Socrates

Socrates  (470-399) was the son of a sculptor and a midwife, and

served with distinction in the Athenian army during Athens’ clash
with Sparta.  He married, but had a tendency to fall in love with
handsome young men, in particular a young soldier named
Alcibiades.  He was, by all accounts, short and stout, not given to
good grooming, and a lover of wine and conversation.  His famous
student, Plato, called him “the wisest, and justest, and best of all men
whom I have ever known” (Phaedo).

He was irritated by the Sophists and their tendency to teach logic as a

means of achieving self-centered ends, and even more their
promotion of the idea that all things are relative.  It was the truth that
he loved, desired, and believed in.

Philosophy, the love of wisdom, was for Socrates itself a sacred path, a holy quest -- not a game to be
taken lightly.  He believed -- or at least said he did in the dialog Meno -- in the reincarnation of an eternal
soul which contained all knowledge.  We unfortunately lose touch with that knowledge at every birth, and
so we need to be reminded of what we already know (rather than learning something new).

He said that he did not teach, but rather served, like his mother, as a midwife to truth that is already in us! 
Making use of questions and answers to remind his students of knowledge is called maieutics
(midwifery), dialectics, or the Socratic method.

One example of his effect on philosophy is found in the dialog Euthyphro.  He suggests that what is to
be considered a good act is not good because gods say it is, but is good because it is useful to us in our
efforts to be better and happier people.  This means that ethics is no longer a matter of surveying the gods
or scripture for what is good or bad, but rather thinking about life.  He even placed individual conscience
above the law -- quite a dangerous position to take!

Socrates himself never wrote any of his ideas down, but rather engaged his students -- wealthy young
men of Athens -- in endless conversations.  In exchange for his teaching, they in turn made sure that he
was taken care of.  Since he claimed to have few needs, he took very little, much to his wife Xanthippe’s
distress.

Plato reconstructed these discussions in a great set of writings known as the Dialogs.  It is difficult to
distinguish what is Socrates and what is Plato in these dialogs, so we will simply discuss them together.

Socrates wasn’t loved by everyone by any means.  His unorthodox political and religious views gave the
leading citizens of Athens the excuse they needed to  sentence him to death for corrupting the morals of
the youth of the city.  In 399, he was ordered to drink a brew of poison hemlock, which he did in the
company of his students. The event is documented in Plato's Apology.

Socrates' final words were "Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius (the god of medicine). Pay it and do not
neglect it."
Plato

Plato (437-347) was Socrates’ prized student.  From a wealthy and powerful family, his actual name was
Aristocles -- Plato was a nickname, referring to his broad physique. When he was about twenty, he came
under Socrates’ spell and decided to devote himself to philosophy.  Devastated by Socrates’ death, he
wandered around Greece and the Mediterranean and was taken by pirates.  His friends raised money to
ransom him from slavery, but when he was released without it, they bought him a small property called
Academus to start a school -- the Academy, founded in 386.

The Academy was more like Pythagoras’ community -- a sort of quasi-religious fraternity, where rich
young men studied mathematics, astronomy, law, and, of course, philosophy. It was free, depending
entirely on donations. True to his ideals, Plato also permitted women to attend!  The Academy would
become the center of Greek learning for almost a millennium.

Plato can be understood as idealistic and rationalistic, much like Pythagoras but much less mystical.  He
divides reality into two:  On the one hand we have ousia, idea or ideal.  This is ultimate reality,
permanent, eternal, spiritual.  On the other hand, there’s phenomena, which are a manifestation of the
ideal.  Phenomena are appearances -- things as they seem to us -- and are associated with matter, time,
and space.

Phenomena are illusions which decay and die.  Ideals are unchanging, perfect.  Phenomena are definitely
inferior to Ideals!  The idea of a triangle -- the defining mathematics of it, the form or essence of it -- is
eternal.  Any individual triangle, the triangles of the day-to-day experiential world, are never quite
perfect:  They may be a little crooked, or the lines a little thick, or the angles not quite right.... They only
approximate that perfect triangle, the ideal triangle.

If it seems strange to talk about ideas or ideals as somehow more real than the world of our experiences,
consider science.  The law of gravity, 1+1=2, “magnets attract iron,” E=mc², and so on -- these are
universals, not true for one day in one small location, but true forever and everywhere!  If you believe that
there is order in the universe, that nature has laws, you believe in ideas!
Ideas are available to us through thought, while phenomena are available to us through our senses.  So,
naturally, thought is a vastly superior means to get to the truth.  This is what makes Plato a rationalist, as
opposed to an empiricist, in epistemology.

Senses can only give you information about the ever-changing and imperfect world of phenomena, and so
can only provide you with implications about ultimate reality, not reality itself.  Reason goes straight to
the idea. You “remember,” or intuitively recognize the truth, as Socrates suggested in the dialog Meno.

According to Plato, the phenomenal world strives to become ideal, perfect, complete.  Ideals are, in that
sense, a motivating force.  In fact, he identifies the ideal with God and perfect goodness.  God creates the
world out of materia (raw material, matter) and shapes it according to his “plan” or “blueprint” -- ideas or
the ideal.  If the world is not perfect, it is not because of God or the ideals, but because the raw materials
were not perfect.  I think you can see why the early Christian church made Plato an honorary Christian,
even though he died three and a half centuries before Christ!

Plato applies the same dichotomy to human beings:  There’s the body, which is material, mortal, and
“moved” (a victim of causation).  Then there’s the soul, which is ideal, immortal, and “unmoved”
(enjoying free will).

The soul includes reason, of course, as well as self-awareness and moral sense.  Plato says the soul will
always choose to do good, if it recognizes what is good.  This is a similar conception of good and bad as
the Buddhists have:  Rather than bad being sin, it is considered a matter of ignorance.  So, someone who
does something bad requires education, not punishment.

The soul is drawn to the good, the ideal, and so is drawn to God.  We gradually move closer and closer to
God through reincarnation as well as in our individual lives.  Our ethical goal in life is resemblance to
God, to come closer to the pure world of ideas and ideal, to liberate ourselves from matter, time, and
space, and to become more real in this deeper sense.  Our goal is, in other words, self-realization.

Plato talks about three levels of pleasure.  First is sensual or physical pleasure, of which sex is a great
example.  A second level is sensuous or esthetic pleasure, such as admiring someone’s beauty, or
enjoying one’s relationship in marriage.  But the highest level is ideal pleasure, the pleasures of the mind. 
Here the example would be Platonic love, intellectual love for another person unsullied by physical
involvement.

Paralleling these three levels of pleasure are three souls.  We have one soul called appetite, which is
mortal and comes from the gut.  The second soul is called spirit or courage.  It is also mortal, and lives in
the heart.  The third soul is reason. It is immortal and resides in the brain.  The three are strung together
by the cerebrospinal canal.

Plato is fond of analogies.  Appetite, he says, is like a wild horse, very powerful, but likes to go its own
way.  Spirit is like a thoroughbred, refined, well trained, directed power.  And reason is the charioteer,
goal-directed, steering both horses according to his will.

Other analogies abound, especially in Plato’s greatest work, The Republic.  In The Republic, he designs
(through Socrates) a society in order to discover the meaning of justice.  Along the way, he compares
elements of his society (a utopia, Greek for “no place”) to the three souls:  The peasants are the
foundation of the society.  They till the soil and produce goods, i.e. take care of society’s basic appetites. 
The warriors represent the spirit and courage of the society.  And the philosopher kings guide the society,
as reason guides our lives.
Before you assume that we are just looking at a Greek version of the Indian caste system, please note: 
Everyone’s children are raised together and membership in one of the three levels of society is based on
talents, not on one’s birth parents!  And Plato includes women as men’s equals in this system.

I leave you with a few quotes:

"Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder."

"...(I)f you ask what is the good of education in general, the answer is easy; that education makes
good men, and that good men act nobly."

"(I) do to others as I would they should do to me."

"Our object in the construction of the State is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of
any one class.

EDM 211 – Philosophy of Man Marianne B. Parohinog

GREEK VIEWPOINTS: WHO IS MAN?

Socrates (469-399 BCE)

-Father of Western Philosophy.

-an enigmatic figure – all of his knowledge and philosophical text related to him is entirely dependent of
the writings of others of that time period (Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle and Aristophanes)
-the first philosopher who engaged in a systematics questioning about the self.

-to him, the true task of the philosopher is to know oneself.

-he questioned everything. His method of inquiry is known as the “Socratic Method”. The preaching of
pedagogy, it is the practice of teaching where the teacher gets the best answer from the students by
eliciting the technique of questioning.

“The art of questioning is one of the most difficult art but deceptively appears as the simplest act of life.”
- Socrates

-He thought that the worst that can happen to anyone: to live but die inside.

In his reckoning, most men were really not fully aware of who they were and the virtues that they
were supposed to attain in order to preserve their souls for the afterlife. Thus, he noted that an
“unexamined life is not worth living”.

-For Socrates, every man is composed of body and soul. This means that every human person is dualistic,
that is, he is composed of two important aspects of his personhood. This means there is an imperfect and
impermanent aspect of every one of us, which is our physical body, and then, there is also the perfect and
permanent, which is our soul.

-His unorthodox political and religious views gave the leading citizens of Athens the excuse they needed
to sentence him to death for corrupting the morals of the youth of the city. In 399, he was ordered to
drink a brew of poison hemlock, which he did in the company of his students. The event is documented in
Plato's Apology.

Plato (428-347 BCE)

-prized student of Socrates.

-known for being the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the
Western World.

- real name Aristocles, Plato was just a nickname given to him by his friend, whose originally connotation
made reference to his broad shoulders.

- a championship Wrestler.

-he basically took off from his master and supported the idea that man is a dual nature of body and soul.
-he further expounded on the idea of the soul by stating that it has three parts or components:

 rational soul- forged by reason and intellect has to govern the affairs of the human
person.
 spirited soul- in charge of emotions should be kept at bay
 appetitive soul- in charge of base de sires like eating, drinking, sleeping and having
sex in which to be controlled.

In his magnum opus, “The Republic”, he emphasizes that justice in human person can only be attained if
the three parts of soul are working harmoniously with one another. When this ideal state is attained, then
the human person’s soul becomes just and virtuous.

- he can be understood as idealistic and rationalistic

- he divided reality into two:  On the one hand we have ousia, idea or ideal.  This is ultimate reality,
permanent, eternal, spiritual.  On the other hand, there’s phenomena, which are a manifestation of the
ideal.  Phenomena are appearances -- things as they seem to us -- and are associated with matter, time,
and space.

Phenomena are illusions which decay and die. Ideals are unchanging, perfect. Ideas are available
to us through thought, while phenomena are available to us through our senses. So, naturally, thought is a
vastly superior means to get to the truth. This is what makes Plato a rationalist, as opposed to an
empiricist, in epistemology.

“Life is nothing more than the imprisonment of soul in a body” –Plato

- Eden Joy P.A., et al. (2018). Understanding the self (First Edition). Rex Bookstore, Inc.

- Eden Joy P.A., et al. (2021). A course module for Understanding the self. Rex Bookstore, Inc.