Why Plato? Part I: The Forms Written By Lou Marinoff
Some readers might wonder why Plato (circa 428 – 348 BC) is one of Bellwether’s featured practitioners. Of course you have all heard of Plato, even if you never studied him. Why? Because his name is virtually synonymous with Western philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead declared that the history of Western philosophy is 2,000 years of footnotes to Plato. Here we’ll look at one reason why: Plato’s theory of Forms. Plato dramatized the dialogues of Socrates, his mentor, while later using Socrates as a mouthpiece for expressing his own mature views. They witnessed a horrific period: the Peloponnesian War (431-401 BC), an inter-civil clash between Athens and Sparta, in whose aftermath Socrates was accused of impiety and corrupting the youth, and was put to death in 399. Plato’s response was a magnificent theory of justice: The Republic. “How can we establish and sustain a prosperous, just, and enduring polity?” he asked. He regarded ethics and politics as the most difficult things to get right. So first, he required mastery of geometry, based on deductive reasoning, before tackling more slippery concepts like laws and justice, prone to emotional tides that inundate reason. Plato posted this sign outside his Academy: “Let No-One Ignorant of Geometry Enter Here.” Plato believed that nature and humans alike create imperfect copies of perfect and unchanging
Forms, or Ideas. These immaterial Forms reside beyond space-time and the causal nexus. For example, we observe all kinds of spherical objects in nature, from stars and planets to fruits and berries. We also manufacture myriads of spherical things, from balls for sports to ball bearings for machines. They are all better or worse approximations of the “Ideal” or “Pure Form” of the sphere, which we can envision and—in this case—also describe with mathematical precision. We can use the power of our minds to apprehend a particular Form we wish to copy. The more clearly we apprehend it, the better our copy will be. What makes a copy accurate is an “essence” that flows from the Form into the copy itself. So, we call something “beautiful” when it is infused with the essence of beauty. We call athletes “MVPs” when they display exceptional essences of their sport. If we encounter a breed of dog we have never seen before, yet still
recognize it as a dog (and not a cat), Plato would say it’s because we recognize its essence as canine (and not feline). For this reason Plato is called an “essentialist”: in his view essence precedes existence. Plato’s moral, social, and political philosophy flows from his essentialism. Our leaders are good, wise, and just only to the extent that they have apprehended the Pure Forms of Goodness, Wisdom, and Justice, and reflect their essences in laws and policies. Clearly a tall order. Plato’s uplifting theory of human nature also follows from his essentialist theme. He argued that virtues themselves are innate in us, not learned. But they can remain dormant, requiring activation. This is the main purpose of education, and the primary role of a philosopher. Plato asserted that we are all “pregnant with wisdom,” and so the philosopher’s job is that of a
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