, indifferent to material world. Lover of Ideas goes to heaven. Others reincarnate.
"Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it?" {Euthyphro problem, Plato}. Either piety has no reason or has reason, but authority does not apply in either case.
The true and the beautiful are good.
World is good, because God created it.
Linguistics
Nouns are proposition subjects. Only Ideas can be sentence subjects. Verb is about proposition action or quality. Verb and adjective are similar.
Metaphysics
Reality is Ideas. Ideas are both universal categories and object essences {third man argument, Plato}. Ideas are eternal, a priori, unchanging, absolute, and immaterial, with absolute and unqualified properties. Ideas include Good, Bad, Beautiful, Ugly, and such ideas as Tableness. Ideas, such as Infinite, have opposites, such as Measurable, so Ideas form a hierarchy. The highest or greatest Idea is Good, which is purpose of reality for both material and ideal worlds and comes from love of ideal beauty.
Objects in nature have Ideas {ideal form} as essence and are like Idea copies or imitations. Objects share in or have part of Idea. Things cannot have opposite properties simultaneously. Objects are empty space shaped by Ideal geometrical figures. Empty space has no substance and no definition. Material things are both non-being, such as space, and being, such as Idea. Objects are thus contradictions and not real.
World-soul causes all motions and changes, which have relations and are unity.
The world creator {demiurge} was pure good, which molded already existing matter to bring order out of chaos.
Mind
Psyche is in body, is same as personality, and is changeable but is also unitary, indivisible, and eternal, because it is both material and Idea. Psyche receives images of Ideas before birth. The presence of Ideas in psyche causes people to seek Ideas and love wisdom. Psyche has appetitive, emotional, and rational parts. Rational part is ability to know Ideas. Emotional part is spirit or will, which wants to find Ideas. Appetitive part is desires. Psyche thus perceives, wills, and knows. Psyche causes movement and life. Psyche can separate from body.
Politics
States are about principle of justice. Justice results when classes do work with virtue. All state principles and actions should be ethical.
States express the Idea of people as a whole and so are about people and their relations.
States have best order with three classes, corresponding to the three psyche parts: rulers with rational psyche, soldiers with emotional psyche, and merchants and laborers with appetitive psyche. Philosopher-kings from ruler class should lead states. Rulers or guardians should have training in goodness, truth, and beauty and so have wisdom. Military and public officials should have training for administration, war, and police work and so use spirit and do their duty. To exercise self-control, merchants should perform commerce, and common people should work, produce, and obey leaders.
People showing that they have souls dominated by one psyche part or another can change classes. Upper classes should give up all property, have communal family life, and serve state. All people should suppress private emotions and desires and live out Idea of the Good.
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Date Modified: 2022.0224