Philosophical pill: A bit of Plato

We all seek our good; not only do we seek the best for ourselves, but every plant and animal seeks the same for itself...

I – The Myth of the Cave

Plato describes the situation in which some men who, since childhood, are trapped in a cave. In this place, they cannot move due to the chains that keep them immobilized. Turning their backs to the entrance to the cave, they see only the bottom. Behind them is a small wall, where a fire remains lit. Men pass by carrying things, but as the wall hides the men's bodies, all the prisoners can see are the shadows of these transported objects. These shadows projected at the bottom of the cave are understood by the prisoners as being everything that exists in the world [and therefore corresponds to the physical world, that is, material or sensorial].

One day, one of the prisoners manages to free himself from the chains that imprisoned him. With great difficulty, he seeks the way out of the cave. However, the light from the bonfire (as well as the light outside the cave) hurts his eyes, as he has never seen light before.

The ex-prisoner thinks about giving up and returning to the comfort of the prison he was used to, but gradually manages to observe and admire the world outside the cave. However, filled with compassion for his fellow prisoners, he decides to face the way back to the cave with the aim of freeing the others and showing them the truth.

In the dialogue, Socrates proposes that Glaucon (his interlocutor) imagine what would happen to this man on his return. Glaucon replies that the others, accustomed to darkness, would not believe his testimony and that the one who freed himself would have difficulty communicating everything he had seen. Finally, it was possible that he would be killed under the allegation of loss of consciousness or madness [in Heidegger it corresponds to thinking about facticity, that is, the world of facts sedimented as pre-critical truths].

II - Consequences

The present myth says that there is a double reality. The world of true being, symbolized by the sun that is found after leaving the cave; as well as the world of appearance, that is, the human world and – in general – marked by the appreciation of the immediate, physical, concrete to the detriment of the ideal.

Each instance – real or apparent – would compose fundamental oppositions of reality.

The ideal world – of the perfect forms present in our reason – would be the true world because all our understanding, as well as our possibility of existing concretely, would come from the paradigms of this eternal, timeless and formal world. While the sensorial world – that is, immediate – would still be real. However, real in the weak sense, as we could not understand ourselves, only having the immediate as a basis. This sensory world is the same as that of the brute animal. It boils down to action-reaction, cause-effect, stimulus-response. Now! That's not enough.

Thus, it is necessary for Plato to explain the difference between the intelligible and sensible world.

By intelligible is understood the world of intelligence, formality, idea, thought, while the sensible world is the world of appearance, body, sensations.

III — Doctrine of ideas (eidos in Greek)

As the material world is dynamic and the world of ideas static, Plato seeks to explain the former through the latter. In Plato, matter is organized by eidos, that is, eternal forms underlying material reality. His doctrine, therefore, seeks to explain not only the movement of bodies and beings, but also seeks to explain the reason for things.

The first major issue, at the basis of his exposition, is the notion of substance.

We are not thinking here of a material substance — for example, like that of a perfume or chemical compound —, but of a substance, that is, a “thing” that changes without altering its nature (essence). Plato says that there is something that receives and modifies something, but itself does not change definitively. Perhaps, the keyword is to think of the Platonic substance as radically resilient, which consists, in mechanics, in the property that some bodies (this, however in the concrete plane) return to their original form after being subjected to an elastic deformation. Just as a body – for example, a metal – can return to its previous form after being deformed, so the substance, after suffering deformation, returns to what it was. It doesn't matter how much ′′ hit ′′ you suffer.

The substance – from another perspective – thus works like an oil platform at sea. As we know, the platform is built to resist the forces of wind and water, so your feet are mobile, but able to move without, however, unbalancing the platform. In the same, everything happens as if there were no shocks.

Plato, therefore, wants to show that we can only understand the phenomena of physis – that is, of nature – if we have metaphysical principles. Nothing gains intelligibility, that is, comprehensibility, without the adoption of non-material principles. Matter, therefore, is lacking in reason.

IV – The movement

Although it seems obvious to us to think about the movement, it has already caused a lot of headaches for philosophers. Some went so far as to say that movement does not exist, but that it would just be an illusion of matter, because it is not inscribed in being; since being is immovable.

Plato resolved this by saying that the movement of bodies can only be understood if we think of something like bodies – including ourselves – as oriented in the world towards an ethical destination.

In a way, moving is moving from state A to state B. We are born into a world of ignorance and appearance, but we are destined by the idea of Good and Beauty to “evolve” spiritually. Such evolution has as its point of arrival – the end of the journey – the development of the soul, the search for truth, the exercise of Good and justice in ourselves and in others.

V – The Idea of Good

The idea of Bem, in Plato, is fundamental because of its role in his theory of forms or ideas.

We could, therefore, call it a manager, that is, an idea that takes care of the organization or that manages the others. In analogy to computing, we could say that the Good is like an operating system, whose other programs run inside it; or even as a compass that guides the others.

Imagine, dear reader, a throne. In it sits the Good. Around, his subjects are the other forms or ideas. The Good, therefore, would be the fundamental idea. It gives direction to other ideas. The phenomena of nature, for example, the sun, earth, water, air, lightning and thunder, as well as the seasons, the fertility of plants and animals, in short, everything we see is in tune – consonant--with the Good . We all seek our good; not only do we seek the best for ourselves, but every plant and animal seeks the same for itself. No animal seeks to eat something bad for itself; nor attacking oneself, even the instinct of conservation is an expression of Good. Entities, like eternal forms, are aligned with Good; this, therefore, unites the multiplicity, that is, the vegetable, animal and human world are united in a single horizon: the Good.

Therefore, everything that exists, exists on the horizon of Good – that is, it is guided by it.

The Good, therefore, is the final cause – the destiny of all that is.

However, we cannot naturally think so. Such a notion is conquered from the Logos, that is, from thought. Only reason could tell us how things, beings and beings work. In this it reveals to us the raison d'être - its purpose or "fate".

VI – The Idea of Beauty

Beauty is a fundamental part of the process of understanding Good.

Beauty means that which is the right measure (neither more nor less), harmony and the inner order of being. That which is (the being) is guided by the Good as well as the Beautiful. Therefore, it contains within itself the purpose of existence, as well as being marked by fundamental harmony.

In this sense, Beauty is the path that leads us to Good.

It leads us to Good as Beauty mobilizes us to act in accordance with virtue.

By virtue is meant several things! First, the opposite of addiction, that is, personality defects. Second, virtue means something like the development of man's cognitive, intellectual, and moral faculties. In a third moment, it means the act of leaving the concrete, material, towards a fundamental truth. It guides us, therefore, to leave the ontic space towards the ontological, that is, to being. As we leave the world of the appearance of beauty towards Beauty itself. It mobilizes us to transcendence. In an upward movement of search for Love. Leaving, thus, the sensorial scope of Eros for its transcendental aspect. — Plato, therefore, thinks of a process of sublimation. From the outflow of libido from the sensible world to the ultimate and fundamental world: the world of the Eternal Idea or of Forms.

VII - Conclusion

Coming out of the cave is, therefore, ascending from the ontic to the ontological world, as well as from the sensory world to the world of intelligence, as well as from temporality to eternity, as well as from appearance to reality. In the sense of realizing in man his ethical destiny, that is, of evolving spiritually through a successive and gradual movement of development of his character.

Thiago Carvalho.

Psychologist and graduate student in neuropsychology.