The Great Philosophers

In this article I comment on various teachings of the great philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, as well as modern philosophers. My purpose is to highlight my view of Philosophy as the Study of the Soul.

If only all the great philosophers of history had known of my view of philosophy; they would have made more sense.

I plan to comment on the teachings of all the major philosophers, ancient and modern — more to come . . . .

Socrates . . .

Socrates awakened people from their sleep of ignorance with the power of his irony and the persistence of his dialectic method. (pg. 63)

Zen Buddhism (and other forms) has a similar idea — that through ideas and words you can shake up a person's mind to "awaken" from their sleep of ignorance.

Socrates frequently received messages or warnings from a mysterious "voice," or what he called his daimon. (pg. 36)

Socrates thought a supernatural being watched over him and warned him if he was about to make an error. Many of the founders of the worlds religions had contact with an angel or supernatural being. In my view of the Philosophy of the Soul, our soul lives in the spiritual realm and encounters other spirit beings all the time. We don't often become aware of their presence but some people occasionally do. After death our only interaction with others will be with their souls.

The conception of the soul, the psyche — the capacity for intelligence and character; it is a person's conscious personality. (pg. 37)

In my view, the soul is the life of every creature which lives in the spiritual realm. The soul interacts with the body which is non-living.

One's greatest concern should be the proper care of one's soul so as to "make the soul as good as possible." (pg. 37)

Holiness, righteousness, and Godliness should be the main focus of human life. The problem with non-Christian views is that they don't address the sin problem in the context of the need for a savior, a redeemer. For them, living a good life is the ultimate human condition; for Christians, living a life pleasing to God and being redeemed of God through faith is the ultimate human condition.

Conduct their behavior in accordance with their knowledge of the true moral values. (pg. 37)

There are two steps outlined here: (1) learn the true moral values, and (2) behave according to them. The problem is in knowing in what these true moral values consist. Without the revealed word of God our knowledge of such things is incomplete. This is where many of the great philosophers show great weakness — they attempt to discern true morality using various schemes.

Teleological (purposeful) conception of things, that things have a function of purpose. In the case of a person, this is to say that there is an activity appropriate for a person's nature. (pg. 40)

Humans are created by God for a purpose, that is true. The problem is that we think we can discern the purpose of things by merely examining their properties and design. In the case of a hammer, this can be accomplished since a hammer was designed by humans. In the case of an amoeba or a planet it is not so clear. The revealed word of God informs us that all things are made for the glory of God. The purpose of humans is for us to choose God, to love him, honor him, worship him, serve him, obey him, and ultimately to spend eternity in his presence.

Universal Ideas, such as Beauty, Straight, Triangle, and Man. Whether these universal Ideas or words refer to some existing reality in the same way that particular words do. [It is not certain that Socrates answered this question; Plato certainly did with his idea of Forms.] (pg. 40)

The concept of Forms is very troublesome to me; it is part of the reason I reject the Catholic emphasis on Thomas Aquinas since the Catholic Church officially embraces Forms, even describing the Eucharist in terms of form and appearance.

In my view, ideas exist in the spiritual realm. The ability to perceive ideas is one of many attributes of the soul; certain kinds of creatures possess this attribute, notably the pure spirit creatures such as angels as well as humans. Ideas have a spiritual existence, it is true. The nature of the spiritual realm is that everything in it is living. Thus, such things as consciousness, ideas, the will, emotion, memory, etc. are all life itself. God is the essence and source of all life and because of this, ideas are of God and from God.

My problem with the philosophical concept of Forms is that it removes God and life from the equation by making Forms and Ideas a thing of its own apart from God, presumably existing in some higher realm somewhere.

A problem with Forms as defined by philosophers is the arbitrary determination of what is and what isn't a Form. Plato can state that Beauty is a Form but that mud is not, but he is not sure about Dog. He believed that there was a hierarchy of Forms — this to me indicates that the concept of Forms is not true. Yes, ideas exist, and they exist in an infinite variety of forms and relationships with other ideas, but philosophical Forms are nothing more than certain "big" ideas that perhaps seem more profound in some way.

The view of Socrates was that "knowledge is virtue." The chief ingredients are: (pg. 59)

The concept of the soul.
The theory of virtue as function.

Knowledge is an attribute of the soul. Virtue is living a life in conformity to God's moral law. Certainly wrong knowledge about God's law is detrimental to living a virtuous life (as modern society demonstrates). But Socrates is wrong: knowledge is not virtue.

Virtue is a spiritual thing, not merely the logical and philosophical correspondence between a thing and its design. Virtue is the wilful, free-will choice to act in accordance with God's divine law, to act in a manner pleasing to God. Non-Christians who act virtuously are honoring the true God with their actions. (Fundamentalist, Evangelical Protestants are wrong in asserting that non-Christians can't do any good deeds because their every action is tainted by the depravity of sin.)

Knowledge and virtue are the same thing. If virtue has to do with "making the soul as good as possible," it is first necessary to know what makes the soul good. (pg. 40)

This is just plain wrong. Humans are moral creatures who are accountable to their Creator God to obey his law. While ignorance of God and of his law indeed result in behavior that is not virtuous, mere knowlege as emphasized by Socrates does not in itself result in virtue, nor is virtue the same as mere knowledge. This philosophical system is based on the mind and thinking and knowing and reasoning. Perhaps the Greek philosophers came to this conclusion because they didn't have the revealed word of God to guide them.

Certainly most people can agree that certain attitudes and behaviors are more virtuous than others (although some modern philosophers and sociologists dispute even this) but this does not mean that knowing whether something is virtuous is the same as being virtuous. There is a "spirit of wickedness" which pervades the spiritual realm that humans live in and this spirit corrupts the souls of humans. Mere knowledge is not sufficient to overcome this spirit, the redemptive grace of God through Christ's work is required, and it requires repentance and faith on our part to receive this. It is more accurate to say that faith leads to virtue, not that knowledge leads to virtue. Faith is spiritual, while knowledge is merely intellectual. Faith and intellect are both attributes of the soul but they are quite different from each other. The ancient philosophers seemed to ignore faith altogether in favor of the intellect and reason. Martin Luther seemed to do the opposite: he rejected reason in favor of faith — but both are needed.

No one ever indulged in vice or committed and evil act knowingly. Wrongdoing is always involuntary, being the product of ignorance. (pg. 41)

Again, Socrates seems unaware of the spirits of darkness who inhabit the spiritual realm in which human souls reside. He wishes to explain everything in terms of the intellect. He seems to regard the intellect as the ultimate human faculty but it is not: faith and love and worship of God are much higher. Because of this mistake, Socrates can make the absurd claim that people commit evil and sinful acts because they are trying to do good. The truth is that people commit sinful and evil acts because their soul is depraved and it desires to do sin — humans are by nature "sinaholics" in need of spiritual redemption.

There is a sense in which wrongdoing is involuntary because we are slaves to sin and in bondage to the spirits of darkness. But the soul still have freedom to choose whether or not to commit sinful deeds or not. And the soul certainly can call out to God for help when faced with the prospect of suffering the consequences of sinful life choices.

What is missing with ancient philosophy and with modern atheistic philosophy and sociology is Christian religion. Religion is when we bring God into the picture. Certain fundamentalist Protestants like to insist that religion is bad but that is because they define religion to be mere ritual and tradition. But the essence of religion is God. Certainly there are non-Christian religious systems that have a very confused view of all this.

When people commit evil acts they always do them thinking that they are good in some way. (pg. 41)

People can be driven by passion, addiction, intoxication, or psychosis to commit evil deeds. When driven in this way, is it proper to say they are thinking their actions are good? Or that they are motivated by seeking the good? Is the intense pleasure a heroin addict experiences after shooting-up properly called a "good?" Pleasure-seeking is certainly a motivation for humans but to call it good seems wrong-headed.

I think Socrates is using the word "good" to refer to whatever causes a person to act out a certain behavior. Thus, if a psychopathic killer acts on whatever internal demons he is following, it can be considered as "good" for that person since it motivated their action. This seems to me to be the wrong use of the word "good."

What Socrates is missing is the concept of sin, of moral depravity, of self-destructive desire as a motivator of human action — this things are not good at all merely because they motivate action.

I don't see how it is possible to admit that there are evil acts while at the same time thinking that the person committing the acts think these acts are good. I doubt that the "goodness" of their actions is not what motivates people to commit evil acts, rather, it is their depraved soul, their sin nature, which motivates them. Thus Lucufer may have rebelled against God but he wasn't doing so because he thought is was good in some way.

Virtue means fulfilling one's function. Every human being has the inescapable desire for happiness or the well-being of their soul. This can be achieved only by certain appropriate modes of behavior. Some forms of behavior appear to produce happiness, but in reality do not. Examples: stealing and various symbols of success and happiness such as power, physical pleasure, property. (pg. 41)

This definition of virtue ignores the God-given moral aspect which should be at the center of discussions about virtue. Using this definition of virtue, even inanimate objects can be virtuous: a hammer is virtuous when it is hitting a nail; it is not virtuous when it is falling to the ground.

The difficulty is in even knowing what the function of a human is without God's revealed revelation as a guide. Humans do desire happiness but they also desire destructive things: this is what cause addiction, obesity, failed marriages, and many other painful outcomes.

Socrates knows that there is an absolute standard for human virtue, and he seems to have properly determined which activities are not motivated out of virtue. He defines the goal as "true happiness." According to Socrates, people may think they are happy but in reality they are not. It seems to me that the goal should be holiness, righteousness, and godliness rather than happiness. But perhaps that's what he means by the word "happiness."

Perhaps an illustration wil help. Suppose someone places before me several pounds of hot, salty french fries (yum!). I start eating them and each bite is so delicious that I can't stop until my stomach is distended and I fall asleep. As I put each french fry in my mouth I savored the flavor and it gave me much pleasure but the act of overeating french fries was guaranteed to soon cause pain and suffering. According to Socrates, the desire for the flavor was a "good" and the power of the impulse to keep eating was "ignorance?" "Virtue" in this example was the "knowledge" that the action would naturally lead to pain and suffering and the motivation cause by this knowledge to stop eating sooner.

In this example the use of the words knowledge, ignorance, and virtue seems wrongheaded. The Christian perspective seem to match reality better. The virtue is temperance and the corresponding vice is gluttony. When we are enslaved by our passions and desires we indulge in vice. It takes knowledge, practice, and God's grace to develop habits of virtue.

The term ignorance refers to the ability of an act to produce happiness. (pg. 41)

I should prefer to state it this way: The term sinfulness refers to the ability of an act to produce holiness. It is not knowledge and happiness which are the key factors of virtue but, rather, righteousness and holiness.

Wrongdoing is a consequence of an inaccurate estimate of modes of behavior, the inaccurate expectation that certain kinds of things or pleasures will produce happiness. Ignorance consists in not knowing that certain behavior cannot produce happiness. (pg. 41)

The highest ideals for Socrates are knowledge and happiness. The highest ideals should be knowledge of God, obedience to God's law, worship of God, holy and righteous living. Some might object that we these ideals are subjective, that different people will for different opinions about the nature of God and his commands. This same objection can also be applied to the ideals of knowledge and happiness. Can anyone claim with certainty that their view of true knowledge and happiness is the correct one?

Plato . . .

Contrary to common sense, it is the world of Ideas and not the visible world of actual things that is most real; the Idea Two, for example, has a timeless quality, whereas two apples dissappear. (pg. 45)

Just because physical objects disappear from our perception does not mean that they disappear. In my philosophical system, every manifestation is eternal — God is always aware of each manifestation and we will be able to retrieve memories of them in the new heavens and new earth. Nothing is ever lost except for sin, death, and evil.

Plato emphasizes dualism between the physical world and the world of Ideas which he considers to be more real than the physical world. But just because a particular apple passes from physical existence in time does not mean that it was not real at the time or that it was in some way less real then the Form or Idea of "appleness".

In my philosophical system everything pertaining to life exists in the spiritual realm and is eternal, while the physical world is inert and lifeless. The souls of human beings interact with the physical world via the senses and nervous system but it is the spiritual aspect of humans that is the essential thing.

(1) The dark world of the cave, and (2) the bright world of light. [The cave is Plato's metaphor of people chained up in a cave and seeing only shadows on the wall from a fire; their concept of reality is deficient because the shadows are not real but are only shadows of reality.] (pg. 51)

This kind of thinking is a set up for exploitation of classes of people. The Christian view is that all are slaves to sin and Jesus offers the hope of redemption to those who will receive it in repentance and faith.

Knowledge is not only possible, but it is virtually infallible because it is based upon what is most real. (pg. 51)

For Plato, knowledge is the ultimate attribute of humans. True knowledge can be obtained through effort and will power.

It seems wrongheaded to me to claim that knowledge is the ultimate ideal, the ultimate goal, the infallible guide. It seems that the kind of reality that Plato envisions is of necessity limited because he ignores the spiritual realm and a personal God who we can enter into a relationship with.

The Sophists were skeptical about the possibility of true knowledge because they were impressed by the variety and constant change in things; our knowledge comes from our experience and is therefore relative to each person. Plato did not accept this notion that all knowledge is relative. (pg. 51)

Christianity is skeptical about the possibility of true knowledge apart from divine revelation.

The liberal progressives and sociologists of today have a similar view as the Sophists, one based on tolerance and relativism. In this way of thinking, nothing is absolute because someone else might have a different idea about it.

In contrast to this, Christianity teaches that there are absolutes including the natural moral law, but the knowledge of the Christian moral natural law is quite different that the knowledge that Plato holds in such a high regard.

The following passage from the Catechism of the Catholic Church highlights the difference between the non-Christian philosophers' conception of knowledge and the Christian idea that God is the source of all truth:

The natural law expresses the original moral sense which enables man to discern by reason the good and the evil, the truth and the lie: The natural law is written and engraved in the soul of each and every man, because it is human reason ordaining him to do good and forbidding him to sin. But this command of human reason would not have the force of law if it were not the voice and interpreter of a higher reason to which our spirit and our freedom must be submitted. (Section 1954)

The human mind can discover the "real" object behind the multitude of shadows, so that the mind can attain true knowledge. (pg. 51)

It seems Plato thought that he had attained true knowledge, but in the subsequent centuries the many philosophers each in turn came up with their own views about reality and true knowledge. This true knowledge of Plato turned out to not be a trustworthy guide after all.

Part of the reason I reject the Catholic theology of Thomas Aquinas is the insistence that Forms are real and exist somewhere. To me it seems that Forms are merely a way of describing what is observed in the realm of ideas and spirit. My system of philosophy places all phenomena of life (such as consciousness, ideas, thought, knowledge, emotion, passion) in the spiritual realm. Thus, Forms are merely one of many aspects of life whereas for Plato and Aristotle they are in some way the ultimate truth.

Distinction between the world of sense and the world of thought, between the visible world and the intelligible world. (pg. 51)

Plato makes a distinction between the realm of the intellect and the realm of the senses and of sense perception. This seems wrongheaded to me. I prefer to classify all aspects of life as part of the spiritual realm and all inert, non-living objects in the physical realm. Thus, the souls of humans, animals, and plants live in the spiritual realm and interact with the inert, lifeless bodies and objects of the physical world. There are many attributes of the soul including consciousness, the intellect, emotion, passion, the will, etc. and there are many appetites (desires) of the soul including self-preservation, procreation, eating, drinking, moving the body, etc.

The problem with Plato's view is that he places the division between the material and the non-material in the wrong place. The material world is non-living, whereas the non-material world is living and spiritual. Thus, the soul is spiritual and lives forever whereas the body dies and decays once the soul no longer energizes it. The living creatures in the spiritual realm (including deceased humans) are fully alive.

In the process of discovering true knowledge, the mind moves through four stages of development: (1) Imagining, (2) Belief, (3) Thinking, (4) Knowledge. These are four different ways of looking at the same object, not four different kinds of real objects. There is a continuous process of the mind's enlightment as it moves through the four stages. (pg. 51,52)

Plato seems to think that the spiritual evolution of humans, that enlightenment if you will, comes about by a process of learning. In contrast, Christianity teaches that enlightenment comes about through faith in the revealed word of God.

It's easy to imagine that Plato's system would lead to an oppressive society with classes of people determined purely on the subjective notion of who had advanced to stage four, the highest stage. Abuse would surely be the norm as ambitious individuals would claim to have reached stage four and would, therefore, be better suited to rule.

The lower degree of reality and truth found in the visible world as compared with the greater reality and truth in the intelligible world. (pg. 52)

The early philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, all considered the intellect to be in the highest place above all other aspects of life and the mind. Feelings, emotions, consciousness, the passions, are all considered to be lower than the intellect. But all these living attributes originate in God's nature — surely there is no such hierarchy in God's attributes, so why should we think some human attributes are superior? I think a better way of judging between the various kinds of human behavior and attitudes is to judge between virtue and vice. In doing so it is our connectedness with the personal God that determines what is better.

The first stage, imagining, is the sense experience of appearances. The mind confronts images which are mistaken for true reality. Plato criticised art because it produces images that stimulate illusory ideas in the observer. What concerned him most were the images fashioned by the art of using words; poetry and rhetoric were the most serious sources of illusion. With rhetoric someone could make either side of an argument seem as good as the other. (pg. 52,53)

Images and art which fool the observer. This reminds me of how politicans and Madison Avenue marketers have conned Americans into believing things that aren't true, into buying things they don't want or need, and into forming opinions that are nonsense.

The second stage is belief. Seeing constitutes only believing because visible objects depend upon their context for many of their characteristics. (pg. 53)

Plato seems to be referring to jumping to conclusions about the nature of something based on superficial appearances. I don't think he is talking about religious faith.

The third stage, thinking, is characteristic of the scientist. Visible things are symbols of a reality that can be thought but not seen. Mathematicians engage in the act of "abstraction." Science forces one to think, because scientists are always searching for laws or principles. Thinking represents the power of the mind to abstract from a visible object that property which is the same in all objects in that class. (pg. 54)

Plato seems to place a higher value on thinking and analysing things than on experiencing them or on emotional experience. He considers mathematics to be better than religion and abstracting from an object to the Form behind the object better than relating to the object itself.

The fourth stage is perfect intelligence. The mind is never satisfied as long as it must still ask for a fuller explanation of things. But to have perfect knowledge would require that the mind should grasp the relation of everything to everything else, that it should see the unity of the whole of reality. In this stage the mind is dealing directly with the Forms. (pg. 54,55)

Certainly the analytical mind seeks some sort of satisfying understanding about how things work. But I find it hard to believe that merely understanding the Forms is the ultimate. I would think that feeling a connectedness with God would be far superior. But the early philosophers emphasized the intellect above everything else.

Forms are those intelligible objects, such as Triangle and "Man," that have been abstracted from the actual objects. (pg. 55)

In my system of philosophy, Forms, Ideas, and symbols actually exist in the spiritual realm and they are alive (everything is alive in the spiritual realm.) For example, in the spiritual realm, unicorns actually exist even though they are based on combining the characteristics of two animals.

The problem with the doctrine of Forms (and with Catholic doctrines based on Forms) is that it creates a false causality between objects and the ideas of classes of objects, of Forms. The truth is, I believe, that God has all concepts and ideas in his mind and that all created objects are based on these since they are all created by God. God is the source of Forms.

The problem with the doctrine of Forms is that it creates a scientific-sounding system to describe observable reality that ignores the spiritual realm and that ignores God's role. Yes, there is an idea of "chair," of "chairness," and yes, this idea has an actual existence as a Form. But trying to explain the relationship between the Form and the object without referring to God as the creator of all phenomena is to make the same mistake that atheistis evolutionists make. They try to explain the existence of objects by referring to previous conditions alone as their source. In like manner, Forms do not explain objects at all.

Forms or Ideas are these changeless, eternal, and nonmaterial essences or patterns of which the actual visible objects we see are only poor copies. (pg. 55)

The assumption is that actual objects are built based on templates. Thus and actual chair is patterned on the Form of chair. Certainly when someone builds a chair they have in mind the idea of what a chair is, how it should look, and how it is to be used. If this were all that the doctrine of Forms were used for, there would be no problem. But, in fact, the doctrine of Forms is used in a religious way, of providine meaning to life and a guiding compass to how we should live. This is misguided.

Philosophers before Socrates thought of reality as material stuff of some sort, but Plato designated the nonmaterial Ideas of Forms as the true reality. (pg. 55)

Both these sets of philosophers made a serious mistake. The philosophers before Socrates tried to explain the origin of physical stuff in terms of pre-existing physical stuff such as water, air, or fire. Plato tried to explain the nonmaterial Forms as true reality.

Actual objects are true reality just as much as the nonmaterial Forms of them are. The physical realm is just as real as the realm of ideas. It seems that throughout much of history humans have considered the physical body as somehow inferior to the mind or to the spiritual realm. The proper hierarchy begins with God at the top and his created creation as lower than him, but made in his image for his purpose. The spiritual realms were created by God as was the physical realm. Everything is permeated by God's spiritual presence.

The source of error is in leaving God out of the equation, not in believing that physical objects are real.

Knowledge is absolute because the true object of thought is not the material order but the changeless and eternal order of the Ideas or Forms. Socrates anticipated this view by holding that there is an absolute Good which makes possible our judgments of particular good. Socrates' concern was ethical but Plato's was metaphysical, an explanation of the whole structure of reality and the place of morality in it. (pg. 55)

Here we see the error in great clarity. The ultimate reality is thought to be the realm of Forms whereas, in truth, the ultimate reality is the living and personal creator God. All aspects of the created world should be understood in their relation to him, in their being created by him for his purpose and for his glory.

It is life, the life of God, which is the source of all reality, not the cold-hearted intellect. God's life is the source and purpose of reality. Forms are merely one of the spiritual components of physical objects. The intellect is an attribute of souls, not an ultimate eternal truth in their own right. God possesses intellect and passes some of it along in the souls he creates. In creating living, self-aware souls, God imparts the gift of himself — these created, self-aware creatures experience something of what it is to be God because God imbued them with some of his attributes. The purpose of doing this was to bless us. In emphasizing Forms as Plato does, he misses the big picture. He is locked-in to a cold-hearted, unfeeling machine of Forms instead of basking in the glory of a living, personal relationship with a caring, loving God. These early philosophical systems seem to me to be religious in nature.

Visible things change — they come and go, generate and perish. Their existence is brief. But Ideas such as Good and Beautiful seem timeless. They have more being than things. The real world is, therefore, not the visible world but rather the intelligible world. (pg. 56)

Visible things only perish because our souls only have a small view of the totality of all things at a time. We are bound by time. God is not bound in this way and he sees these visible things as eternally existing. Thus, they do not change in the way Plato claims.

It is true that God's existence is superior to our existence. God exists eternally by his own nature; we are created.

There is a sense in which even Ideas change in the same way as visible things — Plato doesn't seem to notice this which is, I think, a serious error. Ideas only exist in our minds when we are actively thinking about them. When we stop thinking about them (during sleep for example) they are gone just as visible objects are gone when they are destroyed. But just because we cannot see them doesn't mean they are gone. The Form of "chair" is always present in God's mind just as the particular chair I am now sitting in is always present in God's mind. He never sleeps and is omnipresent — always present everywhere and at all times.

Ideas do not have more "being" than actual objects — this is simply nonsense. God has more "being" than his created creation. He created the spiritual realms, he created the physical realm, he created (and continues to create) the spirit beings which inhabit the spiritual realms, he created (and continues to create) physical beings (with spiritual souls), he has created all the other living aspects of the spiritual realm such as symbols, Forms, feelings. Everything that God creates is living because God is Life. We just think some things are non-living, but at their core the are alive because they are imbued with God's nature.

Certainly physical objects are not alive in the same way that souls are alive. Souls have the ability to be aware whereas object merely have the living ability to be (being is an aspect of God's nature and is, therefore, living).

Both the physical world and the spiritual realms are real — one is not more real than the other. They merely have different attributes and a different plan and purpose in God's mind.

We normally apprehend beauty first of all in a particular object or person. Then, we move from the beauty of a particular body to the recognition that beauty "in every form is one and the same." (pg. 56)

Plato makes much of this progression from observing particular objects to finally apprehending the Form behind the object. But elsewhere he indicates that he believes the soul originally apprehends Forms but loses this capability during conception. Then, slowly over time, some regain this ability. Plato never mentions why we forget and why we later remember. His whole system seems rather arbitrary to me. In my philosophical system, God is the source of everything and all of life resides in the spiritual realm (although physical lifeforms have a component in the physical world).

Beauty is not merely a concept: Beauty has objective reality. Beauty is a Form or Idea. Things become beautiful: but Beauty always is. Beauty has a separate existence from those changing things which move in and out of Beauty. (pg. 56)

This idea seems to be a key ingredient in Plato's system, but to me it doesn't say much. In my philosophical system, everything has objective reality: physical objects, concepts, souls — everything. Chairs are real and the Idea of "chairness" is also real. Ideas are real and objects are real. There are physical chairs in the physical realm, there are spiritual chairs in the spiritual realm (we encounter these in dreams and after death), there are ideas of chairs (of chairness) in the spiritual realm.

The ability of the soul to experience ideas is due to its attribute of intellect. Souls have various attributes and therefore have various aspects. We can see chairs because we have the attribute of sight. Sight has a spiritual component and a physical component. The physical component involves nerves, the eye, and the light coming from the chair. The spiritual component of a chair involves the soul imagining the relief of sitting after standing all day, the preference for soft chairs over hard chairs, the amazement that someone invented chairs at all, the Form or design of chairs as distinguished from couches.

Plato is correct in stating that the concept of beauty is distinct from an object being beautiful. My objection is that he seems to think of the concept of beauty in a religious sense, as being morally superior to the beautiful object; he seems to mistake the significance of the idea of beauty for the creator God who is the source of all beauty and who is supremely beautiful in his very nature.

The true philosopher is concerned to know the essential nature of things. When he asks what is justice or beauty, he does not want examples of just and beautiful things. He wants to know what makes these things just and beautiful. The difference between opinion and knowledge is that those who are at the level of opinion can recognize a just act but cannot tell you why it is just. (pg. 56)

Certainly it is not easy to know what justice is nor to determine how to apply the concept of justice in individual situations. I question whether there even is such a thing as "Justice" outside of the application to specific acts. Certainly there can be teachings and discussion about when an act is just and when it is unjust. The same goes for the idea of "Beauty." Things (physical things and spiritual things) are beautiful; there is no such things as raw "beauty" floating around in some realm of ideas somewhere. Justice and beauty are aspects of God's nature which can be possessed by objects and actions. To understand justice and beauty we must go to the source which is God himself.

Plato's distinction between opinion and knowledge is misguided in my opinion. He considers knowledge to be superior in some way to opinion. A person who can merely notice that an act is just is interior to a person who can explain the attributes of justice. Perhaps this second person is more educated but this is quite different than claiming that they are morally superior, more advanced as a human. Plato seems to think of education as the ultimate measure of human achievement, but in reality it is faith. Our faith in God results in eternal union with God — education does not (but education is certainly an aspect of faith; without knowledge of God it is hard to have faith in him). Plato's knowledge did not bring him knowledge or faith in the God who created him, it merely brought him prejudice against those who were less educated or perhaps less intelligent or perhaps less able to spend mental energy thinking about such things due to the pressures of living life.

Plato is not sure that there are Ideas or Forms of dog, water, and other things, but he indicates that there are "certainly not" Ideas of mud and dirt. If there were Forms behind all classifications of things, there would have to be a duplicate world. (pg. 57)

The cracks in Plato's system emerge in the details. His Forms must of necessity be grand and glorious. The reality is that there is a duplicate world in the spiritual realm. For every kind of object in the physical world there is a similar spiritual object. The spiritual world has many additional kinds of spiritual objects which don't have a counterpart in the physical world: an example of this is unicorns.

The difference between grand Forms such as Beauty and Justice and the smaller ideas of mud and dirt is that the grand Forms concern humans and their relationship with God and with each other — they are moral in their nature. Mud and dirt only deal with physical objects. Plato senses that human life is in some way morally superior to the life of a dog but he doesn't have a frame of reference to express it. Christianity provide this foundation. Human life is superior to mere mud and dirt because humans are created in the image of God and contain the breath of God's life: humans are moral creatures. All life forms (such as dogs) are living and should be respect because they have conscious souls. Other objects such as mud and water are not conscious living beings and thus we cannot insult them or treat them disrespectfully or shamefully. Plato's extreme (religious?) emphasis on the intellect causes him to miss all of this.

In connection with Plato's theory of the preexistence of the soul, he says that the human soul was acquainted with the Forms before it was united with the body. (pg. 57)

Reincarnation has the same problem as Plato's idea. In both, the pre-born soul remembers the "truth" but upon taking up residence in a physical body it forgets. Both systems consider physical reality as inferior to the non-physical realm.

In contrast, Christianity teaches that our soul is created at conception. As we develop in childhood we become morally accountable for our actions (and thoughts.) There is a development and we start out undeveloped but our undeveloped condition at the beginning is not due to a forgetting. I suspect that the reason we develop is because our soul actually develops. Over time it takes on additional attributes. Thus a soul in the womb before 11 weeks doesn't feel pain because the soul doesn'y yet possess the attribute of experiencing physical sensation — this attribute is acquired at the same time that the nervous system of the body develops to provide the possibility of sensation. As young children develop their cognitive abilities their souls are simultaneously acquiring the attribute of cognition. Thus, as Plato asserts, our ability to think correctly does develop. However, as I have noted, this is not the end-all-be-all: our congitive development is not the religious and moral goal of life, rather, it is merely part of the development process of human living. There are things far more important that developing the intellect. Developing a knowledge of God and a relationship with him are far superior.

In the process of creation, the Demiurge or God used the Forms in fashioning particular things. (pg. 57)

This Demiurge is inferior to the creator God of Christianity. The Forms are outside of the Demiurge and the Demiurge must use Forms in creating particular objects.

Forms seem to have originally existed in the "mind of God" or in the supreme principle of rationality, the One. Aristotle says that "the Forms are the cause of the essence of all other things and the One is the cause of the Forms." (pg. 57)

So now we have five eternal, preexistent things which are necessary in the creation of objects:

For these early philosophers, it is philosophical rules and laws which govern how things function. This is similar to modern atheistic science in which natural laws control how the universe functions and the origin of life. Thus, the Forms are the cause of the essence of material objects.

Aristotle hints that the One is at the top of the hierarchy since the Forms are caused by the the One. But this One is bound by the philosophical concept of causation so this One is not really the same as the creator God of Christianity. In Christianity everything owes its origin to God including such philosophical laws as causality, cause and effect, etc.

Aristotle argued that form and matter are inseparable, but Plato said that there was a separate reality of form and matter. (pg. 58)

Plato and Aristotle agree that there is such a thing as Forms. Plato taught that Forms exist in some separate, non-material realm and that these Forms are used in fashioning material objects. Aristotle's view is no much of an improvement. He states that there are two distinct aspects to physical objects: Form and matter. One is non-material (Forms) and the other is material (matter.) Thus, material objects are simultaneously material and non-material: they are therefore not really material at all since they are a hybrid of material and non-material.

My view is similar to Aristotle in that material objects have various components in various realms. Thus, the components or a chair are:

There is a hierarchy of Forms representing the structure of reality: an example is the Form Animal with such subclasses of Forms as Man and Horse. (pg. 58)

Plato is getting just plain wacky here. He assumes that there is only one way to identify this hierarchy. But there are various ways to organize ideas. It is rather arbitrary that Plato considers humans and horses to both be animals. He could just as well have created a hierarchy in which the spiritual qualities provided the main structure. In this case there would be four kinds of creatures:

A problem with Plato's doctrine of Forms: his language gives the impression that there are two distinct worlds, but the relationship of these worlds is not easily conceived. (pg. 59)

Actually, it is very easy to conceive of a physical realm and a non-material, spiritual realm. The problem is that Plato's doesn't recognize that his Forms are actual spiritual phenomena. He hints that they are non-material but he doesn't develop the idea of what it means to be non-material.

Modern atheistic science assumes there is only one realm. This realm includes matter, energy, and the physical laws. But it is difficult to understand why matter would obey the physical laws since matter is different than the physical laws. There must be a non-material aspect to the universe containing the physical laws and which influences the material universe into obeying the physical laws. It is far easier to believe in the existence of a both a physical realm and a spiritual realm rather than to explain all that we observe (including consciousness, love, emotions) in terms of matter, energy, and the physical laws.

An argument in favor of Plato's doctrine of Forms: To say a thing is better or worse implies some standard, which obviously is not there as such in the thing being evaluated. (pg. 59)

Actually, this argument favors Christian moral philosophy over Plato's view. To say that something is better or worse does imply a standard, but this standard must be living. A mere principle cannot choose better or worse, only a living being can do this. The standard used in determining such things is God's nature and his character — God's law. We compare things to God's law to make moral judgments about them. Only moral agents can do this. Chairs to not judge whether something is right or wrong and neither do Forms. So this ability to judge doesn't support Plato's views at all.

There can be no knowledge of a universal Idea of Good if we are limited to the experiences we have of particular cultures. (pg. 59)

This sounds like a description of the error of modern sociology, of relativism. By ignoring God and his moral law we cannot judge the right or wrong of anything: nothing is good or bad except in the culture's particular traditional views about the goodness or badness of attitudes and behaviors. This kind of thinking leads to the most egregious violations of God's pure and holy moral law.

The views of the Sophists: (pg. 59)

Moral rules are fashioned deliberately be each community and have relevance and authority only for the people in that place.
Moral rules are unnatural, that people obey them only because of the pressure of public opinion, and that if their acts could be done in private, even the "good" among us would not follow the rules of morality.
The essence of justice is power, or that "might is right."
In answer to the basic question "what is the good life?" one would have to say that it is the life of pleasure.

These views remind me of the views of modern sociology, of relativism, of Machiavelli, of philosophical utilitarianism. They are certainly un-Christian.

In my view of the soul I claim that souls have various attributes and that the souls of different kinds of creatures have different collections of attributes. All souls have appetites and there are various kinds of appetites. All souls seem to have the appetites being and of self-preservation. In my view, reason and spirit are attributes which human souls have but the souls of bacteria don't have. Read about more appetites of the soul.

The spirit is the drive toward action, which is neutral at first but responds to the direction of reason. (pg. 60)

This sounds like what we would call the will. But the will seems to be driven by all the appetites, not just by the attribute of reason.

In my view, appetites are not limited to bodily urges but include spiritual appetites. In fact, I believe that all appetites are spiritual, not physical. All of life including the soul resides in the spiritual realm. Souls with bodies are connected to the inert, non-living body via the senses, the brain, the nervous system, and other bodily structures. But the soul merely attaches to the body at these points and in doing so enlivens the body. When the soul stops interacting with the body (after death) the body continues to experience chemical reactions but these are no longer living. The body is only living when a spiritual soul interacts with it.

The soul is the principle of life and movement. The body by itself is inanimate. (pg. 60)

Yes, partially true. However, the soul is not a principle, it is a living being. Plato doesn't distinguish between the physical realm and the spiritual realm. He claims that the soul is a principle but doesn't mention that is is not a part of the physical realm. The soul resides in the spiritual realm and only interacts with the body at the boundary between the physical realm and the spiritual realm. I should note that this boundary is not at the surface of the skin of the body, it pervades the entire body but is in a distinct non-material realm. Thus, the boundary between the physical realm and the spiritual realm is within every atom of the universe. However, the soul mainly interacts with the body via the senses, the brain, and the nervous system.

Conflict between the three parts of the soul. Reason could suggest a goal for behavior only to be overcome by a sensual appetite, and the power of the spirit could be pulled in either direction be these sensual desires. (pg. 60)

The only conflict of importance is the conflict between the sin-tainted part of the soul and the rest of the soul. Our innate sin nature prevents the soul from operating properly. This condition will be finally corrected once and for all in the new heavens and new earth. Then we will experience an eternal utopia free from the influences from the spirits of wickedness. The inhabitants of the spiritual realm will also be free from these influences which currently affect them adversely also.

Notice that Plato seems to teach that the body is bad and the reason is good. This kind of dualistic thinking has plagued mankind for thousands of years and continues to plague us. It is central in some religions. Christianity is technically free from this error but has, in practical terms, been plagued by this dualism as well.

Reason is a goal-seeking and measuring faculity. Pleasure is a legitimate goal of life, but the passions, being simply drives toward the things that give pleasure, are incapable of distinguishing between objects that provide a higher or longer-lasting pleasure and those that only appear to provide these pleasures. The passions or appetites deceive us into believing that certain kinds of pleasures will bring us happiness. (pg. 60)

Plato seems to think that passion is always bad. But in Christianity, the passion for God and godliness is good and desirable. He also seems to equate the appetites with the passions.

Moral evil is the result of choosing to do something in opposition to God's moral law, to do something displeasing to God. Evil is not merely an intellectual phenomena, the absence of something good. Rather, moral evil is a living spirit, the consequence of a depraved soul which has rejected God and his pure and holy moral law. Evil is an enemy, not merely a principle. In choosing to reject God, Lucifer became Satan and tainted the spiritual and physical realms with his wicked deceptions and attempts to kill and destroy all that is good. Even within Christianity there is a teaching that evil is merely the absence of something good but this idea was put forward to try to explain the phenomena of evil without attributing it to God. Certainly God created the possibility of evil in giving creatures free will.

Certainly ignorance about God's law contributes to evil in the world but mere knowledge, even true knowledge, would not cure the problem of evil. Human souls are depraved to the core and will disobey God's law even when they full-well know what God expects. The fallen angels in the spiritual realm are doing the same — they know they are in opposition and disobedience to God's moral law but they do it anyway hoping against hope that they will succeed in the impossible war to conquer God.

Plato alternates between an optimistic view of human beings of their capacity for virtue and a rather negative opinion about whether they will fulfill their potentiality for virtue. (pg. 61)

Imagine if Plato believed that virtue was a spiritual, moral quality. If he thinks that humans can't achieve a merely intellectual kind of virtue, what hope is there that anyone could conquer the forces of darkness and the ingrained power of sin operating within our soul? Only through God's grace is such a victory possible.

Evil is not merely the absence of good. (Many Christians have claimed this, thinking that it rescues God from any responsibility in the existence of evil.) However, this view doesn't rescue God at all and it doesn't explain the seemingly living aspect of evil.

In my view, in creating living spiritual souls (angels and humans), God endowed them with the capacity to create life, just as he has the capacity to create life. The ultra-charasmatic Christians have it right in claiming that we create good outcomes through the power of our words.

There is a sense in which we create our children through our procreative efforts. Certainly we require God's participation in this.

In choosing to disobey God, to rebel against him and his divine holy law, we in effect become like Dr. Frankenstein, creating monsters. Using this God-given creative power we create a living spirit of evil and wickedness which can be tangibly perceived. The ultra-charismatic Christians have it right in referring to the spirit of alcoholism, the spirit of adultery, etc. (although they have no theology to go along with their phrases.) These forces acting within us to destroy us are not merely principles or impersonal forces or the absence of God's power working within us. They are, rather, active spiritual living entities (spiritual viruses, if you will) which influence us and tempt us to do evil.

The soul has a prior existence. It has two main parts, the rational and the irrational. The irrational part in turn is made up of two sections, the spirit and the appetites. Each of the two original parts has a different origin. The rational part of the soul is created by the Demiurge, whereas the irrational part is created by the celestial gods, who also form the body. Thus, even before it enters the body, the soul is composed of two different kinds of ingredients. In the soul's prior existence, the rational part has a clear vision of the Forms, of truth, though at the same time, the spirit and appetites already, by their very nature, have a tendency to descend. The soul descends (the soul "falls") into a body because this is simply the tendency of the irrational part, to be unruly and to pull the soul toward the earth. The soul has an unruly and evil nature in its irrational parts even before it enters the body. The cause of evil is located in the soul itself, it is a characteristic of the soul. Only those souls that do forget the truth in turn descend into a body. Upon its entrance into the body, the difficulties of the soul are greatly increased. (pg. 61)

Christianity teaches that the soul is created at conception and that it never dies.

Plato claims that the soul has two parts, each created by a different entity: (1) rational, created by the Demiurge, and (2) irrational (spirit + appetites), created by celestial gods (who also create the body). The early philosophers emphasized the superiority of the intellect and rational mind over the other aspects of the soul.

Plato seems to believe that it would have been better for every soul to have remained in the non-material realm rather than becoming incarnate within a body.

Plato teaches that the origin of evil is within the soul. I agree with this. However, he teaches that it is forgetfulness with is the essence and cause of evil. This is just plain wrong. It is the will which disobeys God which is the source of evil.

Plato teaches that evil is merely wrong knowledge — not a moral rebellion agains God. I believe the Christian concept of evil is the only one that makes sense. None of the other religious or philosophical systems explain the origin and problem of evil satisfactorily.

The body disturbs the harmony of the soul, for the body exposes the soul to stimuli that deflect the reason from true knowledge or that prevent the reason from recalling the truth it once knew. (pg. 62)

The source of evil lies in the spititual realm, not the physical in realm, and certainly not in the body. It is not the appetites of the body that cause us to commit sin, it is the inclination due to sin in the soul. Christians use the term "flesh" to refer to the tendency of the soul toward sin but the use of this word does not mean that the sin originates from the body. Example of the use of the word "flesh" in the Bible illustrating that the flesh is spiritual, not the body:

(Matthew 19:6) Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

(John 6:51) I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

I believe in the Eucharist, however, you cannot claim that the consecrated host is the same as the physical body of Jesus. This body ascended into heaven. This body has hands and arms and a head. The consecrated host has none of these.

(Romans 7:5,6) For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.

(Romans 7:18) For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.

Error is perpetuated whenever a society has the wrong values. Societies tend to perpetuate the evils and errors committed by earlier generations. (pg. 62)

Evil can be perpetuated by allowing low moral standards in society. There is a sense in which lack of knowledge harms people. But the lack of knowledge is not the sin, it is the immoral behavior and attitues which is the sin. There are plenty of ignorant people who are saintly.

(Hosea 4:6) My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee.

Evil is also transmitted when human souls reappear via a transmigration, bringing into a new body their earlier errors and judgments of value. (pg. 62)

(Heb 9:27) And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.

Plato teaches that a tainted soul in being reincarnated corrupts other souls. But since the soul is tainted in being born the first time (that is why it was incarnated in the first place) why would reincarnation be any worse? The error of ignorance is the same whether from the first incarnation of from subsequent incarnations.

It is the body that accounts for ignorance, rashness, and lust, for the body disturbs that clear working of the reason, spirit, and appetites by exposing the soul to a cascade of sensations. (pg. 62)

Plato clearly teaches the dualism between body and soul. The body is the source of all that is bad and undesirable. He attributes this to the appetites.

In my view the soul is spiritual and its appetites are spiritual. Misguided appetites (imfluenced by sin) cause the problems, not the appetites themselves.

Plato lists a few sins: ignorance, rashness, and lust. Two of these are also included in the list of Christian vices so at least there is some agreement on what kinds of behavior is bad. But I suspect that Plato would think that certain sins (defined as such by Christian morality) are not really sins at all. and vice versa. So our views of what is good and what is bad affects our behavior. In this, Plato is correct: ignorance leads to bad behavior.

Plato's system of morality begins with the soul as existing first of all independently of the body. Morality consists in the recovery of one's lost inner harmony by reversing the process by which the reason has been overcome by the appetites and the stimuli of the body. (pg. 62)

In Plato's view, it is the physical body which is the source of the appetites, but this simply can't be the case. Appetites are urges, motivations, desires which are non-physical in nature. This is the same error that atheistic materialists make, ascribing to the realm of matter, energy, and the natural laws such immaterial and spiritual things as consciousness, emotion, feeling, urges, etc.

In Plato's view the soul which is in harmony with truth exists independently of the body at first. Then mysterously, the soul is drawn into a body which corrupts it by confusing the intellect, the reason, which is the good part of the person. The perfect man will relearn the proper place of the intellecty and the body and will again come into harmony. It seems that Plato would value the after-death state since the soul is again free from the harmful influences of the body.

Plato's explanation for this is that people, in ignorance, think that certain actions will be beneficial but they turn out to be harmful. The Christian explanation is that when under the influence of sinful urges, people do things they later regret (or that they don't think are wrong at all) — this is a form of forgetting also. It takes diligent, regular practice in the virtues and habitually avoiding vice to avoid sinful actions.

Socrates awakened people from their sleep of ignorance with the power of his irony and the persistence of his dialectic method. For Plato, the effective teacher must turn the prisoner (of the cave of shadows) around so that he will shift his gaze from the shadows to the real world. (pg. 63)

For both Socrates and Plato the goal is to attain to a state of knowledge, to cast off ignorance. They both have somewhat different ideas about all this. For Plato this is an intellectual process, the intellect discovers the truth using reason. Ignorant people are looking at shadows which they think are true reality. They need to turn around and see the objects casting the shadows on the cave walls.

The Christian view is quite different. Our souls are tangled-up in wicked influences in the spiritual realm which cause us to sin. We need to recognize that there is a creator-God who we offend by our sinning and who has provided grace for us to restore our fellowship with him. To do this we must acgknowledge our sinful nature (and our sins), turn from them (repent), seek God's forgiveness, and accept in faith God's redemptive grace through the work of Jesus Christ. A truly faith-filled person will exhibit victory over much sin and will live a holy, devout, faithful life focused on worshipping and serving God. As we shall see, it is common in the study of philosophy to find philosophers mocking Christianity.

The concept of morality of Plato is quite different than the Christian concept of morality. In Christianity, morality concerns behavior and attitudes that are pleasing to God, that are in harmony with God's will and his law, and that are free from the influence of sin and wickedness. In Christianity morality is a spiritual endeavor concerning life and eternal life, not merely an analyical, intellectual endeavor.

It almost sounds as if Plato's ideas about morality are in harmony with Christian ideas, until we learn that his definitions of the words morality, virtue, and goodness are much different than the meanings given in Christianity. He uses these words as follows:

Goodness and virtue are intimately connected with the mode of behavior that produces well-being and harmony. (pg. 64)

Virtue is grounded in the very nature of the soul. It is the very nature of reason to know and to direct the spirit and appetites. The good life is achieved only when every part is fulfilling its function. (pg. 64)

Plato is correct in stating that the soul is innately virtuous. He doesn't mention that these virtuous souls are currently corrupted by the sin nature which also resides in the spiritual realm.

Plato claims that reason is the attribute of the soul which directs the soul into virtue. But how can an amoral (without morality) attribute consider morality at all? The problem is that Plato considers morality to be an aspect of the intellect, not an aspect of religious, spiritual being. Our modern society makes the same mistake in considering morality to be merely the proper functioning of society and by excluding God from the equation.

The good life is achieved when the soul acts in harmony with God's will — that is the essence of moral goodness. Plato (and other early philosophers) are wrong in stating that the intellect is the highest attribute of the soul.

I suppose there is truth in this which we can see when things are not functioning efficiently. For example, in war-torn countries or in places in the world with famine, the good life is not present. However, it is inevitible that things will not function efficiently in this world. Legislatures squabble about how to structure society, about which laws are needed, and they are influenced by interest groups who have their own selfish interests in mind. All of life is a compromise and I suppose it is easy to claim that things are never functioning efficiently. Thus, according to Plato's definition, we can never have the good life in this world. The Platonic good life is a utopian ideal which can never be realized until the new heavens and new earth.

Plato seems to think that the purpose of life is to create in our living of life a work of art, just as the purpose of a painter is to create a beautiful painting. But the soul is spiritual; the spiritual realm (and the physical world as well) has God as its focus and purpose. The purpose of life is to direct our will, passion, our very being, toward God and to love him, serve him, and please him. This highlights a problem with much of philosophy — it is not religious and it ignores God. Only Christianity can provide the proper perspective of life. Other religious systems contain error in their understanding of God and his purpose in creating us.

Corresponding to the three parts of the soul are three virtues: (pg. 64,65)

Temperance: when the appetites are kept within limits and in their measure, avoiding excesses; the moderation in pleasures and desires.
Courage: when the energy of will, which issues from the spirited part of the soul, is kept within limits, avoiding rash or headlong behavior.
Wisdom: when reason remains undisturbed by the onrush of appetites and continues to see the true ideals in spite of the constant changes experienced in daily life.

There is a fourth virtue, justice, when each part of the soul is fulfilling its own special function. (pg. 65)

Just as the proper function of a hammer is discovered not by opinion but by analyzing the nature and capacities of a hammer, so also the proper behavior for human beings is not prescribed by opinion but is rather required by the very character of the parts of the soul. (pg. 65)

Plato compares humans with a simple tool but there is a vast difference. A hammer is a physical object with no soul; a human is primarily a soul associated with a body. The spiritual realm of the soul is quite different than the physical realm of the hammer.

Plato seems to think it is easy to analyze an object such as a hammer and know it proper function. But it often turns out that objects are used for purposes other then those for which they were designed, for example, when people build shelters from cardboard or build things out of duct tape and bailing wire.

The hammer was designed for a particular purpose. In order to properly use it, instructions are needed. (Of course, in the case of the hammer the instructions are not written down because they are so simple, but everyone who uses one has at some point been taught its use.) Humans are much better off when following the instruction manual for living. As we can see by examining history, humans are not very good at figuring out how to structure societies on their own. And they are terrible at providing for dignity, respect, and freedom for all all kinds and classes of people. It seems that Christianity has improved matters but, unfortunately, the church has done a poor job as well. But when it comes down to morality, the gospel message of Jesus Christ is, by far, the superior teaching about the topic.

They may be able to avoid them while on this earth but they won't be able to avoid them on judgment day when they must explain them to God. Many who think they got away with a sinful lifestyle will discover that God is not too happy with this kind of a life.

The inability of Athenian democracy to produce great leaders and the way it treated one of its greatest citizens, Socrates. Plato despaired of democracy and formulated a new conception of political leadership in which authority and knowledge are appropriately combined. (pg. 46)

Plato is right in noticing the flaws of democracy. For a modern day example, consider American democracy: politicians try to win votes by promising entitlements to the voting masses. These voting masses are so stupid that they don't know that minimum wage laws and rent limits will hurt the very people they are trying to help. They don't notice that the cultural decline is caused by jettisoning Christian-based moral standards.

In addition to these problems with democracy is the problem of stomping on the rights and freedoms of the minority. For example, in this post-Christian America, the rights of Christians to practice their faith is being compromised. Churches must hire people who hold un-Christian views, Christian adoption agencies must not discriminate against providing services to gay couples, and preachers must be very careful not to say anything against homosexual practices. I'm afraid that the Christian church will soon be forced underground.

Plato's solution to the problems of democracy is to train a class of super-leaders who are able to rule effectively and efficiently based on his idea that right-knowledge is the ultimate ideal.

Rulers must "bring compulsion to bear" upon people to ascend upward from darkness to light. (pg. 50)

A society is in trouble when it relies on its rulers to provide spiritual guidance for the masses. Christendom attempted this and failed miserably.

Plato has in mind the enlightened class of rulers who were trained for decades to understand the true condition of reality. But Plato's scheme doesn't include the most important aspect of all, a living relationship with the living God. I think a society ruled by virtuous dictators would be more efficient than a democracy but I'm afraid we can't trust our dictators to be virtuous. For this reason alone democracy is a better choice.

By justice, Plato means that each person is fulfilling their own special function. This definition of justice ignores Goid's moral law. Thus, in Plato's good society there could be significant immorality occuring. For example, a society such as this could be persecuting Christians based on the idea that religions are a harm to society because they are not based on the highest intellectual ideal but are, rather, based on the lower level of belief.

The best way to understand the just person is to analyze the nature of the state. "We should begin by inquiring what justice means in a state." (pg. 65)

Plato's concept of justice begins with the state. Thus, if a person lives in a just state, their views will be considered aberrant if they refer to some ideal beyond the state. There is no place for Christianity or the gospel of Jesus Christ in such a state.

The origin of the state is a reflection of people's economic needs. No individual is self-sufficing. No one possesses all the skills needed. There must, therefore, be a division of labor. (pg. 66)

Plato implies that states are formed by a rational process of dividing up the workload based on skills and needs. He seems to ignore the political realities and doesn't seem to subscribe to the various conflict theories of groups of theories in which power and personal ambition dominates.

What if the mix of skills doesn't match the required workload? What if there is a class of aristocrats who consume more than their fair share? Plato doesn't seem to address these realities but prefers to remain aloof and abstract.

The healthy state soon becomes "swollen up with a whole multitude of callings not ministering to any bare necessity." This desire for more things will soon exhaust the resources of the community. (pg. 66)

Plato highlights what has become the main problem with our post-oil society. We have become conditioned to have much more than our bare necessities. As we begin to run out of oil (and water and food) we will experience wars and famines. We have collectively lived beyond our means because of the abundance of cheap oil. When the oil runs out we will be forced to adapt to a sustainable economic system. Unfortunately, changing to this will be a very painful process and the world's population will drastically decrease since it is much too high to exist without an abundance of cheap oil and water aquifiers.

Wars have their "origin in desires." Thus emerge the guardians of the state who repel the invader and preserve internal order. (pg. 66)

As a result, there are now two distinct classes of people, those who fill all the crafts — farmers, artisans, and traders — and those who guard the community. From this latter class are chosen the most highly trained guardians, who will become the rulers of the state and will represent a third and elite class. (pg. 66)

Plato apparently believed in a class-based society. I can think of some difficulties with this:

The three classes in the state are an extension of the three parts of the soul: (pg. 66)

Craftsmen or artisans: represent as a class the lowest part of the soul, the appetites.
Guardians: embody the spirited element of the soul.
Rulers: represent the rational element.

Here is the problem with Plato's philosophical system. He assumes that the intellectual, rational aspect of humanity is supreme and that appetites and such are inferior. Then he creates a model for society based on this same scheme. The theory is that people remain in the class corresponding to their level advancement. But once a person is a skilled, trained craftsman they will be unable to advance to the next higher level even if they develop their soul to that level because their career will hold them back. Thus, there will be no incentive for people to improve.

Fortunately, Plato's philosophical system is complete nonsense so we don't have to address these concerns.

I wonder whether Plato's three-fold classification of societal roles matches the real world. As subsequent history demonstrated, there are many roles other than these three. Also missing are Christian ministers and evangelists.

People who are capable of progressing to a higher level of class should only do so after extensive training. People theoretically would have the opportunity to reach the highest level, but they would in fact stop at the level of their natural aptitudes. (pg. 67)

This passage exposes the problem with Plato's philosophy. Humans are theoretically equal in that they can all reach the highest level (with the proper training) but in reality some people do not have the aptitude required to reach the highest level no matter how much training they receive. It seems to me that a true philosophical system would have to teach that everyone is equal in their essential human-ness. Differences in aptitudes, personalities, attitudes, etc. should be explainable without excluding anyone from the possibility of reaching the highest ideal. In Christianity, everyone has the possibility of becoming redeemed if they respond favorably to God's promptings on their soul (some Christian groups are confused about how this works and whether or not non-christians can be redeemed).

The "noble lie" is that the god who fashioned all people gave each a particular nature. By nature some would be rulers and others craftsmen and this provides the basis for a perfectly stratified society. This "noble lie" is needed to make everyone satisfied with their lot. Later societies in Europe assumed that the children born into such a stratified society would stay at the level at which they were born, but Plato recognized that children would not always have the same quality as their parents, and that each person must be assigned the station proper to his nature. (pg. 67)

Everyone should agree on who is to be the ruler and agree on the reason why the ruler should be obeyed. (pg. 67)

Political philosophy. This sounds like what the framing fathers of America did. In a constitutional democracy everyone chooses who their leaders are to be and the constitution defines how the government is to be organized. I don't see how the people could choose their leaders in a tyrany.

A problem with American democracy is that the leaders must spend so much of their time getting elected which involves telling the masses what they want to hear and appeasing special interests. I suppose the politicians who get elected are good at that but this is not what Plato refers to. He is advocating that leaders should be skilled in running the state. But here there is much difference of opinion about what works and what doesn't work.

Who should rule the state? The ruler should be the philosopher-king who has been fully educated, one who has come to understand the difference between the visible world and the intelligible world, between the realm of opinion and the realm of knowledge, between appearance and reality. (pg. 67,68)

By the time he is 18 years old, he will have had training in literature, music, and elementary mathematics. His literature would be censored. Plato accused certain poets of outright falsehood and of impious accounts of the behavior of the gods. Seductive music would be replaced be a more wholesome, martial meter. After this, there would be extensive physical and military training, then advanced mathematics, then dialectic and moral philosophy. After this, 15 years would be spent gathering practical experience through public service. Finally, at age 50, the ablest men would reach the highest level of knowledge, and would then be ready for the task of governing the state. (pg. 68)

Whether justice could ever be achieved in a state would depend on whether the philosopic element in society could attain dominance. (pg. 68)

My version of this statement: Whether justice can ever be attained depends on whether all members of society practice the virtue of justice. Certain the rulers must be just for there to be a just society but this is not enough. If the citizens are treating one another unjustly the society will be unjust.

Plato teaches that his philosophical concepts are supreme but he is mistaken. It is the spiritual and moral teachings of Christianity which are absolutes.

The human race will not be free of evils until either the stock of those who rightly and truly follow philosophy aquire political authority, of the class who have power become real philosopers. (pg. 68)

To rule a state (or any group of people) requires leadership skills; it is not enough for a person to be morally pure to qualify as a leader. The question then becomes, what is required to rule virtuously? This question is rarely asked; rulers seem to think that gaining and holding power doesn't have any obligations on their part.

Justice in the state will be attained only when and if the three classes fulfill their functions. (pg. 68)

Unlike the craftsmen who marry and own property, the guardians will have both property and wives in common (but Plato does not mean to suggest any form of promiscuity). Thus, they will never fear poverty of privation and their mode of life should be isolated from possessions. Women could be guardians as well as men. (pg. 68)

To preserve the unity of the members of the class of guardians, the permanent individual family would be abolished, and the whole class would brecome a single family. They must be free from the temptation to prefer to advantages of one's family to those of the state. (pg. 69)

For guardians, sexual relations would be strictly controlled and would be limited to special marriages in which the partners, under the illusion that they had been paired by drawing lots, would, instead, be brought together through the careful manipulation of the rulers to ensure the highest eugenic possibilities. As soon as children are born to the guardians, they will be taken in charge by officers appointed for that purpose and reared in the card of nurses. (pg. 69)

Justice in the state is therefore the same as justice in the individual. It is the product of people staying in their place and doing their special task. (pg. 69)

It is easy to see Plato's error when he makes a statement such as this. Since when is justice attained by everyone fulfilling their proper role? I suspect that totalitarian states are based on notions such as this, that a perfect state will be realized if you can enforce the proper behavior of all the citizens.

What Plato is missing is that justice is a spiritual and moral quality, not an intellectual and rational one. It is not the rational mind which dictates morality but, rather, the spiritual soul. Many errors of the modern world derive from rejecting the realm of spirit and the importance of morality and the soul.

There are five kinds of govenments and five corresponding mental constitutions among individuals. Plato considered the transition from aristocracy to despotism as a step-by-step decline in the quality of the state corresponding to a gradual deterioration of the moral character of the rulers and the citizens. The five kinds of governments listed from highest to lowest: (pg. 69-71)

Aristocracy: The ideal state. The proper subordination of all classes.
Timocracy: The love of honor in which ambitious members of the ruling class love their honor more than the common good.
Plutocracy: The love of wealth. Private property. Power resides in the hands of people whose main concern is wealth. "As the rich rise in social esteem, the virtuous sink." Breaks the unity of the state into two contending classes, the rich and the poor.
Democracy: The principles of equality and freedom reflect the degenerate human characters. Plato was thinking of the direct popular democracy of Athens in which all citizens had the right to participate in the government; he did not have in mind modern liveral and representative democracy. In a direct democracy, "liberty and free speech are rife everywhere; anyone is allowed to do what he likes. One appetite is as good as another and all must have their equal rights." Rulership of a state should be in the hands of those with the special talent and training for it.
Despotism: The passion for money and pleasures leads the masses to plunder the rich. As the rich resist, the masses seek out a strong person who will be their champion. But this person demands and acquires absolute power and makes slaves of the people.

Plato's theory of the Forms rendered science as an exact mode of knowledge impossible because it is about the visible world of things that science seeks to build its theories. How can one formulate accurate, reliable, and permanent knowledge about a subject matter which is itself imperfect and full of change? (pg. 71)

This sounds like relativism. However, Plato seems to think that his philosophical system is correct and true. So how is it that something as unprovable as Plato's philosophical system can be true which scientific assertions such as the law of gravity are unknowable?

Pythagoras claimed that things are capable of a mathematical explanation. This mathematical characteristic of things suggested to Plato that behind things there must be thought and purpose. The cosmos must therefore be the work of intelligence, since it is the mind that orders all things. (pg. 72)

Although Plato said that mind orders everything, he did not develop a doctrine of creation. But he did teach the following: (pg. 72,74)

"That which becomes must necessarily become through the agency of some cause." This agent, which he calls the divine Craftsman or Demiurge, does not bring new things into being but rather confronts and orders what already exists in chaotic form using the Ideas or Forms or patterns after which things are made.
The World Soul is produced by the Demiurge and is the energizing activity in the receptacle, producing what to us appears to be substance or solid matter though in reality is only qualities caused by the arrangement of geometric surfaces.

Plato departed from the materialists who thought that all things derived from some original kind of matter, whether in the form of earth, air, fire, or water. He did not accept the notion that matter was the basic reality: matter itself must be explained as the composition of something other than matter. What we call matter is a reflection of an Idea or Form. Forms are expressed through a medium, which Plato calls the receptacle or space which is a medium that has no structure but that is capable of receiving the imposition of structure by the Demiurge. There is no explanation of the origin of the receptacle — it is underived, as are the Forms and the Demiurge. The receptacle is where things appear and perish. (pg. 72)

Material objects are composed of nonmaterial compounds. Plato was influenced by the Pythagorean perspective when he argued that solid objects of matter are described and defined in geometric terms. (pg. 73)

This sounds a little like astrology in which angles affect aspects of personality and fate.

It's hard to understand how Pythagoras thought that geometry was a building block of matter. It seems that whenever someone thinks about consciousness and the soul they want to ascribe these transcendental aspects of reality with the material realm in some way. Even atheistic scientists try to do this in ascribing consciousness to a physical cause such as a large set of interconnected neurons.

In my view, the physical realm is inert; only the spiritual realms are living. Spiritual souls living in the spiritual realm connect with the inert body via the senses and nervous system.

Matter is only the appearance of something more basic. The world of things is the world of phenomena, which is the Greek word for appearances. (pg. 73)

Certainly God is eternal. Plato seems to believe in various kinds of transcendant godlike entities: The World Soul, the demiurge, celestial gods. In another quote from page 72,74 it appears Plato believes that the World Soul is produced by the Demiurge. How can something that is produced by something else be eternal?

There is evil in the world because there are obstacles in the way of the Demiurge. The Demiurge represents divine reason and the agency that fashioned the order of the universe. (pg. 73)

If there are obstacles in the way of the Demiurge, then the Demiurge isn't God. It's as if Plato believes in a form of polytheism in which multiple limited divine creatures or aspects of reality all work together (or in conflict with one another) in constructing our current reality.

"The generation of the cosmos was a mixed result of the combination of Necessity and Reason." Necessity is one of the conditions of evil in the world, for evil is the breakdown of purpose. Necessity is expressed in various modes, such as inertia and irreversibility which are obstacles getting in the way of the ording of the world according to a definite purpose. (pg. 73,74)

Whatever frustrates the working of mind contributes to the absence of order, which is the meaning of evil. (pg. 74)

Time comes to be only after phenomena are produced. Time is change; change is the cause of time. Forms are timeless, but the various copies of them in the receptacle constantly "go in" or "go out." (pg. 74)

Change is not capricious but regular, and exhibits the presence of eternal mind. (pg. 74)

This is Plato's "likely story" about the cosmos: the Demiurge fashioned things out of the receptacle, using the Forms as patterns. (pg. 74)