Ethics in a Democracy
Podcast # 7: The Enlightenment
Episode # 7 (23:50)
At the end of Podcast #6, I said that enlightenment and democracy necessarily go together. This was true during the Greek enlightenment of the 5th Century B.C. as well as the 18th century enlightenment that fostered the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Immanuel Kant’s role in articulating the nature of the Enlightenment is well known. He wrote an influential essay in 1784, after the American Revolution and before the French revolution: “What is Enlightenment?”
Enlightenment is our release from self-imposed dependence. Dependence is the inability to use our own reasoning. Instead, we rely on others to do our thinking for us. It is self-imposed not because we lack understanding but because we lack decisiveness: Sapere aude! Have the courage to think for yourself. This is the motto of the Enlightenment (Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” published by Agora Publications, Inc., 2007, p. 1).
Only people who have the freedom and the opportunity to think for themselves can be part of a genuine democracy. Governments that do not foster independent thinkers but only pretend to do so are not democratic forms of government. Tyranny, which only seeks power for its own sake, is a blatant form of anti-democratic government. But there are other, more subtle, approaches to governing that claim to promote the common good by assuming the role of thinking for those who are unable or unwilling to do their own thinking. Throughout the ages, Sophists have sharpened their skills and have often persuaded people that they are really doing them a favor by lifting a burden that is hard to for most people to carry. I will return to Kant’s elaboration of the idea of universal moral law and its role in democracy later in this series of podcasts.
In the meantime let’s return to Plato’s treatment of the idea of freedom. The centrality of freedom in Plato’s philosophy has often been ignored, possibly because those who read and interpret his dialogues tend to take isolated passages from the speeches by one or more of his characters and forget to place them in the overall context of the dialogue in which they appear. Dialogues, like all works of art and philosophy, require interpretation, explication, and analysis. Consider this passage from Plato’s Gorgias:
Callicles: Socrates, you keep saying the same thing!
Socrates: Yes, Callicles, I keep saying the same thing and talking about the same subjects. [491]
Callicles: Yes, and you’re always talking about shoemakers and farmers and cooks and physicians, as if they had anything to do with our argument!
Socrates: Why won’t you tell me in what way a person must be superior and wiser in order to claim a larger share? Won’t you either accept a suggestion or offer one?
Callicles: I have already told you! In the first place, I mean by the superior not shoemakers or cooks but wise politicians who understand the administration of a state, who are not only wise but also courageous and able to carry out their plans, not people who faint from lack of spirit.
Socrates: Most excellent Callicles, notice how different is the charge I bring against you from the one you bring against me. You criticize me for always saying the same thing. But I criticize you for never saying the same about the same things. At one point you defined the better and superior as the stronger. Then you said it is the wiser. Now you present a new notion, declaring that the superior and the better are the more courageous. My good friend, I wish you would tell me once and for all whom you claim to be the better and superior and in what way.
Callicles: I have already told you that I mean those who are wise and courageous in the administration of the state. They are the ones who ought to rule and ought to have an advantage over their subjects. That is justice.
Socrates: Do you mean that they should have more than themselves?
Callicles: I don’t understand.
Socrates: I’m talking about self-rule. But perhaps you don’t think that each of us must rule over ourselves. Perhaps you think that it is enough simply to rule over others.
Callicles: What do you mean by “rule over ourselves”?
Socrates: Nothing complicated. I mean what is commonly said, that we should be moderate, be in control of ourselves, and should rule over our own pleasures and passions (Plato’s Gorgias, Greek page 491).
In this exchange Callicles is repeating a claim made by Gorgias early in that dialogue: In order to be successful, leaders must rule over others. What makes rhetoric, as taught by Gorgias, so good is that it “gives freedom to individuals and gives rulers the power of ruling over others.” Socrates says just the opposite — that self-control is the foundation of moral order both in individuals and in groups. Socrates elaborates on that idea later in the dialogue:
Socrates: What do we call harmony and order in the body?
Callicles: I suppose you mean health and strength.
Socrates: Yes, I do. And what name would you give to harmony and order in the soul? Can you provide a name for this as well?
Callicles: Why don’t you provide the name yourself, Socrates?
Socrates: Well, if you’d rather, I will; then you can say whether you agree with me. If not, you can refute me. Healthy is the name we give to the regular action of the body, and from it come health and every other bodily excellence. Is that true or not?
Callicles: It’s true.
Socrates: And to the regular order and activity of the soul we give the name lawful. The people who make the laws are called lawful and orderly. What is this but moderation and justice? Do you accept that?
Callicles: Yes, I accept.
Socrates: Won’t the true rhetorician who is artful and virtuous concentrate on these standards when formulating all words directed to human souls as well as in all actions? Won’t this be the aim of the true rhetorician? The goal will be to establish justice in the souls of all citizens and to take away injustice; to establish moderation and take away excess; to establish every virtue and take away every vice. Do you agree with that?
Callicles: Yes, I agree.
Socrates: What good would it be to provide the body of a sick person in a bad state of health with large amounts of the most delightful food or drink? This may be as bad or even worse [505] than providing nothing. Isn’t that true?
Callicles: I won’t deny it.
Socrates: In my opinion, there is no value in a person’s life if the body is worthless. In that case life itself is bad. Am I right?
Callicles: Yes.
Socrates: Physicians will generally allow a healthy person to eat when hungry and drink when thirsty, to satisfy whatever desires one likes. But when that person is sick, the physician allows hardly any desires to be satisfied. Do you admit that?
Callicles: Yes.
Socrates: Doesn’t the same hold good for the soul? When the soul is in a bad state—is thoughtless, immoderate, unjust, and unholy—then desires ought to be controlled. The soul ought to be prevented from doing anything that works against its own improvement.
Callicles: Yes.
Socrates: It will be for its true interest?
Callicles: Sure.
Socrates: Controlling its desires is correcting it?
Callicles: Yes (Plato’s Gorgias, Greek pages 504-505).
The kind of rhetoric favored by Gorgias and Callicles would provide freedom only for the rulers, not for those who are ruled. Socrates offers a different view of rhetoric, one that articulates the principles according to which all people can be free, not simply from external forces but from the internal turmoil that erupts when individuals and groups are out of control. Ruling over oneself does not mean ignoring other people. Nor is it opposed to the rule of law. But it does require that the laws of free people must be binding on all, must be fair to all, and must promote common justice.
Each dialogue Plato wrote must be interpreted on its own terms and in light of the issues being considered and the characters who are considering them. But there are themes and ideas that appear and reappear. Freedom is one of them. For example, it plays an important part in the complex dialectical development of the Republic. At the end of Book 9, Glaucon and Socrates are summing up their long search for the best kind of education for the citizens of the republic they have been constructing in their imagination. Socrates says:
Socrates: Therefore, in order to be ruled by what is best in them, they ought to be the servant of the best. Rather than being a slave to others to their detriment, as Thrasymachus claimed, they should all be ruled by the divine wisdom within them. If that is not possible, they should be governed by a common external order, established by all alike so that we may dwell as friends.
Glaucon: Those are wise words, Socrates.
Socrates: Clearly this is the purpose of the law, which is allied with everyone in the entire republic. It is also the responsibility and control we have over children, not allowing them to be free until the best in us has helped them set up a republic in themselves, guided and guarded by the best in them. Then we can let them go (Plato’s Republic, published by Agora Publications, Inc., 2001, Greek page 590).
Here we find the same idea that Socrates presented in the Gorgias. The best way to promote internal order in individuals and in groups is through education and nurture. External order through law is necessary, but it should be as minimal as possible. But what kind of education promotes that ideal goal?
In addition to the Republic, we find a clear answer in a dialogue that is not read as often as it should be — Plato’s Sophist. Theaetetus and a character called a Stranger from Elea, have been discussing the difference between sophists and philosophers. They have been looking high and low for the nature and activity of the sophist, but suddenly the Stranger announces that they seem inadvertently to have found the philosopher instead. The sophist seeks to hide and deceive, control, persuade and manipulate others, whereas it would be preferable to bring ideas out into the light and examine them through the open process called dialectic, “the way of knowing that is appropriate for free people” (Plato’s Sophist, Greek page 253). Plato fosters dialectic as the logical method that drives the conversations in all of his dialogues. In the Sophist, the connection between dialectic and democracy becomes explicit. This is the way of knowing that is suitable for free people — those who are willing and able to do their own thinking rather than asking others to think for them.
Podcasts are not the proper place for careful explication, logical analysis, and elaboration of complex philosophical issues and ideas. The most I can do is point to a constructive way of thinking about these important topics and suggest some primary and secondary texts that treat these philosophical subjects in depth. The brief excerpts I offer from those texts are intended to introduce and summarize, not explore these topics in depth. The subject of universal law, especially in the context of Plato’s dialectical philosophy, is a case in point. Not only is there much about this topic in the more than two-dozen dialogues that Plato wrote, but many shelves have been filled over the centuries interpreting, analyzing, and evaluating that thorny problem. My book called Universal Justice: A Dialectical Approach (published by Rodopi in 1997) contains an extended discussion of how I approach the question of universals and universal law. In another book, Reality and the Arts: A Philosophical Approach (published by Agora Publications, Inc. in 2009) I consider the nature of dialectic, again drawing heavily on Plato’s dialogues. I offer this reminder as I move from the Greek Enlightenment to the 18th century Enlightenment and focus on Immanuel Kant’s discussion of the universal moral law. Although I will present and support much that Kant says, I would like to make clear that my own strong preference is for Plato’s dialectical logic which I will try to follow even as I discuss Kant’s didactic method.
Plato’s philosophical method is more humble and, in the long run, better suited to the kind of thinking that is available to human beings. That spirit of inquiry is expressed in an exchange between Socrates and Glaucon toward the end of Book 7 of Plato’s Republic. Glaucon has just asked Socrates to provide a full elaboration of the nature of dialectic, finally presenting the whole truth about this central topic. Here is Socrates’ response:
Socrates: My dear Glaucon, I’m afraid that you cannot follow me any farther, though I am quite willing to lead. Instead of presenting an image through allegory, I would have to disclose the truth itself as it appears to me. I’m not sure that what I see is true, but I am confident that there is truth to be grasped and that we should settle for nothing less. Don’t you agree?
Glaucon: Of course.
Socrates: Can we also say that only the power of dialectic can reveal it to someone who has learned the subjects we were just discussing?
Glaucon: We can definitely say that.
Socrates: And nobody can establish that there is any other way of inquiry specifically designed to understand reality itself. All the other arts are concerned with human desire and opinion, cultivated for producing and nurturing things that grow or building and tending what is constructed. We did agree that mathematical studies such as geometry have some power to grasp reality, but they only dream about being, never able to capture it while fully awake. They work only with assumptions that they take for granted and cannot justify. When a person does not know first principles and cannot give an account of the conclusions and the reasoning leading to that conclusion, how could we possibly call such arbitrary agreement genuine knowledge?
Glaucon: That would be impossible.
Socrates: Then dialectic is the only form of inquiry that goes to the source, eliminating hypotheses and seeking the certainty of first principles. When the eye of the soul is buried in the muck of Hades, dialectic releases it and turns it up toward the light, assisted by the studies we have been discussing. We are in the habit of calling those studies sciences, but they should have some other name, indicating greater clarity than opinion and less clarity than knowledge. This is what we previously called understanding. But let’s not quibble about names when we have matters of such importance to consider (Plato’s Republic, Greek page 533).
The quest for a way to understand universal moral law is best understood in light of this dialectical way of inquiry.
Earlier I said that the Athenian law condemning Socrates to death is an unjust law, not because it lacks support from the majority who voted for it but because it violates the universal principle of justice. This universal principle is what I mean by “universal moral law.” Thinking about universals in the context of Plato’s dialogues points us to the concept of forms (also called essences). The ancient Greek word for forms or universals or essences or ideas is ta eide. Justice, goodness, beauty, and a host of other such ideas play a central role in Plato’s philosophy and are, I believe, the key to understanding the fundamental principles that justify moral claims. Plato is often misunderstood concerning the nature of these ideas, an error that arises when Plato’s way of thinking about reality is taken to be an ontological dualism. That term simply means that there are two separate realms of being, one ream is that of essences or absolute ideas and the other realm is that of individual things that are finite and changeable. The reason I think it is a mistake to interpret Plato this way is that his dialogues present a decisive critique of that dualistic way of thinking. Plato’s Parmenides offers the best example of that rejection of ontological dualism.
If we think of ideas or essences (ta eide) as final causes, goals to be achieved rather than blueprints to be followed, the troublesome dualism disappears. I interpret Plato’s view of reality as ontological monism. There is but one realm of being — the world of reality. To distinguish the idea or essence of justice from particular decisions or acts that we judge to be just or unjust is not to separate two kinds of being but rather to identify the qualities that are present or absent. Was the decision to convict and execute Socrates made by the Athenian Assembly just or unjust? To say that it was unjust is to make a judgment about its nature or essence. We can certainly understand the conceptual distinction between justice and injustice and can apply that idea to the decision to convict and condemn Socrates. And we can differ in our judgment, as the Athenian Assembly differed from Socrates and Crito. But all of that takes place in a single world, one realm of being. To make the distinction between what justice is (an idea or essence) and what is just (a particular decision or action) does not require two separate realms of being. The idea of justice (what justice is) is universal. Individual decisions and acts (what the Athenian Assembly decided and what Socrates did) are particulars. In this way the distinction between universal moral law and the attempt to manifest that law in an individual life or in the life of a community helps us understand the disagreements that abound in the moral and political life that is so important to human beings.
The ancient Greek Enlightenment and the 18th Century Enlightenment are separated by more than two thousand years, but philosophers like Kant and Hume and statesmen like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson drew heavily on the ideas and issues that emerged in the 5th century B.C. and were revived by the ancient Romans during the time of Cicero and Marcus Aurelius. In my next podcast I will focus on the 18th century Enlightenment, with special attention to the ethical philosophy of Immanuel Kant.
Podcast # 7: The Enlightenment
Episode # 7 (23:50)
At the end of Podcast #6, I said that enlightenment and democracy necessarily go together. This was true during the Greek enlightenment of the 5th Century B.C. as well as the 18th century enlightenment that fostered the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Immanuel Kant’s role in articulating the nature of the Enlightenment is well known. He wrote an influential essay in 1784, after the American Revolution and before the French revolution: “What is Enlightenment?”
Enlightenment is our release from self-imposed dependence. Dependence is the inability to use our own reasoning. Instead, we rely on others to do our thinking for us. It is self-imposed not because we lack understanding but because we lack decisiveness: Sapere aude! Have the courage to think for yourself. This is the motto of the Enlightenment (Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” published by Agora Publications, Inc., 2007, p. 1).
Only people who have the freedom and the opportunity to think for themselves can be part of a genuine democracy. Governments that do not foster independent thinkers but only pretend to do so are not democratic forms of government. Tyranny, which only seeks power for its own sake, is a blatant form of anti-democratic government. But there are other, more subtle, approaches to governing that claim to promote the common good by assuming the role of thinking for those who are unable or unwilling to do their own thinking. Throughout the ages, Sophists have sharpened their skills and have often persuaded people that they are really doing them a favor by lifting a burden that is hard to for most people to carry. I will return to Kant’s elaboration of the idea of universal moral law and its role in democracy later in this series of podcasts.
In the meantime let’s return to Plato’s treatment of the idea of freedom. The centrality of freedom in Plato’s philosophy has often been ignored, possibly because those who read and interpret his dialogues tend to take isolated passages from the speeches by one or more of his characters and forget to place them in the overall context of the dialogue in which they appear. Dialogues, like all works of art and philosophy, require interpretation, explication, and analysis. Consider this passage from Plato’s Gorgias:
Callicles: Socrates, you keep saying the same thing!
Socrates: Yes, Callicles, I keep saying the same thing and talking about the same subjects. [491]
Callicles: Yes, and you’re always talking about shoemakers and farmers and cooks and physicians, as if they had anything to do with our argument!
Socrates: Why won’t you tell me in what way a person must be superior and wiser in order to claim a larger share? Won’t you either accept a suggestion or offer one?
Callicles: I have already told you! In the first place, I mean by the superior not shoemakers or cooks but wise politicians who understand the administration of a state, who are not only wise but also courageous and able to carry out their plans, not people who faint from lack of spirit.
Socrates: Most excellent Callicles, notice how different is the charge I bring against you from the one you bring against me. You criticize me for always saying the same thing. But I criticize you for never saying the same about the same things. At one point you defined the better and superior as the stronger. Then you said it is the wiser. Now you present a new notion, declaring that the superior and the better are the more courageous. My good friend, I wish you would tell me once and for all whom you claim to be the better and superior and in what way.
Callicles: I have already told you that I mean those who are wise and courageous in the administration of the state. They are the ones who ought to rule and ought to have an advantage over their subjects. That is justice.
Socrates: Do you mean that they should have more than themselves?
Callicles: I don’t understand.
Socrates: I’m talking about self-rule. But perhaps you don’t think that each of us must rule over ourselves. Perhaps you think that it is enough simply to rule over others.
Callicles: What do you mean by “rule over ourselves”?
Socrates: Nothing complicated. I mean what is commonly said, that we should be moderate, be in control of ourselves, and should rule over our own pleasures and passions (Plato’s Gorgias, Greek page 491).
In this exchange Callicles is repeating a claim made by Gorgias early in that dialogue: In order to be successful, leaders must rule over others. What makes rhetoric, as taught by Gorgias, so good is that it “gives freedom to individuals and gives rulers the power of ruling over others.” Socrates says just the opposite — that self-control is the foundation of moral order both in individuals and in groups. Socrates elaborates on that idea later in the dialogue:
Socrates: What do we call harmony and order in the body?
Callicles: I suppose you mean health and strength.
Socrates: Yes, I do. And what name would you give to harmony and order in the soul? Can you provide a name for this as well?
Callicles: Why don’t you provide the name yourself, Socrates?
Socrates: Well, if you’d rather, I will; then you can say whether you agree with me. If not, you can refute me. Healthy is the name we give to the regular action of the body, and from it come health and every other bodily excellence. Is that true or not?
Callicles: It’s true.
Socrates: And to the regular order and activity of the soul we give the name lawful. The people who make the laws are called lawful and orderly. What is this but moderation and justice? Do you accept that?
Callicles: Yes, I accept.
Socrates: Won’t the true rhetorician who is artful and virtuous concentrate on these standards when formulating all words directed to human souls as well as in all actions? Won’t this be the aim of the true rhetorician? The goal will be to establish justice in the souls of all citizens and to take away injustice; to establish moderation and take away excess; to establish every virtue and take away every vice. Do you agree with that?
Callicles: Yes, I agree.
Socrates: What good would it be to provide the body of a sick person in a bad state of health with large amounts of the most delightful food or drink? This may be as bad or even worse [505] than providing nothing. Isn’t that true?
Callicles: I won’t deny it.
Socrates: In my opinion, there is no value in a person’s life if the body is worthless. In that case life itself is bad. Am I right?
Callicles: Yes.
Socrates: Physicians will generally allow a healthy person to eat when hungry and drink when thirsty, to satisfy whatever desires one likes. But when that person is sick, the physician allows hardly any desires to be satisfied. Do you admit that?
Callicles: Yes.
Socrates: Doesn’t the same hold good for the soul? When the soul is in a bad state—is thoughtless, immoderate, unjust, and unholy—then desires ought to be controlled. The soul ought to be prevented from doing anything that works against its own improvement.
Callicles: Yes.
Socrates: It will be for its true interest?
Callicles: Sure.
Socrates: Controlling its desires is correcting it?
Callicles: Yes (Plato’s Gorgias, Greek pages 504-505).
The kind of rhetoric favored by Gorgias and Callicles would provide freedom only for the rulers, not for those who are ruled. Socrates offers a different view of rhetoric, one that articulates the principles according to which all people can be free, not simply from external forces but from the internal turmoil that erupts when individuals and groups are out of control. Ruling over oneself does not mean ignoring other people. Nor is it opposed to the rule of law. But it does require that the laws of free people must be binding on all, must be fair to all, and must promote common justice.
Each dialogue Plato wrote must be interpreted on its own terms and in light of the issues being considered and the characters who are considering them. But there are themes and ideas that appear and reappear. Freedom is one of them. For example, it plays an important part in the complex dialectical development of the Republic. At the end of Book 9, Glaucon and Socrates are summing up their long search for the best kind of education for the citizens of the republic they have been constructing in their imagination. Socrates says:
Socrates: Therefore, in order to be ruled by what is best in them, they ought to be the servant of the best. Rather than being a slave to others to their detriment, as Thrasymachus claimed, they should all be ruled by the divine wisdom within them. If that is not possible, they should be governed by a common external order, established by all alike so that we may dwell as friends.
Glaucon: Those are wise words, Socrates.
Socrates: Clearly this is the purpose of the law, which is allied with everyone in the entire republic. It is also the responsibility and control we have over children, not allowing them to be free until the best in us has helped them set up a republic in themselves, guided and guarded by the best in them. Then we can let them go (Plato’s Republic, published by Agora Publications, Inc., 2001, Greek page 590).
Here we find the same idea that Socrates presented in the Gorgias. The best way to promote internal order in individuals and in groups is through education and nurture. External order through law is necessary, but it should be as minimal as possible. But what kind of education promotes that ideal goal?
In addition to the Republic, we find a clear answer in a dialogue that is not read as often as it should be — Plato’s Sophist. Theaetetus and a character called a Stranger from Elea, have been discussing the difference between sophists and philosophers. They have been looking high and low for the nature and activity of the sophist, but suddenly the Stranger announces that they seem inadvertently to have found the philosopher instead. The sophist seeks to hide and deceive, control, persuade and manipulate others, whereas it would be preferable to bring ideas out into the light and examine them through the open process called dialectic, “the way of knowing that is appropriate for free people” (Plato’s Sophist, Greek page 253). Plato fosters dialectic as the logical method that drives the conversations in all of his dialogues. In the Sophist, the connection between dialectic and democracy becomes explicit. This is the way of knowing that is suitable for free people — those who are willing and able to do their own thinking rather than asking others to think for them.
Podcasts are not the proper place for careful explication, logical analysis, and elaboration of complex philosophical issues and ideas. The most I can do is point to a constructive way of thinking about these important topics and suggest some primary and secondary texts that treat these philosophical subjects in depth. The brief excerpts I offer from those texts are intended to introduce and summarize, not explore these topics in depth. The subject of universal law, especially in the context of Plato’s dialectical philosophy, is a case in point. Not only is there much about this topic in the more than two-dozen dialogues that Plato wrote, but many shelves have been filled over the centuries interpreting, analyzing, and evaluating that thorny problem. My book called Universal Justice: A Dialectical Approach (published by Rodopi in 1997) contains an extended discussion of how I approach the question of universals and universal law. In another book, Reality and the Arts: A Philosophical Approach (published by Agora Publications, Inc. in 2009) I consider the nature of dialectic, again drawing heavily on Plato’s dialogues. I offer this reminder as I move from the Greek Enlightenment to the 18th century Enlightenment and focus on Immanuel Kant’s discussion of the universal moral law. Although I will present and support much that Kant says, I would like to make clear that my own strong preference is for Plato’s dialectical logic which I will try to follow even as I discuss Kant’s didactic method.
Plato’s philosophical method is more humble and, in the long run, better suited to the kind of thinking that is available to human beings. That spirit of inquiry is expressed in an exchange between Socrates and Glaucon toward the end of Book 7 of Plato’s Republic. Glaucon has just asked Socrates to provide a full elaboration of the nature of dialectic, finally presenting the whole truth about this central topic. Here is Socrates’ response:
Socrates: My dear Glaucon, I’m afraid that you cannot follow me any farther, though I am quite willing to lead. Instead of presenting an image through allegory, I would have to disclose the truth itself as it appears to me. I’m not sure that what I see is true, but I am confident that there is truth to be grasped and that we should settle for nothing less. Don’t you agree?
Glaucon: Of course.
Socrates: Can we also say that only the power of dialectic can reveal it to someone who has learned the subjects we were just discussing?
Glaucon: We can definitely say that.
Socrates: And nobody can establish that there is any other way of inquiry specifically designed to understand reality itself. All the other arts are concerned with human desire and opinion, cultivated for producing and nurturing things that grow or building and tending what is constructed. We did agree that mathematical studies such as geometry have some power to grasp reality, but they only dream about being, never able to capture it while fully awake. They work only with assumptions that they take for granted and cannot justify. When a person does not know first principles and cannot give an account of the conclusions and the reasoning leading to that conclusion, how could we possibly call such arbitrary agreement genuine knowledge?
Glaucon: That would be impossible.
Socrates: Then dialectic is the only form of inquiry that goes to the source, eliminating hypotheses and seeking the certainty of first principles. When the eye of the soul is buried in the muck of Hades, dialectic releases it and turns it up toward the light, assisted by the studies we have been discussing. We are in the habit of calling those studies sciences, but they should have some other name, indicating greater clarity than opinion and less clarity than knowledge. This is what we previously called understanding. But let’s not quibble about names when we have matters of such importance to consider (Plato’s Republic, Greek page 533).
The quest for a way to understand universal moral law is best understood in light of this dialectical way of inquiry.
Earlier I said that the Athenian law condemning Socrates to death is an unjust law, not because it lacks support from the majority who voted for it but because it violates the universal principle of justice. This universal principle is what I mean by “universal moral law.” Thinking about universals in the context of Plato’s dialogues points us to the concept of forms (also called essences). The ancient Greek word for forms or universals or essences or ideas is ta eide. Justice, goodness, beauty, and a host of other such ideas play a central role in Plato’s philosophy and are, I believe, the key to understanding the fundamental principles that justify moral claims. Plato is often misunderstood concerning the nature of these ideas, an error that arises when Plato’s way of thinking about reality is taken to be an ontological dualism. That term simply means that there are two separate realms of being, one ream is that of essences or absolute ideas and the other realm is that of individual things that are finite and changeable. The reason I think it is a mistake to interpret Plato this way is that his dialogues present a decisive critique of that dualistic way of thinking. Plato’s Parmenides offers the best example of that rejection of ontological dualism.
If we think of ideas or essences (ta eide) as final causes, goals to be achieved rather than blueprints to be followed, the troublesome dualism disappears. I interpret Plato’s view of reality as ontological monism. There is but one realm of being — the world of reality. To distinguish the idea or essence of justice from particular decisions or acts that we judge to be just or unjust is not to separate two kinds of being but rather to identify the qualities that are present or absent. Was the decision to convict and execute Socrates made by the Athenian Assembly just or unjust? To say that it was unjust is to make a judgment about its nature or essence. We can certainly understand the conceptual distinction between justice and injustice and can apply that idea to the decision to convict and condemn Socrates. And we can differ in our judgment, as the Athenian Assembly differed from Socrates and Crito. But all of that takes place in a single world, one realm of being. To make the distinction between what justice is (an idea or essence) and what is just (a particular decision or action) does not require two separate realms of being. The idea of justice (what justice is) is universal. Individual decisions and acts (what the Athenian Assembly decided and what Socrates did) are particulars. In this way the distinction between universal moral law and the attempt to manifest that law in an individual life or in the life of a community helps us understand the disagreements that abound in the moral and political life that is so important to human beings.
The ancient Greek Enlightenment and the 18th Century Enlightenment are separated by more than two thousand years, but philosophers like Kant and Hume and statesmen like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson drew heavily on the ideas and issues that emerged in the 5th century B.C. and were revived by the ancient Romans during the time of Cicero and Marcus Aurelius. In my next podcast I will focus on the 18th century Enlightenment, with special attention to the ethical philosophy of Immanuel Kant.
