Plato relates philosophers with. Philosophy of Plato. What the philosopher looked like, his character

Philosophy is the highest science, which embodies the pure desire for truth. She is the only path to knowing yourself, God and true happiness. A true sage is drawn to philosophy not by a dry, rational craving for dead, abstract knowledge, but by a loving attraction (Eros) to the highest mental good.

The great Greek philosopher Plato

Plato on the dialectical method of philosophical knowledge

The world of things and the world of ideas in Plato - briefly

In addition to the perception of sensory, material of things, we have an idea of ​​general, abstract concepts - ideas. According to Plato's philosophy, an idea is something identical that occurs in at least two different things. But no one can cognize what does not exist - therefore, ideas really exist, although we do not feel them like sensory objects.

Moreover, only the world of intelligible ideas true exists, but the sensory world of things. Not a single sensory object is capable of being a complete manifestation of at least one idea, of embodying it entirely. In the world of things, true essences are hidden and distorted by the cover of formless, qualityless matter. Things are nothing more than a weak semblance of ideas - and therefore they are not true being.

Plato's teacher, Socrates

The structure of the universe according to Plato

Ideas of beauty and harmony are inseparable from reason. The distances between the orbits of the planets correspond to the first three numbers, their squares and cubes: 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 27. If you supplement the series of these numbers by inserting proportional numbers between them, you get a mathematical sequence corresponding to the relationships between the tones of the lyre. Hence Plato argues that the rotation of the celestial spheres creates musical harmony (“ harmony of spheres»).

But since the ideal and material principles are connected in the universe, it is not governed by one mind, and the second – by inert, blind and inert – force: the law of necessity, which Plato figuratively calls rock. The movements of the planets in the direction opposite to the movement of the starry sky prove that forces operating in the universe are opposite to one another. During the creation of the Universe, reason prevailed over the law of material necessity, but in some periods evil fate can achieve dominance over reason. God, having initially put intelligence into the world, then gives the universe freedom and only occasionally takes care of it, restoring a rational structure in the cosmos and preventing it from slipping into complete chaos.

Plato's doctrine of the soul - briefly

“Justice,” says Plato, “will be established only when philosophers become kings or kings become philosophers.” The upper, ruling class, in his opinion, should receive philosophical education and upbringing from the state from an early age. Poets, artists and, in general, all works of intellectual creativity should be subjected to strict government supervision, so that only noble, useful works, full of good moral examples, are disseminated in society. Not only the political, but also the personal of every citizen must be fully regulated by the state - right up to the establishment of a communist community of property and women.

The normal family in Plato's ideal republic is abolished. Relations between the sexes are also regulated by the state. Children immediately after birth are transferred to public foster homes, so they do not know their parents, and adults do not know those to whom they gave birth. Material goods produced by the lower, working class are distributed under state control. In general, Plato's political philosophy advocates the complete enslavement of every individual by society - so that he serves only the collective, and not his own personal interests.

Plato's works belong to the classical period of ancient philosophy. Their peculiarity lies in the combination of problems and solutions that were previously developed by their predecessors. For this Plato, Democritus and Aristotle are called taxonomists. Plato the philosopher was also an ideological opponent of Democritus and the founder of the objective.

Biography

The boy we know as Plato was born in 427 BC and named Aristocles. The city of Athens became the place of birth, but scientists are still arguing about the year and city of the philosopher’s birth. His father was Ariston, whose roots went back to King Codra. The mother was a very wise woman and bore the name of Periktion; she was a relative of the philosopher Solon. His relatives were prominent ancient Greek politicians, and the young man could have followed their path, but such activities “for the good of society” were abhorrent to him. All he enjoyed by birthright was the opportunity to receive a good education - the best available at that time in Athens.

The youthful period of Plato's life is poorly studied. There is not enough information to understand how its formation took place. The life of the philosopher from the moment he met Socrates has been studied more thoroughly. At that time, Plato was nineteen years old. Being a famous teacher and philosopher, he would hardly have taken up teaching an unremarkable young man similar to his peers, but Plato was already a prominent figure: he took part in the national Pythian and Isthmian sports games, was involved in gymnastics and strength sports, was fond of music and poetry. Plato is the author of epigrams, works related to the heroic epic and dramatic genre.

The biography of the philosopher also contains episodes of his participation in hostilities. He lived during the Peloponnesian War and fought at Corinth and Tanagra, practicing philosophy between battles.

Plato became the most famous and beloved of Socrates' students. The work “Apology” is imbued with respect for the teacher, in which Plato vividly painted a portrait of the teacher. After the death of the latter from voluntarily taking poison, Plato left the city and went to the island of Megara, and then to Cyrene. There he began to take lessons from Theodore, studying the basics of geometry.

After completing his studies there, the philosopher moved to Egypt to study mathematical science and astronomy from the priests. In those days, adopting the experience of the Egyptians was popular among philosophers - Herodotus, Solon, Democritus and Pythagoras resorted to this. In this country, Plato's idea of ​​the division of people into classes was formed. Plato was convinced that a person should fall into one caste or another according to his abilities, and not his origin.

Returning to Athens, at the age of forty, he opened his own school, which was called the Academy. It belonged to the most influential philosophical educational institutions not only in Greece, but throughout antiquity, where the students were Greeks and Romans.

The peculiarity of Plato’s works is that, unlike his teacher, he told his thoughts in the form of dialogues. When teaching, he used the method of questions and answers more often than monologues.

Death overtook the philosopher at the age of eighty. He was buried next to his brainchild - the Academy. Later, the tomb was dismantled and today no one knows where his remains are buried.

Plato's ontology

Being a taxonomist, Plato synthesized the achievements made by philosophers before him into a large, holistic system. He became the founder of idealism, and his philosophy touched on many issues: knowledge, language, education, political system, art. The main concept is idea.

According to Plato, an idea should be understood as the true essence of any object, its ideal state. To comprehend an idea, it is necessary to use not the senses, but the intellect. The idea, being the form of a thing, is inaccessible to sensory knowledge; it is incorporeal.

The concept of idea is the basis of anthropology and Plato. The soul consists of three parts:

1. reasonable (“golden”);
2. strong-willed principle (“silver”);
3. the lustful part (“copper”).

The proportions in which people are endowed with the listed parts may vary. Plato suggested that they should form the basis of the social structure of society. And society itself should ideally have three classes:

1. rulers;
2. guards;
3. breadwinners

The last class was supposed to include traders, artisans and peasants. According to this structure, each person, a member of society, would do only what he has a predisposition to do. The first two classes do not need to create a family or own private property.

Plato's ideas about two types stand out. According to them, the first type is a world that is eternal in its immutability, represented by genuine entities. This world exists regardless of the circumstances of the external, or material world. The second type of being is an average between two levels: ideas and matters. In this world, an idea exists on its own, and real things become shadows of such ideas.

In the described worlds there are masculine and feminine principles. The first is active, and the second is passive. A thing materialized in the world has matter and idea. It owes its unchanging, eternal part to the latter. Sensible things are distorted reflections of their ideas.

Doctrine of the Soul

Discussing the human soul in his teaching, Plato provides four proofs in favor of its immortality:

1. Cyclicality in which opposites exist. They cannot exist without each other. Since the presence of more implies the presence of less, the existence of death speaks to the reality of immortality.
2. Knowledge is actually memories from past lives. Those concepts that people are not taught - about beauty, faith, justice - are eternal, immortal and absolute, known to the soul already at the moment of birth. And since the soul has an idea of ​​such concepts, it is immortal.
3. The duality of things leads to a contrast between the immortality of souls and the mortality of bodies. The body is part of the natural shell, and the soul is part of the divine in man. The soul develops and learns, the body wants to satisfy base feelings and instincts. Since the body cannot live in the absence of the soul, the soul can be separate from the body.
4. Every thing has an immutable nature, that is, white will never become black, and even will never become odd. Therefore, death is always a process of decay that is not inherent in life. Since the body decays, its essence is death. Being the opposite of death, life is immortal.

These ideas are described in detail in such works of the ancient thinker as “Phaedrus” and “The Republic”.

Doctrine of knowledge

The philosopher was convinced that only individual things can be comprehended by the senses, while essences are cognized by reason. Knowledge is neither sensations, nor correct opinions, nor certain meanings. True knowledge is understood as knowledge that has penetrated into the ideological world.

Opinion is the part of things perceived by the senses. Sensory knowledge is impermanent, since the things subject to it are variable.

Part of the doctrine of cognition is the concept of recollection. In accordance with it, human souls remember ideas known to it before the moment of reunification with a given physical body. The truth is revealed to those who know how to close their ears and eyes and remember the divine past.

A person who knows something has no need for knowledge. And those who know nothing will not find what they should look for.

Plato's theory of knowledge comes down to anamnesis - the theory of memory.

Plato's dialectic

Dialectics in the works of the philosopher has a second name - “the science of existence.” Active thought, which is devoid of sensory perception, has two paths:

1. ascending;
2. descending.

The first path involves moving from one idea to another until the discovery of a higher idea. Having touched it, the human mind begins to descend in the opposite direction, moving from general ideas to specific ones.

Dialectics affects being and non-being, one and many, rest and movement, identical and different. The study of the latter sphere led Plato to the derivation of the formula of matter and idea.

Political and legal doctrine of Plato

Understanding the structure of society and the state led to Plato paying a lot of attention to them in his teachings and systematizing them. The real problems of people, rather than natural philosophical ideas about the nature of the state, were placed at the center of political and legal teaching.

Plato calls the ideal type of state that existed in ancient times. Then people did not feel the need for shelter and devoted themselves to philosophical research. Afterwards, they faced a struggle and began to need means for self-preservation. At the moment when cooperative settlements were formed, the state arose as a way to introduce a division of labor to satisfy the diverse needs of people.

Plato calls a negative state a state that has one of four forms:

1. timocracy;
2. oligarchy;
3. tyranny;
4. democracy.

In the first case, power is held in the hands of people who have a passion for luxury and personal enrichment. In the second case, democracy develops, but the difference between the rich and poor classes is colossal. In a democracy, the poor rebel against the power of the rich, and tyranny is a step towards the degeneration of the democratic form of statehood.

Plato's philosophy of politics and law also identified two main problems of all states:

• incompetence of senior officials;
• corruption.

Negative states are based on material interests. For a state to become ideal, the moral principles by which citizens live must be at the forefront. Art must be censored, atheism must be punished by death. State control must be exercised over all spheres of human life in such a utopian society.

Ethical views

The ethical concept of this philosopher is divided into two parts:

1. social ethics;
2. individual or personal ethics.

Individual ethics is inseparable from the improvement of morality and intellect through the harmonization of the soul. The body is opposed to it as related to the world of feelings. Only the soul allows people to touch the world of immortal ideas.

The human soul has several sides, each of which is characterized by a specific virtue, briefly it can be represented as follows:

• the reasonable side - wisdom;
• strong-willed – courage;
• affective – moderation.

The listed virtues are innate and are steps on the path to harmony. Plato sees the meaning of people's lives in the ascent to an ideal world,

Plato's students developed his ideas and passed them on to subsequent philosophers. Touching upon the spheres of public and individual life, Plato formulated many laws of the development of the soul and substantiated the idea of ​​its immortality.

The main part of Plato's philosophy, which gave the name to the whole direction of philosophy, is the doctrine of ideas (eidos), the existence of two worlds: the world of ideas (eidos) and the world of things, or forms. Ideas (eidos) are prototypes of things, their sources. Ideas (eidos) underlie the entire set of things formed from formless matter. Ideas are the source of everything, but matter itself cannot give rise to anything. The world of ideas (eidos) exists outside of time and space. In this world there is a certain hierarchy, at the top of which stands the idea of ​​​​the Good, from which all others flow. Good is identical to absolute Beauty, but at the same time it is the Beginning of all beginnings and the Creator of the Universe. In the myth of the cave, the Good is depicted as the Sun, ideas are symbolized by those creatures and objects that pass in front of the cave, and the cave itself is an image of the material world with its illusions. The idea (eidos) of any thing or being is the deepest, most intimate and essential thing in it. In man, the role of idea is performed by his immortal soul. Ideas (eidos) have the qualities of constancy, unity and purity, and things have the qualities of variability, multiplicity and distortion.

The human soul is represented by Plato in the form of a chariot with a rider and two horses, white and black. The driver symbolizes the rational principle in a person, and the horses: white - the noble, highest qualities of the soul, black - passions, desires and the instinctive principle. When a person is in another world, he (the charioteer) gets the opportunity to contemplate eternal truths together with the gods. When a person is born again into the material world, the knowledge of these truths remains in his soul as a memory. Therefore, according to Plato’s philosophy, the only way for a person to know is to remember, to find “glimmers” of ideas in the things of the sensory world. When a person manages to see traces of ideas - through beauty, love or just deeds - then, according to Plato, the wings of the soul, once lost by it, begin to grow again.

Hence the importance of Plato’s teaching about Beauty, about the need to look for it in nature, people, art or beautifully constructed laws, because when the soul gradually rises from the contemplation of physical beauty to the beauty of the sciences and arts, then to the beauty of morals and customs, it the best way for the soul to climb the “golden ladder” to the world of ideas. The second force, no less transformative of a person and capable of raising him to the world of the gods, is Love. In general, the philosopher himself resembles Eros: he also strives to achieve good, he is neither wise nor ignorant, but is an intermediary between one and the other, he does not possess beauty and good and that is why he strives for them. Both philosophy and love make it possible to give birth to something beautiful: from the creation of beautiful things to beautiful laws and fair ideas.

Plato teaches that we can all come out of the “cave” into the light of ideas, since the ability to see the light of the spiritual Sun (that is, to contemplate truth and think) is in everyone, but, unfortunately, we are looking in the wrong direction. In the Republic, Plato also gives us a teaching about the main parts of the human soul, each of which has its own virtues: the rational part of the soul has wisdom as a virtue, the concupiscible principle (the passionate principle of the soul) has moderation and temperance, and the fierce spirit (which can be ally of both the first and the second) - courage and the ability to obey reason.

Taken together, these virtues constitute justice. Plato draws parallels between parts of the soul and types of people in the state and calls justice in the state when each person is in his place and does what he is most capable of. In the Republic, Plato devotes a special place to guards (warriors) and their education, which should combine two parts: musical and gymnastic. Gymnastic education allows one to subordinate passions to reason and develop the quality of will. And the musical allows you to soften the furious spirit and subordinate it to the laws of rhythm and harmony.

Plato's name is not just famous, significant or great. With thin and strong threads, Plato's philosophy permeates not only world philosophy, but also world culture. In European history after Plato, there has not yet been a single century when they did not argue about Plato, either exorbitantly praising him, or belittling him in every possible way in some respect - historical-religious, historical-literary, historical or sociological.

The world religions that arose after Plato tried to win him over to their side, justifying their creed with his help and often achieving success in this. But this founder of creeds often turned out to be their insidious enemy. After all, Platonism is, at its core, still a pagan teaching. There came moments in history when Platonism suddenly rebelled with a formidable force against the monotheistic doctrine, and under its blows those very theological systems, of which Plato had previously seemed the most faithful ally, began to stagger and fall.

The Greeks of the classical and Hellenistic periods, the ancient Romans, Arab thinkers opposed to Islam, late antique Judaism and medieval bondage, Byzantine Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, the Byzantine mystics of the 14th century, who summed up the thousand-year-old Byzantinism, and the German mystics of the same century, who created a strong bridge from medieval theology to German idealism, and above all to Kant, theists and pantheists of the Italian Renaissance, German humanists, French rationalists and English empiricists, the subjective idealist Fichte, the romantic mythologist Schelling, the creator of the universal dialectic of categories Hegel, Schopenhauer with his doctrine of the world of reasonable ideas (which is usually relegated to the background in comparison with his doctrine of the unreasonable world will), Russian idealist philosophers up to Vladimir Solovyov and Sergei Trubetskoy, the latest German thinkers up to the neo-Kantians, Husserlians and existentialists, Italians up to Rosmini, Gioberti, Croce and Gentile, English -American philosophy up to Royce, Whitehead and Santayana, mathematics and physics up to Heisenberg and Schrödinger, countless poets and prose writers, artists and critics, scientists and amateurs, creators who break tradition, and ordinary people who cowardly defend it - all this is boundless Many minds have been arguing, worrying, getting excited about Plato for the third millennium, singing his praises or reducing him to the level of philistine mediocrity. We can say that Plato turned out to be some kind of eternal problem in the history of human culture, and it is still impossible to imagine when, how, under what circumstances and by whom this problem will be finally resolved.

This unprecedented situation has two consequences. After all, since Plato constantly influenced and, on the other hand, they constantly fought against him, the historian of philosophy receives very interesting, varied and more or less easily covered material at certain moments in history. But due to the fact that so many people thought and dreamed about him, accepted him or even simply studied him, Plato’s personality and work are shrouded in an impenetrable fog of various legends and tales, even a kind of myths and fairy tales. And the question arises: how to get through the impenetrable thickness of this fog to the real Plato, how to unravel, how to formulate the true historical essence of Plato’s philosophy, without falling into any exaggeration and, if possible, adhering only to the facts?

But what are facts? The whole difficulty lies precisely in the fact that it is often completely impossible to establish the facts, that is, to qualify the information that has reached us about Plato as information about facts, and not as fantastic fiction or just gossip. Some foreign researchers (for example, Zeller) acted very simply in these cases: they questioned all the numerous ancient evidence about Plato, only sometimes, very rarely, descending from the heights of their academic greatness to recognizing the reported event as a valid fact.

One of them turned out to be dubious and unreliable, another - contradictory, the third - extremely confusing, the fourth - an unfounded dithyramb, the fifth - a deliberate reduction, the sixth - a historical-religious or historical-philosophical stencil, etc. With such hypercriticism, we are not talking about Plato, We cannot know anything properly about any other ancient thinker, we cannot say anything reliable, and everything in general turns out to be unknowable. This was a huge era of bourgeois historiography, which now seems to have largely been outlived.

Overcoming hypercriticism has long affected Plato. However, we still do not have a sufficiently detailed critical biography of Plato. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, one of his last major biographers, himself admits such an incredible mixture of hypercriticism and fantasy that his talented two-volume biography of Plato cannot at present be considered the final word of science.

A modern researcher of Plato still has to construct his biography at his own peril and risk and fear for his constructions from some critical techniques still unknown to science. However, this applies not only to Plato. The more remarkable a person is, the more overgrown he is in subsequent generations with all sorts of myths and fairy tales, and the more difficult it is to get to the historical truth.

Plato's philosophy

The essence of philosophy according to Plato

According to Plato, philosophy is the highest science, which embodies the pure desire for truth. She is the only path to knowing yourself, God and true happiness. A true sage is drawn to philosophy not by a dry, rational craving for dead, abstract knowledge, but by a loving attraction (Eros) to the highest mental good.

Plato on the dialectical method of philosophical knowledge

Like Socrates, Plato believes that everyday impressions give us a distorted image of reality. Naive-direct knowledge is erroneous. It can only be clarified through intense reflection and application. philosophical dialectics, which teaches to analyze, connect, classify confusing sensory impressions, obtaining a general concept from their disordered mass - and, conversely, from a general concept to derive ideas about genera, species and individual objects.

The world of things and the world of ideas in Plato - briefly

In addition to the perception of sensory, material of things , we have an idea of ​​general, abstract concepts - ideas . According to Plato's philosophy, an idea is something identical that occurs in at least two different things. But no one can cognize what does not exist - therefore, ideas really exist, although we do not feel them like sensory objects.

Moreover, only the world of intelligible ideas true exists, and the sensory world of things is only its pale ghost. Not a single sensory object is capable of being a complete manifestation of at least one idea, of embodying it entirely. In the world of things, true essences are hidden and distorted by the cover of formless, qualityless matter. Things are nothing more than a weak semblance of ideas - and therefore they are not true being.

The structure of the universe according to Plato

IN Plato's philosophical ideas about space and the universe there is a strong influence of mythology - perhaps even the eastern traditions adopted by him during his many years of travel. God, the architect of the universe, when creating it, combined ideas with material matter. The essence of the universe is similar to that of man: it has a rational soul and is a personality. “The Architect of the World” distributed matter into five elements and gave the Universe the shape of that geometric figure into which all the others can be enclosed (inscribed) - a ball. This ball inside consists of concentric spheres along which the planets and celestial bodies move. The natural, and not arbitrary, nature of the movement of these luminaries serves, according to Plato, the best proof that the cosmos is controlled by an intelligent will.

Ideas of beauty and harmony are inseparable from reason. The distances between the orbits of the planets correspond to the first three numbers, their squares and cubes: 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 27. If you supplement the series of these numbers by inserting proportional numbers between them, you get a mathematical sequence corresponding to the relationships between the tones of the lyre. Hence Plato argues that the rotation of the celestial spheres creates musical harmony (“ harmony of spheres»).

But since the ideal and material principles are connected in the universe, it is not governed by one mind, and the second – by inert, blind and inert – force: the law of necessity, which Plato figuratively calls rock. The movements of the planets in the direction opposite to the movement of the starry sky prove that forces operating in the universe are opposite to one another. During the creation of the Universe, reason prevailed over the law of material necessity, but in some periods evil fate can achieve dominance over reason. God, having initially put intelligence into the world, then gives the universe freedom and only occasionally takes care of it, restoring a rational structure in the cosmos and preventing it from slipping into complete chaos.

Plato's doctrine of the soul - briefly

Plato's doctrine of the soul set out in dialogues Timaeus and Phaedrus. According to Plato, the human soul is immortal. All souls were created by the Creator at the moment of the creation of the universe. Their number is equal to the number of heavenly bodies, so that for each soul there is one star, which protects the soul in earthly life, after connecting with the body. Before the beginning of earthly existence, souls visit the world of pure ideas, located above the starry sky. Depending on the memories retained by the soul from this, it then chooses a body and a way of earthly life. After death, the soul is judged: the righteous go to heaven, and the sinners go underground. After a thousand years, the soul will again have to choose a material body. Souls who choose the lifestyle of philosophers three times in a row stop further rebirths and plunge into divine peace. All the rest migrate across earthly bodies (sometimes even non-human ones) for ten thousand years.

Plato believes that the human soul consists of three parts. One of them, the intelligent one, fits in the head. The other two parts of the soul are irrational. One of them is noble - this is the will that lives in the chest and is in union with the mind. The other is ignoble - these are sensual passions and lower instincts located in the stomach. In each of the peoples, one part of the soul predominates: reason - among the Greeks, courage - among the northern barbarians, attraction to low self-interest - among the Phoenicians and Egyptians.

Being in the body under the dominion of sensuality, the soul would have no way to return to the world of ideas if the world of phenomena did not have in itself a property that revives memories of the ideal world in the soul. This is beauty that arouses love in the soul. In Plato's philosophy, love is valued the more, the more completely it is freed from gross sensual attractions. Such love has since been called “platonic”.

Plato's doctrine of the state - briefly

Based on the above ideas about the three parts of the soul Plato's state philosophy. Each of these three parts should strive for its own virtue. The virtue of reason is wisdom, the virtue of will is courage, the virtue of feeling is temperance. From the harmony of these three qualities, the highest form of good arises - justice. Like the parts of the human soul and according to them, ideal state should consist of three classes, separated from each other according to the type of closed castes: rulers-sages, warriors subordinate to them and the lower, working class. Each of them has its own special social purpose.

“Justice,” says Plato, “will be established only when philosophers become kings or kings become philosophers.” The upper, ruling class, in his opinion, should receive philosophical education and upbringing from the state from an early age. Poets, artists and, in general, all works of intellectual creativity should be subjected to strict government supervision, so that only noble, useful works, full of good moral examples, are disseminated in society. Not only the political, but also the personal of every citizen must be fully regulated by the state - right up to the establishment of a communist community of property and women. The normal family in Plato's ideal republic is abolished. Relations between the sexes are also regulated by the state. Children immediately after birth are transferred to public foster homes, so they do not know their parents, and adults do not know those to whom they gave birth. Material goods produced by the lower, working class are distributed under state control. In general, Plato's political philosophy advocates the complete enslavement of every individual by society - so that he serves only the collective, and not his own personal interests.

PLATO: philosophy

Plato. The world of ideas and the world of things

The famous philosopher Plato was Socrates' student. One of his main statements is that what is visible is not real: if we see something, this does not mean at all that it exists exactly as we perceive it. This idea is one of the eternal ones in philosophy. Let us remember that the Eleatic philosophers say: “We see movement and change around us, but in reality nothing moves or changes”; Heraclitus argued that if something is observed by us unchanged, this does not mean that it really is such, it’s just that no one notices the general and incessant movement; Do you think, the Milesian philosopher Anaximenes tells us, that there are different things around us? - nothing of the kind: everything that seems different is one and the same substance - air, only in its different states; We see mountains and trees, meadows and lakes, stars and planets, says Democritus, and do not understand at all that there is neither one nor the other, nor the third, but there is only a set of atoms invisible to us that move in the void. So, it may well be that we see one thing, but in fact there is something completely different.

To better understand Plato's theory, let's imagine the following picture. Let's say there are three objects in front of us - an apple, a pear and a plum. It is clear that an apple is not a pear, a pear is not a plum, and so on. But there is something common and similar in them, making them different from other things, uniting them into one group. We call this common thing the word “fruit”. Now let us ask: does a fruit exist in reality - as a thing in which all possible fruits of the earth would be collected, as an object that could be examined or touched? No, it doesn't exist. “Fruit” is just a concept, a term, a name, a name that we use to designate a group of things that are similar to each other. Only these objects themselves really exist, and their names do not really exist in the world, since they exist as concepts or ideas only in our consciousness. That's what we think.

But it is quite possible to assume that everything is quite the opposite. Really and initially there are ideas or concepts of things, and not in our minds, but on their own, outside of us, only in a special, higher, inaccessible world to us, and all the things that surround us are just products of these ideas and are their reflections, or shadows, and therefore do not really exist. This idea is the main one in Plato's teachings. It seems to us, he says, that there is one world - the one that we see around us, but in fact there are two worlds: one is the higher and invisible world of ideas, the other is the lower and perceived world of things. The first gives rise to the second. There is, for example, in the higher world the idea of ​​a horse, and it gives birth to each specific horse that is on earth. Ideas are eternal and unchanging, but things are changeable. They are their outlines, pale semblances or, best of all, shadows.

To illustrate his view, Plato offers the following example. Imagine, he says, that we are sitting in a cave with our backs to the entrance and looking at its wall. Some animals pass behind us in the sun's rays, birds fly by, flowers grow. We see the shadows of these objects on the wall of the cave, but since we are sitting with our backs to the exit, we do not know about their existence - it seems to us that the observed shadows are the objects themselves and represent the only possible reality. But let’s assume that someone managed to look back and see the object itself, which, of course, is many times more perfect compared to its shadow. The one who sees it will understand that all the time he mistook the shadow for the thing itself, will compare one with the other, and his surprise will know no bounds. He realizes that the real world is not at all the same as he saw it before, he will admire it and will never again look at pitiful shadows, but will direct all his strength to the contemplation of the objects themselves; Moreover, he will leave the cave to see that in addition to its low arch, gray, gloomy walls, rotten air, there are wide green plains, beautiful meadows, fresh space, an endless azure sky on which the sun shines.

It’s the same in our life: we see various things around us and consider them to be really and uniquely existing, not realizing that they are just insignificant reflections, imperfect similarities or pale shadows of ideas - objects of the real and highly genuine world, but inaccessible and invisible. If one of us managed to see behind physical things their real beginning - ideas, how endlessly he would begin to despise that material, corporeal world, close, understandable and familiar to us, in which we live, considering it the only possible one.

Therefore, the task of each of us is to see the genuine behind the inauthentic, the real behind the unreal, the ideal behind the material, the real outlines behind the contour, the true Being behind the phantom of existence. How to do it? The fact is that a person does not completely belong to the world of things. He has a soul - an eternal and ideal essence, which connects him with the invisible world. After the death of the body, the soul goes there, stays there for some time, while contemplating the ideas themselves and joining the highest knowledge. Then she descends into the material world and, inhabiting some body, forgets about her knowledge. But to forget does not mean not to know at all, because in forgetting lies the opportunity to remember. It turns out that a person who is born already knows everything, but only potentially. He should not learn from scratch and acquire knowledge step by step. He must only discover them in himself, manifest them, remember what he has forgotten. Therefore, knowledge, according to Plato, is the recollection of the soul. Later this view was called the “theory of innate ideas.” But, despite any efforts, we still cannot fully comprehend the ideal world; It’s good if at least a small element or fragment of it is revealed to us. After all, whether we like it or not, we are primarily in the physical world, which is evil and imperfect. But since we know about the most beautiful Being, then why not try to ennoble and elevate earthly life according to its example, to make it more harmonious, virtuous and happy?

The human soul consists, says Plato, of three parts: rational, affective (or emotional) and lustful. This combination is uneven in each case. If the rational part of the soul predominates, a person is a philosopher, if the emotional part is a warrior, and if the lustful part of the soul, then he is a farmer or artisan. It turns out that the human race naturally falls into three classes, each of which must do what is predetermined by its nature: philosophers, as omniscient and wise people, must govern the state; brave, strong and courageous warriors must defend him; and those who know perfectly well how to cultivate the land, know how to harvest crops and make handicrafts, must work and feed the state. Everyone doing their own thing will bring maximum benefit to society, and in this case prosperity awaits us. If everyone does what they don’t know how to do, there will be no benefit, and social life will become disorder. The first principle by which an ideal state should be built is the division of labor between classes, from which follows a complete denial of democracy, based on the fact that the people leading the state are elected by popular vote. “How can you choose a leader?” - Plato is perplexed. After all, the one who knows how to do it should rule, and not the one who is sympathetic to us and whom we therefore choose to rule us. We don’t choose a helmsman for the ship - the ship is steered by someone who knows how to do this, and if we put on the stern a person we simply like or even respect, but who has absolutely no understanding of navigation, he will sink our ship after the very first minutes of sailing.

The second principle of an ideal social structure should be the absence of private property, since it is the source of all disasters. If everyone is equal, then who would think of envying their neighbor because he has more of something, and who would need to be afraid of a neighbor who might take something away? Equality excludes envy, fear, and enmity. Why do people quarrel and be offended at each other if everyone is equal in their property status? A society and state built on the natural division of labor and the absence of private property will be prosperous and happy. This should be so, but in reality everything is different: everyone does not do their own thing; leaders do not know how to govern, plunging the people into the abyss of suffering, warriors poorly defend the state, and farmers do not work; everyone pursues his own personal interests, splitting social unity; everyone is at enmity with everyone, and as a result, disasters and misfortunes multiply on earth. The picture painted by Plato is an ideal to which we should strive and according to which our lives should be transformed. As a rule, the doctrine of a perfect society is called utopia (Greek - non-existent place: u - not + topos - place), because most often ideals are not realized in practice and dreams do not come true. Thus, Plato created the first detailed social (public) utopia in the history of mankind.

Plato's Philosophy: Plato's Theory of Ideas

Plato was born in Athens around 429 BC. e. in a family of aristocrats. His teachers were many famous people of that time. However, Socrates had the greatest influence on Plato with his ability to argue and build dialogues. The source of much of our knowledge about Socrates is the written works of Plato.

Parents expected that Plato would prove himself in the political field, but this did not happen due to two important events: the Peloponnesian War (after the victory of Sparta, several of Plato’s relatives participated in establishing a dictatorship and governing the state, but were removed from their posts for corruption), and also execution of Socrates in 399 BC e. by order of the new Athenian government.

Plato turned to philosophy, began writing and traveling. In Sicily, he communicated with the Pythagoreans, and upon returning to Athens he founded his own school, the Academy, where he and philosophers who shared his views taught and discussed issues of philosophy and mathematics. Among Plato's students was Aristotle.

Plato's philosophy in dialogues

Like Socrates, Plato saw philosophy as a process of dialogue and questioning. His works are written in this format.

The two most interesting facts about Plato's dialogues: he never expressed his opinion directly (although with in-depth analysis it can be “calculated”) and he himself never appeared in his works. Plato wanted to give the reader the opportunity to form their own opinion, rather than dictate what to think (this also shows how good a writer he was). Many of his dialogues lack concrete conclusions. The same dialogues that have a conclusion leave room for counterarguments and doubts.

Plato's dialogues touch on very different topics, including art, theater, ethics, immortality, consciousness, metaphysics.

At least 36 dialogues are known to have been written by Plato, as well as 13 letters (although historians have questioned the authenticity of the letters).

Plato's Theory of Ideas

One of the most important concepts proposed by Plato was his theory of ideas. Plato argued that there are two levels of reality.

1. The visible world (“the world of things”), consisting of sounds and pictures.

2. The invisible world (“the world of ideas”), and any thing is only a reflection of its idea.

For example, when a person sees a beautiful painting, he may appreciate it because he has an abstract concept of what beauty is. Beautiful things are perceived as such because they are part of the concept of beauty. In the visible world things may change and lose their beauty, but its idea remains eternal, unchanging and invisible.

Plato believed that concepts such as beauty, courage, virtue, temperance, justice, exist in the world of ideas outside of time and space and are not affected by what happens in the world of things.

The theory of ideas appears in many of Plato's dialogues, but varies from text to text and sometimes the differences are not explained. Plato uses abstractions as a means to achieve even deeper knowledge.

Plato's theory of the three parts of the soul

In the famous dialogues “The Republic” and “Phaedrus” Plato describes his understanding of the rational and spiritual principles. He identifies three principles of the soul: rational, furious and passionate.

1. The rational principle is focused on cognition and conscious activity, is responsible for making informed decisions, the ability to distinguish true from false, real from imaginary.

2. The violent principle is responsible for the desires of a person when he longs for victory and glory. If a person has a just soul, the fierce principle strengthens the mind, and it leads the person. Violent disturbances provoke anger and a sense of injustice.

3. The passionate principle is responsible for basic needs and desires, such as hunger or thirst. In this case, appetite can turn into irrational desire or lust, such as gluttony or sexual intemperance.

To explain the three principles of the soul, Plato considers three different classes of a just society: the class of educators (highest), the class of warriors (guards) and the class of breadwinners (other citizens). According to Plato, the rational principle should control a person’s decisions, the violent principle should help reason, and the passionate principle should obey. Having achieved the correct relationship between the three principles of the soul, a person will achieve personal justice.

Plato also believed that in an ideal society, the rational principle is represented by the upper class (philosophers who govern society), the violent principle is represented by guards (warriors who ensure the subordination of the rest of society to the upper class), and the passionate principle is represented by breadwinners (workers and traders).

Importance of Education

Plato attached great importance to the role of education and considered it one of the most important factors in creating a healthy state. The philosopher was aware of how easy it is to influence an immature child's mind, and believed that children from a very early age should be taught to always seek wisdom and lead a virtuous life. He even created a detailed guide with a set of exercises for pregnant women to do in order to give birth to a healthy baby, as well as a list of physical exercises and arts for children. According to Plato, who considered Athenian society to be corrupt, easily susceptible to temptation and prone to demagoguery, education is the most important factor for the formation of a just state.

The Myth of the Cave

Rational cognition versus cognition through the senses

In one of his most famous dialogues, The Republic, Plato shows that human perception exists without awareness of the existence of the world of ideas and true knowledge can only be achieved through philosophy. Everything that is known through the senses is not knowledge, but only opinion.

Allegory of the Cave

This famous allegory by Plato is told in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and Plato's brother Glaucon. Socrates invites Glaucon to imagine a world where illusion is perceived as reality. For clarity, he gives the following example.

Suppose there is a cave in which a group of people have been living since birth. They have shackles on their legs and necks that prevent them from turning around. Therefore, they see only what is in front of their eyes: a stone wall. Behind the prisoners there is a fire burning high up, and between it and the prisoners there is a low wall along which people walk with different objects on their heads. Objects cast shadows on the stone wall. Shadows are the only thing the prisoners can see. The only sounds they hear are the echoes of the cave.

Since the prisoners have never seen real objects, only their shadows, they mistake these shadows for reality. They consider the echoes of the cave to be the sounds of shadows. If the shadow of a book appears on the wall, the prisoners think they see the book itself: there are no shadows in their reality. Eventually one of them will be able to understand the nature of this world, and he will guess which shadow will appear next. Thanks to this, he will gain recognition and respect from other prisoners.

Now suppose that one of the prisoners is freed. If he had been shown a real book, he would not have recognized it. For him, a book is the shadow of a book on the wall. The illusion of an object appears more real than the object itself.

Socrates goes on to describe what would happen if the freed prisoner turned towards the fire. He could not bear such bright light and undoubtedly returned back to the shadow, which seems more real to him. What if the prisoner was forced out of the cave? He would be stressed and unable to see reality: the bright sunlight would blind him.

Allegory of Plato's Cave in modern culture

This story seems vaguely familiar: you've probably already seen variations of it in contemporary art. The script for the feature film “The Matrix” (1999) is based on its free interpretation. All that remains is to repeat after Keanu Reeves’ character Neo: “Wow.”

But after some time, the former prisoner will get used to his new life and understand that the world in the cave is not reality. He will look at the sun and realize that it determines the change of seasons and everything visible in this world (and even in some way is the reason for what he and his comrades saw on the cave wall). The former prisoner will remember his time in the cave with bitterness: he now understands that his perception of reality was not reality before. Then he will decide to return and free the others. When the former prisoner returns to the cave, he will again need to adapt to the darkness. Others will find his behavior strange (after all, the darkness of the cave is still their only reality). Instead of gratitude and recognition, they will call their former comrade a fool and will not believe his words. They will even threaten him with death if he releases them.

The meaning of Plato's allegory

Plato compares the prisoners in the cave with people who are not familiar with his theory of ideas. They mistake what they see for reality and live in ignorance (and are happy because they know no other life). And when glimpses of truth appear, people get scared and want to return to the familiar past. If a person does not turn away from the truth and continues to persistently seek it, he begins to better understand the world around him and will never be able to go back. The freed prisoner is a philosopher who seeks truth beyond the limits of reality perceived through the senses.

Plato believed that people do not use words to describe the physical objects they see. Rather, they give a name to what they cannot see. Names are given to things that can only be realized with the help of the mind. The prisoner in the cave was convinced that the shadow of the book was the book, until he could turn around and see the truth. Replace the book with something intangible, such as the concept of fairness. The theory of ideas formulated by Plato allows people to see the truth. So: knowledge obtained through the senses is not knowledge, but opinion. A person can gain knowledge only through philosophical reflection.

Plato - ideas of philosophy

Plato (427-347 BC) is a great thinker who permeates the entire world philosophical culture with his finest spiritual threads; he is the subject of endless debate in the history of philosophy, art, science and religion. Plato was in love with philosophy: all the philosophizing of this thinker is an expression of his life, and his life is an expression of his philosophy. He is not only a philosopher, but also a brilliant master of artistic expression, able to touch the finest strings of the human soul and, having touched them, tune them into a harmonious mood. According to Plato, the desire to understand existence as a whole gave us philosophy, and “there has never been and never will be a greater gift to people like this gift of God” (G. Hegel).

Space. On the relation of ideas to things.
Plato says: “The world is not just a corporeal cosmos, and not individual objects and phenomena: in it the general is combined with the individual, and the cosmic with the human.” Space is a kind of work of art. He is beautiful, he is the integrity of individuals. The cosmos lives, breathes, pulsates, filled with various potentialities, and it is controlled by forces that form general patterns. The cosmos is full of divine meaning, which is the kingdom of ideas (eidos, as they said then), eternal, incorruptible and abiding in their radiant beauty [According to Greek. “idea” means “what is seen,” but not just with the eye, but with the “intelligent eye.”]. According to Plato, the world is dual in nature: it distinguishes between the visible world of changeable objects and the invisible world of ideas. Thus, individual trees appear and disappear, but the idea of ​​a tree remains unchanged. The world of ideas represents true existence, and concrete, sensory things are something between being and non-being: they are only shadows of ideas, their weak copies [To explain his understanding of ideas, Plato cites the famous legend of the cave as a symbol. Chained prisoners are sitting in it. The light of the fire illuminates the entrance to the cave. In front of her, some creatures are carrying stuffed animals, birds, people, and various images on long sticks. The prisoners see neither these creatures nor the mannequins. They cannot turn their heads, and only shadows born in the flickering light of the fire slide before their eyes. The prisoners know no other world except the world of shadows. If any of these prisoners is lucky enough to be freed from their shackles in the future and look into the world of real phenomena, he will be incredibly amazed by its richness and diversity. And if in the future he has to be in this cave again, he will live in dreams of a real colorful world.].

Idea is a central category in Plato's philosophy. The idea of ​​a thing is something ideal. So, for example, we drink water, but we cannot drink the idea of ​​water or eat the idea of ​​bread, paying in stores with the ideas of money: an idea is the meaning, the essence of a thing.

Plato's ideas summarize all cosmic life: they have regulatory energy and govern the Universe. They are characterized by regulatory and formative power; they are eternal patterns, paradigms (from the Greek paradigma - sample), according to which the whole multitude of real things is organized from formless and fluid matter. Plato interpreted ideas as certain divine essences. They were thought of as target causes, charged with the energy of aspiration, and there were relations of coordination and subordination between them. The highest idea is the idea of ​​absolute good - it is a kind of “Sun in the kingdom of ideas”, the world’s Reason, it deserves the name of Reason and Divinity. But this is not yet a personal divine Spirit (as later in Christianity). Plato proves the existence of God by the feeling of our affinity with his nature, which, as it were, “vibrates” in our souls. An essential component of Plato's worldview is belief in gods. Plato considered it the most important condition for the stability of the social world order. According to Plato, the spread of “ungodly views” has a detrimental effect on citizens, especially young people, is a source of unrest and arbitrariness, leads to the violation of legal and moral norms, i.e. to the principle “everything is permitted,” in the words of F.M. Dostoevsky. Plato called for severe punishment of the “wicked.”

Let me remind you of one thought from A.F. Loseva: Plato, an enthusiastic poet in love with his kingdom of ideas, here contradicted Plato, a strict philosopher who understood the dependence of ideas and things, their mutual indissolubility. Plato was so smart that he understood the impossibility of completely separating the heavenly kingdom of ideas from the most ordinary earthly things. After all, the theory of ideas arose with him only on the path of realizing what things are and that their knowledge is possible. Greek thought before Plato did not know the concept of “ideal” in the proper sense of the word. Plato singled out this phenomenon as something self-existent. He attributed to ideas an initially separate and independent existence from the sensory world. And this, in essence, is the doubling of being, which is the essence of objective idealism.

The idea of ​​the soul.
Interpreting the idea of ​​the soul, Plato says: the soul of a person before his birth resides in the realm of pure thought and beauty. Then she finds herself on the sinful earth, where, temporarily being in a human body, like a prisoner in a dungeon, she “remembers the world of ideas.” Here Plato meant memories of what happened in a previous life: the soul resolves the main issues of its life even before birth; Having been born, she already knows everything there is to know. She chooses her lot herself: it is as if she is already destined for her own fate, destiny. Thus, the Soul, according to Plato, is an immortal essence; there are three parts in it: rational, turned to ideas; ardent, affective-volitional; sensual, driven by passions, or lustful. The rational part of the soul is the basis of virtue and wisdom, the ardent part of courage; overcoming sensuality is the virtue of prudence. As for the Cosmos as a whole, the source of harmony is the world mind, a force capable of adequately thinking about itself, being at the same time an active principle, the feeder of the soul, governing the body, which in itself is deprived of the ability to move. In the process of thinking, the soul is active, internally contradictory, dialogical and reflexive. “Thinking, it does nothing more than reason, questioning itself, affirming and denying.” The harmonious combination of all parts of the soul under the regulative principle of reason provides a guarantee of justice as an integral property of wisdom.

About knowledge and dialectics.
In his doctrine of knowledge, Plato underestimated the role of the sensory stage of knowledge, believing that sensations and perceptions deceive a person. He even advised to “close your eyes and plug your ears” to learn the truth, giving space to your mind. Plato approached knowledge from the position of dialectics. What is dialectics? This concept comes from the word “dialogue” - the art of reasoning, and reasoning in communication means arguing, challenging, proving something and disproving something. In general, dialectics is the art of “searching thinking,” while thinking strictly logically, unraveling all sorts of contradictions in the clash of different opinions, judgments, and beliefs.

Plato developed in particular detail the dialectics of the one and the many, the identical and the other, movement and rest, etc. Plato’s philosophy of nature is characterized by its connection with mathematics. Plato analyzed the dialectic of concepts. This was of great importance for the subsequent development of logic.

Having recognized with his predecessors that everything sensory “eternally flows,” constantly changes and is therefore not subject to logical understanding, Plato distinguished knowledge from subjective sensation. The connection that we introduce into judgments about sensations is not a sensation: in order to cognize an object, we must not only feel, but also understand it. It is known that general concepts are the result of special mental operations, “the initiative of our rational soul”: they are not applicable to individual things. General definitions in the form of concepts do not refer to individual sensory objects, but to something else: they express a genus or species, that is, something that relates to certain sets of objects. According to Plato, it turns out that our subjective thought corresponds to an objective thought that resides outside of us. This is the essence of his objective idealism.

About categories.
Early Greek thought considered the elements as philosophical categories: earth, water, fire, air, ether. Then the categories take on the form of generalized, abstract concepts. This is how they still look today. The first system of five main categories was proposed by Plato: being, motion, rest, identity, difference.

We see here together both the categories of being (being, movement) and logical categories (identity, difference). Plato interpreted the categories as sequentially arising from each other.

Views on society and the state. Plato justifies his views on the origin of society and the state by the fact that an individual person is not able to satisfy all his needs for food, housing, clothing, etc. In considering the problem of society and the state, he relied on his favorite theory of ideas and ideals. The “ideal state” is a community of farmers, artisans who produce everything necessary to support the lives of citizens, warriors who protect security, and philosopher-rulers who exercise wise and fair governance of the state. Plato contrasted such an “ideal state” with ancient democracy, which allowed the people to participate in political life and to govern. According to Plato, only aristocrats are called upon to rule the state as the best and wisest citizens. But farmers and artisans, according to Plato, must do their work conscientiously, and they have no place in government bodies. The state must be protected by law enforcement officers, who form the power structure, and the guards should not have personal property, must live in isolation from other citizens, and eat at a common table. The “ideal state,” according to Plato, should protect religion in every possible way, cultivate piety in citizens, and fight against all kinds of wicked people. The entire system of upbringing and education should pursue these same goals.

Without going into details, it should be said that Plato’s doctrine of the state is a utopia. Let us just imagine the classification of forms of government proposed by Plato: it highlights the essence of the socio-philosophical views of the brilliant thinker.

Plato highlighted:

A) “ideal state” (or approaching the ideal) aristocracy, including an aristocratic republic and an aristocratic monarchy;

B) a descending hierarchy of government forms, which included timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny.

According to Plato, tyranny is the worst form of government, and democracy was the object of his sharp criticism. The worst forms of the state are the result of the “damage” of the ideal state. Timocracy (also the worst) is a state of honor and qualifications: it is closer to the ideal, but worse, for example, than an aristocratic monarchy.

Ethical views.
Plato's philosophy is almost entirely permeated with ethical problems: his dialogues discuss such issues as the nature of the highest good, its implementation in the behavioral acts of people, in the life of society. The moral worldview of the thinker developed from “naive eudaimonism” [Eudaimonism (from the Greek eudaimonia - happiness, bliss) is an ethical principle according to which happiness and bliss are the highest goal of human life.] (Protagoras) - it is consistent with the views of Socrates: “good” as the unity of virtue and happiness, the beautiful and useful, the good and the pleasant. Then Plato moves on to the idea of ​​absolute morality (dialogue “Gorgias”). It is in the name of these ideas that Plato denounces the entire moral structure of Athenian society, which condemned itself in the death of Socrates. The ideal of absolute objective truth is opposed to human sensual attractions: good is opposed to pleasant. Faith in the final harmony of virtue and happiness remains, but the ideal of absolute truth, absolute goodness leads Plato to the recognition of another, supersensible world, completely naked of the flesh, where this truth lives and is revealed in all its true fullness. In such dialogues as “Gorgias”, “Theaetetus”, “Phaedo”, “Republic”, Plato’s ethics receives an ascetic orientation: it requires purification of the soul, renunciation from worldly pleasures, from secular life full of sensual joys. According to Plato, the highest good (the idea of ​​good, and it is above all) resides outside the world. Consequently, the highest goal of morality is located in the supersensible world. After all, the soul, as already mentioned, received its beginning not in the earthly, but in the higher world. And clothed in earthly flesh, she acquires a multitude of all kinds of evils and suffering. According to Plato, the sensory world is imperfect - it is full of disorder. The task of man is to rise above him and with all the strength of the soul strive to become like God, who does not come into contact with anything evil (“Theaetetus”); is to free the soul from everything corporeal, concentrate it on itself, on the inner world of speculation and deal only with the true and eternal (“Phaedo”). It is in this way that the soul can rise from its fall into the abyss of the sensory world and return to its original, naked state

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