Plato was born and lived most of his life in Athens. He was educated,
as were all upper class Athenians, in what we would now consider the
liberal arts, including cosmological speculation, mathematics, and
rhetoric. In 407 BCE he became a pupil and follower of Socrates (469-399
BCE), who devoted most of his life to questioning the noble men of his
day about their beliefs. Raised the son of a sculptor and actually
practicing that art for a time, Socrates attracted a loyal group of
young followers, but also managed to offend many wealthy aristocrats by
exposing their ignorance about subjects in which they considered
themselves experts. When a democracy was restored in Athens in 399 BCE,
after a period of autocracy, Socrates was brought to trial on charges of
impiety and corrupting the youth. The record of the trial is recounted
in Plato’s dialogue Apology and reads like an eyewitness account.
Although the charges were clearly ridiculous, Socrates was found guilty
and condemned to death. Plato’s Phaedo purports to be an account of
Socrates’ last day before drinking the poison, hemlock, to carry out the
sentence.
We know relatively little about Plato’s life. He came from an
aristocratic family and never married. He saw military service, as did
Socrates, in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta (431-404 BCE). Exactly
when he became an initiate into the Greek Mystery Schools is unknown.
About 388 BCE Plato went to the court of Dionysius the Elder, military
governor (or tyrant) of Syracuse in Sicily, apparently in an effort to
persuade the ruler to adopt his ideas for government. Upon returning to
Athens, Plato (about 364 BCE) founded a school, called the Academy (or
akadãmía, named after the grove of trees where Plato’s home was located
in a suburb of Athens). In addition to teaching his own philosophic
ideas, he hired noted mathematicians, astronomers, and physicians as
teachers. One of his early pupils (then aged 17) was Aristotle, not an
initiate into the Mysteries, who was later hired to teach his own
philosophic ideas, even though they differed in significant ways from
those of Plato. In 367 and 361 BCE, Plato again visited Syracuse, trying
unsuccessfully to convince Dionysius the Younger to adopt his ideas. It
was after those failures that Plato abandoned his model of the ideal
political system based on a philosopher-king, as detailed in the
Republic, and worked on the framework for a political system based on
law. He was still working on his final dialogue, Laws, when he died. By
this time, his Academy had been put under the control of a board of
trustees and Plato died a relatively poor man. After his death, the
school was first headed by Plato’s nephew, Speusippus, then by
Xenocrates. They, however, did not share Plato’s tolerance for
Aristotle’s views and so Aristotle, then aged 37, was forced to leave
the Academy and start his own school.
Plato’s philosophic views as well as his method of presenting them
evolved over his lifetime, as indicated by the style of and topics
covered in his dialogues. It is impossible to date the dialogues with
any certainty, but scholars group them into three categories: early,
middle, and late. To the former category belong Lysis, Laches,
Charmides, Euthyphro, Ion, Hippas Major and Hippas Minor, Gorgias,
Euthydemus, and Apology. Probably also Crito and the first book of
Republic, as well as Alcibiades I and II if Plato actually wrote them.
Socrates is the major figure, portrayed as questioning important nobles
about the definition of various virtues. This Socratic method is also
known as a dialectic or elenchus. For example, the Euthyphro purports to
record a conversation about piety which Socrates had with Euthyphro as
the two were about to go into court, Socrates to defend himself against
the charge of impiety and Euthyphro to bring suit against his own father
(unheard of in ancient Athens!) for causing the death of a slave.
Euthyphro is convinced he knows what piety is and offers several
definitions, all of which Socrates shows are inadequate. The Apology
contains not only Socrates’ very cogent, but unfortunately unpersuasive,
arguments in his defense, but also a reference to his daimon or
daimonion, and which the Mahātma KOOT HOOMI
(Cf. Mahatma Letters, #11; Barker #28) and most scholars interpret as
the voice of his conscience. It only warned him what not to do. Crito
purports to be a conversation between Socrates in prison and his rich
friend Crito, who has come to bribe Socrates’ way out of jail, an offer
Socrates refuses by offering cogent arguments against those of Crito.
The middle dialogues present some of Plato’s most characteristic
doctrines, again using Socrates, most certainly now anachronistically,
as their principle character. These include Meno, Phaedo, Phaedrus,
Philebus, Symposium, Republic, and Timaeus. The Meno, which some
scholars consider an early dialogue, addresses the question as to
whether virtue can be taught and introduces the characteristic Platonic
doctrine of anamnesis or “recollection” in a famous scene in which
Socrates, by means of questioning Meno’s slave boy, proves that the boy
can figure out a difficult geometric problem, although he has been
taught no geometry in his present life. That leads Socrates to conclude
that he must have learned it in a previous life. Since there is no
indication that Socrates actually believed in reincarnation (Greek
metempsychosis), this must represent Plato’s development of Socrates’
ideas. It leads to the Platonic doctrine that all learning is
recollection, although it is difficult to determine whether Plato meant
just all moral knowledge or all knowledge in general. The argument for
reincarnation is further developed in the Phaedo in which a group of
Socrates’ friends plus two disciples of Pythagoras conduct a philosophic
debate during Socrates’ last day in prison. One of the arguments,
repeated centuries later by Descartes, is that since the soul and body
are different and the body is mortal, the soul must be immortal. The
dialogue also contains Plato’s view that a true philosopher — i.e.,
lover of wisdom — looks forward to death because it frees him from the
limitations and distractions of the body and brings him in contact with
all the great thinkers of the past. The final scene of the dialogue, in
which Socrates cheerfully drinks the hemlock, is one of the most moving
in all philosophic literature.
Republic is a lengthy dialogue attempting to define the meaning of
“justice” which Plato takes to be the appropriate working of a
well-ordered socio-political system. It contains, among other things, a
full development of Plato’s doctrine of Forms,
i.e., that there exists a conceptual realm, objective in nature, where
the realities of all things, sensory and mental, exist and of which our
perceptual world is an imperfect copy. It is suggested that this realm
of Forms is hierarchical in nature, with the Form of the Good at the
apex, and that the true philosopher or lover of wisdom is constantly
trying to achieve direct realization of that realm. The dialogue
contains the famous allegory of the cave wherein Plato suggests that our
perceptual realm consists of the mere shadows of copies of reality, a
doctrine very reminiscent, Blavatsky reminds us, of the doctrine of m€y€
in Ved€nta philosophy (IU I:xiii-xiv). We are like prisoners in a cave,
chained to pillars able to perceive only these faint semblances of
reality; the philosopher is like one who has unshackled himself and
climbed out of the cave to view the sun (i.e., the Form of the Good).
Therefore, Plato argues, because the philosopher, using the term in
Plato’s sense, has apprehended the truth directly, he should be the
ruler (or king), even though he will have to be persuaded against his
will to accept such a responsibility. Plato outlines in the Republic a
system of education, open to both males and females, in which people
will determine by their own abilities (or lack of them) what role they
will play in society, which he envisions are divided into categories
very reminiscent of the Hindu caste system (cf IU I:271), but not based
on heredity. The purpose of education would be to produce philosophers,
though he realized that very few would actually attain that vision of
reality which would authenticate their wisdom.
Timaeus is Plato’s outline of cosmology and contains his description
of a lost continent called Atlantis. It is the dialogue most frequently
cited in theosophical literature. Its scientific speculation, put forth
by Timaeus, is drawn almost entirely from Italian and Sicilian sources
so must have been written after one of Plato’s trips to Syracuse. Plato
may have intended it as a text on science for use in his Academy, but
even so in the dialogue Timaeus only puts it forth as probable or
speculative. One interesting feature of this dialogue, as well as
several other dialogues, is Plato’s use of a “myth” to expound some
important idea. Scholars have interpreted this as an indication that
Plato did not have cogent arguments for his point and so resorted to
that device to forestall criticism. A more plausible explanation is that
such “myths” were intended to remind his readers, some of whom would
also have been initiates of the Mystery schools, of doctrines which were
esoteric and not allowed to be spoken of openly in public.
There is very little of philosophic interest in Phaedrus or
Symposium, the latter consisting mainly of a series of banquet orations
given by seven different speakers. The Philebus, which contains a
discussion of the doctrine of Forms, is dated by some scholars as a late
dialogue, which would mean that Plato held that doctrine throughout his
life. Others, however, identify it as a middle dialogue and claim that
Plato abandoned his most characteristic doctrine later in his life,
since it seems to be criticized in some later dialogues and not
mentioned at all in the generally unphilosophical Laws.
Along with Laws, Plato’s third period dialogues are identified by
scholars as being Theaetatus, Sophist, Parmenides, Politicus, and
probably Cratylus. The Parmenides contains the famous “third man”
argument against the doctrine of Forms and is interpreted as an
indication of Plato’s eventual rejection of the doctrine. Plato had
earlier argued that for us to realize that two things had something in
common or that some action exemplified a virtue it must mean that we
perceived the conceptual reality, i.e., the Form, of the virtue or
whatever they had in common, since two individual things or acts are not
identical nor perfect exemplifications of whatever they have in common.
How else, he argued, would we be able to perceive that commonality? The
Greek philosopher Parmenides, after whom the dialogue is named, argues
that Plato’s theory would involve an infinite regress. In order to know
whether the Form of, say, Man really resembled a particular man, there
would have to be another Form, say Man2, which Man1 and the particular
man had in common. That, in turn would require another Form, say Man3,
etc. Parmenides’ argument is a form of reductio ad absurdum. Plato
offers no counter-argument in the dialogue. But the argument is so
obviously fallacious that apparently he felt he did not need to.
Individual men have a body, arms, legs, etc., but the idea or Form of
Man does not; it is a conceptual entity. So the two do not resemble each
other in the way that two individual men do — hence do not need another
Form to explain their resemblance. No such resemblance exists. It seems
likely, therefore, that Plato did not abandon that doctrine, as some
scholars believe, but merely turned his attention to other philosophic
problems. As an initiate of the Mystery schools of his day, he certainly
did not abandon his belief in reincarnation, which is associated in his
dialogues with the doctrines of anamnesis and Forms.
According to Madame Blavasky, the mother of all things esoteric, she acknowledged Plato for his methodology which, she points out, was to
start with universals and descend to particulars, the opposite of
Aristotle’s method (CW III:196). She states that Plato “fully embraced
the ideas of Pythagoras
— who had brought them from India,” but “compiled and published them in
a form more intelligible than the mysterious numerals of the Greek
Sage” She also mentions with approval Plato’s concept of the
soul, which he claimed was dual, one part mortal (what in theosophical
literature would be identified as astral or kāma-manas), the other immortal (i.e., the monad or ātman, possibly the triple spirit: ātma-buddhi-manas).
She states that the former was created by “intelligent forces in
nature” while the latter is “an emanation from the supreme Spirit” or Parabrahman
(CW II:16). It is the latter which is responsible for our well-being,
but is often overruled by our animal desires, creating a continually
unsatisfied longing, coupled with regret and despair, citing Plato’s
Protagoras as a defense of this idea (SD II:412-412). HPB also points
out that Plato’s concept of a Demiurge, mentioned in Timaeus, is not at
all the same as the orthodox Christian concept of a personal God, since
“Plato having been initiated, could not believe in a personal God — a
gigantic shadow of Man. His epithets of ‘Monarch and Lawgiver of the
Universe’ bear an abstract meaning well understood by every Occultist,
who, no less than any Christian, believes in the One Law, that governs
the Universe, recognizing it at the same time as immutable” (SD II:554).
Furthermore, that, in Cratylus, he appropriately derives the word theos
(2,`H) from the verb théein (2X,4<), “to move” or “to run,”
indicating its creative nature (SD I: 2 fn.; II:545). Contrast that with
Aristotle’s idea of a remote and abstract “Prime Mover.” HPB reminds us
of a characteristic Platonic idea, the five so-called “Platonic
solids,” when she notes that Timaeus 55c says that the concrete form of
the universe, “first begotten” as an idea or Form, “was constructed on
the geometrical figure of the dodecahedron” (SD I:340). Actually, the
“Platonic solids” are found in Greek mythology as toys of Baccus. She
also cites Plato’s story in Laws about an earlier golden age on earth
when men were governed by rulers who had a daimonia (*"4:`<4") and
that people in those days would no more allow ordinary men to rule them
than they would allow a bullock or ram to rule over other bullocks or
rams (SD II:372-373). The decline of that age occurred during the
Atlantean period, coming to an end, as Plato points out, with the
sinking of Poseidon. But she explains Plato’s reference, in Critias
(108e) and Timaeus (23e) to the sinking of Atlantis as occurring 9,000
years before his time as meaning millenial years, hence 900,000 years,
closer, she points out, to the occult tradition (SD II:394-395). She
comments, in a footnote, that Plato had learned of Atlantis as a child
from his grandfather, Critias, then aged ninety; and that Critias had
heard it in his youth from the Greek sage Solon, adding, “ No more
reliable source could be found, we believe” (SD II:743 fn), because
Solon had heard it from “the priests of Egypt” (ibid, p. 266). Plato
then, “as every Initiate would” intentionally confused the sinking of
the large continent of Atlantis with the much later sinking of its last
small remnant, Poseidon (idem.; cf. vol. 2, p. 767). These ideas should
be kept in mind when theosophists or scholars attempt to verify — or
refute — the existence of Atlantis.
There you have a brief overview of Plato. I'm sure we will have more to say on this guy in the future, or was it the past?
~~ Eso Terry
