PHILOSOPHY - Plato
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Athens, 2400 years ago. It’s a compact place:
only about a quarter of a million people live here.
There are fine baths, theatres, temples,
shopping arcades and gymnasiums
It’s warm for more than half the year.
This is also home to the world’s first true
– and probably greatest – philosopher:
Plato
Born into a prominent and wealthy family in the city,
Plato devoted his life to one goal:
helping people to reach a state of what he termed:
εὐδαιμονία (Eudaimonia) or fulfilment.
Plato is often confused with Socrates
Socrates was an older friend,
who taught Plato a lot but didn’t write any books.
Plato wrote lots of them: 36, all
dialogues: beautifully crafted scripts of
imaginary discussions in which Socrates is
always alotted a starring role - among them:
The Republic
The Symposium
The Laws
The Meno
and
The Apology
Plato had four big ideas for making life more
fulfilled.
First big idea: Think more
We rarely give ourselves time to think carefully
and logically about our lives and how to live
them.
Sometimes we just go along with what the the
Greeks called ‘doxa’: ‘popular opinions’.
In the the 36 books he wrote, Plato showed
this ‘common-sense’ to be riddled with
errors, prejudice and superstition.
Fame is great
Follow your heart
Money is the key to a good life
The problem is, popular opinions edge us towards
the wrong values, careers and relationships.
Plato’s answer is
‘Know yourself.’
It means doing a special kind of therapy,
philosophy:
Subjecting your ideas to examination rather
than acting on impulse.
If you strengthen your self-knowledge, you
don’t get so pulled around by feelings.
Plato compared the role of our feelings to
being
dragged dangerously along by a group of wild horses.
In honour of his mentor and friend, Socrates,
this kind of examination is called a Socratic discussion.
You can have it with yourself
or ideally, with another person who isn’t
trying to catch you out but wants to help
you clarify your own ideas.
Second Big idea: Let your lover change you.
That sounds weird, if you think that love
means
finding someone who wants you just the way you are.
In The Symposium , Plato’s play about a
dinner party where a group of friends drink
too much and get talking about love, sex and relationships,
Plato says:
“True love is admiration.”
In other words, the person you need to get
together with should have very good qualities
… which you yourself lack.
Let’s say, they should be really brave
Or organised.
Or warm and sincere
By getting close to this person, you can become
a little like they are.
The right person for us helps us grow to our
full potential.
For Plato, in a good relationship, a couple
shouldn’t love each other exactly as they
are right now.
They should be committed to educating each
other – and to enduring the stormy passages
this inevitably involves.
Each person should want to seduce the other
into becoming a better version of themselves.
Three: decode the message of beauty.
Everyone – pretty much – likes beautiful
things
Plato was the first to
ask why do we like them?
He found a fascinating reason:
Beautiful objects are whispering important
truths to us about the good life …
We find things beautiful when we unconsciously
sense in them qualities we need
but are missing in our lives.
gentleness
harmony
balance
peace
strength
Beautiful objects therefore have a really
important function.
They help to educate our souls.
Ugliness is a serious matter too. it parades
dangerous and damaged characteristics in front
of us. It makes it harder to be wise, kind
and calm.
Plato sees art as therapeutic: it is the duty
of poets and painters (and nowadays, novelists,
television producers and designers) to help
us live good lives.
Four: Reform society.
Plato spent a lot of time thinking how the
government and society should ideally be.
He was the world’s first utopian thinker.
In this, he was inspired by Athens’s great
rival: Sparta.
This was a city-sized machine for turning
out great soldiers
Everything the Spartans did – how they raised
their children, how their economy was organised,
whom they admired, how they had sex, what
they ate – was tailored to that one goal.
And Sparta was hugely successful, from a military
point of view.
But that wasn’t Plato’s concern. He wanted
to know: how could a society get better at
producing not military power but fulfilled
people?
In his book, The Republic, Plato identifies
a number of changes that should be made:
Athenian society was very focused on the rich,
like the louche aristocrat Alcibiades, and
sports celebrities, like the boxer Milo of
Croton.
Plato wasn’t impressed: it really matters
who we admire, because celebrities influence our
outlook, ideas and conduct. And bad heroes
give glamour to flaws of character.
Plato therefore wanted to give Athens new
celebrities, replacing the current crop with
ideally wise and good people he called Guardians
models for everyone’s good development. These people
would be distinguished by their record of
public service, their modesty and simple habits,
their dislike of the limelight and their wide
and deep experience.
They would be the most honoured and admired people in society.
He also wanted to end democracy in Athens.
He wasn’t crazy. He just observed how few
people think properly before they vote and
therefore we get very substandard rulers.
He didn’t want to replace democracy with
horrid dictatorship;
but wanted to prevent people from voting until
they had started to think rationally. Until
they had become philosophers. Otherwise, government
would just be a kind of mob rule [back to
To help the process, Plato started a school,
The Academy, in Athens, which lasted a good
300 years. There, pupils learnt not just maths
and spelling, but also how to be good and
kind.
His ultimate goal was that politicians should
become philosophers: ‘The world will not
be right,’ he said, ‘until kings become
philosophers or philosophers kings.’ [show
Hollande, Merkel, Cameron all trooping into
a uni- then coming out as philosophers]