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Authors: Charles Freeman
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powerful individual, institution or government to claim that it had discovered the Platonic Forms, and with them the right to impose them on others, for a dictatorship to emerge. Among its casualties would be the speculative tradition of empirical research, to which Plato appeared to give such little value. 11
Platonic thought assumes that the material world is not the ideal setting for the soul. A more satisfying home exists elsewhere, in the immaterial world of the Forms. This was a revolutionary concept in the Greek world, where, for example, the afterlife was traditionally seen as a shadowy and unfulfilling existence, and it created a radical disagreement between those who attempted to live life to the full within the material world, and whose philosophies and ethical systems reflected that, and those who saw the soul as trapped temporarily in this inadequate and transient world before a greater one to come. Platonists also assumed there was a deep gulf between the world of the senses and that of the Forms. Because it was accessible to so few and needed such an arduous training to reach it, the world of the Forms was divine in a very different sense from that of the traditional world of the Greek gods, whose human forms, behaviour and rich mythology of exploits made them comprehensible, even accessible, to all. If a Form, say that of a supreme Good, was equated with an actual God, then he would indeed be an awesome and remote one. Inherent in Plato’s thought was a massive realignment of the relationship between human beings and “the divine” that involved, inevitably, the diminution of the place of “the ordinary man” in the scheme of things. The fruits of Platonic reason might not be self-confidence but the opposite—a realization of how insignificant human beings were in the face of the superior, unchanging, hierarchical world of the Forms. Explicit too was the grading of human beings into a minority who could grasp the nature of the immaterial world and the mass who could not and were therefore dependent on the minority for elucidation. Effective reasoning was the preserve of the few, who had to persuade or coerce those who were unable to grasp the nature of the Forms.
Plato’s insistence on an other-worldly basis for ethical belief can be contrasted with Aristotle’s. In many respects Aristotle’s thought is as alien to us as Plato’s: he was aristocratic by temperament and supported the subjection of women and the institution of slavery. Only the free mature male, according to Aristotle, is able to think rationally. Yet, unlike Plato, Aristotle was concerned to create an ethical system that was based in the everyday world of human existence. He was much more sensitive to and accepting of the humanity of others than Plato was. “One may observe in one’s travels in distant countries,” he writes in the
Nicomachean Ethics,
“the feelings of recognition and affiliation that link every human being to every other human being.” 12 Virtue (the word used was
arete,
often translated as “excellence,” although this risks depriving it of its ethical connotations) is not an abstract principle to be searched for outside the material world. It exists when a human being lives a life in which his nature as a human being is realized at the highest level. By living in this way he will reach
eudaimonia,
a state of well-being or flourishing. This state does not just happen; it has to be worked for through the actual experience of living. First a child must be brought up by its parents to be disposed towards the doing of “good,” but he can only become “good” through the active doing of “good” acts. First the right orientation, the desire to do good as a way of living, then the practical experience of doing “good,” which somehow fixes “goodness” within the character of the doer. (This concept, important for educationalists among others, has gained new life in modern philosophical debates.) Yet
Platonic thought assumes that the material world is not the ideal setting for the soul. A more satisfying home exists elsewhere, in the immaterial world of the Forms. This was a revolutionary concept in the Greek world, where, for example, the afterlife was traditionally seen as a shadowy and unfulfilling existence, and it created a radical disagreement between those who attempted to live life to the full within the material world, and whose philosophies and ethical systems reflected that, and those who saw the soul as trapped temporarily in this inadequate and transient world before a greater one to come. Platonists also assumed there was a deep gulf between the world of the senses and that of the Forms. Because it was accessible to so few and needed such an arduous training to reach it, the world of the Forms was divine in a very different sense from that of the traditional world of the Greek gods, whose human forms, behaviour and rich mythology of exploits made them comprehensible, even accessible, to all. If a Form, say that of a supreme Good, was equated with an actual God, then he would indeed be an awesome and remote one. Inherent in Plato’s thought was a massive realignment of the relationship between human beings and “the divine” that involved, inevitably, the diminution of the place of “the ordinary man” in the scheme of things. The fruits of Platonic reason might not be self-confidence but the opposite—a realization of how insignificant human beings were in the face of the superior, unchanging, hierarchical world of the Forms. Explicit too was the grading of human beings into a minority who could grasp the nature of the immaterial world and the mass who could not and were therefore dependent on the minority for elucidation. Effective reasoning was the preserve of the few, who had to persuade or coerce those who were unable to grasp the nature of the Forms.
Plato’s insistence on an other-worldly basis for ethical belief can be contrasted with Aristotle’s. In many respects Aristotle’s thought is as alien to us as Plato’s: he was aristocratic by temperament and supported the subjection of women and the institution of slavery. Only the free mature male, according to Aristotle, is able to think rationally. Yet, unlike Plato, Aristotle was concerned to create an ethical system that was based in the everyday world of human existence. He was much more sensitive to and accepting of the humanity of others than Plato was. “One may observe in one’s travels in distant countries,” he writes in the
Nicomachean Ethics,
“the feelings of recognition and affiliation that link every human being to every other human being.” 12 Virtue (the word used was
arete,
often translated as “excellence,” although this risks depriving it of its ethical connotations) is not an abstract principle to be searched for outside the material world. It exists when a human being lives a life in which his nature as a human being is realized at the highest level. By living in this way he will reach
eudaimonia,
a state of well-being or flourishing. This state does not just happen; it has to be worked for through the actual experience of living. First a child must be brought up by its parents to be disposed towards the doing of “good,” but he can only become “good” through the active doing of “good” acts. First the right orientation, the desire to do good as a way of living, then the practical experience of doing “good,” which somehow fixes “goodness” within the character of the doer. (This concept, important for educationalists among others, has gained new life in modern philosophical debates.) Yet
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