Plato hand tools

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It also stands to reason that Plato gradually widened the scope of his investigations, by reflecting not only on the social and political conditions of morality, but also on the logical, epistemological, and metaphysical presuppositions of a successful moral theory.

These theoretical reflections often take on a life of their own. The Parmenides , the Theaetetus , and the Sophist deal primarily or exclusively with epistemological and metaphysical problems of a quite general nature. Nevertheless, as witnessed by the Philebus , the Statesman , the Timaeus , and the Laws , Plato never lost interest in the question of what conditions are necessary for a good human life.

Socrates explores the individual virtues through a discussion with persons who are either representatives of, or claim to be experts on, that virtue. Xenophon Memorabilia I, 10; In the Laches , he discusses courage with two renowned generals of the Peloponnesian war, Laches and Nicias.

Similarly, in the Charmides Socrates addresses—somewhat ironically—the nature of moderation with the two of the Thirty Tyrants, namely the then very young Charmides, an alleged model of modesty, and his guardian and intellectual mentor, Critias.

And in the Gorgias Socrates discusses the nature of rhetoric and its relation to virtue with the most prominent teacher of rhetoric among the sophists. Finally, in the Meno the question how virtue is acquired is raised by Meno, a disciple of Gorgias, and an ambitious seeker of power, wealth, and fame.

Nor is such confidence unreasonable. These flaws vary greatly in kind and gravity: Socrates shows that enumerations of examples are not sufficient to capture the nature of the thing in question. Definitions that consist in the replacement of a given concept with a synonym are open to the same objections as the original definition.

Definitions may be hopelessly vague or miss the mark entirely, which is to say that they may be either too wide, and include unwanted characteristics or subsets, or too narrow, and exclude essential characteristics. Moreover, definitions may be incomplete because the object in question does not constitute a unitary phenomenon. Given that the focus in the early dialogues is almost entirely on the exposure of flaws and inconsistencies, one cannot help wondering whether Plato himself knew the answers to his queries, and had some cards up his sleeve that he chose not to play for the time being.

This would presuppose that Plato had not only a clear notion of the nature of the different virtues, but also a positive conception of the good life as such. Since Plato was neither a moral nihilist nor a sceptic, he cannot have regarded moral perplexity aporia as the ultimate end, nor regarded continued mutual examination, Socratico more , as a way of life for everyone. Perplexity, as is argued in the Meno , is just a wholesome intermediary stage on the way to knowledge Me. But if Plato assumes that the convictions that survive Socratic questioning will eventually coalesce into an account of the good life, then he keeps this expectation to himself.

There is no guarantee that only false convictions are discarded in a Socratic investigation, while true ones are retained. For, promising suggestions are often as mercilessly discarded as their less promising brethren.

It is therefore a matter of conjecture whether Plato himself held any positive views while he composed one aporetic dialogue after the other. He may have regarded his investigations as experimental stages, or have seen each dialogue as an element in a network of approaches that he hoped to eventually integrate.

The evidence that Plato already wanted his readers to draw this very conclusion in his early dialogues is somewhat contradictory, however. Plato famously pleads for the unity of the virtues in the Protagoras , and seems intent to reduce them all to knowledge.

This intellectualizing tendency, however, does not tell us what kind of master-science would fulfill all of the requirements for defining virtues, and what its content should be.

Though Plato often compared the virtues with technical skills, such as those of a doctor or a pilot, he may have realized that virtues also involve emotional attitudes, desires, and preferences, but not yet have seen a clear way to coordinate or relate the rational and the affective elements that constitute the virtues. In the Laches , for instance, Socrates partners struggle when they try to define courage, invoking two different elements. His comrade Nicias, on the other hand, fails when he tries to identify courage exclusively as a certain type of knowledge e—a.

The investigation of moderation in the Charmides , likewise, points up that there are two disparate elements commonly associated with that virtue — namely, a certain calmness of temper on the one hand Chrm. It is clear that a complex account would be needed to combine these two disparate factors.

In his earlier dialogues, Plato may or may not already be envisaging the kind of solution that he is going to present in the Republic to the problem of the relationship between the various virtues, with wisdom, the only intellectual virtue, as their basis. Courage, moderation, and justice presuppose a certain steadfastness of character as well as a harmony of purpose among the disparate parts of the soul, but their goodness depends entirely on the intellectual part of the soul, just as the virtue of the citizens in the just state depends on the wisdom of the philosopher kings R.

Nicias is forced to admit that such knowledge presupposes the knowledge of good and bad tout court La. But pointing out what is wrong and missing in particular arguments is a far cry from a philosophical conception of the good and the bad in human life.

But the evidence that Plato already had a definitive conception of the good life in mind when he wrote his earlier dialogues remains, at most, indirect. First and foremost, definitions presuppose that there is a definable object; that is to say, that it must have a stable nature. Nothing can be defined whose nature changes all the time. In addition, the object in question must be a unitary phenomenon, even if its unity may be complex.

If definitions are to provide the basis of knowledge, they require some kind of essentialism. This presupposition is indeed made explicit in the Euthyphro , where Plato employs for the first time the terminology that will be characteristic of his full-fledged theory of the Forms. Despite this pregnant terminology, few scholars nowadays hold that the Euthyphro already presupposes transcendent Forms in a realm of their own— models that are incompletely represented by their imitations under material conditions.

No more than piety or holiness in the abstract sense seems to be presupposed in the discussion of the Euthyphro. Given that they are the objects of definition and the models of their ordinary representatives, there is every reason not only to treat them as real, but also to assign to them a state of higher perfection.

And once this step has been taken, it is only natural to make certain epistemological adjustments. For, access to paradigmatic entities is not to be expected through ordinary experience, but presupposes some special kind of intellectual insight. It seems, then, that once Plato had accepted invariant and unitary objects of thought as the objects of definition, he was predestined to follow the path that let him adopt a metaphysics and epistemology of transcendent Forms.

It would have meant the renunciation of the claim to unassailable knowledge and truth in favor of belief, conjecture, and, horribile dictu , of human convention. It led him to search for models of morality beyond the limits of everyday experience. This, in turn, explains the development of his theory of recollection and the postulate of transcendent immaterial objects as the basis of reality and thought that he refers to in the Meno , and that he presents more fully in the Phaedo.

We do not know when, precisely, Plato adopted this mode of thought, but it stands to reason that his contact with the Pythagorean school on his first voyage to Southern Italy and Sicily around BC played a major role in this development. Mathematics as a model-science has several advantages.

It deals with unchangeable entities that have unitary definitions. It also makes a plausible claim that the essence of these entities cannot be comprehended in isolation but only in a network of interconnections that have to be worked out at the same time as each particular entity is defined. For instance, to understand what it is to be a triangle, it is necessary — inter alia — to understand the nature of points, lines, planes and their interrelations.

The slave finally manages, with some pushing and pulling by Socrates, and some illustrations drawn in the sand, to double the area of a given square. In the course of this interrogation, the disciple gradually discovers the relations between the different lines, triangles, and squares. That Plato regards these interconnections as crucial features of knowledge is confirmed later by the distinction that Socrates draws between knowledge and true belief 97b—98b.

And that, Meno my friend, is recollection, as we previously agreed. After they are tied down, in the first place, they become knowledge, and then they remain in place. And the Beautiful, and the Good? How does it work? The hypothesis he starts out with seems simpleminded indeed, because it consists of nothing more than the assumption that everything is what it is by participating in the corresponding Form.

But it soon turns out that more is at stake than that simple postulate. First, the hypothesis of each respective Form is to be tested by looking at the compatibility of its consequences. Second, the hypothesis itself is to be secured by higher hypotheses, until some satisfactory starting point is attained.

The distinctions that Socrates subsequently introduces in preparation of his last proof of the immortality of the soul seem, however, to provide some information about the procedure in question d—b. Socrates first introduces the distinction between essential and non-essential attributes.

This distinction is then applied to the soul: because it always causes life in whatever it occupies, it must have life as its essential property, which it cannot lose.

The viability of this argument, stripped here to its bare bones, need not engage us. The procedure shows, at any rate, that Plato resorts to relations between Forms here. The essential tie between the soul and life is clearly not open to sense-perception; instead, understanding this tie takes a good deal of reflection on what it means to be, and to have a soul.

To admirers of a two-world metaphysics, it may come as a disappointment that in Plato, recollection should consist in no more than the uncovering of such relationships.

Plato does not employ his newly established metaphysical entities as the basis to work out a definitive conception of the human soul and the appropriate way of life in the Phaedo. Rather, he confines himself to warnings against the contamination of the soul by the senses and their pleasures, and quite generally against corruption by worldly values.

He gives no advice concerning human conduct beyond the recommendation of a general abstemiousness from worldly temptations. But as long as this negative or other-worldly attitude towards the physical side of human nature prevails, no interest is to be expected on the part of Plato in nature as a whole — let alone in the principles of the cosmic order but cf. But it is not only Platonic asceticism that stands in the way of such a wider perspective.

Socrates himself seems to have been quite indifferent to the study of nature. If Plato later takes a much more positive attitude towards nature in general, this is a considerable change of focus. In the Phaedo , he quite deliberately confines his account of the nature of heaven and earth to the myth about the afterlife d—c. This is as constructive as Plato gets in his earlier discussions of the principles of ethics. If Plato went through a period of open-ended experimentation, this stage was definitely over when he wrote the Republic , the central work of his middle years.

The aporetic controversy about justice in the first book is set off quite sharply against the cooperative discussion that is to follow in the remaining nine books. Of these disputes, the altercation with the sophist Thrasymachus has received a lot of attention, because he defends the provocative thesis that natural justice is the right of the stronger, and that conventional justice is at best high-minded foolishness. The arguments employed by Socrates at the various turns of the discussion will not be presented here.

Though they reduce Thrasymachus to angry silence, they are not above criticism. Socrates himself expresses dissatisfaction with the result of this discussion R. The brothers demand a positive account of what justice is, and of what it does to the soul of its possessor. The change of character in the ensuing discussion is remarkable. Not only are the two brothers not subjected to elenchos , they get ample time to elaborate on their objections a—e.

Though they are not themselves convinced that injustice is better than justice, they argue that in the present state of society injustice pays — with the gods as well as with men — as long as the semblance of respectability is preserved. He will succeed at every level because he knows how to play the power game with cunning. The just man, by contrast, pays no heed to mere semblance of goodness, rather than its substance,and therefore suffers a Christ-like fate, because he does not comply with the demands of favoritism and blandishment e.

Even the gods, as the poets allegedly confirm, are on the side of the successful scoundrel, since they can be propitiated by honors and sacrifices. Instead, Socrates should show what effect each of them have on the soul of their possessors. Plato at this point clearly regards refutation as an insufficient method of making true converts; whether he ever had such confidence in the power of refutation must remain a moot point.

But the Republic shows that the time had come for a positive account of morality and the good life. It should be pointed out, however, that in his treatment of justice Plato does not resort to the theory of Forms. Instead, he offers a political and psychological solution to the problem of justice. This question is addressed in a quite circuitous way. A study of how a city comes to be will supposedly reveal the origin of justice and injustice a.

The minimal city is based on the need for food, clothing, shelter, and for the requisite tools. For a more luxurious city needs protection by a professional army as well as the leadership of a class of philosopher-kings and -queens.

Beyond the claim that the division of functions is more economical, Plato gives no justification for this fateful decision that determines the social order in the state, as well as the nature of the virtues. Human beings are not born alike, but with different abilities that predestine them for different tasks in a well-ordered state.

That economic needs are the basis of the political structure does not, of course, mean that they are the only human needs Plato recognizes. It indicates, however, that the emphasis here is on the unity and self-sufficiency of a well-structured city, not on the well-being of the individual c—e; c.

All stories that undermine respect towards the gods are to be banned, along with tales that instill fear of death in the guardians. The imitation of bad persons is forbidden, as are depictions of varieties of character, quite generally.

Analogous injunctions apply, mutandis mutatis , to the modes and rhythms in music and to painting. Physical exercise must suit the harmonious soul and therefore must not exceed what is healthy and necessary e—b. The supervision of education is the function of the third class, the rulers of the city b—b. They are to be selected through tests of intelligence and character from among the soldiers, to identify individuals who are unshakable in their conviction that their own well-being is intimately tied to that of the city.

To ensure that members of the ruling and military classes retain their right attitude towards their civic duties, members of both classes must lead a communal life, without private homes, families, or property. The division of functions that leads to the separation of the three classes for the purpose of achieving the social conditions for justice concludes the discussion of the social order d—c. The somewhat peculiar manner in which Socrates further develops his explation of the nature of justice can be understood with reference to this concluding discussion.

Piety, as the text indicates, is no longer treated as a virtue, for religious practices should be left to tradition and the oracle of Apollo at Delphi b—c. The definition of justice is to be discovered by a process of elimination.

If there are four virtues in the city, then justice must be the one that is left over after the other three have been identified e. There is no proof offered that there are exactly four virtues in a state, nor that they are items that can be lifted up, singly, for inspection, like objects from a basket. Instead, Socrates points out the role they play in the maintenance of the social order. The third class, then, has no specific virtue of its own. But since Socrates does not elaborate on the dispositions of justice and moderation any further, there seems to be only a fine line between the functions of justice and moderation in the city.

That there are four virtues rather than three probably also reflects the fact that this catalogue of four was a fixture in tradition. As will emerge in connection with the virtues in the individual soul, the distinction between justice and moderation is far less problematic in the case of the individual than in that of the city as a whole, because in the individual soul, internal self-control and external self-restraint are clearly different attitudes. As this survey shows, the virtues are no longer confined to knowledge.

They also contain right beliefs and attitudes of harmony and compliance — extensions that are apt to make up for deficiencies in the explanation of certain virtues in earlier dialogues. The promise to establish the isomorphic structure of the city and soul has not been forgotten. After the definition and assignment of the four virtues to the three classes of the city, the investigation turns to the role and function of the virtues in the soul.

The soul is held to consist of three parts , corresponding to the three classes in the city. Indeed, there is no indication of separate parts of the soul in any of the earlier dialogues; irrational desires are attributed to the influence of the body.

In the Republic , by contrast, the soul itself becomes the source of the appetites and desires. The difference between the rational and the appetitive part is easily justified, because the opposition between the decrees of reason and the various kinds of unreasonable desires is familiar to everyone d—e. But the phenomenon of moral indignation is treated as evidence for a psychic force that is reducible neither to reason nor to any of the appetites; it is rather an ally of reason in a well-ordered soul, a force opposed to unruly appetites e—c.

This concludes the proof that there are three parts in the soul corresponding to the three classes in the city — namely the rational part in the wisdom of the rulers, the spirited part, which is manifested in the courage of the soldiers, the appetitive part, which is manifested in the rest of the population, whose defining motivation is material gain.

This presupposes that the two upper parts have been given the right kind of training and education in order to control the appetitive part d—a. The three other virtues are then assigned to the respective parts of the soul. Courage is the excellence of the spirited part, wisdom belongs to the rational part, and moderation is the consent of all three about who should rule and who should obey. Justice turns out to be the overall unifying quality of the soul c—e. For, the just person not only refrains from meddling with what is not his, externally, but also harmonizes the three parts of the soul internally.

While justice is order and harmony, injustice is its opposite: it is a rebellion of one part of the city or soul against the others, and an inappropriate rule of the inferior parts. Justice and injustice in the soul are, then, analogous to health and illness in the body. This comparison suffices to bring the investigation to its desired result. If justice is health and harmony of the soul, then injustice must be disease and disorder.

Hence, it is clear that justice is a good state of the soul that makes its possessor happy, and injustice is its opposite. Just as no-one in his right mind would prefer to live with a ruined body so no-one would prefer to live with a diseased soul. In principle, the discussion of justice has therefore reached its promised goal at the end of Book IV. That the discussion does not end here but occupies six more books, is due most of all to several loose ends that need to be tied up.

This gap will be filled, at least in part, by the description of the communal life without private property and family in Book V.

More importantly, nothing has been said about the rulers and their particular kind of knowledge. A short summary of the upshot of the educational program must suffice here. The future philosophers, both women and men, are selected from the group of guardians whose general cultural training they share. If they combine moral firmness with quickness of mind, they are subject to a rigorous curriculum of higher learning that will prepare them for the ascent from the world of the senses to the world of intelligence and truth, an ascent whose stages are summed up in the similes of the Sun, the Line, and the Cave a—b.

This study is to last for another five years. Successful candidates are then sent back into the Cave as administrators of ordinary political life for about 15 years. At the age of fifty the rulers are granted the pursuit of philosophy, an activity that is interrupted by periods of service as overseers of the order of the state. That is no mean feat in a society where external and civil wars were a constant threat, and often enough ended in the destruction of the entire city. That human beings find, or at least try to find, satisfaction in the kinds of goods they cherish is a point further pursued in the depiction of the decay of the city and its ruling citizens, from the best — the aristocracy of the mind — down to the worst — the tyranny of lust, in Books VIII and IX.

A discussion of the tenability of this explanation of political and psychological decadence will not be attempted here. It is supposed to show that all inferior forms of government of city and soul are doomed to fail because of the inherent tensions between the goods that are aimed for. He clearly goes on the assumption that human beings are happy insofar as they achieve the goals they cherish. Why, then, reduce the third class to animal-like creatures with low appetites, as suggested by the comparison of the people to a strong beast that must be placated a—c?

This comparison is echoed later in the comparison of the soul to a multiform beast, where reason just barely controls the hydra-like heads of the appetites, and then only with the aid of a lion-like spirit c—d. Is Plato thereby giving vent to anti-democratic sentiments, showing contempt for the rabble, as has often been claimed? Plato seems to sidestep his own insight that all human beings have an immortal soul and have to take care of it as best they can, as he not only demands in the Phaedo but is going to confirm in a fanciful way in the Myth of Er at the end of Republic Book X.

The life-style designated for the upper classes also seems open to objections. Theirs is an austere camp-life; not all of them will be selected for higher education.

Their intellectual pursuits are also not entirely enviable, as a closer inspection would show. This is indicated in the injunctions concerning the study of astronomy and harmonics a—d. The universe is not treated as an admirable cosmos, with the explicit purpose of providing moral and intellectual support to the citizens, in the way Plato is going to state in the Timaeus and in the Laws. The system resembles a well-oiled machine where everyone has their appointed function and economic niche; but its machine-like character seems repellent, given that no deviations are permitted from the prescribed pattern.

If innovations are forbidden, no room seems to be left for creativity and personal development. It states that every object, animal, and person has a specific function or work ergon. His aim is rather more limited: He wants to present a model , and to work out its essential features. Rather, he wants to explain the generation and decay typical of each political system and the psychopathology of its leaders.

It is unlikely that Plato presupposes that there are pure representatives of these types, though some historical states may have come closer to being representatives than others. Was Plato aware of the fact that his black-and-white picture of civic life in his model state disregards the claim of individuals to have their own aims and ends, and not to be treated like automata, with no thoughts and wishes of their own?

These works are the Symposium and the Phaedrus. For though each dialogue should be studied as a unity of its own, it is also necessary to treat the individual dialogues as part of a wider picture.

The Symposium and the Phaedrus are two dialogues that focus on the individual soul and pay no attention to communal life at all. Instead, they concentrate on self-preservation, self-improvement, and self-completion. The Symposium is often treated as a dialogue that predates the Republic , most of all because it mentions neither the immortality nor the tripartition of the soul. But its dramatic staging — the praise of Eros by a company of symposiasts — is not germane to the otherworldly and ascetic tendencies of the Gorgias and the Phaedo.

Contrary to all other speakers, Socrates denies that Eros is a god, because the gods are in a state of perfection. Love, by contrast, is a desire of the needy for the beautiful and the good c—c. Human beings share that demonic condition; for they are neither good nor bad, but desire the good and the beautiful, the possession of which would constitute happiness for them.

Because all people want happiness, they pursue the good as well as they can a—b. In each case they desire the particular kinds of objects that they hope will fulfill their needs.

And this is possible in one way only: by reproduction, because it leaves behind a new young one in place of the old. In the case of human beings this need expresses itself in different ways. Starting with the love of one beautiful body, the individual gradually learns to appreciate not only all physical beauty, but also the beauty of the mind, and in the end she gets a glimpse of the supreme kind of beauty, namely the Form of the Beautiful itself — a beauty that is neither relative, nor changeable, nor a matter of degree.

There is no talk of a painful liberation from the bonds of the senses, or of a turn-around of the entire soul that is reserved only for the better educated. Second, this drive finds its expression in the products of their work, in creativity. There is no indication that individuals must act as part of a community. Though the communitarian aspect of the good and beautiful comes to the fore in the high praise of the products of the legendary legislators e—a , the ultimate assent to the Beautiful itself is up to the individual.

The Lysis shares its basic assumption concerning the intermediary state of human nature between good and bad, and regards need as the basis of friendship. The idea that eros is the incentive to sublimation and self-completion is worked out further in the Phaedrus. Although the close relationship between the two dialogues is generally acknowledged, the Phaedrus is commonly regarded as a much later work. But this difference seems due to a difference in perspective rather than to a change of mind.

The discussion in the Symposium is deliberately confined to the conditions of self-immortalization in this life, while the Phaedrus takes the discussion beyond the confines of this life. They explain, rather, the different routes taken by individuals in their search for beauty and their levels of success.

The misuse of rhetoric is exemplified by the speech attributed to the orator Lysias, a somewhat contrived plea to favor a non-lover rather than a lover.

Once restored to his senses the lover will shun his former beloved and break all his promises. To explain the nature of this madness, Socrates employs the comparison of the tripartite soul to a charioteer with a pair winged horses, an obedient white one and an unruly black one. That is what first makes the soul grow wings and soar in the pursuit of a corresponding deity, to the point where it may attain godlike insights.

The best-conditioned souls — those where the charioteer has full control over his horses — get a glimpse of true being, including the nature of the virtues and of the good c—e. Depending on the quality of each soul, the quality of the beauty pursued will also determine the cycle of reincarnations that is in store for each soul after death c—c. The individual does not find her or his fulfillment in peaceful interactions in a harmonious community.

Instead, life is spent in the perennial pursuit of the higher and better. But in that task the individual is not alone; she shares that task with kindred spirits. The message of the the Symposium and the Phaedrus is therefore two-pronged.

On the one hand, there is no permanent attainment of happiness as a stable state of completion in this life. In the ups and downs of life and of the afterlife , humans are in constant need of beauty as an incentive to aim for their own completion. Humans are neither god-like nor wise; at best, they are god-lovers and philosophers, demonic hunters for truth and goodness.

To know is not to have; and to have once is not to have forever. In the Symposium , Diotima states in no uncertain terms that humans have a perennial need to replenish what they lose, both in body and soul, because they are mortal and changeable creatures, and the Phaedrus confirms the need for continued efforts, for the heavenly voyage is not a one-time affair.

On the other hand, the second part of he message conveyed is that the pursuit of the good and the beautiful is not a lonely enterprise. As the Phaedrus makes clear, love for a beautiful human being is an incentive to search for a higher form of life, as a sacred joint journey of two friends in communion a—e. Sober philosophers have a tendency to ignore such visionary talk as too elevated and lacking in substance to be worth serious thought.

Artful speaking and even artful deception presupposes knowledge of the truth, especially where the identity of the phenomena is difficult to grasp, because similarities can be deceptive. This applies in particular to concepts like the good and the just, as witnessed by the wide disagreement about their nature a—c.

That dialectic is geared to this end is somewhat obscured in the subsequent discussion in the Phaedrus. First of all, Plato turns away from this issue in his long depiction of the iniquities of contemporary rhetoricians, when he constrasts their efforts with scientific rhetoric. Second, although Plato makes ample use of the method of collection and division in later dialogues such as the Sophist and the Statesman , he seems to pay little heed to problems of ethics, with the exception of the Philebus.

That the Good is nowhere subjected to such treatment must be due to the enormity of the task involved in undertaking a systematic identification of all that is good, and in distinguishing good things from each other, as well as from the Form of the Good.

As a closer look at the much later Philebus will show, the determination of what is good about each kind of thing presupposes more than a classification by collection and division. For in addition, the internal structure of each kind of entity has to be determined. But as the late dialogues show, it took him quite some effort to develop the requisite conceptual tools for such analyses. Before we turn to the late dialogues, a final review is in order of the kind of good life Plato envisages in the dialogues under discussion here.

This is what the scala amoris is all about. Just as in the Symposium , the philosophical life is deemed the best. But then, this preference is found everywhere in Plato and itis not unique to him: all ancient philosophers regard their own occupation as the true fulfillment of human life. If there are differences between them, they concern the kinds of study and occupation that are deemed appropriate to philosophy. They may be complementary, rather than rival, points of view, and no fixed chronology need be assumed in order to accommodate both.

Nature and natural things are not among the objects that concern Plato in his earlier and middle philosophical investigations. Thus, in the Republic , he dismisses the study of the visible heaven from the curriculum of higher learning along with audible music. What he denigrates is not the study of the heavenly order as such, nor that of harmonics; it is rather the extent to which we must necessarily rely on our eyes and ears in those concerns.

Students of philosophy are, rather, encouraged to work out the true intelligible order underlying the visible heaven and audible music.

If Plato is critical of natural science, it is because of its empirical approach. Plato did not attempt to state how such a principle of goodness works in all things when he wrote the Republic. The stringency of these inferences is far from obvious; but they show that Plato saw an intimate connection between the nature, the function, and the well-being of all things, including human beings.

In the Republic , this question is answered only indirectly through the isomorphism of the just state and soul as a harmonious internal order.

The postulate of such an orderly structure is not explicitly extended beyond the state and the soul. In contrast, in the later dialogues, the Good clearly operates on a cosmic scale.

What actions and passions properly belong to human nature and distinguish it from all other beings? If, in the Republic , the goodness of the individual soul is explained in terms of its being a smaller copy of a harmonious society, in the Timaeus , Plato goes for a larger model. The structure of the world-soul is replicated in the nature of the human soul. That there is, nevertheless, a close affinity between the Republic and the project that Plato meant to pursue in the Timaeus and its intended sequels is clearly indicated in the preface to the Timaeus.

From antiquity on, this introduction has created the impression that the Timaeus is the direct continuation of the Republic , an impression that explains its juxtaposition in the Corpus Platonicum. Strong indications speak, however, for a much later date for the Timaeus. If Plato establishes a link between these two works, his intent is to compare as well as to contrast. It is this ideal order that Critias promises to illustrate by narrating the tale of the war between pre-historic Athens, a city that exempified the ideal order, and Atlantis, a powerful tyrannical superpower Ti.

However, Plato eventually set aside the project of illustrating the ideal city in action: the Critias breaks off after 15 pages, in mid-sentence, and the third dialogue in the series, Hermocrates , was never written at all.