Plato

Che cos'è l'Assoluto? Dio esiste?

A Good beyond being and a good craftsman who willed the world

Personale e impersonale insiemeSi deduce dalla sua dottrina

In Plato two faces of the ultimate coexist. In the Republic the Good is the source from which things receive being and knowability, and it is not essence but still beyond essence: an impersonal principle named only by analogy with the sun. In the Timaeus, by contrast, a good demiurge, free of envy, wills that everything become as like him as possible and orders the cosmos looking to an eternal model. The Laws add gods who care for small things as much as great and punish impiety. Plato does not explicitly unify the two levels; the later tradition read them as degrees of a single divine reality.

Chi sono io? Esiste un vero sé?

The immortal soul, akin to the Forms, imprisoned in the body

Un'anima creata e immortaleLo dice espressamente

Plato identifies the human being with the soul and devotes his most famous proofs to it. In the Phaedo the soul is like the divine, immortal, intelligible and always the same as itself, while the body resembles the mortal and changing; to philosophise is to separate it from the body. The Phaedrus defines it as a self-moving principle of motion that therefore is neither born nor dies. In the Timaeus the demiurge fashions the immortal part of the human soul from the same mixture as the world soul and entrusts it to the lesser gods. Its destiny is to become like God as far as possible. Yet Plato also ascribes successive reincarnations to this soul.

Perché soffriamo?

Injustice is a civil war in the soul, and the body feeds it

Il disordine sociale e moraleLo dice espressamente

Plato gives two complementary explanations. In the Phaedo the body fills the soul with loves, desires, fears and images, and from its needs arise wars, revolts and fights over money. In the Republic evil is thought of as disorder: the soul has three parts, reason, spirit and appetite, and justice consists in each doing its own work under reason's rule; injustice is an inner uprising, a sickness of the soul. The same holds for the city, whose degenerate forms correspond to disordered souls. We suffer when order is inverted and appetite rules, in the soul and in the city.

Che cosa accade dopo la morte?

The immortal soul is judged and reborn until philosophy frees it

Rinascita secondo il karmaLo dice espressamente

Plato upholds the immortality of the soul with arguments and describes it with myths. In the Phaedo philosophy is a practice of dying, because it prepares the soul to separate from the body; souls attached to it are reincarnated according to their habits, as asses, wolves or bees, while those purified by philosophy live with the gods. The Phaedrus tells of a ten-thousand-year cycle in which only the philosopher's soul regains its wings sooner. In the myth of Er, at the end of the Republic, judged souls choose their next life and drink from the river of forgetfulness. Plato warns that the form of the tale is approximate but that the risk of believing it is worth taking.

Come si raggiunge la liberazione o la salvezza?

Turning the whole soul towards what is and becoming like God

Con la conoscenza direttaLo dice espressamente

For Plato liberation is a conversion of knowledge. The allegory of the cave presents humans chained before shadows; education does not consist in putting knowledge into the soul but in turning it whole, away from what becomes, until it can bear the contemplation of what is and of the Good. The way passes through mathematics and culminates in dialectic. The Phaedo calls philosophy purification and a practice of dying; the Symposium describes an ascent of love from beautiful bodies to Beauty itself; the Theaetetus sums up the goal as flight from here to there, which is becoming like God by becoming just and holy with understanding.

Serve un maestro?

Truth catches after long companionship, like a spark that leaps

Comunità e tradizioneLo dice espressamente

Plato founded the Academy, a community of study and life, and in his dialogues learning always happens between persons. The Seventh Letter, of disputed authenticity but very old, states the idea precisely: the essential cannot be put into words like other studies, but after long companionship with the matter itself and a shared life, it is suddenly born in the soul like a light kindled from a leaping spark. The Phaedrus criticises writing because it cannot answer the questioner and prefers the living word sown in a suitable soul. In the cave, someone has to unchain the prisoner and force him upward. Knowledge is passed on in a prolonged relationship, not in a book.

Il mondo è reale?

The sensible always becomes and never fully is: an image of what is

Apparenza sull'unica realtàLo dice espressamente

Plato distinguishes what always is and never becomes, grasped by thought, from what always becomes and never fully is, the object of opinion and the senses. In the allegory of the cave the prisoners take projected shadows for reality; the divided line grades the levels of reality from images up to the Forms. But the sensible world is not nothing: in the Timaeus it is the work of a good craftsman, the most beautiful of generated things, an image of the intelligible which the dialogue's last sentence calls a perceptible god. The world is real as an image; the fully real are the Forms and, above them, the Good.

Che cos'è l'amore?

Eros ascends from beautiful bodies to Beauty itself

Anelito e unioneLo dice espressamente

Plato makes love a force of ascent. In the Symposium, Diotima explains that Eros is not a god but an intermediary, child of Resource and Poverty, always lacking and always seeking; he desires the beautiful because he desires the good and immortality. Rightly guided, he climbs by degrees: from one beautiful body to all, from bodies to souls, to laws, to sciences, until suddenly beholding Beauty itself, the moment when, if ever, life is worth living. The Phaedrus describes love as divine madness: the sight of the beloved reminds the soul of the beauty it beheld before birth and makes its wings grow. To love is to remember the origin and return to it.

Siamo liberi o è tutto determinato?

The responsibility is the chooser's; the god is not responsible

Karma e sceltaLo dice espressamente

The myth of Er, at the end of the Republic, is Plato's great image on this question. Souls, before being reborn, choose their next life from many patterns; a prophet proclaims that virtue has no master, that each will have more or less of it as he honours or scorns it, and that the responsibility is the chooser's, not the god's. But the choice is not neutral: most choose according to the habits of their former life, and once made, the Fates render it irrevocable. The Laws likewise hold that God left to our wills the causes of our being one way or another. The past conditions choice but does not replace it.

Perché meditare o pregare?

Turning the soul towards what is until it contemplates the Good

Vedere la realtà così com'èLo dice espressamente

Plato proposes no meditation techniques, but contemplation is the centre of his philosophy. True education consists in turning the whole soul from what becomes until it can bear the sight of what is; the ascent of the Symposium culminates in the sudden contemplation of Beauty itself; the Phaedo describes philosophy as the soul's gathering into itself, away from the senses, to see the truth. Nor does Plato neglect prayer: the Timaeus opens with the remark that everyone with a little sense invokes the divine at the start of any undertaking. But the goal is to see: to know reality as it is.

Può la ragione conoscere l'ultimo?

After dialectic, the ultimate is born in the soul like a leaping spark

L'ultimo è al di là della menteLo dice espressamente

Plato trusts reason as few have: dialectic is the only method that ascends to the unhypothetical principle. But at the summit language falls short. The Good is beyond essence, and Socrates in the Republic declines to say what it is and offers only an image, the sun. In the Symposium Beauty itself is beheld suddenly at the end of the ascent. And the Seventh Letter states that the most serious matters cannot be put into words like other studies, but after long companionship with the subject, are born suddenly in the soul, like light kindled from a spark. Reason prepares the way; the ultimate is seen, not proved.

Ritirarsi dal mondo o trasformarlo?

Until philosophers rule, there will be no respite from evils for cities

Ordinare la societàLo dice espressamente

Plato sought to transform the world through government. The Republic holds that there will be no respite from evils for cities until philosophers rule or kings truly philosophise; the philosopher who has left the cave and beheld the Good is obliged to go back down to govern, though he would prefer contemplation. The Seventh Letter relates how the young Plato, disillusioned with Athenian politics after Socrates' death, reached that conviction, and his journeys to Syracuse attempted to put it into practice. The Laws, his last work, design a possible city in detail. Wisdom is realised in the good order of the city and the soul.