Hi welcome back to philosophy 101 Morals
and Society from Honolulu Community
College, I am Chris Ann Moore. Today we'll
be doing program 9: Plato and Objective
Ethics. Before we start on Plato I want
to remind you of just a few things, one
of them is is that you should be reading
your chapters as we go along as you've
been watching these programs I'm sure
you notice that we have a lot of
information to squeeze into 56 minute
episodes that's why I start rushing at
the end sometimes but there's no need to
fear, read your chapters also answer your
study questions your midterm and your
final are coming out of your study
questions and go over the discussion
questions at the end of the chapter as
we move on now into philosophical
ethical theories those discussion
questions are going to become more and
more important in terms of you
developing your own moral theory. So last
time we talked about Socrates, this time
we're going to talk about Socrates most
famous pupil, Plato.  Plato lived in Athens
as well, he lived from 427 to 348 BC. As
you remember from our last episode
Socrates was solidly middle class, his
father was a sculptor and his mother was
Midwife. Plato on the other hand was
extremely aristocratic, he came from one
of the oldest and wealthiest families in
Athens. Plato was expected by all to
become one of the political leaders of
Athens actually and it seems from
stories told about him of his youth he
had every attribute necessary to be
successful in that job or in any other
job for that matter, as stories have it
Plato was extremely handsome. He was an
accomplished athlete, he had won medals
in wrestling. He was also a decorated
soldier, he had distinguished himself in
three himself in three battles and he
had actually won a medal for bravery so
it seemed with his aristocratic lineage,
his wealth, his access
his looks, his talent, his decoration as a
war hero that he was all set to become a
political leader in Athens
that was until Plato meant Socrates when
Plato met Socrates, he was immediately
drawn to this man he thought, here was
someone who had wisdom, here was someone
who knew the good and Socrates in Plato
inspired Plato to begin that
journey in search of the good, and so
Plato is one of those young men who hung
around Socrates in the marketplace of
Athens as he questioned the leading
citizens of Athens, and when Plato was
eventually, when Socrates was eventually
arrested and tried, found guilty and put
to death Plato was absolutely devastated.
This was made much worse by the fact
that those aristocratic families, who
were taken over after Sparta had won the
war if you remember from last time,
Athens lost the Peloponnesian wars and
Sparta won, and when Sparta
conquered Athens she dismantled the
democracy and put in place a rule of 30
aristocrats. These 30 aristocrats were
brutal, bloodthirsty, and cruel and they
spent their time lining their own
pockets and revenging their enemies. Well,
some of those aristocrats were Plato's
own family members. So Plato had seen his
own family members become ultimately
immoral and bloodthirsty, and then when
that aristocracy was dismantled and the
democracy was put back in place,
the democracy then turned around
arrested, tried, convicted, and executed
his teacher, not only his teacher and his
friend, but the man who Plato said was
the wisest and best man of Athens. So
here was Plato 27 years old and absolutely depressed and
disgusted. What Plato did is he turned his back on
his homeland and he left, he left for 12
years as a matter of fact, and just
think how long that would be to leave
your home now, so imagine how long a
12-year journey really is was back then.
We're not sure where Plato went although
there is some evidence that he probably
studied in Egypt, he probably also spent
some time with the Pythagoreans in Italy
and it seems he probably studied
geometry with Euclid. What we do know is
that after 12 years Plato came home, and
once he came home he set up a school, to
teach what he had learned on his long
journey and in his time with Socrates
that school he called the Academy. The
Academy would be the primary center or
one of the primary centers of learning
for the next 900 years. The Academy would
last until it was finally closed by the
church the Catholic Church in 525 AD, so
for nine hundred years the school that
Plato setup would be a premier center of
learning in the West. Now we're not sure
what was taught at the academy,
many of Plato's dialogues have been lost
and in those dialogues he doesn't tell
us exactly what was taught at the
academy, but we can from the 40 dialogues
that we have, know much about Plato's
philosophy, because what Plato really did
on this long journey his he went in
search of the good, he went in search of
wisdom and Plato wanted to prove that
the good was objective and knowable. That
was the primary search that he went on
to believe again that morality is not
relative, that it is not a matter of
opinion, that is not a matter of culture,
and is not a matter of power that it is
not okay, to execute Socrates, it is not
okay to pursue wealth
and power and not to care what you do to
people in the meanwhile, and so in his
dialogues Plato expresses his theory of
the good, his objective moral theory now
as we said in the last episode, what we
know of Socrates philosophy what we know
as Socrates moral theory comes from
Plato's dialogues
so really Socrates, morality is Plato's
morality, because Plato indeed wrote
those dialogues. It is very difficult
from the dialogues to know when Socrates
is speaking his own philosophy and when
Plato is using Socrates as a mouthpiece
for his own philosophy, as I said before
generally the earlier dialogues of Plato
are thought to reflect Socrates true
philosophy and the later dialogues are
thought to be Plato's own thoughts.
However it is Plato writing those
earlier dialogues and so, Socrates belief
in immortality is Plato's belief in the
immortality of the soul
Socrates belief in reincarnation is
Plato's belief in reincarnation
Socrates belief that desire prevents us
from hearing and listening to our soul
is Plato's belief that desire prevents
us from hearing and listening to our
soul. Socrates belief in the sacrifice of
personal will is Plato's belief in the
Socrates in the sacrifice of personal
will, and Socrates belief that the good
was necessary for human happiness and
fulfillment is Plato's belief that the
good was necessary for human happiness
and achievement the idea that morality
is objective universal and knowable is
shared by the two of them. However it
becomes obvious in Plato's later
dialogues, that unlike what we say
Socrates believed that in order for
human being to be happy, they needed to
be good.  Plato on the other hand did not
believe that goodness was sufficient for happiness. Goodness was not
enough something else was necessary, you see and
had become abundantly clear to Plato,
that in order to be happy, a human
being needed not only to be good that
indeed was necessary, but that a human
being also needed to live in a just
state. So, for Plato happiness was the
just person in the just state. Happiness
could only be achieved by the just
person in the just state, now when we're
referring to the just state that means a
just government, that means a society in
which social and civil laws are just
where people are not in treated with
injustice, you see it become very clear
to Plato what happens to the just
person in the unjust state. What happened
to Socrates, Plato the man Plato thought
was the most just person, he was killed
so what happens to the just person in
the unjust state, they suffer and often
they are killed. Unfortunately Plato's insights have only
been played out again and again and
again in history, what happened to
Abraham Lincoln, he was shot. What
happened to Mahatma Gandhi, he was shot.
What happened to Martin Luther King,
Malcolm X,  Anwar Sadat, shot
Anwar Sadat was the prime minister of Egypt,
the president I'm sorry of Egypt who
negotiated the Middle East treaty with
Israel, the very first time an Arab
nation had recognized Israel and agreed
to negotiate a peace, Anwar Sadat along
with Menachem Begin who sat down with
him to do that treaty won the Nobel
Peace Prize Anwar Sadat was shot.
Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister
who worked for a peace treaty with the
Palestinians and agreed to remove
settlements from the Gaza Strip was shot.
Nelson Mandela who worked to end
apartheid in South Africa spent 20 years
in prison
again and again history has shown us
what happens to the just person in the
unjust state, unfortunately those who
work for peace and justice and
non-violence and equality, often suffer
the terrible injustice of the cruel and
the unjust. So to Plato, happiness
required both being just and living
under a just government in a just state,
and so Plato set out to define what
those things were, what is a just person
and what is just state, and actually
Plato believed that these two were
mirror images of one another
that the just person and the just state were
mutually interdependent, trying to define
the just person and the just state occupied
much of Plato's philosophy and
particularly, the philosophy of his
most influential book the Republic. The
Republic has actually been so
influential in the development of
Western philosophy and Western thought
of all kinds, that Alfred North Whitehead
a very famous philosopher of the 20th
century said that, philosophy is the
Republic everything else is just a
footnote. So when the Republic Plato sets
out to define the just person the just
state, but in order to do this Plato
first has to set up his epistemology. If
you remember epistemology is a theory of
knowledge, epistemology attempts to answer how can
I know what I know is true
remember this epistemology it's a theory
of knowledge, how do I know what I know
is true, so Plato in his epistemology
wanted to prove that, universal truths
existed and were accessible. That
universal truth, could be known and accessed
by the human mind in other words that
there was an objective good, there were
objective moral laws, and human beings
could know them, and they could know them
in such a way that they would be sure to
be universally and eternally true. Now
you may ask do such universal and
eternal truths absolutely exist,
well as we said before it is certain
they do or at least some philosophers
are very certain that they do for
example two plus two equals four. Two
plus two equals four in Guam, Nairobi, New
York, Mars if there's anyone up there
calculating, and two plus two has always
equaled four and will always equal four
two plus two equal four in 10,000 BC and
two plus two equal four in 20,000 ad. So
what Plato wanted to show is that there
were philosophical truths, that were
eternally and universally true, just as
there were mathematical truths, that are
internally and universally true. So how
was Plato going to do this. Well to begin
with, Plato began looking at the
Pre-Socratics, if you remember when we
talked about the Pre-Socratic
philosophers briefly in Chapter seven
I mentioned that we would discuss two
Pre-Socratic philosophers who would be
extremely important in understanding the
development of Plato's theory later on.
These philosophers were Heraclitus and
Parmenides. Now if you remember both
Heraclitus and Parmenides believed that
everything was just one thing, but they
each believed that the nature of that
one thing were entirely different as a
matter of fact they were opposites in
their beliefs and they both provided
reasoned arguments for their conception
of the nature of that one.
Let's go back and remember Heraclitus
said, that all is one and that one is
constantly changing, that there is no
stability, that actually all stability is
an illusion, an appearance, reality is
constant change
Heraclitus had said very famously you
can't step into the same river twice by
that Heraclitus meant that the river is
always flowing, and that indeed your body
is always changing so the river is not
the same from moment to moment and
neither are you
Parmenides on the other hand, had said
the truth is nothing changes, reality is
eternal and unchanging. All change is an
illusion, all change is an appearance, all
change is a deception that our senses
perceive, but in fact reality does not
change
Heraclitus is world of change, Plato
called the world of becoming, Parmenides
world, eternal and unchanging Plato
called the world of being, and to begin
his epistemology Plato had to figure out
who's right. Was Heraclitus right,
or Parmenides right, because they were
completely contradictory views of
reality, and Plato solve that by saying
they are both right. Plato said there are
two worlds, there is a world of constant
change, of ever becoming which is the world
that we exist in, and there is another
world. There is a world of being, which is
eternal and unchanging, you see this is
not so different from Socrates. If you
remember with Socrates, Socrates believed
that we had existed before we were born
in another world, and then we were born
into this world, and when we die we return to the
other world. That there are not, there is
not just one world there are two worlds.
Plato will split the worlds in two no
longer will the West conceive as the
world as one. Now this vision of the
world as two worlds will become
extremely important in the future
because of course it will be
incorporated into Christian theology,
four or five hundred years from now and
the world of ever changing becoming will
be considered earth. The world of eternal
being will be called of course heaven.
Well, now that Plato had established that
there are two worlds that Heraclitus and
Parmenides are both correct
he said about defining how we might have
knowledge of these two worlds. For Plato
there were four levels of knowledge,
there are two levels of knowledge of the
world of becoming and two levels of
knowledge of the world of being. So there
are four kinds of knowledge, in fact
Plato calls his theory of knowledge the
divided line because as you'll see on
the picture, there are four dividing
lines between each level of knowledge
now let's look at these levels of
knowledge the first level of knowledge
Plato called illusion. Illusion is
believing what you are told, this is
knowledge that comes from what other
people tell you to think. This is the
level of culture, this is the level of
tradition, simply because it is culture,
simply because it is tradition not
reasoned this is the level of listening
to Authority, this is the level of I was
raised that way, and to Plato of course
none of these could lead to truth none
of these could lead to universal
knowledge. Now the second level of
knowledge Plato called experience,
now experience experience of this world
experience of the world of the senses,
can also never lead to eternal
unchanging universal truth, because as we
have seen since Chapter three that
experience is always limited, relative,
deceptive, and because my experience is
my experience and your experiences is your
experience they can't lead to eternal
truth. I don't know what it's like to
grow up in your family, I don't know what
it's like to grow up with your religion,
necessarily in your part of the country
and you cannot know what it's like to
grow up in my family in my part of the
country, in my religion, in my culture you
see we've had totally different
experiences of life, and so how I
perceive things are relative to me and
how you perceive things of the senses is
relative to you, and as we talked in
Chapter three, senses are deceptive and
senses are extremely limited, so the
first two levels illusion and experience
cannot lead to knowledge but can only
lead to opinion so, believing what you're
told and the experiences of your senses
cannot lead to eternal truth and only
eternal truth was considered real
knowledge by Plato, the first two levels
can only lead to opinion, but Plato was
not interested in opinion. Plato had seen
what opinion are thinking that
morality was relative had done to Athens
he had seen what opinion or thinking
morality was relative had done to
Socrates. Plato wanted to prove there was
eternal unchanging truth and Plato said
we could have such knowledge because we
can have knowledge of the world of being,
of the eternal unchanging world, now in
order to understand, how we might have
knowledge of this world of being
we have to understand a little bit of
Plato's theories of the forms. You see if
you remember from Socrates he said when
we were in this other world
we had experienced perfect justice,
perfect goodness, perfect beauty, that he
was assured that we had experienced
these ideas, because we compare
everything down here to those ideas,
saying everything is more or less just
more or less beautiful, more or less
equal, so he experiences but what had we
experienced. Well Plato said what we had
experienced is the perfect form of
justice, the perfect form of beauty, the
perfect form of equality in other words
what we had experienced were the
essences, our archetypes of these
qualities. The form, in the world of
being, are reflected by everything in the
world of the senses as a matter of fact
everything in the world of the senses is
a mere shadow of the perfect instance
found in the world of being, how can we
think about this well think of a cookie
cutter, a cookie cutter shapes each
cookie right, star-shaped, little
gingerbread men well the gingerbread man
the form is in the cookie cutter the
actual cookie is something quite
different. So what Plato is thinking is that these
forms shape the material of this world
shape the essence of the things of this
world and actually the things in this
world only have beauty, justice, goodness
truth to the extent that they
participate
in these perfect forms. So think about
this in the world of being, we have these
perfect forms of justice, of love, of
courage, and these perfect forms are like
molds or patterns by which the material
of this world is shaped or formed like
dough through a cookie cutter or you
want to think again like light through a
flashlight. If light from a flashlight
moves through a pattern the light
assumes that pattern, if light moves
through a star pattern then what will
move through that pattern, is a star
shape of light that is how the form
shape everything in this world. Now this
might been a little bit easier for the
Greek mind to understand because
actually the Greek mind have been used
to thinking of perfect essences of
qualities like justice and beauty. For
the Greeks, the gods and goddesses were
perfect archetypes or essences Aries was
the archetype or essence of war.
Aphrodite was the archetype or essence
of desire. Well really what Plato did in
a sense as he took the personification
away and what was left was the essence
of war, the essence of desire, the
archetype, the perfect form, the perfect
shape and this is what exists in the
world of being. The perfect forms of
everything that exists in this world
that is what Socrates meant when he said
we experienced perfect justice before we
were born, we experienced perfect
goodness before we were born because for
Plato in addition to all these other
forms of qualities like justice, goodness
beauty there were forms of everything in
this world
there's the perfect red, the perfect
triangle, the perfect circle, and there is
the form of forms. Now the form of forms
Plato would say, is the good.
We want to understand the good as the
form of forms we can compare it to the
Sun in this world just as in this world
the sun's light is responsible for the
energy, vitality in fact the life of
everything in this world the light of
everything in this world, the good are
the form of forms in the world of being
gives light and energy and vitality to
all the other forms, in fact we may think
of the good as the light from the
flashlight that becomes molded by the
forms in the world of being, and that is
how our sense experiences of this world
think of that flashlight again, now if we
look at that flashlight the light from
the flashlight, we would think of as the
good, the star we would think of as the
form, and the formed light that is
the star itself would be the sense
experience in this world. Now you may
have to think about that a little bit
but let's look at the four levels of
knowledge again. In this world the world
of becoming the world of the senses we
have the Sun, whose light shines down on
us without which we would not be alive
without without which there would be no
energy, no vitality, no light. Well the
same can be said of the good in the
world of being, the good gives light to
all the forms and as we said before
knowledge of this plane only leads to
opinion, but to know the forms in the
world of being is to begin to access
eternal truths because the world of
being is unchanging in truth Plato
thought by necessity must be unchanging.
So we can begin to access knowledge
of the world of being, by beginning to
understand the perfect forms.
We can reason about the forms, and by
applying logic to the forms of
experience, rather than to any persons
particular experience, we can begin to
access universal truth so the third
level, that leads to knowledge is reason
which is using logic on the forms of
experience. How can we understand this
well let's think about this, there is no
such thing as a perfect circle, in this
world oh sure we have all sorts of
shapes that resemble circles but there's
no such thing as a perfect circle first
of all the perfect circle, is one
dimensional, and everything in this world
is 3-dimensional so it would be
impossible for a perfect circle to exist
in this world, further all the circles in
this world are a little bit off, however
by experiencing all the individual 
imperfect circles in this world, we can
conceive in our mind really in our
imagination in our minds eye we can
think about the perfect circle, and then
we can apply logic to that perfect
circle in this case let's say the laws
of geometry which are perfect logic, well
I don't know perfect but their logic, we
take logic apply it to the perfect
circle, and we can build bridges with the
formulas that we come up with, we can
build temples with the formulas that we
can come up with, we can begin to access
knowledge when we can think in terms of
the forms of experience rather than
particular experiences and when we apply
logic to those forms, we can arrive at
new truths. Let's take a quality, we have
never experienced perfect love, perfect
love does not exist on this plane, but by
examining all of our individual
particular experiences of love, we can
remember love itself. By examining my
love for my mother, my love for my children, the love for a lover
the love for friends, the love for
pets, all the different forms are
particular instances of experience in
this plane all the different particular
experiences of love by examining them, I
can begin to remember unconditional love
perfect love, the love that I once knew
in the world of being, now once I can
think that love I can begin to access
other truths, as a matter of fact it is
this perfect form of love that poems are
usually written about, that songs on AM
radio are usually written about, in fact
a lot of people spend their entire lives
seeking that perfect love that doesn't
exist on this plane, and writing poems
thinking other people have it, but
if you think of the form of love and
apply logic to it,  you can arrive at
other truths, so this is Plato's third
level of knowledge when reason is
applied to the forms of experience
rather than their particular instances,
and therefore you can arrive at
knowledge. But for Plato there was a
fourth level of knowledge and for Plato
this fourth level of knowledge, was
direct experience of the forms in the
world of being. Direct experience of the
forms in the world of being, in other
words you directly perceive the good, you
directly perceive beauty, you directly
perceive justice, you see them as clearly
as you would see the things of the
senses now there's some argument here as
to what Plato is really talking about
there are those who believe that Plato
is talking about there comes a time when
the mind can image the form of the good
perfectly, and can see it as clearly as
one might see something in the senses
there are others
who believe that Plato is talking
about a mystical experience, that Plato
is talking about breaking through the
illusions of this reality and reaching a
whole another level of consciousness
something similar to Nirvana as we
talked about in Buddhism, but that Plato
is describing a mystical experience. I am
one of those who believes the Plato was
describing a mystical experience
I think this becomes clear in Plato's
allegory of the cave
Plato told a story called the allegory
of the cave in the Republic which is
quite famous, in which he explained his
four levels of knowledge. In the very
beginning of the story Plato says we are
like prisoners in a cave, but worse than
that not only are we prisoners in a cave
but we have been bound we are chained
and our heads are bound and we are
looking at the wall of the cave, but this
is all we can see so we think the wall
of the cave is reality, now
unbeknownst to us behind us is a fire
and people are walking back and forth in
front of the fire with sticks and
puppets, and they're talking now the fire
light moves through the puppets and it's
reflected on the wall of the cave well
the people who are chained, think that
their shadows in the wall of the cave
are real they think the noises that are
coming are coming from the wall of the
cave this of course is the level of
illusion this is how Plato describes a
level of the illusion it's like believing
something that is not real it's like
those people who go to a movie theater,
and the light is projected onto a screen
in front of them and they get so wrapped
up in the movie that they believe that
the movie is real you know people who
write to soap opera stars for medical
advice because they play doctors. Of
course we all fall into that a little bit
I did actually once, ever see the movie Thelma and Louise, very cool Susan Sarandon
and Geena Davis take a trip
through the desert in a convertible and
it was so beautiful and it looks so
wonderful, that a friend and I got in a
convertible and took a trip through the
desert, do you have any idea the problem
with this, we didn't either
we believe the movie we thought it would
be so wonderful you can't ride through
the desert in a convertible, it's hot the
Sun is beating down it's a hundred and
thirty five degrees in the shade I
burned my entire body, beside from that
there's dust everywhere constantly
blowing at you I breathed in more desert
sand it wasn't the least bit glamorous
or beautiful it was hot and dusty and
my hair was never so knotted in my life
I fell into that trap of believing an
illusion
well Plato would say the same thing is
that we do the same thing every time
that we believe what we're told, that we
believe something just because someone
said so now what it is true that in life
sometimes we just have to trust what we
are told in this complicated world
especially for instance if I go home
tonight and on the news,
the anchormen says there was a car
bombing in Iraq I will believe what he
said, now I will be skeptical about the
news station that I listen to, and I do
apply reason to choosing my sources of
information, but when push comes to shove
there are just some things I have to
believe, but as the information gets more
and more and more important for instance
what I believe is morally good and right,
what I believe about the way I ought to
live my life, what I believed about what
is wrong and harmful, what I believe
was worth standing up against, I'm not
gonna trust Authority with that, I want
to find out for myself with my own
reason as do you those of you who chose
to walk through the door where you
strive and struggle for your own answers
so the next level, there are those who
break their chains and turn around and
tentatively at first, start exploring the
cave they see the fire and the people
with the puppets and they begin getting
information
about the cave, but of course
this level is the level of experiences
this is the level of using your senses
for information and of course what one
is getting is information about a cave,
but there is another level of knowledge
this is the third level one some few
people are able to find the exit of the
cave, how do they do so they've begin
applying logic to the forms of their
experience in the cave, and by applying
logic to the forms of the experience in
the cave they begin to use reason and
they begin to crawl out of the cave and
then some very few actually make it all
the way out of the cave and when they do
they find themselves in a whole other
world, and this world Plato would say is
so bright and so beautiful and the
colors are so vivid, that their previous
experience is revealed to be exactly
what it was a limited sad experience in
a cave. Here they are in the world of a
new Sun, the good vibrant colors of
unchanging reality and beauty, but of
course they're faced with a dilemma
those who have merged from Plato's cave
and Plato's story have the same dilemma
that buddha did when buddha reached
nirvana
they have a choice, they can stay in this
whole new world or feeling sorry for
those left down in the cave, they can go
back, what would you do. Well Plato says
those who go back, they go back into the
cave and once again get thrown by the
darkness but when they're being able to
move them around again they try to wake
the people up hey it's a wall, but what
happens the people in the cave think
they're crazy, the people in
the caves think they're insane, and
so they laugh at them, but it's worse
than that
unlike the end of Buddhas story at the
end of Plato's story, Plato says if the
people who had returned to the cave try
to bring the people from the cave out of
the cave, those people will kill them if
they catch them, you see of course Plato
was no optimist about human nature and
of course Plato was devastated by
Socrates death, Plato had seen what had
happened to the wise man who tried to
wake people up and let them know they
were living in illusion. So, with the four
levels of knowledge: illusion, experience
reason and understanding, Plato set forth
his epistemology and of course the last
level understanding, direct perception of
the world of being it certainly seems to
me that Plato was talking about a
mystical experience but philosophers
rarely agree with each other and they
all have their own arguments. What is
important is that once Plato set up his
epistemology he was then able to do what
he set out to do in the beginning which
was to define the just person and to
define the just state so just to go over
what we've talked about here the the
crux of Plato's epistemology, we have the
divided line which is the four levels of
knowledge, the simile of the Sun
understanding the form of forms the good
by comparing it to the Sun in this world
and of course the allegory of the cave
once these are set forth Plato begins
his definition of the just person in the
just state. Now, we're not going to cover
Plato's political theory in this course
but suffice it to say who do you think
Plato thought should rule, well of course
the only people Plato thought should
rule is those who had emerged from the
cave, only those who had
seen the good and knew the good
undoubtedly would do the good at all
times and so to Plato only philosopher
King could rule, and so it seems that at
the end Plato leaves us with a utopia a
utopia is an idealized vision. Plato's
vision was a vision of rule by
philosopher king and perhaps even Plato
himself knew it was an ideal although
there is quite a bit of evidence that
Plato himself thought that it could be
approximated, he took several trips down
to Syracuse to convince the tyrant
Dionysius to try to set up this kind of
state but Plato ultimately failed, but in
establishing his epistemology, Plato also
establishes what is the just person. Now
for Plato in order to understand Plato's
theory of what are just person is we
have to understand Plato's theory of the
soul. Plato like Socrates believed that
we are an immortal soul but for Plato
there were three parts to our soul, you
see we don't have just one soul Plato
thought this was quite apparent why
because we're often at war with
ourselves
for instance, part of me wants to study
for my philosophy exam and get an A, part
of me wants to go to the party.
So a lot of times we seem to be torn
different parts of our soul leading us
in different directions, so as Plato
examine these parts of ourselves that
can pull us all over the place he
determined that there are three parts of the
soul and he called these three parts of
the soul: reason, spirit, and appetite. Now
reason is that part of a soul of course
which is capable of logic, which is
capable of thinking, which is capable of
critical thinking particularly. Spirit is
will, that is our emotions and our
willpower and of course appetite is our
desires, now for Plato in order
be a just person each part of the soul
must acquire a specific virtue
reason of course, must acquire wisdom.
Spirit of course must acquire courage and
appetite must acquire temperance.
In other words moderation again we find
a similarity with Buddhism,
appetite or desire, appetite of the body
in this case is to be found through a
middle way of moderation of temperance
well when this three parts of the soul
each have these virtues when reason is
wise, when spirit has courage and
appetite has temperance or moderation
the just person can be realized but only
if reason leads you see the just person
cannot be being pulled in all these
different directions by the different
desires of the parts of their soul, only
reason of course for Plato would allow
someone to be just only the reason would
be able to acquire wisdom and perceive
the good therefore reason must lead.
Reason must lead in spirits, reason leads
with wisdom spirit follows with courage
and appetite follows with temperance you
see Plato use the image of a chariot
that only when the charioteer guides
wisely and the two horses follow
harmoniously will the entire assemblage
move forward in balance, and in the human
being only when reason leads wisely, when
spirit follows with courage and when
appetite follows with temperance will
the person be just in harmonious and
this entire package is when we use the
word justice this is Plato's picture of
the just person. Now, once Plato had
established his epistemology he had
defined the just state and he had defined
the just person, he had as far as he was
concerned
and firmly argued for an objective
theory of morality not only that but he
said that each person has a certain area
of their soul which is strongest in them
although in each person reason must lead
there are some people who are by nature
more inclined to reason that is the
strongest part of their soul there are
others who are more inclined to follow
their spirit and there are still others
that are more inclined to follow their
desires and so in a just state, each
person would be given the job dictated
by the nature of their soul naturally
those in whom reason was dominant should
rule, those in whom spirit was dominated
should be the Warriors, and those in whom
desire dominated should be the merchants
and tradesmen and this was all the needs
of a state in the fifth century BC as
far as Plato is concerned. Government
protection and nourishment needs the
trades, so when the just person is doing
their right work in the just state
happiness is accomplished. Now it may seem
clear to you that like Socrates Plato
has not given us a specific method to
know the good in specific circumstances
philosophers wouldn't attempt to do that
till later, and we will get to them you
see the Greek philosophers were not rule
makers they were more concerned about
proving our establishing the existence
of an objective moral good, that could be
known not by divine command which was
confusing but by human reason and
refuting relativism and morality was a
matter of opinion or culture or power. In
doing so Plato set up theories and ideas
that will have enormous impact on the
development of the entire Western world
and certainly on the develop of the
Western development of the development
of the Western mind. Plato's theory
of two worlds will be incorporated into
Christian theology as earth and heaven
Plato's form of the good of course
will later be interpreted as God
Christianity will also believe that
harming others harms the self, that the
morality is objective and knowable, and
in the sacrifice of personal will. Future
philosophers will believe as did Plato
that universal knowledge can be obtained
only by applying logic to a priori ideas
to ideas that are not based on
experience a large part of the entire
Western philosophical tradition will
believe that, and so in his epistemology
Plato laid the foundation for much of
what would follow. Platonic dualism, the
two worlds, the objective existence of
the good or God, the immortality of the
soul of course Christianity would reject
reincarnation but they would incorporate
the immortality of the soul and in a way
that was much more Greek than it was
actually Jewish which is of course the
roots of Christianity. A priori ideas and
logic, and many many other things that we
have not yet covered and so we have one
of the bases of the Western mind. Few
people will be as influential as Plato
actually I think Plato's influence is
only matched by that of his student
Aristotle so now we're gonna look at Aristotle
ethics which are virtue ethics as
I said Aristotle is Plato's most famous
student. Aristotle unlike Socrates and
Plato was not an Athenian. Aristotle
actually was from Macedonia which is a
country north of Greece. Aristotle
lived from 384 to 322 BC, as I said he
was born in Macedonia he was the son of
the court physician to King Philip the
second, who ruled there and Aristotle
eventually was sent by his father to
study at
Plato's Academy and Aristotle too like
Socrates and Plato was quite a character
it seems that Aristotle liked fine
clothes and good wine and lots of
friends, here he enjoyed the good life in
other words in fact one time Plato said
that of Aristotle that he cares far too
much about clothes to be a philosopher
however it also turned out that
Aristotle was absolutely brilliant and
Plato also once said that the Academy
consisted of the body of the students
and the brain of Aristotle.  Aristotle 
would prove to be Plato's most brilliant
student and he would remain at the
academy for twenty years. After that he
would start his own school the Lyceum
just outside of Athens.
Of course geniuses rarely get along well
and Aristotle and Plato were geniuses on
top of that philosophy as we saw from
just a few episodes ago is based on a
tradition of argumentation in other
words unlike traditions in which
knowledge is just handed down from
teacher to pupil and the pupil is just
expected to honor the master and past
the tradition on, in philosophy knowledge
is based on arguments and whoever has
the best argument, is considered to have
the best conclusion, and students are
expected to argue with their teachers
nicely but to argue with their teachers
in the terms of presenting philosophical
arguments so the fact that they were
both geniuses and this tradition of
argumentation it really shouldn't
surprise anyone to find out that Aristotle
will eventually disagree with
Plato, although he accepted many of
Plato's ideas Aristotle ultimately
rejected Plato's theory of the forms
which was essential to Plato's
philosophy, Aristotle also rejected the
idea that we need to have knowledge of
another world, in order to obtain truth
in order to perceive eternal and
universal truth that we had to go to
some other world Aristotle actually
believed the truth could be found in
this world, it was like Aristotle was one
of the prisoners in the cave he was
bound and freed himself and began to
look about the cave but instead of
looking for a way out of the cave
Aristotle's like wow this is fascinating
Aristotle spent his career exploring
the cave and Aristotle indeed believed
that knowledge could be gained from
experience of the cave
you see Aristotle didn't believe that
form was something that existed in
another plane, for Aristotle form was
something that existed in the things of
this world, that the essence of something
could be found in the thing itself for
instance the form of cat is found in
the cat. The form of tree is found in the
tree that the catness of cat is the
form of cat the treeness of all trees is
the form of tree and by observing all
trees are as many trees as possible one
could begin to understand the essence of
tree the form of tree one by studying
many many cats, can begin to understand
the essence of cat. In other words for
Aristotle the things of this world could
be understood by studying the things
themselves that the forms of the things
of this world could be understood by
observing the things of this world and
applying reason to them Aristotle to
believe that form was an a priori idea
in the sense that it was not relative it
was not an opinion that it wasn't the
particular experience but that these
particular experience one could
understand that experience and so this
idea that knowledge can come from
experience, reason, and observation of this
world will begin the basis of a whole
new tradition in the West because
really what Aristotle is, is the
first scientist Aristotle sets up the
entire tradition of science where as
Plato is a transcendentalist who looks
for truth in another world Aristotle is
an experimenter who looks for truth in
this world and actually those are the
two foundations of the Western mind and
will follow us for the rest of history
in the West part of us will seek for a
better life in the afterlife for
transcendence and escape of this world
and part of us will seek to conquer this
world through science, that is
Plato and Aristotle, and we will continue
looking at Aristotle in the next episode
in the meantime I want to remind you
that your student learning outcomes
which are flashed at the end of each
episode are also on your web then your
student learning outcomes will point to
those aspects of each lecture that are
essential. The essential idea is actually
the essence the archetype of each
program is outlined in your student
learning outcomes so make sure you look
at them, read your chapter on Plato,
answer your study questions, consider the
discussion questions, check for your
assignments, and of course complete your
assignments hand them in and participate
in your web discussions and so I will
see you next time when we will talk more
about Aristotle till then bye bye
