Platonic Ethics

At Issue

The key ethical topics of Plato’s dialogues may be listed as follows: the definition of the virtues, most prominently justice, moderation, courage, wisdom, and piety; the so-called Socratic paradoxes (first, that no one sins knowingly, and second, that virtue is knowledge); the inseparability of virtue and happiness (eudaimonia); the relation of the virtues to political life; the virtues as subspecies of the idea of the good; and the denunciation of hedonism—that is, the rejection of the popular notion that pleasure is that which produces happiness.

Beyond these topics, which are explicitly identified by Plato, the dialogues address numerous areas of ethical import. These include the existence of the soul, immortality, and life after death (in the dialogue Phaedo); rewards and punishments; education; the value of the fine arts; men’s duties to the gods, to other men, to their cities, families, and to themselves; the rights and duties of women; and in the story of Gyges and his invisibility ring (Republic), the question of whether the moral status of one’s conduct should depend on the consequences of that conduct.

History

The event that more than any other turned Plato from politics to philosophy was the trial and condemnation of his teacher, Socrates, in the year 399 b.c.e. In his Phaedo, written while he was still in his twenties and poignantly close to the memory of Socrates, Plato described Socrates as the best, most intelligent, and most moral man of his time. After that, Plato determined to take no active part in the radically democratic Athenian judicial or governmental system, which he came to define as the government of those least qualified by temperament and intelligence to rule.

Plato’s antidote to what he felt to be the rule of the mob was his concept of government by philosopher-kings, people prepared by lifelong education to be good rulers. In his most famous dialogue, Republic, he stated that “Unless philosophers become kings of states or else those who are now kings and rulers become real and adequate philosophers . . . there can be no respite from evil for states or, I believe, for the human race.”

This idea antedated by many years the appearance of Republic. According to Plato’s “Seventh Letter,” the search for a king whom he might train in philosophy led him in about 389 b.c.e. to Syracuse, Sicily. Having failed in this attempt to turn the Syracusan tyrant Dionysius I into a philosopher-king, Plato returned to Athens in 387 and in the latter 380’s founded his Academy, which J. E. Raven called “a training ground for future statesmen.” Republic was most likely produced soon afterward, in the early 370’s.

Any study of Plato’s ethical thought must begin with Socrates’ attempts to refute the moral relativism of the sophists. Plato’s ethics seems to have evolved beyond his master’s, for Plato continued to explore the field in his mature and in his latest dialogues, including Republic, Philebos, and Laws.

The sophists had said that the only ethical standards that were morally binding on an individual’s behavior were those that all people agreed to or that followed the laws of nature (physis). Most of the rules people live by are, they said, really only local norms or customs (nomos) that held little or no moral force. In most cases, therefore, each person is the judge of what is good for himself or herself, and ethics (the ethical measure of physis) does not really come into play. Where it is simply a matter of nomos, the operative rule was “man is the measure”; that is, what seemed to each individual to be good was, for him, good.

A prime example of a natural law (physis) prevalent universally in the world and thus binding on humanity was that of the sophist Thrasymachus, who in Republic argued that “might makes right.” In the Gorgias, Plato makes Callicles of Acharnae articulate the corollary sophist view that local laws were artificial and conventional (mere nomos) and framed by the many weak men as a means of keeping the strong under their control.

Definition of the Virtues

Socrates responded (as is known from Plato’s earlier, or Socratic dialogues) that individual virtues such as courage (discussed in Laches), moderation (Charmides), piety (Euthyphro), and justice (Republic) could be defined for all to understand, so as to place most or all ethical activity under the umbrella of universally accepted standards. The realm in which each person was to be judge of the ethical quality of his own actions was much reduced; sophist ethics was defeated.

The Socratic contribution to ethical thought—essential in Plato’s system—was identified by Aristotle, who credited Socrates with laying down the principles of “universal definition and inductive reasoning”; that is, arriving at the universal definition of each virtue by means of a discussion and analysis of particular actions (inductive reasoning).

The Socratic Paradoxes

In developing his own ethical program, Plato took his point of departure from the so-called Socratic paradoxes. The first paradox argues that all men naturally seek to do good but often act wrongly because they mistake evil for good. Men thus commit sin involuntarily and out of ignorance (Protagoras). This paradox allows Plato, with Socrates, to define all sin or evil as ignorance and, conversely, to assert that all virtue is knowledge or wisdom: the second paradox.

This knowledge is available to men in general, but ordinary men occasionally err. It thus behooves the best men to acquire knowledge about the virtues, understand their nature, and act on a foundation of knowledge. This is no easy matter and requires a lifelong pursuit of wisdom (Republic). Thus, philosophers (seekers of wisdom) will be the wisest and, seeking the good (as all men do), will be less likely to err.

John Gould, in The Development of Plato’s Ethics (1955), strongly asserts that the goal of Plato’s ethical system (virtue, or areté) was always to lead to virtuous activity or behavior—for example, justice in the soul will express itself in just action—not merely to arrive at a valid ethical theory. This too was inspired by Socrates, as Plato dramatically demonstrated in the Crito, in which his teacher put his ethics into action by accepting the sentence of death as legally binding, refusing to escape from prison when he had the opportunity to do so, and refusing to disobey the state’s command that he take poison.

The Teachability of Virtue

Since virtue is knowledge and all men possess an innate capacity for knowledge, then virtue can be taught, and teaching and guidance may direct an individual toward good. On this point Plato seems initially to have wavered, for in the Meno Plato has Socrates say that virtue comes rather by chance, while in the Protagoras he suggests its teachability. Thus, the moral and political education of youths depends on the identity of virtue with knowledge and therefore on the teachability of virtue.

Plato’s Theory of Ideas or Forms as Related to Ethics

When one comes really to know the virtues, it is the immutable, stable, and abiding idea, form, or universal definition of the virtue that one comes to know. In the Gorgias, Plato has Socrates make the point that belief or opinion (which Gorgias, as a sophist, teaches) is not a sufficient standard for guiding moral and political life. The idea (or definition) of a virtue is learned by induction from particular case studies of the virtue in action.

In Republic, Plato lays out the course of lifelong study whose goal is the attainment of knowledge of the ideas and of the highest of the ideas, which Plato variously calls the idea of beauty, truth, or the good. Intimate knowledge of the ideas of the different virtues allows the guardians of the state to recognize the virtues and their opposites in every action in which they are present.

After a primary education (to age eighteen), the citizens, especially those who will emerge as guardians of the republic, are made to dwell in beautiful surroundings so as to attain to a love of the idea of the beautiful-in-itself. They next serve two years of military service. This is followed by the citizens’ higher education, which consists of ten years in “propaedeutic” (preparatory) studies for those who will become the guardians or philosopher kings of the state. The subjects studied in this phase are arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and harmonics (music). The purpose of this scientific quadrivium is to lead the mind away from material and changing objects of the realm of opinion (for example, two apples, two cubes) to immaterial and immutable realities (for example, the concept of “two” and “cubeness”). Plato had derived from Pythagoras a respect for abstract numbers as unchanging realities. Numbers are akin to the unchanging ideas of the virtues, and this training in correct thinking about numbers, Plato thought, prepared the mind to recognize virtue and vice in action. Many aspiring guardians would be left behind during this phase of education.

The final level of higher education consisted of five years of training in dialectic, also known as the Socratic elenchos. Dialectic is the process of repeatedly proposing hypotheses and drawing out consequences used by Socrates in his conversations with his pupils. By this means of interlocution, the pupils were drawn ever closer to the irrefutable and true hypothesis that it had always been the purpose of the session to achieve. Thus, the pupils, future guardians, were trained to brainstorm, together or privately, in the quest for the form or idea that defined and produced knowledge about the virtue in question. This knowledge enabled the guardians to know which human actions claiming to share in the virtue in question were virtuous and which were not. No doubt, other citizens would, at this final plateau, fail to qualify for the ranks of the guardians. Completion of training in dialectic brought the guardians to age thirty-five.

The Overriding Idea of the Good

Some Plato scholars are troubled that in the minor dialogues (Laches, among others), the definitions of the virtues sometimes break down when Socrates tests them for their production of happiness in individual or city. That Plato may have done this deliberately in these early dialogues is indicated by the hints of dramatic purpose as opposed to an air of tentative inquiry in their structure and logic.

In Republic, Plato himself warns that these early definitions of virtues are not final. The utility of virtue must be related to an ultimate standard or ideal of the good. He devotes much of Republic and Symposium to achieving this.

For Plato, the forms of the virtues are themselves subcategories of the idea of the good. In reality, moderation, justice, and all the other virtues, including knowledge, are virtues because they participate in goodness. Plato is clear about this in Republic, where he calls the good the ultimate aim of life, the final object of desire, and the sustaining cause of everything else. The virtues, whether severally or united under the paradox that all virtue is knowledge, themselves aim at the good.

It is the guardians’ vision of the good that enables them to inculcate right opinion, teach virtue, and mold character and institutions in the light of a reasoned concept of goodness in private and public life.

The Symposium and other dialogues provide parallels to the idea of the good as final cause by looking, for example, at a hierarchy of friendship, passion, and love culminating in the apprehension of the idea of beauty, which is depicted by Plato as practically identical to the good.

The Relationship of Utility and Pleasure to Ethics

Plato is clear in rejecting Protagoras’ dictum that pleasure is to be identified with the good. He denies as well the notion that utility is the source and goal of morality. In Lysis and Symposium, Plato rejects the theory that the good is desired as a remedy against evil because that would make the good merely a means to an end. For the same reason, he explicitly rejects the hope of immortality as the origin of and reasons for people’s morality. In Republic, he strenuously opposes the view of Thrasymachus and Callicles that justice is an artificial convention devised by the weak in their conspiracy to neutralize the strong.

In his article “Plato’s Ethics,” Paul Shorey believes Plato’s whole ethical thrust to be a polemic against hedonism: “This doctrine of the negativity of what men call pleasure is the fundamental basis of Plato’s ethics.” On this basis, Shorey continues, rests Plato’s demonstration that virtue and happiness are one. Moreover, pleasures are never pure but always mixed with desire or pain. Finally, Shorey adds, “Pleasure and pain, like confidence and fear, are foolish counselors.”

The dialogues devote much space to analyzing the concept of pleasure, which arises in some form in more dialogues than does any other issue. The Gorgias and Philebos directly oppose the sophist doctrine that defines the good as pleasure and that asserts that true happiness comes from gratifying the sensual appetites. This repudiation of hedonism also appears in Phaedo and Republic. In Republic, where Plato presents the idea of man’s tripartite soul, pleasures are ranked as intellectual, energetic, and sensual. Plato allowed the thesis of the Protagoras that a surplus of pleasure is good, but only when the pleasure is kept in perspective and is free from all evil consequences. Only in the sense that it suited his ethical system to argue that the virtuous life is the most pleasurable did Plato make Socrates identify pleasure and the good at the end of Protagoras. Rather, it is wisdom (sophia) that delivers happiness, for wisdom always achieves its object, wisdom never acts in error, and absence of error entails happiness.

Final Developments in Plato’s Ethical Thought

In Plato’s last years, his ethical approach underwent a change little noticed in discussions of mainstream Platonism. John Gould remarks that in his last work, Laws, “Plato the aristocrat, Plato the constructor of systems, Plato the lover of the aesthetic are all represented in their final and most convincing forms, while the ghost of Socrates . . . is no longer present even in the dramatis personae.”

In Laws, the thrust is still the perfection of the individual, but now no longer through the personal acquisition of virtue. Instead, the individual is to be improved by means of ideal legislation whose explicit goal is the control and obliteration of nonvirtuous behavior in the interest of the perfection of society. In this last dialogue of Plato’s corpus, the primary virtues are given their own separate existence as sophrosyne (moderation or temperance), dikaiosyne (justice), phronesis (wisdom), and andreia (courage), and possession of only one of them is not sufficient.

Plato’s thinking has, in fact, undergone a change from that of his Socratic period. In his new ideal state, the legislator will guide his people to virtue by manipulating the distribution of honor and dishonor and by using the pleasures, desires, and passions that motivate people: a kind of nascent behaviorist theory. By using a system of repetitive propaganda to work on popular emotions, he will steer them to virtue (areté). Plato’s goal was ever the same. What changed in his latter years was his attitude toward human nature, which became more pessimistic. The mistakes of Athenian democracy, rule by the masses, had convinced him that a more thoroughgoing system of controls had to prevail, and this he intended to provide in his new “second-best” state, governed not by philosophers but by law.

Bibliography

Crombie, I. M. An Examination of Plato’s Doctrines. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963. A general work on all aspects of Plato’s philosophy, with ninety pages on ethics. Especially useful in tracing Plato’s ideas through the early minor dialogues: Euthyphro, Charmides, Laches, Meno, and Euthydemus.

Gould, John. The Development of Plato’s Ethics. New York: Russell & Russell, 1972. An excellent survey of the evolution of Plato’s ethical views from his youthful days under the influence of Socrates to the fully mature thought of his last dialogues, chiefly Philebos and Laws.

Grube, G. M. A. Plato’s Thought. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980. Perhaps the best introduction to the entire philosophical system of Plato.

Lodge, R. C. Plato’s Theory of Ethics: The Moral Criterion and the Highest Good. New York: Archon Books, 1966. An interpretation that ignores both solidly based explications of Plato’s ethics and Plato himself by subjectively focusing on non-Platonic topics such as “value scales” and “private-spirited artistic creation.”

Raven, J. E. Plato’s Thought in the Making. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1965. A highly readable discussion of Plato’s life and thought, featuring a generous treatment of his ethics and especially a critique of the views of other premier Plato scholars on important issues.

Rowe, Christopher. An Introduction to Greek Ethics. London: Hutchinson, 1976. A short introduction to the field that ranges from Homer to the Epicureans and Stoics.

Shorey, Paul. “Plato’s Ethics.” In Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Gregory Vlastos. Vol. 2. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1971. A concise introduction to the major ethical issues considered by Plato from the pen of an important Plato scholar.

Shorey, Paul. What Plato Said. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. A highly acclaimed résumé and analysis of Plato’s writings with synopses of and critical commentary on twenty-eight dialogues. Treats ethics in appropriate contexts.

Taylor, A. E. Plato: The Man and His Work. 7th ed. London: Methuen, 1960. An indispensable book for any study of Plato’s philosophy in English. Provides a thorough discussion of every aspect of Platonism.