Read Online The Seekers: The Story of Man's Continuing Quest to Understand His World by Daniel J. Boorstin - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Daniel J. Boorstin
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Plato returned to Athens, and never again played a role in Syracusan politics. Dion himself kept trying. He returned to Syracuse hoping to take over the government, but was murdered by one of his own officers. Perhaps the finest fruit of all these Sicilian adventures was Plato’s vivid autobiographical letter.
Could someone of Plato’s intelligence and his chastening experience of political intrigue in Athens and Syracuse ever really have hoped to test his utopian vision in the profligate city-state of Syracuse? May he not at least have welcomed the opportunity, not available in Athens, to see what good could be done by one properly instructed dictator? Or perhaps he thought that his improved constitutions could help the Greek communities in Sicily resist the invading Carthaginians.
* * *
The Way of Dialogue, with its idealization of the spoken word—the sparks that fly in living conversation—makes it difficult to define the doctrines of particular philosophers. It is risky to turn Socrates’ questions into answers. Of all literary forms, then, dialogues are least suited to summary. Still, one idea more than others that have emerged from Plato’s works has become a symbol of “Platonism” and a clue to Plato’s own way of seeking. This was his Theory of Ideas (or Forms). We cannot know how much of it was owed to Socrates, but the historic influence of the theory is plainly due to Plato and his disciples.
One impulse to the theory must have been the malaise in Athens in the lifetimes of Socrates and Plato. Thucydides in his
History of the Peloponnesian Wars
gave a classic description of that malaise:
. . . the whole Hellenic world was convulsed. . . . The sufferings which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and terrible, such as have occurred and always will occur, as long as the nature of mankind remains the same. . . . Revolution thus ran its course from city to city. . . . Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice, moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence. . . . Thus religion was in honour with neither party; but the use of fair phrases to arrive at guilty ends was in high reputation. . . . Thus every form of iniquity took root in the Hellenic countries by reason of the troubles. The ancient simplicity into which honour so largely entered was laughed down and disappeared; and society became divided into camps in which no man trusted his fellow.
To confront this impermanence, the Sophist teachers had prepared their own paradoxical response: “Man is the measure of all things.” Protagoras’ maxim was a way of seeking solace from the evanescence of everything else in the permanence of Man himself. At the same time they expressed the relativity of all other standards. So they taught rhetoric and the arts of persuasion, how to get on in the world where you happened to find yourself. Socrates, on the other hand, had sought to unmask the false contemporary certitudes, and to provide a technique of universal definition.
Plato, moving along Socrates’ path, came up with a dazzling idea, to which he gave unforgettable form in his myth of the cave in
The Republic:
Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen
Could someone of Plato’s intelligence and his chastening experience of political intrigue in Athens and Syracuse ever really have hoped to test his utopian vision in the profligate city-state of Syracuse? May he not at least have welcomed the opportunity, not available in Athens, to see what good could be done by one properly instructed dictator? Or perhaps he thought that his improved constitutions could help the Greek communities in Sicily resist the invading Carthaginians.
* * *
The Way of Dialogue, with its idealization of the spoken word—the sparks that fly in living conversation—makes it difficult to define the doctrines of particular philosophers. It is risky to turn Socrates’ questions into answers. Of all literary forms, then, dialogues are least suited to summary. Still, one idea more than others that have emerged from Plato’s works has become a symbol of “Platonism” and a clue to Plato’s own way of seeking. This was his Theory of Ideas (or Forms). We cannot know how much of it was owed to Socrates, but the historic influence of the theory is plainly due to Plato and his disciples.
One impulse to the theory must have been the malaise in Athens in the lifetimes of Socrates and Plato. Thucydides in his
History of the Peloponnesian Wars
gave a classic description of that malaise:
. . . the whole Hellenic world was convulsed. . . . The sufferings which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and terrible, such as have occurred and always will occur, as long as the nature of mankind remains the same. . . . Revolution thus ran its course from city to city. . . . Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice, moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence. . . . Thus religion was in honour with neither party; but the use of fair phrases to arrive at guilty ends was in high reputation. . . . Thus every form of iniquity took root in the Hellenic countries by reason of the troubles. The ancient simplicity into which honour so largely entered was laughed down and disappeared; and society became divided into camps in which no man trusted his fellow.
To confront this impermanence, the Sophist teachers had prepared their own paradoxical response: “Man is the measure of all things.” Protagoras’ maxim was a way of seeking solace from the evanescence of everything else in the permanence of Man himself. At the same time they expressed the relativity of all other standards. So they taught rhetoric and the arts of persuasion, how to get on in the world where you happened to find yourself. Socrates, on the other hand, had sought to unmask the false contemporary certitudes, and to provide a technique of universal definition.
Plato, moving along Socrates’ path, came up with a dazzling idea, to which he gave unforgettable form in his myth of the cave in
The Republic:
Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen
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