02/28/01

Any philosophical discussion would not be complete without mentioning Plato.  Indeed, Plato is considered one of the most (if not the most) influential thinkers of the western world. 

Born in Greece about 400 BC, Plato formulated ideas on life and reality.  He attempted to answer the fundamental questions that have begged an answer:

Why are we here?

What is the point of existence?

What is truth (reality)?

Plato's uniqueness is partly based on how he works through his answer, and partly on his conclusions.  Plato was a student of Socrates and the most significant distinction that we can draw between them is that Plato wanted to define all things in terms of the universal (or general).  Plato would define not a man, but mankind; not a decision, but the deductive process; not infatuation, but the concept of love.  I’ll discuss this more a little later. 

Plato presented his thoughts as if there were a conversation between two or more people—a dialogue.  This allows him to present opposing ideas, present arguments, and draw conclusions.  Contrast this with the idea of straight-line logic—that is, presenting an argument with no contradicting comments or inquiry. 

I would like to point out that it is Plato who brings us the idea of Atlantis.  It is found in one of his dialogues about a perfect society.  Atlantis, according to the dialogue, was a perfect society but due to some indiscretion, found itself condemned by the gods (Greek pantheon) and doomed to destruction by being submerged in the ocean.  Plato is not the first philosopher to discuss a perfect society; however, the idea of Atlantis as a real place has echoed ever since. 

Atlantis represented several universal ideas for Plato—a perfect society (as opposed to perfect individuals), a perfect judicial system (as opposed to a perfect judge), a perfect economy (as opposed to perfect distribution of wealth), and so on. To Plato, only the true philosopher could understand and appreciate the reality of things because only the philosopher could ascertain the form of things.  Singular instances of the universal idea were mere vestiges of the universal form, and could not be used to define the universal.  Let me use an example: the universal idea of mankind is perfect, but a single man is imperfect and cannot be used to define mankind.

But this leads to a problem.  Plato realized that even the non-philosopher could hold an apple in his hand and know that he was holding an apple.  Plato resolves this by separating the form of something from its substance.  The substance, Plato would argue, is the apple currently in the hand, while the form would be apple-ness.

The issue that arises from this is that Plato asserts that nothing exists in the substance—it is merely perceived in the substance.  Things only truly exist in their form.  I can find only one good example to help explain this principle:

Humans have a body (substance) and a soul (form).  The form of the human transcends the body (life after death).

Again, the substance is temporal and sensory (can be sensed) and only represents the universal concept of the form (the soul).  But the problem that I have with this is that while the concept is true of humanity (we have a body and a soul), it is not necessarily true of everything.  According to the Bible, only humans are endowed with a soul.

So, in a sense, Plato’s notion of the universal seems to reverberate with the eastern religious ideas of pantheism.  In pantheism, everything is part of god.  In Buddhism, every person, rock, tree, and cloud is part of the same divine union and as long as they exist, are only extractions of that singular god-ness.  As they cease to exist, they are reabsorbed into that god-ness and thus lose any individuality.

This leads us into a discussion of Plato’s religion.  For, indeed, his world-view was shaped by some religious thought.  Plato was well versed with the Greek gods.  In his tales of Atlantis, he speaks of several of the Greek gods in a passive, foregone conclusive manner (as if they were real and no argument is needed to establish the fact).

But Alexander the Great was gone, Greece was losing it’s world power status, and society as a whole was beginning to question the validity of the Greek pantheon.  Plato was no exception to this and many of his writings appear to be attempts at re-explaining origin, reality, and truth.  His predecessor and mentor, Socrates had been accused of atheism (against the Greek gods), and to some extent, we must applaud Plato for questioning the validity of the Greek pantheon.  Many atheists and agnostics have echoed his ideas through the ages.  But that’s not to say that everyone who respects Plato is an atheist.  It does, however, seem clear to me that Plato was rejecting at least part of the mythology of the Greek pantheon and thus he struggled to make sense of his world in the absence of any god.

You may be asking why Plato would not have turned to God.  Where are the Christians?  It will be another 300 years before Jesus is born.  The Jews have been dispersed and have not been a world power for several hundred years, so Judasim is basically unknown in Greece.  So, when Plato begins to re-address reality, he ends up searching for some absolute that he can use as the starting point.  But how difficult this must be when, as far as he can tell, there is no starting point— no god. 

He thus begins the process by searching for some point, some idea, or anything he can find that can be absolutely defined and remain irrefutable.  For the Pythagoreans before him, this absolute was mathematics.  They believed that everything was merely part of a greater mathematical abstraction.  Plato rejected this idea and searched for something else.

The search for something absolute began outside the self, but by the time Plato addresses the subject, he is focusing on the self.  Later philosophers will also focus on the self.  For instance, how can I know that I exist?  How do I know that I am not a player in someone else’s dream?  To answer these questions, I must somehow substantiate my own existence.   Therein lies the problem.  There is no definitive method to prove I exist.  For in order to prove it, I must make external references – which to the philosopher, are yet to be proven either.

So Plato, like so many other philosophers, finds himself lacking any absolute on which to base his entire world view.  He compensates for this by structuring a reality that is relative, utopian, and ultimately impractical.

This is what makes our Bible so important.  Not just the Bible, but our faith that it is authentic and accurate. 

We are told in Genesis that God created all things including humans with a purpose in mind.  We are subjugated to that purpose and do not have the capacity to understand beyond it.  We can take that account as an absolute that defines our existence.  We can further look to the rest of scripture to understand our role in the grand purpose of God’s plan. 

The totality of Plato’s philosophies cannot be incorporated into a Christian world view.  Perhaps pieces here and there, but not the totality, because Plato did not believe in a single benevolent God who had created all things according to a purpose.  Therefore his philosophies will lead away from sound, Biblical teachings.