HUEN 3100
Dr. Fredricksmeyer
Contextualizing
Socrates, Plato, and Greek Philosophical Idealism
I. Background
theoretical thinking (based on ideas) over practical thinking (based on observation)
etymology: idea (Gk. &id, Lat. vid): mental picture of something in its perfect state
[idealism defined: idealism: tendency to want something in reality to approximate
one’s mental picture of it in its perfect state]
reasons for this tendency among many Greeks includedupper-class disdain for practical thought/business
humanism and focus on man rather than natural world
theoretical issues such as virtue
[though interest also in physical well-being/medicine>observation]
observation (practical thinking) unreliable:
stick in water distorted
apparent change vs. permanent reality: life and death vs. spring every year
“New Learning”
anthropocentric rationalism and natural philosophy
astronomy: Thales (635-543) predicted solar eclipse of 585 BCE
physics: Democritos (460-370) atomic theory
medicine: Hippocrates (460-380) and the Hippocratic corpus
the sophists: towards moral relativism, and epistemological and linguistic nihilism
Protagoras (481-420): “man is the measure of all things”
Thrasymachus (459-400): “justice is the advantage of the
stronger”
compare with the Mytilenian Debate and Melian Dialog in Thucydides
Gorgias:
“On Non-existence”
logos/ergon (compare with modern distinction between
signifier/signified)
language as indeterminate
see “deconstruction” and the Alan Sokal affair
II. Socrates (469-399)
select biography
odd appearance
perhaps a stonemason
wife Xanthippe: he was “a good-for-nothing idler”
notoriously brave (Alcibiades in the Symposium)
notoriously “wise” (the oracle’s declaration in the Apology)
associated with anti-democratic elements, including among the Thirty
Tyrants of 404
Socrates' trial and death as characterized in:
Euthyphro (the charges)
Apology (Socrates defense against the charges)
Crito (refusal to escape prison, and the social contract theory)
Phaedo (the death of Socrates by hemlock): final words to Crito, “I owe a cock to
Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?”
III. Plato (424-347):
select biography
student of Socrates (see also Xenophon and others)
wealthy family (etymology of the term “scholar”)
founded the “Academy” that operated until AD 529!
along with Aristotle, laid foundations of western philosophy (more below),
including Stoicism (see Epictetus and Stockdale)
Plato and Platonic dialogues: philosophical dialectic with characterization and humor,
many featuring Socrates the "Horsefly" (Cahill: “the Stingray”)
problems of interpretation
dating of the dialogues
voice of Socrates vs. that of Plato
recent trends in interpretation: “new Platonism”
Platonic aporia
Platonic idealism in the Republic
the Cave
Platonic theory of forms/idealism
unreliability of observation
the perfect state/utopia: social stratification
Guardians/Philosopher King (wisdom)
austerity: no money, property, family, or marriage; eugenic breeding
Soldiers (bravery)
Producers (productive-acquisitive urge)
elimination of poetry, art, music
IV. Aristotle
Plato's disciple
the Lyceum
materialism: the "form" is inherent in objects; they are informed
V. Plato's Legacy
Neo-Platonism and St. Augustine
reason and Christianity
Neo-Platonism, Humanism, and the Renaissance
Cosimo de Medici
Ficino
Neo-Platonic Academy at Florence
philosophyAlfred N. Whitehead: western philosophy as footnotes to Plato
recent vote of academic philosophers
Plato and Aristotle establish debate between rationalism and empiricism that continued
arguably until Kant
Christianityspiritual world more real than the world of matter
religion and politics: idealism to ideologyideology: tendency to force something to approximate one’s
mental picture of it in its perfect state
dangerous elements of The Republic
class stratification
rule by elite that is closely associated with a military
total subordination of the individual to the state
censorship
eugenics
from the Platonic forms to dystopia/ideologies:
Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies (1938)
failed utopias on the left and rightMarxism/Stalinist Russia (left)
Maoist China (left)
Nazism (right)
part of problem: Platonic equation of knowledge and virtue (vs. Phaedra in
Euripides' Hippolytus)