Plato For Beginners

By Robert Cavalier and Eric Lurio

All philosophy is a footnote to Plato. No other person so shaped the Western world and the way we think about it.

Plato’s questions remain as real for us today as they were 2500 years ago, and as human beings, we can not avoid their presence nor shirk our responsibility to attempt to answer them:

• What is Justice?
• What is Truth?
• What is Beauty?
• What kind of society should we build?
• How do we know what we know?

Plato For Beginners introduces the reader to Socrates, Plato’s mentor whose martyrdom led Plato to formulate a new system of knowledge based on reason. Socrates was found guilty and sentenced to death for refusing to recognize the gods of the State and for introducing other divinities. He was also found guilty of corrupting youth.

Plato For Beginners also covers the history of Greece as well as the life and ideas of this great philosopher and his influence over time, from early Christianity to the 20th Century. The reader learns what he meant by Truth, Beauty, and the Good. Classical dialogues such as Symposium, Phaedo, The Apology, and The Republic are all explored in the context of his time and our own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: For Beginners
• Release date: Aug 21, 2007
• ISBN: 9781939994189

Robert Cavalier

Robert Cavalier received his BA from New York University and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Duquesne University. In 1987 he joined the staff at Carnegie Mellon's Center for Design of Educational Computing, where he became Executive Director in 1991. Dr. Cavalier was Director of CMU's Center for the Advancement of Applied Ethics and Political Philosophy from 2005-2007. He is currently co-Director of Southwestern Pennsylvania Program for Deliberative Democracy.

Book preview

WHO WAS PLATO?

First of all, Plato was not a god or a superman. —He was a man. —All men are mortal. —Therefore, Plato was a mortal. Flesh and blood, and let’s not forget it!

More specifically, Plato was a philosopher — perhaps the greatest the world has ever known.

—Someone who deals with philosophy (a Greek word meaning love of wisdom). So why should we care about wisdom? In answer to that question, Aristotle, a student of Plato, once said:

It means that understanding the world, ourselves, and how we know what we know…makes our lives deeper, more meaningful — basically, BETTER!

Besides, as a species we seem to have a need to ask…

Plato’s approach to this question — and the answers he arrived at — changed the way we think about the world and our place within it.

Plato’s influence has been so great that a prominent modern philosopher, ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD, once declared:

Plato’s answers to these and many other questions had a profound effect on the future of:

HISTORY OF GREECE

OUR STORY BEGINS LONG, LONG AGO IN A CIVILIZATION FAR, FAR AWAY...

Today, we tend to think of Greek art and culture as Classical. By that we mean cool, clean lines, white marble sculpture, tapering columns — grace and restraint. In reality, Greek buildings and statues were painted in bright, garish colors.

The paint wore off over time, thus leaving us with the wrong impression. The Greeks, as we know from their writing, were actually a people torn between reason and madness, freedom and slavery, war and peace, life and death.

In the year 428 B.C., Plato was born into this world — the center of which was the important city-state (polis) of Athens. High above the walls encircling the city was the Acropolis — the temples built to honor the gods. Foremost of all was the goddess Athena, protectress of the city. The embodiment of strength in peace, Athena ruled over this cradle of philosophy.

Athens was one of the oldest city-states in Greece. Its foundation is lost in the mists of pre-history. But by Plato’s time, it had grown into the richest, most populous Greek city. Its central location and access to the sea made it the commercial and cultural center of Hellas, the Greek world.

Greece was poor in natural resources. It was dry, with few rivers. The soil was great for growing olives and grapes, but other crops grew with difficulty. The land was cut up by mountain ranges and divided by water, especially the Peloponese and the islands of the Aegean.

This physical situation encouraged the growth of small self-sufficient city-states. All shared a common language and basic culture, but sometimes little else. In fact, the Greeks seemed to enjoy fighting each other more than anyone else.

Politically, Greek city-states were organized in one of three ways:

AUTOCRACY— rule by one, king or tyrant

OLIGARCHY— rule by the few, the noble and the rich

DEMOCRACY— rule by the many, or the people as a whole

Athens was known as the birthplace of democracy. In reality, it was a three-tiered society.

THE FIRST TIER consisted of all the male citizens, ranging from wealthy landowners to merchants and even including poor laborers.

THE SECOND TIER consisted of free women and resident foreigners.

THE THIRD TIER consisted of the large slave population.

Only the male citizens could vote in the Assembly and hold positions in the Council, which governed the city-state.

The political evolution of Athens went through many stages. At first, it was a primitive monarchy led by hereditary kings. Then, the land-owning aristocrats assumed control. The earliest experiments in democracy were the reforms of Solon, which failed because of imbalances of power and clan rivalries. They were followed by an oligarchy in which power was based on wealth. Tyrants, whose authority was based on military force, eventually seized power. They were able to rule by playing the poor against the rich.

Finally, in 510 B.C.,