Morality

[vulcanlogician]

" the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed."

Do you believe as Plato did, that Good is the universal author of all things beautiful and right, the immediate source of reason and of reason and truth, etc...?

No, I do not.

But to conflate the form of the Good with a creator deity demonstrates a basic misunderstanding of the theory of forms and the excerpt from the Republic. Plato thought that the forms were fundamental to reality. He thought they were more real than material things. I'm not sure I agree with Plato there, but I'm not sure I disagree with him either. It depends on what he means. There is much debate in philosophy about how to interpret Plato's theory of forms.

Here is what I find compelling in Plato's theory of the forms:

Take a triangle, as understood by mathematicians, as an example. Any material approximation of a conceptual triangle is going to partake in features of "triangleness itself"-- that is-- any mathematical law that applies to distance between lines, degrees of the third angle etc. are going to be true for any material representation of a triangle. Therefore, if one wants to thoroughly understand triangles one finds in the world, one must understand "triangleness itself" or the form of the triangle.

Now let's return to goodness. Same principle here. Take three things:

1. Helping an old lady across the street

2. Preventing a murder

3. Creating a just and fair system of government

Let's assume that all three of these things are "good." But what makes all three good? They are each very different endeavors. So how do we discover what single thing makes them all good? Well, we do ethics! THAT is what Plato was doing, friend. He was doing metaphysics too (and epistemology and political philosophy, but also ethics). He was trying to discover the form of the Good (ie, asking what makes good things good?) via the Socratic dialectic. Ethicists are doing the same thing in modern and contemporary philosophy. Many philosophers, like GE. Moore (atheist!) were inspired by Plato's theory of forms when asking the question "What is good?" Moore accepted some of Plato's ideas and rejected others. (Not in a pick and choose way but in a this is logical to accept and this other is illogical way.) And guess what? That's exactly what Plato intended to accomplish with his work. He wanted to spark debate, not propagate ideas.

PLATO WAS NOT CREATING A BELIEF SYSTEM. HE WAS KICKSTARTING PHILOSOPHY.

And he did a damn fine job. I think you like Platonism more than you like Plato. Some scholars argue that Plato himself was not a Platonist. Whatever the case, it is probable that if Plato knew what we know today, he'd redact or adjust many of his ideas. That's Plato, though--not Platonism. Platonism can't adjust its ideas. They are affixed. We as philosophers can only analyze Platonism and see what parts might be true and which parts might be in error.

I saved as a draft the beginnings of a detailed analysis of the passage you quoted from the Republic. But I abandoned it because I've already explained things about my views concerning Plato in a lengthy post which you wholly ignored. I wonder if you really want to have a discussion about what Plato might have gotten right and what he might have gotten wrong. THAT'S the discussion I would like to have. To me, it's the only discussion worth having.

I'm no Plato scholar. I don't know Greek. But I've read the Republic four times. Some specific parts way more than that. The Republic was the subject of a semester-long independent research project that I completed under the supervision of two philosophy professors. I made a rigorous analysis of the ideas within it and had numerous errors in my understanding corrected by two professionals along the way. Because Plato is one of my faves, his work has been the subject of numerous research papers where I got to choose the subject, not to mention required work in other philosophy courses. Lump on top of that some more Plato that I read for pleasure in my spare time.

This doesn't make me an authority on Plato (far from it). But it does mean that I have a grasp of Plato. I'd like to reproduce several translations of the excerpt of the Republic you quoted and discuss (in depth) how they are to be interpreted given the context of the allegory. But I don't want to do that if you aren't interested. Perhaps you're just "trying to be right about Plato on the internet" and you aren't interested in parsing through the text and having a reasoned debate or looking at the work from angles other than neoplatonist doctrines.

Let me know. Because I can argue my point and defend my views concerning Plato. But I don't want to go through the effort for nothing.