The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 3): The Philosophy of Classical Greece: Plato’s Academy…Virtues, Forms, and What’s Really Real

Alfred North Whitehead famously stated that the Western philosophical tradition “consists in a series of footnotes to Plato.” This statement is perhaps a bit simplistic, but is still nevertheless generally true. Plato was a student of Socrates, and the man who preserved Socrates’ teachings. After witnessing the unjust sentence of Socrates carried out in 399 BC, Plato left Athens in disgust, only to return to Athens in 387 BC to found The Academy. It was the first institution in western civilization devoted to education.

Plato’s Academy
The focus of Plato’s Academy was the teaching of mathematics, law, and political theory. Underlying all of these things, of course, was philosophy. After all, questions regarding the law and politics ultimately come down to more fundamental questions like, “What does it mean to have a just society? What is real? What is virtuous?” Most of us live our lives never really giving much thought to these questions—Plato did the exact opposite. He devoted his life to trying to understand what was “really real.”

Having lived through the last years, and eventual destruction, of Athenian democracy, Plato asked a fundamental question: “What would an ideal society look like?” The society around him was a mixture of good and bad things, and it eventually crumbled. So Plato asked, “Where does one find the ultimate good?” His answer was this: the world around us and the reality that our senses perceive is merely a cheap imitation and pale reflection of the ultimate reality, or as he called it, the world of forms. This idea can be found in Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave.

The Allegory of the Cave (And a Shout Out to the Matrix!)
Plato likened this material world of our senses to a cave in which its inhabitants were held as prisoners, chained to a bench facing the back wall of the cave. Behind them was a low wall, on top of which there was a puppet show going on. The puppets were nothing more than representations of the real things in the real world outside of the cave. Behind the wall was a fire whose light shown against the back wall. Since the low wall and puppet show was between the fire and the wall, the shadows of the puppets would flicker against the back wall. Consequently, in Plato’s allegory, the only reality the prisoners had ever been aware of was the one involving the shadows of the puppets flickering against the wall in front of them. What their senses perceived was nothing more than shadows of representations of real things. In other words, their reality was a false reality—a “reality, twice removed,” if you will.

Somehow, though, one of the people escapes his chains. As soon as he turns around, he sees the wall, the puppet show, and the fire, and quickly realizes that they were, in fact, the cause for the only reality he had ever known, and that reality was, in fact, a false reality. Eventually, he makes his way out of the cave to the real world. Quite obviously, his eyes, which had never experienced actual sunlight before, have a hard time adjusting to this new reality. He can only initially look at the faint reflections of things, and not the things themselves. Eventually, his eyes grow accustomed to the real world, and he learns to appreciate the actual things themselves, as they really are, and not the mere reflections or shadows of those things.

Given his new knowledge about the real world, the man feels impelled to go back into the cave and try to free some of his friends. Ironically, though, as soon as he goes back into the cave, he realizes that his eyes need time to re-adjust to the darkness. When he goes to tell his friends about the real world outside, though, they obviously think he’s crazy. The fact that they can actually see in the dark cave better than him further reassures them that he is crazy and ought not to be listened to. Such is the man’s unhappy dilemma: he has seen the real world outside, but has an incredibly hard time convincing those chained in bondage and darkness of the reality of the outside world.

For Plato, this allegory explained the nature of the material world, and the plight of the philosopher. The man who makes his way out of the cave is the philosopher who, through his intellect, learns to contemplate and understand the world of forms and the “more real reality” itself. The people chained in the cave are the mass of humanity, bound to their own senses and passions, and completely unable to even contemplate the existence of a “more real reality” than the flickering shadows before their eyes.

Forms and Universals…and Triangles and Governments
This world of forms contained universals—the reality of things in their perfection, the way they ought to be, and the standards by which we are able to compare any earthly lesser reality. It is the form, or universal, that contains the essence of any given thing. The essence of any given thing is decidedly immaterial, can only therefore be discerned through the intellect, not the senses. After all, everything in this sensory world of constant change is nothing more a shadowy, distorted, and ultimately “less real” imitation of the universals found in the world of forms.

It follows, therefore, that anything that can be discerned by our senses (seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling) simply cannot tell us much of anything of the truth concerning universals. They merely give us fleeting snapshots of flickering shadows. Therefore, the senses can be deceptive. The reality of universals and the essence of a thing can only be discerned through the intellect, through reason. It is only the philosopher, who sees that there is “more real reality” than this concrete and constantly changing world our feeble senses take in, who is able to use his intellect to contemplate the “realer reality” of abstract universal forms.

Let’s take a basic example of a triangle to illustrate the concept. One can draw a wide variety of triangles of different sizes, colors, and styles that would be, because they were drawn by human beings, all of varying degrees of perfection, with some being drawn better than others. In that sense, any triangle drawn would have a certain degree of imperfection about it. So how can we still discern them to be triangles if they are imperfectly drawn? The answer is because we all have a mental concept of “triangularity” that makes it possible for us to recognize imperfectly drawn triangles. That mental concept of “triangularity” is not a material thing, but it allows us to recognize triangles drawn in the material world. That mental concept of “triangularity” is, in fact, “perfect,” and it is the standard by which we can discern all imperfect renderings of triangles. Therefore, what is more real and more perfect (i.e. the essence of a thing) is, in fact, that which is immaterial, and that which can only be grasped by the intellect.

Take for another example the concept of government. Some governments are horrible and almost immediately destroy a society, while other governments are better, and actually cultivate a society fairly well—but eventually they crumble too. But although all governments eventually crumble, the reason why some more successful than others is that some are closer to the perfect, universal form of “government” in the world of forms. So why didn’t Athenian democracy work? Plato argued that the Athenian leaders didn’t fully understand what the ideal government and society world of forms really was. Their failure to understand and contemplate the universal form of “just government” led to the establishment of a flawed particular government (i.e. Athenian democracy).

Material Reality’s Relationship to the World of Forms…and What to do About it
So for Plato, this material reality is nothing but a pale, shadowy reflection of the higher and perfect reality of the world of forms. Therefore, the one who is best-suited to rule in this imperfect reality of particulars would be someone who is dedicated to contemplating the world of universal forms—a philosopher-king. Being more in tune with the world of perfect, universal forms, the philosopher-king would know best how to run a society. For Plato, that ideal society would certainly not be like the Athenian democracy he witnessed. Plato’s Republic instead had all the characteristics of an authoritarian social-engineering program:

1. Instead of a democracy, where just any citizen could have a say in government, Plato’s ideal society would be authoritarian; the philosopher-king knew best, and should not be questioned.
2. The upper classes would share their women communally.
3. There would not only be the careful breeding of children, but those children would be raised by the state, namely the philosopher-king and the other government rulers.
4. Music and poetry would be censored. After all, music and poetry are merely images and shadows of the true form of beauty and reality, and therefore are dangerous. They can inflame the masses and bring about anarchy and chaos.
5. Private property would be abolished too. The philosopher-king had to have complete and total control of everything in order to shape society according to the world of universal forms.

Plato’s concept of some sort of world of perfect, unchanging forms betrayed his assumption that to be perfect, one would have to be static and unchanging. Therefore, Plato’s god was seen as perfect and unchanging in any way shape or form. But that created a problem: what could account for this ever-changing world of particulars? Plato’s answer was that of the Demiurge—a “supreme soul,” that wasn’t Plato’s god, but who was the one responsible for created this world. According to Plato, it was the Demiurge that formed this crude matter into the imperfect particulars our senses perceive that merely reflect the world of perfect Forms.

Plato’s “god” vs. The God of the Bible
Plato’s concept of reality therefore, stands in stark contrast to the worldview of the Bible. (Or perhaps it would be better to say that it was woefully inadequate, for later Christian philosophers would argue that just as Christ was the fulfillment of the Old Testament scriptures, he was also the fulfillment of the partial truths found within the pagan philosophy of men like Plato.) First of all, Plato’s Demiurge should in no way be equated with the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Demiurge is, after all, obviously subordinate and subservient to the Forms—he didn’t create the Forms, but rather created this crude matter that merely reflected the Forms. Therefore, Plato’s Demiurge is not the ultimate creator of all reality.

Secondly, like all Greeks, Plato did not believe that the ultimate Creator of all (i.e. God) was a personal being. After all, a personal being changes, and ultimate reality, for Plato, was found the unchanging world of Forms.

Third, Plato’s worldview was ultimately that of a split reality: the “lesser reality” of the particulars of matter and the senses, and the “ultimate reality” of the universal forms. By contrast, what we find in the Bible is an ultimate Creator who is both all-powerful and perfect on one hand, yet is also immensely personal and intricately involved in this ever-changing world of particulars, matter, and the senses.

Plato’s Influence in Christian Philosophical Thought
Nevertheless, Plato’s philosophy was extremely influential on the first thousand years of Christian philosophical thought, not to mention Christianity as a whole. His theory of forms essentially argued (and many would say, proved) the existence of a deeper, “more real” reality beyond the material world of space and time. Not only that, but his philosophy correctly places human intellect and reason on a level above mere sensory perception. For Plato, what is perceived in this material world can only at best serve as a signpost to the “more real reality” of the world of forms. The things in the material world, in and of themselves, mean nothing unless they can be seen in the light of the forms of which they are shadowy reflections. Since human beings alone have the ability to contemplate and reason, that points to the fact that human beings must have immaterial souls that have the ability to contemplate the immaterial forms. And since we’re talking about forms, we should also mention that for Plato, the source of all the forms, and of being itself, was the form of the good. It was essentially the sun in Plato’s allegory of the cave that shined upon everything and made it known.

All of these Platonic philosophical concepts were interacted with and actually used by later Christian philosophers as they strove to translate the Gospel of the Jewish Messiah in terms that the Greek-influenced Roman culture would understand. We can even see this tendency within the New Testament itself. In the very beginning of John’s gospel, we can see John tweaking the Platonic philosophical concept of the Demiurge with his discussion concerning “the Word” (Logos). For John, “the Word” was not only God, but had also become flesh—the Universal Word became a particular human being. Not too many people realize just what a philosophical nuclear detonator John’s prologue really is. Simply put, the Greek philosophical categories of Plato (as well as Aristotle, whom we will shortly discuss) provided the playing field on which the early Christian writers and philosophers proceeded to dominate the “philosophical game” for the next 1,500 years. As Christians strove to understand the nature of God in light of the revelation of Jesus Christ, they used Plato’s theory of forms to help them discuss the reality of God’s oneness, His unchanging nature, and His ultimate goodness.