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Aristotle notes that there is a purely rational part of the soul, the calculative, which is responsible for the human ability to contemplate, reason logically, and formulate scientific principles. The mastery of these abilities is called intellectual virtue. Aristotle continues by making several general points about the nature of moral virtues i. First, he argues that the ability to regulate our desires is not instinctive, but learned and is the outcome of both teaching and practice. Second, he notes that if we regulate our desires either too much or too little, then we create problems.
As an analogy, Aristotle comments that, either "excess or deficiency of gymnastic exercise is fatal to strength. The core of Aristotle's account of moral virtue is his doctrine of the mean. According to this doctrine, moral virtues are desire-regulating character traits which are at a mean between more extreme character traits or vices.
For example, in response to the natural emotion of fear, we should develop the virtuous character trait of courage. If we develop an excessive character trait by curbing fear too much, then we are said to be rash, which is a vice. If, on the other extreme, we develop a deficient character trait by curbing fear too little, then we are said to be cowardly, which is also a vice. The virtue of courage, then, lies at the mean between the excessive extreme of rashness, and the deficient extreme of cowardice. Aristotle is quick to point out that the virtuous mean is not a strict mathematical mean between two extremes.
For example, if eating apples is too many, and eating zero apples is too little, this does not imply that we should eat 50 apples, which is the mathematical mean. Instead, the mean is rationally determined, based on the relative merits of the situation. That is, it is "as a prudent man would determine it. Most moral virtues, and not just courage, are to be understood as falling at the mean between two accompanying vices.
His list may be represented by the following table:. The prominent virtue of this list is high-mindedness, which, as being a kind of ideal self-respect, is regarded as the crown of all the other virtues, depending on them for its existence, and itself in turn tending to intensify their force. The list seems to be more a deduction from the formula than a statement of the facts on which the formula itself depends, and Aristotle accordingly finds language frequently inadequate to express the states of excess or defect which his theory involves for example in dealing with the virtue of ambition.
Throughout the list he insists on the "autonomy of will" as indispensable to virtue: Justice is used both in a general and in a special sense. In its general sense it is equivalent to the observance of law. As such it is the same thing as virtue, differing only insofar as virtue exercises the disposition simply in the abstract, and justice applies it in dealings with people.
Particular justice displays itself in two forms. Strictly speaking, distributive and corrective justice are more than mere retaliation and reciprocity. However, in concrete situations of civil life, retaliation and reciprocity is an adequate formula since such circumstances involve money, depending on a relation between producer and consumer. Since absolute justice is abstract in nature, in the real world it must be supplemented with equity, which corrects and modifies the laws of justice where it falls short.
Thus, morality requires a standard which will not only regulate the inadequacies of absolute justice but be also an idea of moral progress. This idea of morality is given by the faculty of moral insight. The truly good person is at the same time a person of perfect insight, and a person of perfect insight is also perfectly good.
Our idea of the ultimate end of moral action is developed through habitual experience, and this gradually frames itself out of particular perceptions. It is the job of reason to apprehend and organize these particular perceptions. However, moral action is never the result of a mere act of the understanding, nor is it the result of a simple desire which views objects merely as things which produce pain or pleasure.
We start with a rational conception of what is advantageous, but this conception is in itself powerless without the natural impulse which will give it strength. The will or purpose implied by morality is thus either reason stimulated to act by desire, or desire guided and controlled by understanding. These factors then motivate the willful action. Freedom of the will is a factor with both virtuous choices and vicious choices.
Actions are involuntary only when another person forces our action, or if we are ignorant of important details in actions. Actions are voluntary when the originating cause of action either virtuous or vicious lies in ourselves. Moral weakness of the will results in someone does what is wrong, knowing that it is right, and yet follows his desire against reason. For Aristotle, this condition is not a myth, as Socrates supposed it was.
The problem is a matter of conflicting moral principles. Moral action may be represented as a syllogism in which a general principle of morality forms the first i. The conclusion, though, which is arrived at through speculation, is not always carried out in practice. The moral syllogism is not simply a matter of logic, but involves psychological drives and desires.
Desires can lead to a minor premise being applied to one rather than another of two major premises existing in the agent's mind. Animals, on the other hand, cannot be called weak willed or incontinent since such a conflict of principles is not possible with them.
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Pleasure is not to be identified with Good. Pleasure is found in the consciousness of free spontaneous action. It is an invisible experience, like vision, and is always present when a perfect organ acts upon a perfect object. Pleasures accordingly differ in kind, varying along with the different value of the functions of which they are the expression. They are determined ultimately by the judgment of "the good person. It is this in fact which constitutes our personality, and we would not be pursuing our own life, but the life of some lower being, if we followed any other aim. Self-love accordingly may be said to be the highest law of morals, because while such self-love may be understood as the selfishness which gratifies a person's lower nature, it may also be, and is rightly, the love of that higher and rational nature which constitutes each person's true self.
Such a life of thought is further recommended as that which is most pleasant, most self-sufficient, most continuous, and most consonant with our purpose. It is also that which is most akin to the life of God: Friendship is an indispensable aid in framing for ourselves the higher moral life; if not itself a virtue, it is at least associated with virtue, and it proves itself of service in almost all conditions of our existence.
Such results, however, are to be derived not from the worldly friendships of utility or pleasure, but only from those which are founded on virtue. The true friend is in fact a second self, and the true moral value of friendship lies in the fact that the friend presents to us a mirror of good actions, and so intensifies our consciousness and our appreciation of life. For a fuller discussion of these topics, see the article Aristotle's Ethics. Aristotle does not regard politics as a separate science from ethics, but as the completion, and almost a verification of it.
The moral ideal in political administration is only a different aspect of that which also applies to individual happiness. Humans are by nature social beings, and the possession of rational speech logos in itself leads us to social union. The state is a development from the family through the village community, an offshoot of the family.
Formed originally for the satisfaction of natural wants, it exists afterwards for moral ends and for the promotion of the higher life. The state in fact is no mere local union for the prevention of wrong doing, and the convenience of exchange. It is also no mere institution for the protection of goods and property. It is a genuine moral organization for advancing the development of humans. The family, which is chronologically prior to the state, involves a series of relations between husband and wife, parent and child, master and slave.
Aristotle regards the slave as a piece of live property having no existence except in relation to his master. Slavery is a natural institution because there is a ruling and a subject class among people related to each other as soul to body; however, we must distinguish between those who are slaves by nature, and those who have become slaves merely by war and conquest.
Household management involves the acquisition of riches, but must be distinguished from money-making for its own sake. Wealth is everything whose value can be measured by money; but it is the use rather than the possession of commodities which constitutes riches. Financial exchange first involved bartering. However, with the difficulties of transmission between countries widely separated from each other, money as a currency arose. At first it was merely a specific amount of weighted or measured metal.
Afterwards it received a stamp to mark the amount. Demand is the real standard of value. Currency, therefore, is merely a convention which represents the demand; it stands between the producer and the recipient and secures fairness. Usury is an unnatural and reprehensible use of money. For, the state is not a homogeneous unity, as Plato believed, but rather is made up of dissimilar elements.
The classification of constitutions is based on the fact that government may be exercised either for the good of the governed or of the governing, and may be either concentrated in one person or shared by a few or by the many. There are thus three true forms of government: The perverted forms of these are tyranny, oligarchy and democracy. The difference between the last two is not that democracy is a government of the many, and oligarchy of the few; instead, democracy is the state of the poor, and oligarchy of the rich.
Considered in the abstract, these six states stand in the following order of preference: But though with a perfect person monarchy would be the highest form of government, the absence of such people puts it practically out of consideration. Similarly, true aristocracy is hardly ever found in its uncorrupted form. It is in the constitution that the good person and the good citizen coincide. With the spread of population, democracy is likely to become the general form of government.
Which is the best state is a question that cannot be directly answered. Different races are suited for different forms of government, and the question which meets the politician is not so much what is abstractly the best state, but what is the best state under existing circumstances. Generally, however, the best state will enable anyone to act in the best and live in the happiest manner. To serve this end the ideal state should be neither too great nor too small, but simply self-sufficient.
It should occupy a favorable position towards land and sea and consist of citizens gifted with the spirit of the northern nations, and the intelligence of the Asiatic nations. It should further take particular care to exclude from government all those engaged in trade and commerce; "the best state will not make the "working man" a citizen; it should provide support religious worship; it should secure morality through the educational influences of law and early training.
Law, for Aristotle, is the outward expression of the moral ideal without the bias of human feeling. It is thus no mere agreement or convention, but a moral force coextensive with all virtue. Since it is universal in its character, it requires modification and adaptation to particular circumstances through equity. Education should be guided by legislation to make it correspond with the results of psychological analysis, and follow the gradual development of the bodily and mental faculties. Children should during their earliest years be carefully protected from all injurious associations, and be introduced to such amusements as will prepare them for the serious duties of life.
Their literary education should begin in their seventh year, and continue to their twenty-first year. This period is divided into two courses of training, one from age seven to puberty, and the other from puberty to age twenty-one. Such education should not be left to private enterprise, but should be undertaken by the state. There are four main branches of education: They should not be studied to achieve a specific aim, but in the liberal spirit which creates true freemen.
Thus, for example, gymnastics should not be pursued by itself exclusively, or it will result in a harsh savage type of character. Painting must not be studied merely to prevent people from being cheated in pictures, but to make them attend to physical beauty. Music must not be studied merely for amusement, but for the moral influence which it exerts on the feelings.
Indeed all true education is, as Plato saw, a training of our sympathies so that we may love and hate in a right manner. For a fuller discussion of these topics, see the article Aristotle's Politics. Art is defined by Aristotle as the realization in external form of a true idea, and is traced back to that natural love of imitation which characterizes humans, and to the pleasure which we feel in recognizing likenesses. Art however is not limited to mere copying.
It idealizes nature and completes its deficiencies: The distinction therefore between poetic art and history is not that the one uses meter, and the other does not. The distinction is that while history is limited to what has actually happened, poetry depicts things in their universal character. And, therefore, "poetry is more philosophical and more elevated than history. Comedy is the imitation of the worse examples of humanity, understood however not in the sense of absolute badness, but only in so far as what is low and ignoble enters into what is laughable and comic.
They develop a schema that, with modifications of course, went on to be productive in the work of Aristotle and many later researchers. Thus, 1 the early, or Socratic, dialogues represent conversations in which Socrates tests others on issues of human importance without discussing metaphysics; 2 the middle dialogues, or literary masterpieces, typically contain views originating with Plato on human issues, together with a sketch of a metaphysical position presented as foundational; and 3 the late dialogues, or technical studies, treat this metaphysical position in a fuller and more direct way.
There are also some miscellaneous works, including letters, verses attributed to Plato, and dialogues of contested authenticity. The early dialogues serve well as an introduction to the corpus. They are short and entertaining and fairly accessible, even to readers with no background in philosophy.
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Indeed, they were probably intended by Plato to draw such readers into the subject. In them, Socrates typically engages a prominent contemporary about some facet of human excellence virtue that he is presumed to understand, but by the end of the conversation the participants are reduced to aporia. The discussion often includes as a core component a search for the real definition of a key term.
One way of reading the early dialogues is as having the primarily negative purpose of showing that authority figures in society do not have the understanding needed for a good human life the reading of the Skeptics in the Hellenistic Age. Yet there are other readings according to which the primary purpose is to recommend certain views.
In Hellenistic times the Stoics regarded emphasis on the paramount importance of virtue, understood as a certain kind of knowledge , as the true heritage of Socrates, and it became foundational for their school. Such episodes are intended to disabuse the naive, immature, or complacent reader of the comfortable conviction that he—or some authority figure in his community—already understands the deep issues in question and to convince him of the need for philosophical reflection on these matters.
Each of the other works in this group represents a particular Socratic encounter. In the Charmides , Socrates discusses temperance and self-knowledge with Critias and Charmides; at the fictional early date of the dialogue, Charmides is still a promising youth. The Cratylus which some do not place in this group of works discusses the question of whether names are correct by virtue of convention or nature. The Crito shows Socrates in prison, discussing why he chooses not to escape before the death sentence is carried out.
The dialogue considers the source and nature of political obligation. The Euthydemus shows Socrates among the eristics those who engage in showy logical disputation.
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Socrates and Euthyphro agree that what they seek is a single form, present in all things that are pious, that makes them so. Socrates suggests that if Euthyphro could specify what part of justice piety is, he would have an account. The more elaborate Gorgias considers, while its Sophist namesake is at Athens, whether orators command a genuine art or merely have a knack of flattery.
Socrates holds that the arts of the legislator and the judge address the health of the soul, which orators counterfeit by taking the pleasant instead of the good as their standard. Discussion of whether one should envy the man who can bring about any result he likes leads to a Socratic paradox: In the Hippias Minor , discussion of Homer by a visiting Sophist leads to an examination by Socrates, which the Sophist fails, on such questions as whether a just person who does wrong on purpose is better than other wrongdoers.
The Ion considers professional reciters of poetry and develops the suggestion that neither such performers nor poets have any knowledge. The interlocutors in the Laches are generals. One of them, the historical Laches, displayed less courage in the retreat from Delium during the Peloponnesian War than the humble foot soldier Socrates. Likewise, after the fictional date of the dialogue, another of the generals, Nicias, was responsible for the disastrous defeat of the Sicilian expedition because of his dependence on seers.
Here the observation that the sons of great men often do not turn out well leads to an examination of what courage is. The Lysis is an examination of the nature of friendship; the work introduces the notion of a primary object of love, for whose sake one loves other things.
The Menexenus purports to be a funeral oration that Socrates learned from Aspasia , the mistress of Pericles himself celebrated for the funeral oration assigned to him by Thucydides , one of the most famous set pieces of Greek antiquity. This work may be a satire on the patriotic distortion of history. The Meno takes up the familiar question of whether virtue can be taught, and, if so, why eminent men have not been able to bring up their sons to be virtuous.
How is it possible to search either for what one knows for one already knows it or for what one does not know and so could not look for? This is answered by the recollection theory of learning. This theory will reappear in the Phaedo and in the Phaedrus.
The dialogue is also famous as an early discussion of the distinction between knowledge and true belief. The Protagoras , another discussion with a visiting Sophist , concerns whether virtue can be taught and whether the different virtues are really one. The dialogue contains yet another discussion of the phenomenon that the sons of the great are often undistinguished.
This elaborate work showcases the competing approaches of the Sophists speechmaking, word analysis, discussion of great poetry and Socrates. Under the guise of an interpretation of a poem of Simonides of Ceos c. Most famously, this dialogue develops the characteristic Socratic suggestion that virtue is identical with wisdom and discusses the Socratic position that akrasia moral weakness is impossible.
Socrates suggests that, in cases of apparent akrasia , what is really going on is an error of calculation: These longer, elaborate works are grouped together because of the similarity in their agendas: Typically much longer than the Socratic dialogues, these works contain sensitive portrayals of characters and their interactions, dazzling displays of rhetoric and attendant suggestions about its limitations, and striking and memorable tropes and myths , all designed to set off their leisurely explorations of philosophy.
In the middle dialogues, the character Socrates gives positive accounts, thought to originate with Plato himself, of the sorts of human issues that interlocutors in the earlier works had failed to grasp: The works typically suggest that the desired understanding, to be properly grounded, requires more-fundamental inquiries, and so Socrates includes in his presentation a sketch of the forms. Even the middle works, however, do not fully specify how the forms are to be understood see above The theory of forms.
At the party depicted in the Symposium , each of the guests including the poets Aristophanes and Agathon gives an encomium in praise of love. Socrates recalls the teaching of Diotima a fictional prophetess , according to whom all mortal creatures have an impulse to achieve immortality. This leads to biological offspring with ordinary partners, but Diotima considers such offspring as poetry, scientific discoveries, and philosophy to be better. Alcibiades concludes the dialogue by bursting in and giving a drunken encomium of Socrates.
The Phaedo culminates in the affecting death of Socrates, before which he discusses a theme apposite to the occasion: The dialogue features characteristically Platonic elements: Initial concern for justice in the individual leads to a search for justice on a larger scale, as represented in an imaginary ideal city hence the traditional title of the work. In the Republic the rulers and guardians are forbidden to have private families or property, women perform the same tasks as men, and the rulers are philosophers—those who have knowledge of the Good and the Just. Socrates develops the proposal that Justice in a city or an individual is the condition in which each part performs the task that is proper to it; such an entity will have no motivation to do unjust acts and will be free of internal conflict.
The soul consists of reason, spirit, and appetite, just as the city consists of rulers, guardians, and craftsmen or producers. The position occupied by the form of the Good in the intelligible world is the same as that occupied by the Sun in the visible world: The usual cognitive condition of human beings is likened to that of prisoners chained in an underground cave, with a great fire behind them and a raised wall in between. The prisoners are chained in position and so are able to see only shadows cast on the facing wall by statues moved along the wall behind them.
They take these shadows to be reality. The account of the progress that they would achieve if they were to go above ground and see the real world in the light of the Sun features the notion of knowledge as enlightenment. Plato proposes a concrete sequence of mathematical studies, ending with harmonics, that would prepare future rulers to engage in dialectic, whose task is to say of each thing what it is—i.
Contrasting with the portrait of the just man and the city are those of decadent types of personality and regime. The dialogue concludes with a myth concerning the fate of souls after death. The first half of the Phaedrus consists of competitive speeches of seduction. Socrates repents of his first attempt and gives a treatment of love as the impulse to philosophy: Platonic love, as in the Symposium , is eros , here graphically described. Later in the dialogue, Socrates maintains that philosophical knowledge is necessary to an effective rhetorician, who produces likenesses of truth adapted to his audience and so must know both the truth concerning the subject matter and the receptivities of different characters to different kinds of presentation.
This part of the dialogue, with its developed interest in genera and species, looks forward to the group of technical studies. It is also notable for its discussion of the limited value of writing. The Parmenides demonstrates that the sketches of forms presented in the middle dialogues were not adequate; this dialogue and the ones that follow spur readers to develop a more viable understanding of these entities. The Philebus proposes a mathematized version, inspired by Pythagoreanism and corresponding to the cosmology of the Timaeus.
But Plato did not neglect human issues in these dialogues. The Phaedrus already combined the new apparatus with a compelling treatment of love ; the title topics of the Sophist and the Statesman , to be treated by genus-species division, are important roles in the Greek city; and the Philebus is a consideration of the competing claims of pleasure and knowledge to be the basis of the good life.
If one combines the hints in the Republic associating the Good with the One, or Unity; the treatment in the Parmenides of the One as the first principle of everything; and the possibility that the good proportion and harmony featured in the Timaeus and the Philebus are aspects of the One, it is possible to trace the aesthetic and ethical interests of the middle dialogues through even the most difficult technical studies.
It presents a critique of the super-exemplification view of forms that results from a natural reading of the Symposium , the Phaedo , and the Republic and moves on to a suggestive logical exercise based on a distinction between two kinds of predication and a model of the forms in terms of genera and species. Designed to lead the reader to a more sophisticated and viable theory, the exercise also depicts the One as a principle of everything see above The theory of forms.
Yet these are puzzling in light of the brilliant use by the historical Parmenides also an Eleatic of the slogan that one cannot think or speak of what is not.
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Being, Sameness, Difference, Motion, and Rest. Although these kinds are of course not species of each other, they do partake of each other in the ordinary way. The Statesman discusses genus-species definition in connection with understanding its title notion. The Timaeus concerns the creation of the world by a Demiurge , initially operating on forms and space and assisted after he has created them by lesser gods.
Earth, air, fire, and water are analyzed as ultimately consisting of two kinds of triangles, which combine into different characteristic solids. Plato in this work applies mathematical harmonics to produce a cosmology. The Critias is a barely started sequel to the Timaeus ; its projected content is the story of the war of ancient Athens and Atlantis.
The Philebus develops major apparatuses in methodology and metaphysics. The genus-species treatment of forms is recommended, but now foundational to it is a new fourfold division: Forms members of the mixed class are analyzed in Pythagorean style as made up of limit and the unlimited. This occurs when desirable ratios govern the balance between members of underlying pairs of opposites—as, for example, Health results when there is a proper balance between the Wet and the Dry.
It develops laws to govern a projected state and is apparently meant to be practical in a way that the Republic was not; thus the demands made on human nature are less exacting. This work appears, indirectly, to have left its mark on the great system of Roman jurisprudence. The Epigrams are elegiac couplets attributed to Plato. Epigrams 1—3 are especially interesting: Correspondence purporting to be from Plato is collected as the Letters or Epistles ; their authorship is controversial, and each must be evaluated separately.
Three dialogues of uncertain authorship in the Socratic genre are the following. The Alcibiades depicts Socrates with the brilliant title character, whose meteoric career before the date of composition but after the fictional date of the dialogue contributed to the resentment against the older man. In the Clitophon , the title character objects that Socrates has awakened his wish for knowledge of virtue but has failed to help him reach his goal.
Many people associate Plato with a few central doctrines that are advocated in his writings: Among the most important of these abstract objects as they are now called, because they are not located in space or time are goodness, beauty, equality, bigness, likeness, unity, being, sameness, difference, change, and changelessness. Nearly every major work of Plato is, in some way, devoted to or dependent on this distinction. Many of them explore the ethical and practical consequences of conceiving of reality in this bifurcated way.
We are urged to transform our values by taking to heart the greater reality of the forms and the defectiveness of the corporeal world. We must recognize that the soul is a different sort of object from the body—so much so that it does not depend on the existence of the body for its functioning, and can in fact grasp the nature of the forms far more easily when it is not encumbered by its attachment to anything corporeal.
In a few of Plato's works, we are told that the soul always retains the ability to recollect what it once grasped of the forms, when it was disembodied prior to its possessor's birth see especially Meno , and that the lives we lead are to some extent a punishment or reward for choices we made in a previous existence see especially the final pages of Republic. But in many of Plato's writings, it is asserted or assumed that true philosophers—those who recognize how important it is to distinguish the one the one thing that goodness is, or virtue is, or courage is from the many the many things that are called good or virtuous or courageous —are in a position to become ethically superior to unenlightened human beings, because of the greater degree of insight they can acquire.
To understand which things are good and why they are good and if we are not interested in such questions, how can we become good? Although these propositions are often identified by Plato's readers as forming a large part of the core of his philosophy, many of his greatest admirers and most careful students point out that few, if any, of his writings can accurately be described as mere advocacy of a cut-and-dried group of propositions.
Often Plato's works exhibit a certain degree of dissatisfaction and puzzlement with even those doctrines that are being recommended for our consideration. For example, the forms are sometimes described as hypotheses see for example Phaedo. The form of good in particular is described as something of a mystery whose real nature is elusive and as yet unknown to anyone at all Republic. Puzzles are raised—and not overtly answered—about how any of the forms can be known and how we are to talk about them without falling into contradiction Parmenides , or about what it is to know anything Theaetetus or to name anything Cratylus.
When one compares Plato with some of the other philosophers who are often ranked with him—Aristotle, Aquinas, and Kant, for example—he can be recognized to be far more exploratory, incompletely systematic, elusive, and playful than they. That, along with his gifts as a writer and as a creator of vivid character and dramatic setting, is one of the reasons why he is often thought to be the ideal author from whom one should receive one's introduction to philosophy.
His readers are not presented with an elaborate system of doctrines held to be so fully worked out that they are in no need of further exploration or development; instead, what we often receive from Plato is a few key ideas together with a series of suggestions and problems about how those ideas are to be interrogated and deployed. Readers of a Platonic dialogue are drawn into thinking for themselves about the issues raised, if they are to learn what the dialogue itself might be thought to say about them. Many of his works therefore give their readers a strong sense of philosophy as a living and unfinished subject perhaps one that can never be completed to which they themselves will have to contribute.
All of Plato's works are in some way meant to leave further work for their readers, but among the ones that most conspicuously fall into this category are: There is another feature of Plato's writings that makes him distinctive among the great philosophers and colors our experience of him as an author. Nearly everything he wrote takes the form of a dialogue. There is one striking exception: However, even there, Socrates is presented at one point addressing questions of a philosophical character to his accuser, Meletus, and responding to them.
In addition, since antiquity, a collection of 13 letters has been included among his collected works, but their authenticity as compositions of Plato is not universally accepted among scholars, and many or most of them are almost certainly not his. Most of them purport to be the outcome of his involvement in the politics of Syracuse, a heavily populated Greek city located in Sicily and ruled by tyrants. We are of course familiar with the dialogue form through our acquaintance with the literary genre of drama.
But Plato's dialogues do not try to create a fictional world for the purposes of telling a story, as many literary dramas do; nor do they invoke an earlier mythical realm, like the creations of the great Greek tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Nor are they all presented in the form of a drama: As a group, they form vivid portraits of a social world, and are not purely intellectual exchanges between characterless and socially unmarked speakers.
At any rate, that is true of a large number of Plato's interlocutors. However, it must be added that in some of his works the speakers display little or no character. See, for example, Sophist and Statesman —dialogues in which a visitor from the town of Elea in Southern Italy leads the discussion; and Laws , a discussion between an unnamed Athenian and two named fictional characters, one from Crete and the other from Sparta. In many of his dialogues though not all , Plato is not only attempting to draw his readers into a discussion, but is also commenting on the social milieu that he is depicting, and criticizing the character and ways of life of his interlocutors.
Some of the dialogues that most evidently fall into this category are Protagoras , Gorgias , Hippias Major , Euthydemus , and Symposium. There is one interlocutor who speaks in nearly all of Plato's dialogues, being completely absent only in Laws , which ancient testimony tells us was one of his latest works: Like nearly everyone else who appears in Plato's works, he is not an invention of Plato: Plato was not the only author whose personal experience of Socrates led to the depiction of him as a character in one or more dramatic works. Socrates is one of the principal characters of Aristophanes' comedy, Clouds ; and Xenophon, a historian and military leader, wrote, like Plato, both an Apology of Socrates an account of Socrates' trial and other works in which Socrates appears as a principal speaker.
Furthermore, we have some fragmentary remains of dialogues written by other contemporaries of Socrates besides Plato and Xenophon Aeschines, Antisthenes, Eucleides, Phaedo , and these purport to describe conversations he conducted with others. So, when Plato wrote dialogues that feature Socrates as a principal speaker, he was both contributing to a genre that was inspired by the life of Socrates and participating in a lively literary debate about the kind of person Socrates was and the value of the intellectual conversations in which he was involved.
Aristophanes' comic portrayal of Socrates is at the same time a bitter critique of him and other leading intellectual figures of the day the s B. Evidently, the historical Socrates was the sort of person who provoked in those who knew him, or knew of him, a profound response, and he inspired many of those who came under his influence to write about him. But the portraits composed by Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato are the ones that have survived intact, and they are therefore the ones that must play the greatest role in shaping our conception of what Socrates was like.
Of these, Clouds has the least value as an indication of what was distinctive of Socrates' mode of philosophizing: Xenophon's depiction of Socrates, whatever its value as historical testimony which may be considerable , is generally thought to lack the philosophical subtlety and depth of Plato's. At any rate, no one certainly not Xenophon himself takes Xenophon to be a major philosopher in his own right; when we read his Socratic works, we are not encountering a great philosophical mind.
But that is what we experience when we read Plato. We may read Plato's Socratic dialogues because we are as Plato evidently wanted us to be interested in who Socrates was and what he stood for, but even if we have little or no desire to learn about the historical Socrates, we will want to read Plato because in doing so we are encountering an author of the greatest philosophical significance.
No doubt he in some way borrowed in important ways from Socrates, though it is not easy to say where to draw the line between him and his teacher more about this below in section But it is widely agreed among scholars that Plato is not a mere transcriber of the words of Socrates any more than Xenophon or the other authors of Socratic discourses. Socrates, it should be kept in mind, does not appear in all of Plato's works.
He makes no appearance in Laws , and there are several dialogues Sophist , Statesman , Timaeus in which his role is small and peripheral, while some other figure dominates the conversation or even, as in the Timaeus and Critias , presents a long and elaborate, continuous discourse of their own. Plato's dialogues are not a static literary form; not only do his topics vary, not only do his speakers vary, but the role played by questions and answers is never the same from one dialogue to another.
Symposium , for example, is a series of speeches, and there are also lengthy speeches in Apology , Menexenus , Protagoras , Crito , Phaedrus , Timaeus , and Critias ; in fact, one might reasonably question whether these works are properly called dialogues. Plato never became a writer of philosophical treatises, even though the writing of treatises for example, on rhetoric, medicine, and geometry was a common practice among his predecessors and contemporaries.
The closest we come to an exception to this generalization is the seventh letter, which contains a brief section in which the author, Plato or someone pretending to be him, commits himself to several philosophical points—while insisting, at the same time, that no philosopher will write about the deepest matters, but will communicate his thoughts only in private discussion with selected individuals. As noted above, the authenticity of Plato's letters is a matter of great controversy; and in any case, the author of the seventh letter declares his opposition to the writing of philosophical books.
Whether Plato wrote it or not, it cannot be regarded as a philosophical treatise, and its author did not wish it to be so regarded. In all of his writings—except in the letters, if any of them are genuine—Plato never speaks to his audience directly and in his own voice. Strictly speaking, he does not himself affirm anything in his dialogues; rather, it is the interlocutors in his dialogues who are made by Plato to do all of the affirming, doubting, questioning, arguing, and so on.
Whatever he wishes to communicate to us is conveyed indirectly. This feature of Plato's works raises important questions about how they are to be read, and has led to considerable controversy among those who study his writings. Since he does not himself affirm anything in any of his dialogues, can we ever be on secure ground in attributing a philosophical doctrine to him as opposed to one of his characters? Did he himself have philosophical convictions, and can we discover what they were? Or, if we attribute some view to Plato himself, are we being unfaithful to the spirit in which he intended the dialogues to be read?
Is his whole point, in refraining from writing treatises, to discourage the readers of his works from asking what their author believes and to encourage them instead simply to consider the plausibility or implausibility of what his characters are saying? Is that why Plato wrote dialogues? If not for this reason, then what was his purpose in refraining from addressing his audience in a more direct way? There are other important questions about the particular shape his dialogues take: Once these questions are raised and their difficulty acknowledged, it is tempting, in reading Plato's works and reflecting upon them, to adopt a strategy of extreme caution.
Rather than commit oneself to any hypothesis about what he is trying to communicate to his readers, one might adopt a stance of neutrality about his intentions, and confine oneself to talking only about what is said by his dramatis personae. One cannot be faulted, for example, if one notes that, in Plato's Republic , Socrates argues that justice in the soul consists in each part of the soul doing its own. It is equally correct to point out that other principal speakers in that work, Glaucon and Adeimantus, accept the arguments that Socrates gives for that definition of justice. Perhaps there is no need for us to say more—to say, for example, that Plato himself agrees that this is how justice should be defined, or that Plato himself accepts the arguments that Socrates gives in support of this definition.
Should we not read his works for their intrinsic philosophical value, and not as tools to be used for entering into the mind of their author? We know what Plato's characters say—and isn't that all that we need, for the purpose of engaging with his works philosophically? But the fact that we know what Plato's characters say does not show that by refusing to entertain any hypotheses about what the author of these works is trying to communicate to his readers we can understand what those characters mean by what they say.
We should not lose sight of this obvious fact: When we ask whether an argument put forward by a character in Plato's works should be read as an effort to persuade us of its conclusion, or is better read as a revelation of how foolish that speaker is, we are asking about what Plato as author not that character is trying to lead us to believe, through the writing that he is presenting to our attention.
We need to interpret the work itself to find out what it, or Plato the author, is saying. Similarly, when we ask how a word that has several different senses is best understood, we are asking what Plato means to communicate to us through the speaker who uses that word. We should not suppose that we can derive much philosophical value from Plato's writings if we refuse to entertain any thoughts about what use he intends us to make of the things his speakers say. Penetrating the mind of Plato and comprehending what his interlocutors mean by what they say are not two separate tasks but one, and if we do not ask what his interlocutors mean by what they say, and what the dialogue itself indicates we should think about what they mean, we will not profit from reading his dialogues.
Furthermore, the dialogues have certain characteristics that are most easily explained by supposing that Plato is using them as vehicles for inducing his readers to become convinced or more convinced than they already are of certain propositions—for example, that there are forms, that the soul is not corporeal, that knowledge can be acquired only by means of a study of the forms, and so on. Why, after all, did Plato write so many works for example: Phaedo , Symposium , Republic , Phaedrus , Theaetetus , Sophist , Statesman , Timaeus , Philebus , Laws in which one character dominates the conversation often, but not always, Socrates and convinces the other speakers at times, after encountering initial resistance that they should accept or reject certain conclusions, on the basis of the arguments presented?
The only plausible way of answering that question is to say that these dialogues were intended by Plato to be devices by which he might induce the audience for which they are intended to reflect on and accept the arguments and conclusions offered by his principal interlocutor. The educative value of written texts is thus explicitly acknowledged by Plato's dominant speaker. If preludes can educate a whole citizenry that is prepared to learn from them, then surely Plato thinks that other sorts of written texts—for example, his own dialogues—can also serve an educative function.
This does not mean that Plato thinks that his readers can become wise simply by reading and studying his works. On the contrary, it is highly likely that he wanted all of his writings to be supplementary aids to philosophical conversation: They are, Socrates says, best used as devices that stimulate the readers' memory of discussions they have had Phaedrus ed.
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In those face-to-face conversations with a knowledgeable leader, positions are taken, arguments are given, and conclusions are drawn. Plato's writings, he implies in this passage from Phaedrus , will work best when conversational seeds have already been sown for the arguments they contain. If we take Plato to be trying to persuade us, in many of his works, to accept the conclusions arrived at by his principal interlocutors or to persuade us of the refutations of their opponents , we can easily explain why he so often chooses Socrates as the dominant speaker in his dialogues. Presumably the contemporary audience for whom Plato was writing included many of Socrates' admirers.
Furthermore, if Plato felt strongly indebted to Socrates for many of his philosophical techniques and ideas, that would give him further reason for assigning a dominant role to him in many of his works. More about this in section Of course, there are other more speculative possible ways of explaining why Plato so often makes Socrates his principal speaker.
But anyone who has read some of Plato's works will quickly recognize the utter implausibility of that alternative way of reading them. Plato could have written into his works clear signals to the reader that the arguments of Socrates do not work, and that his interlocutors are foolish to accept them. But there are many signs in such works as Meno , Phaedo , Republic , and Phaedrus that point in the opposite direction. And the great admiration Plato feels for Socrates is also evident from his Apology.
The reader is given every encouragement to believe that the reason why Socrates is successful in persuading his interlocutors on those occasions when he does succeed is that his arguments are powerful ones. The reader, in other words, is being encouraged by the author to accept those arguments, if not as definitive then at least as highly arresting and deserving of careful and full positive consideration. When we interpret the dialogues in this way, we cannot escape the fact that we are entering into the mind of Plato, and attributing to him, their author, a positive evaluation of the arguments that his speakers present to each other.
There is a further reason for entertaining hypotheses about what Plato intended and believed, and not merely confining ourselves to observations about what sorts of people his characters are and what they say to each other.