Why we should read Plato - Jerry Balmuth

and this man here Jerome Bangla is an institution he is actually he instantiates Colgate the best of Colgate I mean that totally and heartily seriously he is has been teaching here for over 50 years and those of you who haven't taken a course with him you have to take a course with him one of those people like Tony emini Chris Betsy Sean O'Neal who is visiting us from Hamilton Bobby we like him anyways holy all the above is for all is a very humble man yeah you went to Amherst College when a lot of people okay a New York didn't go to your first college it is graduate work at Cornell on the corner he survived d-day and could tell us about that be well he now holds the Harry Emerson Fosdick chair in philosophy religion what can I say a lot of things but I'm going to turn it over to Jerry who's going to tell us yeah why does the weary Plato in our series why we read the classics like the great works okay Jerry I gather the applause is premature I'm taking my coat off because all of this lavish introduction here has heated me up and I'm not at all certain I can live up to that prospectus this is not a lecture it's a talk meaning by that that all improvised as they go along but I have certain ideas that I want to get across and I'm not unwilling to accept questions in the course of it but probably it's preferable if I just go through what I have to say first and then I'll take any questions that you may have people ask me why I wear this hat and the answer is it's a billboard it's a billboard for Plato and because I do believe both in philosophy as the most profound and critical subject that one can engage in and also as Plato as the really the central focus a seminal thinker in the philosophical tradition at least he's thought of his seminal Alfred North Whitehead once called all of Western thought a footnote to Plato and what he had in mind was that there was so much of the of deep reflection and so much of the subsequent history of thought is grounded in Plato including of course the history of medieval thought the history of Christianity platonism one can't really understand or appreciate Augustine without understanding and confronting Platonism and the contemporary term plate photonic or economic entities is a reference here to a concept of Plato that has remained significant here throughout Western thought the book I'll be talking about for the most part II is Plato's Republic and the reason is it's the work that is mostly easily accessible I think and tries to incorporate the fulfillment of Plato's own admiration of Socrates because Socrates began simply with a simple question how should one live a life and in asking that kind of question how should one live a life he then fixed on the idea that there is such a thing as the excellence of something each thing in the universe has his own peculiar or special excellence because that the virtue of that particular thing the virtue of a knife virtue a hat the virtue of a table the virtue of a thumb is being able to grasp and make it possible each thing has a kind of excellence that is special to that particular object now if that's the case it may well be that human beings in their exercising of life and the choices they make should be guided by this notion or this question here what is the excellence for living life what kind of life should one live if one pursues the question of the virtue of living what are what is this that reflects this virtue because so Socrates was convinced and Socrates was after all plato's original teacher convinced that no human being really did evil that is to say no human being intentionally did evil when a human being acts they always act for the purpose of some good some purpose is always the anticipated good to be realized by the action when one creates an object one does so as an action here to realize a good of some kind the question then became what is the good to be realized in human behavior and you in action and this is the point at which Socrates then raised the question if no man no woman acts intercourse with evil why is there evil why is it why are some of these decisions ends or purposes which we think are good but which in fact or not now Socrates was himself knowledgeable about the community about him but he also was open to the possibility that there are others who knew the good better needed and so what you get in a whole range of early Tommy dialogues is soccer beans soup of those people who claimed another know what it is that is critical here to the living of an excellent life and as he goes through each of the dialogues so check saw the inability of each of these so-called experts charlatans he discovers that he'll they represent themselves there's no any good in fact when their representation is subjected to serious question they're incapable supporting this planning kind of serious issue as its arrest in the early dialogues is that we need to determine what the good is in order to live an excellent life there are all kinds of candidates for this but most of these candidates are incapable of being sustained here by critical thought the the claim here that they are uncapable of is one here which is done through what he calls the dialogue Diallo goes through the talk and Plato was uniquely responsible for this idea that in talking through ideas we reach various levels of understanding and that the dialogue is our method of discovering and self discovering what the truth is or at least what is false or what is unable to be sustainable so the dialogue is a unique expression of a form of reasoning of rational reflection which challenges the received opinion by raising questions about what is given now of course that made Socrates a very unpleasant person to a large number of pseudo experts and of course the result is that he was martyred to this commitment to find the good in life or the good of youin and now a few weeks ago Bob Garland gave us a marvelous talk on the Homeric hero we know that the Homeric hero whether it was a Decius or Hector or Achilles like a memnon had certain virtues certain excellences those excellences were the excellences that have to do with with both fighting sustaining loyalties within the community reflecting conventional wisdom about what was the value of life itself a Plato for the first time introduces the idea of the intellectual hero the hero whose virtues have to do with thought and reflection not with the commitment here at the certain military values or a certain a certain moral moral claims that have to do with fighting and shrewdness and loyalty all of which are quite valuable in Homeric communities but Plato introduces a new level the level of reflection and thought upon the nature of human beings themselves and the nature of human community so here we have a new kind of hero one who was martyred really slain for exactly this kind of challenge to the conventional wisdom he's a hero to all Western thought because the challenge to received opinion is not necessarily antagonistic to receive the pea it is simply asking the question can received opinion justify itself is it can it be in some ways warranted or is it held here solely by convention and without any justification of warrant that suggests there for that critical element here of Socrates is really the biting element of of his Socrates contribution as Plato saw and that biting element is what has remained consistent here in philosophy and in fact all critical thought we it is the function of the academic world to constantly challenge not because they're skeptical but because they're searching for that elements of the received opinion that can be warranted and what alternatives they can be as a substitute they're off and so they're constantly raising new kinds of question Plato is the hero in recognizing this in Socrates and in making this part of our culture and part of the Western contribution here to the self understanding and understanding of the world while now in the Plato's Republic the next possibility for the good is taken up and it's taken up as the concept of justice and the Republic raises the question maybe the good of a human being is the goodness or the justice of him as a him or her as a human being living in a just state and being able thus to exercise those powers that that just state is able to administer but what is that just state and what is justice anyway this notion of what is or the so-called essential concept what is that what are those necessary conditions without which the thing would not be what it is is the challenge here to everything that is proposed what is the essential nature of justice and Scipio sets up Socrates as posing a possible answer to this justice for the individual justice for the state which are critically interconnected is in part his response to how to shoot a man how should a man or woman live and how should a state be organized such that it would be fulfillment of the best that can be saved now at the beginning of the of the Republic there are a number of comments made about the nature of justice for the most part the important comment is this idea that justice is really a compromise if an individual had his druthers this is famous ring of guy Jensen had they'd rather had their ability here to choose their world each of us would choose a world in which we were totally dominant and powerful and able and in which we might not abuse this ability but in which we were totally involve other people's power that would be the best of all possible worlds of course the obverse of that the worst of all possible worlds would be a world in which others have power over us and we were totally weak and in defence defenseless incapable of functioning in any way that would realize our own purposes and between those two you have then the best and the worst world the best world is a world in which you have all power and the power and the capacity hit act as you will without restraints but the worst world is a world in which we are in we are victims or victimized by a world over which we have no control justice is the hypothesis is is really a combination or a compromise between those two each of us gives up our power to exercise our strengths over others whatever advantages we have others in return for others giving that up in in their possibility of controlling ourselves so that what we have then is a compromise between the best and the worst and justice is thus treated as a compromise one thus looks at the the good world the just world as a world in which one manipulates one's way to one's own best advantage and to the least disadvantage so prudence is the principal virtue meaning the excellence in such a life and Socrates is confronted with this as the common opinion about justice the common opinion about our relationship to each other and to the state it's this common opinion that Socrates then takes up to examine he wants to argue that this makes justice only an instrumental good what is an instrumental good well instrumental goods are those goods that are only good for what they bring they're not necessarily good in themselves good examples of them is medical treatments dental treatment would be an excellent example I think rubbish collection nobody seeks to do rubbish collection for its own sake one does it for the advantages it brings the study of economics for example it's a good it's your mental good it's a highly valuable for its own sake or isn't it well let's leave it open question but those Goods money of course people don't necessarily recognize this but that money after all is of no value whatsoever unless you can and do something with it so the purely instrumental good there are in contrast to that there are these intrinsic good so these Goods that are worth having for their own sake such as health such as education and knowledge and understanding such as happiness one can't really justify happiness as something seeking something else it is its own satisfaction that's all right some forms of pleasure not all but some would be intrinsically good good in its own right now the challenge to Socrates is to show that justice is worth having not only for what it brings that is over adjust life in a just society but also it is valuable for itself irrespective of the consequences of the the employment of it and the exercise of it and that's a very tall challenge considering that most people consider justice purely as throw some ACCA's did purely the the conditions of the stronger as he puts it the what the stronger holds the in the interest of the stronger how does how to Socrates M Percy well he says if if we're going to talk about the intrinsic value of justice we really need to talk about the nature of the human being as well as the nature of the state that is today we really need to disentangle the various characteristics of a human being as well as at the state if we're to understand what we are doing part of this is Plato's unique and theirs is the point at which Plato is really advancing beyond Socrates in which Plato uniquely begins to have a functional understanding of justice that is to say he believes that justice is a consequent or dependent variable dependent upon other factors each of which is a factor and it's alright what do I mean by that well he says look the individual every individual has appetites the appetite of element here that is the element here of merely needing things for survival we'll call this food shelter clothing we'll call these our appetites that is our urgency those are minimally required here if we're to live some kind of life here that will be at least at the beginning of a sense of security one can't imagine a an excellent life without any of these are shorn of these satisfactions of our appetites so that's Faculty of the of the soul as he puts it a Faculty of the person in contrast to another element of the person II which is that spirited element a kind of passionate commitment here to various kinds of ends or purposes now the interesting example that Plato provides is as follows if you're there devilishly thirsty and you're or wounded in the stomach is the example he gives and you're calling out for water but then you're told that or you then recognize that if you drink this will enhance and likely destroy the possibility of of becoming successful in your becoming well again if you know the water is poisonous if you know the water is such that it will destroy your life rather than enhance it then you don't drink it it's perfectly obvious but if you're not drinking it you have the urgency to drink like the ancient man the urgency to drink but the recognition that to drink is really to destroy the purpose of which the drinking was supposed to fulfill your life how is that possible that on the one hand you have this urgency an ill and you have this inhibition well there must be another faculty that ability to control or to censor what it is that you have that urgency for that ability to control a sensor is what he calls the rational part of the human being so reason spirit and appetite doesn't constitute what we might say the rudimentary anthropology or psychology that Plato offers us reason and the head of course spirit and too much on the heart and of course appetite below the belt at that point we have then the tripartite soul one of the great contributions that Plato made in trying to reflect on the nature of human beings now what's important here is that each of these each of these parts have a virtue that is to say they themselves have an excellence and the part as we said each individual part has an excellence that a reason is with that a spirit is courage and that of appetite is moderation and he argued that they are controlled by the virtue they try to seek their virtue and the ideal individual that is the individual who is in harmony with itself is one that exercises these virtues through these parts now justice he says is a dependent variable depending on the virtues the realization of the virtues of each of the parts of the soul so that that complex concept of virtue that it's not a given it's a dependent variable upon each of these then constitutes the justice of the individual this means that there should be a rational ordering of these in this relationship so that just as the rational part says no it's wrong to drink so the appetite of POD may continue to exercise its urgency but what was peculiar about the human these human faculties here is that there is no self governance on these two faculties that the only self-governing element of the Faculty is that of Reason so that to the degree to which reason is able to exercise censorship and control to that degree you have a just individual but if that control is lacking and if it gets out of hand at that particular juncture the appetites will go wild we call that addiction or a total incapacity here to have that kind of self-control and spirit remains as a dependent on its own range it will sometimes ally itself with reason and other times it will lie itself with appetite and so you'll find that very often our passion is to satisfy our appetites when we know rationally that's not a good thing whether it's alcoholism or drug or insatiable appetites these have no governance that part of our soul has no governance the only part of the soul that is governing is the rational part that's an important recognition because it means that unless we have reasoning persons in a community the society the individuals will not be just and by implication your society will not be just if it's consistent of consists of these kinds of persons you can think of that in terms of the current election and think of those who are trying to understand what would be the best resolution of the problems that we presently have financially economically and socially and see to what degree those are ruled by reason and what degree they're ruled by ideological appetites or spirit at any rate this is the just individual this is a model that he uses on which actually to model the notion of the state the state he says is the soul writ large bit large reading by that that we can see in the state as a whole the elements here only these elements are distinct and they function slightly differently so you will have a ruling group or person you'll have a in the state you'll have the producers and you'll have the Guardians and the state thus is a itself a dependent the justice in the state or if you like rationality in the state depends on the virtues of the ruling group their capacity to use reason and understanding and knowledge to control the state itself to control it over the producing element because it produces know what they want what know what they're supposed to do because part of Plato's theory here is what's called a division of labor and a specialization of function he was very clear about that way before Marx that specialization of function and division of labor is an essential element here of both well certainly of the state now when the ruling group functions well in accordance with the purposes of the state and the producers continue to produce you have then the virtues of wisdom in the state and moderation or temperance in the state and you have here courage fighting in Afghanistan and not necessarily Iraq so the point being here that you can divide the society into these forms and each of them thus has a virtue and the just state is a state in which the relationship to the parts is exactly or similar to there's an analogy here that he likes to play with and it's of course a very valuable kind of of analogy now what is the unjust solo well younger soul is one where the appetites takes control or the spirit takes control where it's incapable of being so you have a kind of analytic account here of the distorted or unhappy soul ineffectual so well the same thing goes for the state and it's you the mosses state in which the producers are in control of the ruling group would itself be a frustrating state a state in which the producing group would have no real capacity to rule and so you'd have to have a dictatorship of proletariat in order to make it work if you have a military state as we often do where the Guardians take over and control the itself become the the strength of government they become the forces employing the army not only to defend the state but to defend the military that controls the state then you have a distortion and an unjust state because its purpose is not to realize the best of the community but rather that part of the community here which both advances the interests of that particular group so here you have this Platonic vision of what works and doesn't work in terms of the relationship between the parts and the virtues of these parts all combining to constitute the virtue of the policy the whole sorry now those two seem to be easily enough established but then question emerges what exactly is it to realize wisdom what exactly how in the world is a state to try to fulfill this division of labour and the fulfilment of the best of the states and the answer gives is education education is that mechanism for advancing from possibility to actuality from taking the raw talents of persons and developing those raw talents into capacities that have the capacity ultimately to rule so his vision of education is very much of a liberal education every individual should be exposed every individual men and women every member of the state will start from the beginnings to be educated and to work their education through to the point of their talents the point of their talents is as they get off at different stages they may get off at the point at which their produces they may get off at the point at which their Guardians such as John McCain and they may get off at the point at which they are part of a ruling group guardians of course are those who are the protectors of the state but who themselves are not in position here to decide what they ought to protect so the ones who decide what they ought to protect is the ruling group and the guardians are best used to support the ruling group and when they have a coup d'etat and they take over the rule you have a distorted state and uh adjusting same thing for the human individual now in order to have this education you have to have education here that proceeds to an understanding of what are we how do we educate and one of the great virtues of the Republic is that it has a theory of knowledge a theory of philosophy called epistemology or pisum logical pattern and that theory of knowledge is that we need to distinguish between those things that are accessible to us by appearances and those things that are only accessible by reflection and understanding we need to distinguish the apparent and the real what goes beyond the apparent to the real so he distinguishes two levels the so-called visibles what's obvious which just the minimal education requires to the intelligible what behind what is behind the obvious to the more profound understanding of what connects things to other things one of the things that Plato is absolutely convinced of is that we know nothing about individual things we just know their appearances to understand a particular thing is to understand not only that one but how it is part of a kind or sort or type of thing so this he calls the form of the thing the form of the thing is that which binds instances of the same kind to be instances of that kind what is it that makes that thing what it is what is it so and this gives us a clue to something which is very puzzling which is why when you move into a new place you're able to identify things you've never physically seen before you've never seen those buildings you've never seen those people you've never seen those trees you've never seen that lake and yet you know what they are the capacity to know what something is irrespective of the fact you haven't confronted it previously becomes then a key to understanding the form of the thing and also a reflection of Plato's thought that there must have been in some way some prior understanding or knowledge some a priori some prior confrontation and so we had a theory about that but that confrontation is based on the idea that we recognize new things we recognize recognize the by virtue of our understanding of the forms of things so all knowledge has to proceed from the rudimentary elements of the visibles up through to the intelligible x' and up to the form of forms now he thinks of there being such a thing as form of forms and we're we asked the question what is a form of forms he says well I can't tell you but I can tell you this just as the Sun is a necessary condition of the visible and indeed it is if without the Sun everything would go dark all energy would cease the Sun is to the visibles as the form of the good is to the intelligible so it gives us a metaphor and the metaphor is that the essential nature of of knowing is dependent audibly on the form of the good so his epistemology follows through there are levels of epistemological sophistication but ultimately that level of sophistication here is vindicated here by the fact that we ourselves recognize that simply the way things look is not the way things are we distinguish the looks of something from what that something is the nature of that thing and that's what we seek in using cognition understanding the attempt to go beyond the particular to the form so this is rudimentary for Plato's Republic it is essential that this be followed and that is the the theory of knowledge that he explores and then I can't tell you to what how important Plato was to the concept of liberal education we ourselves would not be in the liberal arts college that we are if we're not for Plato's advocacy of the both physical education and moral education physical education and intellectual education and that intellectual education is not just the accumulation of information intellectual information is the capacity to begin to exercise judgment and to be able to move with understanding beyond information information needs to be sorted it needs to be clarified and categorized and made clear and that's where education comes in and we are grateful to Plato for teaching Aristotle because Aristotle began really what is our contemporary university Aristotle began the inquiry into biology bills into psychology the anima into logic into ethics into metaphysics and the whole of our contemporary series of studies is dependent upon this continuing challenge to the way things are appear and the way things are finally because I don't want to do any more on this there is the critique he has of democracy and it's very valuable it's very useful I think to be able to see democracy as compared to the kind of society which he advocates when he says you have this you have certain degrees of the virtues of the ruling group the Guardians the producers and they produce different kinds of states different kinds of political systems one such political system is meritocracy he calls it aristocracy what if meritocracy it is the fact that those who are in positions of authority exercised that authority out of knowledge and understanding and not out of other forms of over say selective choices of some kind meritocracy from meritocracy he argues there is democracy then oligarchy then democracy and then finally because democracy very often just doesn't work you get tyranny tyranny is the use of is the lighting on of power on one person as representative of all the people and Plato is brilliantly clear as to how democracy very often becomes tired of its freedom and equality because on the freedom and equality there is no there is no taste there is no capacity here to distinguish mean what's better or worse and the result is a form of of complete and total adequacy opened this to every other every possible choice so that some people prefer this other people for that they're all open democracy has this tendency oligarchy tends to be the rule of the few which is the rule of money and he's very clear about that he says at one point we talked about oligarchy ESA's so we must explain how democracy is transformed into oligarchy yes and surely the manner of this transformation is clear even to the blind well what is it like well a treasure house filled with gold which each possesses destroys the Constitution first they find ways of spending money for themselves then they stretch the laws relating to this then then they're wise disobey the laws entirely then in the end victory loving and honor loving men become lovers of making money on money lovers and they praise and admire wealthy people and appoint them as rulers while they dishonored poor ones again he says well isn't the city changed from the oleg our key to a democracy in some such way as this because of its insatiable desire to attain what is set before it as the good namely the need to become as rich as possible in what way well he says since those who rule the city do so because they own a lot I suppose they're unwilling to enact laws to prevent young people who've had no discipline from spending and wasting their wealth so that by making loans to them and secured by the young people's property and then calling those loans in they themselves become even richer and more honored this that's a favorite thing to do so isn't it clear that by now that it's impossible for city to honor wealth at at the same time for its citizens to acquire moderation but the one or the other is inevitably neglected that's pretty clear and because of this neglect and because they encourage bad discipline oligarchy is not infrequently reduced people to comment stamp to poverty that's right and these people sit idle in the city unemployment any rate the critique therefore of democracy Aligarh hits home it's close it may not have it may not nail it because it does depend to the degree to which we're able to elect and to choose people in the ruling group who in fact have that capacity to rule but it's very easy to denigrate down to a period in which anarchy and that ultimately tyranny takes over thank you very much so I'm going to save up okay let's take some questions good understood at all I'll take my hat off my plate off now myself yeah that's right that's right he thinks that he thinks it's bad for young people to read bad things he thinks that young people should be informed about what is respected and valued and what will in turn produce value and then a great deal of exposure to indulgences and to corruption that is to say two forms here that corrupt the soul in fact may well destroy so this notion of freedom of censorship is a peculiarly democratic notion and it has great cost the cost being that we that there is a lack of taste there is a lack of control and as a lack of standards our norms tend to be conventionally what the polls say so the market allows for any kind of interest whether it's pornographic whether it's drugs whether it's alcohol any kind of of appetite can be satisfied in the democratic society where there is total freedom and he thinks that's bad why because he believes that living well demands self-control it demands continuing moderate monitoring of one's capacities and powers and appetites continuing monitoring why because the individual faculties had not are insatiable they are not capable of self-monitoring and thus so it's not the society we live in it's society which he considers to be better than the one we live in in that of exercises a certain set of a paradigm of what is the ideal society he calls it an ideal society and he says likely such a society will never exist but it might if philosophers became kings that is if philosophy became the dominant and relevant and I think that's true yeah that is to say I think it's to the good that student study philosophy because they study this kind of thing and by so doing recognize how to exercise critical choices in critical decision-making trends of goods yeah anything systemic to say about whether herself or himself is a instrumental for an intrinsic good well the presumption is that when we asked what is the good life how shall I lead a life and each of us has to ask that question question we are taking our own lives as intrinsically valuable in its own right as something that we need to bend all of our capacities all our resources to to direct it to that fulfillment so he's taking it as an intrinsic good life per se and I would agree with that now yeah yes his argument against the Democratic state is that generally it corrupts by the lower the lower tastes tends to corrupt upper to higher tastes and while there may be initially a range of opportunities of books of musical offerings of art forms of inventions such as cell phones all the rest the there is a way in which we become well informed about what's the best in the among these and if we can cultivate that through our education system through our educational system if we can cultivate that through our education system then we can serve democracy but it's compatible with the fact of an educated elite elite is a bad word in our community because we're all Democrats but elite is not a bad word for Socrates or Plato because elite means simply abled to respond to in a way that others are not able to respond to particular kinds of needs of concerns words are fully philosophy yes no I think I think they hang together I well they hang together in that good literature I make is I don't want to say it's didactic but every piece of literature affects us in certain ways or oh - if we read it seriously

Channel: Colgate University

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Keywords: jbalmuth, spring09, Colgate University (College/University), Plato, Philosophy (Field Of Study)

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Length: 62min 29sec (3749 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 12 2009