PLATO Part III.
Previously, we learned about Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides and Anaxagoras, in part V we will learn about Plato (c. 428 – c. 347 BCE) student of Socrates; we now move away from the pre-Socratic philosophers to Plato, his younger contemporary and then onto Aristotle and beyond! In this part we will see how Plato postulates his concepts, borrows from Parmenides, his metaphysics, how man can have true knowledge of what is actual, real, that men somehow pre-existed and known about the Forms/Ideas through ‘anamnesis’; the highest of the Forms i.e. The ‘Good’, which is beyond essence (ousia), the demiurge the middleman of creation…!
Plato studied the philosophies of the men who came before him and as such, he rejected some of their ideas, while taking on board others; Plato was an Absolutist, therefore he rejected out of hand Relativism… he held to e.g. standards that were absolute, such as beauty, justice, goodness etc., Plato was, like the philosophers before him a monotheist, which seemed to start with Pythagoras, and Plato taught that the soul was noble and was immortal, trapped in matter and he was somewhat Rationalistic in his outlook, in that man can arrive at true knowledge by means of his power of reason and taught that man cannot come to knowledge by means of his senses, which were of the phenomenal world, because, like Heraclitus, everything was in a state of flux! Plato theorised, that the phenomenal world of the senses was not the real world, of which no permanent knowledge could be had…but that of the unseen, completely separate from the material world in which man lived; he taught that the real world consisted of the world of ‘essences’, which had intelligence, this was the world in which ‘God’ existed in the Pleroma and such was called ‘ousia’ or ‘being’, the expression ‘being’ being another word for the Forms/Ideas, this will be explained in a little more detail as we go along!
Plato took from the previous philosopher; Anaxagoras ‘Dualism’, Plato was a dualist in that he was convinced that there was a complete separation between ‘matter’ and ‘mind’ and that when ‘mind’ comes into contact with ‘matter’ such experiences ‘effect’ i.e. something happens to ‘matter’! To Plato the phenomenal world, the world of the senses and matter, ‘flowed like a river’, there was no permanence (Heraclitus) so the world in which men lived was called ‘becoming’ i.e. it was in a continuous state of or in the process of ‘becoming real/actual’ but never could be, because it was always changing…it was in a constant state or course of development, so could never be or become ‘actual’ God was responsible for this, and with good reason, as far as Plato was concerned! Unlike Parmenides, men were children of both worlds and participated in both, men participated in the material world through their senses and the actual world where God and the Forms were…men had no permanent knowledge of the material world of flux, but man had a true knowledge of the other world because of his ‘reason’, man could get to know the world of the Forms…!
Plato’s World of the Forms/Ideas?
Plato also called the expressions “Forms” or “Ideas” by the term “Ousia”, these were interchangeable terms, the Forms…were things/objects of pure and perfect thought, originators, archetypal…of things that went into make up the world of the senses, these conformed to the perfect and absolutes of the mathematical, geometrical …such as the perfect square, oblong, circle…others of the Forms were of the absolutes, such as love, goodness, beauty, justice…to Plato, what existed as perfects and absolutes in the world of the Pleroma, was reflected, mirrored in the material, observable world and in fact everything in the material world was a pale copy or stamp… of the true or actual, which existed in the immaterial world beyond and invisible to the senses…! To Plato, the Forms were actual existences, non spatial and were in existence long before the minds (reason) of men and the reason why men were able to be aware of the Forms…was because within man there existed a state of ‘anamnesis’ that is, Plato taught that man had a spiritual dimension to him and that was the ‘soul’ which was immaterial and immortal, the spark of the divine within man, this ‘soul’ was omniscient, man somehow knew something…was aware, he could ‘remember’ (anamnesis =remembering) and for Plato, if men could remember then they can proceed to knowledge and more knowledge and more knowledge because of the soul within him and as time went by, if the man was not too distracted and wanted to and didn’t give up, he was able to conceptualise, conceive, envisage…of the Forms…in the Pleroma, it was as if the soul was pushing him, little by little to his true home, one could venture to say, that the more spiritual a man got (because of his reason…) the nearer he got to the world of the Pleroma, a sort of out of body experience…but the living man’s soul was trapped in a body of matter…!
The highest of the Forms was the ‘Good’ which Plato termed ‘God’ the Good was the goal of man at his death, the road taken when man uses his reason and comes to true knowledge…the Good is the Efficient Cause of all that exists and the sustainer of all and because of the Good and by means of the soul and the reason within the minds of men and continuing knowledge by men being accrued the existence of the Forms etc., can become known to man, whatever men come to know…is from the Good!
The Divine Builder ‘Demiurge’ ‘the god’?
Plato postulated, that the phenomenal world at one time didn’t exist, that it was brought into existence, created and it was means of the Demiurge, the divine craftsman “the god” and that it was the demiurge that shaped, fashioned, designed the world of men and all that they see, hear, feel…and such was made from matter that was pre-existent, formless, chaotic; what the demiurge did was to cause the Forms and matter to come into contact with each other and whatever form came into contact with matter, that matter took its ‘form’ (tree, earth, stars, men, dog, beauty, justice, etc., whatever men saw had its absolute and perfect non-spatial counterpart in the realm of the existences [Forms…] above…the Demiurge made order out of chaotic matter, as it was better to have something better, than chaotic, formless inharmonious…matter! What had happened after the work of the demiurge was a universe that was a living thing, a creature possessing mind and reason and this was the purpose of ‘the god’ the demiurge! To Plato mind and soul were inseparable, because without the soul, mind would come to nothing and because the demiurge, ‘the god’ made the universe a living thing, he gave it three things, ‘mind, soul and body’ it was as if, it was a sentient being…and so with man, he too had three things, likewise, ‘mind, soul and body’ and like the universe, was a living thing!, a creature!
Centuries later, there would be those who took a very different view of ‘God’ and ‘Matter’, as ‘Matter’ would become associated with ‘Evil’ and that ‘God’ could not possibly have any connection with ‘evil’ i.e. ‘Matter’ and just before the death of the apostle John, these views were being explored and espoused, by those without and within the Christian congregation, but such matters were not to be taken, as a sudden event, as the Christ and his apostles foretold that such things (deviations = Greek, ‘apostasis’) would take place and in time, the simplicity of the Christ was not enough for many, they wanted to have their ears tickled and wished to accumulate teachers for themselves…eventually, Plato…replaced the Christ, but was dressed up in a peculiar language, so as to fool the masses…the language (technical Greek jargon) of the Trinity was getting ever closer…! Col 2:8; 2 Tim 4:1-5; 2 Pet 3:14-16; 1 John 2:18-21.
