understand how Plato might hold that all things really were, or
(as we say) “realized their idea,” in proportion as they accomplished
the special end or good for which they were adapted.
Even Socrates, in spite of his aversion to physics, was led by
pious reflection to expound a teleological view of the physical
world, as ordered in all its parts by divine wisdom for the realization
of some divine end; and, in the metaphysical turn which
Plato gave to this view, he was probably anticipated by Euclid of
Megara, who held that the one real being is “that which we call
by many names, Good, Wisdom, Reason or God,” to which
Plato, raising to a loftier significance the Socratic identification
of the beautiful with the useful, added the further name of
Absolute Beauty, explaining how man’s love of the beautiful
finally reveals itself as the yearning for the end and essence of
being.
Plato, therefore, took this vast stride of thought, and identified the ultimate notions of ethics and ontology. We have now to see what attitude he will adopt towards the practical inquiries from which he started. What will now be his view of wisdom, virtue, pleasure and their relation to human well-being?
The answer to this question is inevitably somewhat complicated. In the first place we have to observe that philosophy has now passed definitely from the market-place into the lecture-room. The quest of Socrates was for the true art of conduct for a man living a practical life among his fellows. But if the objects of abstract thought constitute the real world, of which this world of individual things is but a shadow, it is plain that the highest, most real life must lie in the former region and not in the latter. It is in contemplating the abstract reality which concrete things obscurely exhibit, the type or ideal which they imperfectly imitate, that the true life of the mind in man must consist; and as man is most truly man in proportion as he is mind, the desire of one’s own good, which Plato, following Socrates, held to be permanent and essential in every living thing, becomes in its highest form the philosophic yearning for knowledge. This yearning, he held, springs—like more sensual impulses—from a sense of want of something formerly possessed, of which there remains a latent memory in the soul, strong in proportion to its philosophic capacity; hence it is that in learning any abstract truth by scientific demonstration we merely make explicit what we already implicitly know; we bring into clear consciousness hidden memories of a state in which the soul looked upon Reality and Good face to face, before the lapse that imprisoned her in an alien body and mingled her true nature with fleshly feelings and impulses. We thus reach the paradox that the true art of living is really an “art of dying” as far as possible to mere sense, in order more fully to exist in intimate union with absolute goodness and beauty. On the other hand, since the philosopher must still live and act in the concrete sensible world, the Socratic identification of wisdom and virtue is fully maintained by Plato. Only he who apprehends good in the abstract can imitate it in such transient and imperfect good as may be realized in human life, and it is impossible that, having this knowledge, he should not act on it, whether in private or public affairs. Thus, in the true philosopher, we shall necessarily find the practically good man, who being “likest of men to the gods is best loved by them”; and also the perfect statesman, if only the conditions of his society allow him a sphere for exercising his statesmanship.
The characteristics of this practical goodness in Plato’s matured thought correspond to the fundamental conceptions in his view of the universe. The soul of man, in its good or normal condition, must be ordered and harmonized under the guidance of reason. The question then arises, Virtue a harmony. “Wherein does this order or harmony precisely consist?” In explaining how Plato was led to answer this question, it will be well to notice that, while faithfully maintaining the Socratic doctrine that the highest virtue was inseparable from knowledge of the good, he had come to recognize an inferior kind of virtue, possessed by men who were not philosophers. It is plain that if the good that is to be known is the ultimate ground of the whole of things, it is attainable only by a select and carefully trained few. Yet we can hardly restrict all virtue to these alone. What account, then, was to be given of ordinary “civic” bravery, temperance and justice? It seemed clear that men who did their duty, resisting the seductions of fear and desire, must have right opinions, if not knowledge, as to the good and evil in human life; but whence comes this right “opinion”? Partly, Plato said, it comes by nature and “divine allotment,” but for its adequate development “custom and practice” are required. Hence the paramount importance of education and discipline for civic virtue; and even for future philosophers such moral culture, in which physical and aesthetic training must co-operate, is indispensable; no merely intellectual preparation will suffice. His point is that perfect knowledge cannot be implanted in a soul that has not gone through a course of preparation including much more than physical training. What, then, is this preparation? A distinct step in psychological analysis was taken when Plato recognized that its effect was to produce the “harmony” above mentioned among different parts of the soul, by subordinating the impulsive elements to reason. These non-rational elements he further distinguished as appetitive (τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν) and spirited (τὸ θυμοειδές or θυμός)—the practical separateness of which from each other and from reason he held to be established by our inner experience.
On this triple division of the soul he founded a systematic view of the four kinds of goodness recognized by the common moral consciousness of Greece, and in later times known as the Cardinal Virtues (q.v.). Of these the two most fundamental were (as has been already indicated) wisdom—in its highest form philosophy—and that harmonious and regulated activity of all the elements of the soul which Plato regards as the essence of uprightness in social relations (δικαιοσύνη). The import of this term is essentially social; and we can explain Plato’s use of it only by reference to the analogy which he drew between the individual man and the community. In a rightly ordered polity social and individual well-being alike would depend on that harmonious action of diverse elements, each performing its proper function, which in its social application is more naturally termed δικαιοσύνη. We see, moreover, how in Plato’s view the fundamental virtues, Wisdom and Justice in their highest forms, are mutually involved. Wisdom will necessarily maintain orderly activity, and this latter consists in regulation by wisdom, while the two more special virtues of Courage (ἀνδρεία) and Temperance (σωφροσύνη) are only different sides or aspects of this wisely regulated action of the complex soul.
Such, then, are the forms in which essential good seemed to manifest itself in human life. It remains to ask whether the statement of these gives a complete account of human well-being, or whether pleasure also is to be included. On this point Plato’s view seems to have gone through several oscillations. After apparently maintaining (Protagoras) that pleasure is the good, he passes first to the opposite extreme, and denies it (Phaedo, Gorgias) to be a good at all. For (1), as concrete and transient, it is obviously not the real essential good that the philosopher seeks; (2) the feelings most prominently recognized as pleasures are bound up with pain, as good can never be with evil; in so far, then, as common sense rightly recognizes some pleasures as good, it can only be from their tendency to produce some further good. This view, however, was too violent a divergence from Socratism for Plato to remain in it. That pleasure is not the real absolute good, was no ground for not including it in the good of concrete human life; and after all only coarse and vulgar pleasures were indissolubly linked to the pains of want. Accordingly, in the Republic he has no objection to trying the question of the intrinsic superiority of philosophic or virtuous[1] life by the standard of pleasure, and argues that the philosophic (or good) man alone enjoys real pleasure, while the sensualist spends his life in oscillating between painful want and the merely neutral state of painlessness, which he mistakes for positive pleasure. Still more
- ↑ It is highly characteristic of Platonism that the issue in this dialogue, as originally stated, is between virtue and vice, whereas, without any avowed change of ground, the issue ultimately discussed is between the philosophic life and the life of vulgar ambition or sensual enjoyment.
