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THE PHILOSOPHER AS TEACHER

TEACHING PLAT0 AS AN INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY’

BYRON L. HATNES

Children are naturally Platonists (just as they are naturally scientific realists). By that I mean that children are easily and naturally led to think and talk in ways that imply that things of a kind have some common character that makes them to be of that kind, that these characters are as objective as the things that possess them, and that we gain improved understanding of these characters through a process of reflection rather than empirical investigation. One evening, when my daughter was about seven, and we were having one of our regular bed- time talks, she asked me, “Do you have a philosophical theory of love?” I pondered a few seconds and admitted that I guessed that I did not. “Well, I do,” she said. “My theory is that to love someone you must have real concern for that person.” While this may not have been quite adequate as a definition of love, and so perhaps was not, in that sense, an adequate philosophical theory of love, it struck me as expressing an important, and indeed necessary, truth about the nature of love, and 1 asked her where she had learned it. Although my daughter was, even at that age, a very polite and respectful person, I detected a note of mild indignation and annoyance in her response: “Nowhere. My mind teaches me things.” It should not be thought that she could have reached this understanding without that history of loving contexts in which children acquire the concept of love; however, given that she had acquired the concept her mind could teach her things by reflecting on the nature of love. This illustrates excellently one of the lessons of the Meno: although one can know what a thing is, in the sense of having a concept of it (and, indeed, must have that kind of knowledge in order for philosophical inquiry to proceed), inquiry is not pointless, for i t can bring to consciousness necessary features of the kind that have not been hitherto noted.

’ My vicws on the nature o f philosophy, and teaching philosophy as well, derive, to a large extent, from reflecfions crn the works o f Plato. Wittgenstein. and John Wisdom, hut, more than any of those. from continuing discussions with my friend and collcague Don Moor. 1 also owe a great deal to conyervations with my daughter, at a very early age. which provided the important reminder that asking philosophical questions, and making considerable progress in answering some of them, is as much a part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing.

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Of course not all answers to these “What is to be a such and such?” questions are as happy as the above one. Cephalus, in the Republic, no doubt being aware that just persons typically tell the truth and pay their debts, suggests that justice or righteousness consists simply in telling the truth and paying debts. Socrates has to remind him that this is not so by providing him with the counter-example of paying a debt by returning a weapon to a dangerous madman. Euthyphro, perhaps noting that there must be some connection between piety and the gods, suggests that the character of being pious is just that of being god-beloved. Socrates has to present him with a number of statements, to which he is prepared to assent, in order to remind him that the characters of piety and god- beloved are not identical. In learning why Cephalus’ view is false we improve our understanding of the nature of justice. We learn that, whatever it is, it does not consist simply in following a bunch of rules. Given what is at issue in the Euthyphro, from the discussion that occurs there we gain improved understanding not only of piety but of the other moral kinds. Indeed, the Euthyphro provides an excellent vehicle for displaying how philosophical reflection, remote from day to day affairs as it sometimes seems, can be importantly relevant to moral practice. Socrates’ argument, at least properly supplemented with a fuller defense of the key premise (i.e. that the gods love the pious because it is pious), can show why a certain form of argument, still sometimes encountered in the public arena (i.e. that a thing is good or an action right because God favors it) must always be, because question begging, a bad argument.

The above considerations provide some reason for believing that an excellent way of introducing students to philosophy is through the dialogues of Plato, and for a number of years I have been using Plato’s works, almost exclusively, for assigned readings in my introductory class. I am not, of course, the only philosophy teacher to do this. For example, Professor Gary Seay, in a recent APA Newsletter on teaching philosophy, (1989) presented an excellent explanation and defense of the use of Plato’s early dialogues for a complete introductory class. In support of his practice, Professor Seay offered such reasons as the following: the earlier dialogues present serious philosophical ideas in a form that is reasonably accessible to persons with little or no philosophical background; they are worth reading because of their place in the classical canon; they offer reliable insight into the character of the historical Socrates. The latter is important, Professor Seay thinks, because Socrates “shows a relentlessly critical attitude of mind that is openly hostile to doctrinaire and dogmatic thinking and the intellectual laziness they imply.” (1989, p. 23) I agree that these things are true of the early dialogues and that they are relevant to their use in introductory classes. No doubt they are among the reasons that many teachers include at least some of the early dialogues in their introductory classes.

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However, I believe that there is a more important reason for making considerable use of Rlato in introductory classes, whether or not that is the exclusive subject matter, and for including material from the middle, and possibly later, dialogues as well. For many years 1 have been adding the Meno and large parts of the Republic to the Apology, Euthyphro, and sometimes the Crito. My reason is this: Once students have been exposed to Socratic dialectic (as in the Euthyphro and Bk. 1 of the Republic) consideration of the Meno and Bks. V-Vll of the Republic can serve to remind students that there is a distinctively philosophical subject matter clearly distinguishable from the subject matter of the various sciences. Of course, students will readily accept that there is a difference between philosophy and science, but without proper guidance they can easily reach the conclusion that the difference is that science deals with fact and philosophy is all a matter of opinion. It seems important that they gain, early on, the understanding that philosophical beliefs are about something, that they can be true or false (however difficult it is sometimes to tell which), and that there are objects of philosophical inquiries with regard to which we can gain improved understanding (even if such understanding rarely gets expressed in anything like a definition). I have found Plato to be the philosopher who can be most effectively used to convey this under- standing.

The Republic presents us with the theory of forms. The theory of forms seems best understood as Plato’s effort to say what must be true of the objects of Socratic inquiry in order for that inquiry to have proceeded, using the methods it employed, to produce the improved understanding (such as in the Euthyphro) that it did provide. That theory, together with the myth of recollection in the Meno, attempts to answer the question: How is philosophical inquiry possible? While Platonism, as a theory of philosophy, has often, and in a variety of ways, been challenged, one is not in a position to evaluate the challenges unless one understands what is being challenged.

This is not the place to undertake a thorough discussion of the theory of forms. To discuss that theory as it was presented by Plato would require sorting out what is essential to Platonism from the various confusions and superstitions to which Plato’s colorful myths have given rise (e.g. that the forms are ideal exemplars of the things that we see, existing in another place to which our souls had access before we were born) and from the excessive claims that Plato himself may have made concerning the forms (e.g. that they are the only objects of true knowledge and that science is, in effect, a poor imitation of philosophy). However it may be necessary to provide a few reminders concerning a few essential features of Platonism. A Platonist will, of course, hold that it is a necessary feature of any world that there be these forms, or characters. The reasoning behind this is as follows: take any two things

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(or, of course, any number of things) and they will always, necessarily, resemble each other in some respects and fail to resemble each other in other respects. Two pieces of chalk, for example, will resemble each other in the respect of being chalk and may resemble each other in the respect of being white; they will differ with respect to physical location and may differ with respect to length. Things will never simply resemble; they must resemble in a respect. The Platonic forms are just these respects in which things resemble. This being so it should be evident that there is no deep, mysterious problem concerning the existence or “ontological status” of the forms. That there is a character of being white is no more mysterious than that there are white things. It should also be evident that certain questions which the philosophically uninitiated are inclined to ask - e.g. “Where are the forms?” “Are they in the things or somewhere else?” “How many of them are there?” “Who made them?” “How long have they been in existence?” “How long will they last?” - are misconceived. They are misconceived in the way that “When did time begin?” is misconceived. Any attempt to answer them will involve an absurdity.

It is also essential to Platonism that any given form be timeless, changeless, and necessarily as it is. Consider triangularity. If there is a time (past, present, or future) when there is no triangularity then it would not be possible for some figure to come into existence that has that character (though, of course, it should not be concluded that triangularity has been around for a very long time). All one has to do to display to students Plato’s reasons for “separating” the forms is to draw a bunch of triangles on the board and then erase them. If the forms were in the things then, assuming that these are all the triangles that there are, one would have destroyed triangularity, but that is easily shown to be absurd by drawing another triangle. (When reminding students of the Platonistic truisms, I often find myself musing on Wittgenstein’s remark at P.I. 128: “If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them.”) Contingent things can, while retaining their identity, change by taking on and losing characteristics. However, if triangularity were to change to something else it would no longer be triangularity, or if it were to lose one of its necessary features (equiangularity, for example, in the case of an equilateral triangle) it would no longer be identical with itself. For similar reasons triangularity is necessarily what it is. If triangularity might be something other than it is (e.g. circularity) then it ought to be possible to conceive of it still being what it is and being circularity and that, of course, is absurd.

There is much in the Socratic inquiries that have gone before (e.g. in the Euthyphro and Bk. I of the Republic) to support that the inquiries are about these objective, timeless, changeless, and necessary characters, and not about some such transitory matters as language or other

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contingent matters of fact, and that such inquiries involve the effort to bring to mind matters with which we are, in a way, already familiar. Consider the counter-example argument against the view of Cephalus at the beginning of the Republic. There are at least three points of importance to be noted here. The first is that when asked the question of whether the just person would restore the weapon Cephalus knows the answer to it, thereby displaying that in spite of holding a mistaken theory of justice he is not without knowledge of the nature of justice. Socrates’ counter-example functions as a reminder. (Wittgenstein at PI 127: “The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose.” - Though, of course, if Platonism is true, these reminders are not about language, however important it is that we pay attention to our ordinary, non-philosophical language.) It seems important that students learn, early on, that philosophical questions are not requests for new information in the way that “What is the largest city in North Dakota?” may be a request for new information, and that one who asks, or is asked and understands, a particular philosophical question has the resources within oneself to answer it (although it may take someone with the skill of a Socrates to raise the relevant questions for producing the improved understanding).

A second important point is this: although many centuries have passed, and we live in a culture in many ways different from that of the Greeks, when confronted with the question that Socrates put to Cephalus, students give the same answer that Cephalus gave. (Of course there will be the occasional student who will try to evade the question by saying such things as “That all depends upon what you mean by justice,” or “Maybe, in some other culture, justice wouldn’t be the same as it is for us” and also, occasionally, the clever student who will modify the case so that the answer is not so clear and obvious: e.g. “What if the threatening person was the would-be assassin of Hitler just before he gave the order for the final solution?”) This displays that the object of the inquiry is indeed timeless (and not, say, the language and culture of the Greeks). That the moral forms such as justice are timeless does not, of course, refute ethical relativism - at least in its intelligible versions. Some have held that good and bad, right and wrong, perhaps even just and unjust, are relational characteristics in the way that customary, legal, in accordance with the mores, etc., are relational, and that the forms are timeless does not refute this. However the philosophical question is whether those timeless characteristics are relational, and the considerations that count in favor and against them being that are the same for us as they were for the Greeks of Plato’s time.

A third point to note is that Socrates’ counter-example need not involve an actual case. It is not a weakness in Socrates’ argument that he has not traipsed around Greece and found a case where someone actually did borrow a weapon from someone who later went mad and

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demanded it back. It is enough that such a thing could happen. That we may test philosophical theories by hypothetical cases reveals the fundamental demarcation between philosophy and science. Science investigates the actual world. Its theories must be tested finally by observed fact. However, philosophical theories purport to be true of what couldn’t be otherwise, and so it is enough to show such a theory to be false to find a case which reveals the alleged necessity not to obtain. Those utilitarians who object to some of the counter-examples to that theory on the grounds that they involve “desert island morality” display an imperfect understanding of the nature of philosophy at just this point.

That the object of philosophical inquiry is an objective matter is revealed at many points in the dialogues by the fact that there is genuine contradiction between the statements of the participants. For example, Thrasymachus claims that justice is not an excellence, while Socrates claims that it is. That this is a matter of their holding different views concerning a single objective character (and not, say, a matter of their having different concepts) is evidenced by the fact that each can understand and respond to the arguments of the other. Of course readers of Plato often hold views that clearly seem to contradict those of Plato. For example, Plato, in Bk. IV of the Republic, reaches the conclusion that, strictly speaking, justice is not a matter of external behavior but of the inner order and harmony of our souls. Many readers (including this one) believe that justice is a disposition to treat others in just ways within the context of morally significant relations in which we stand to those others. (I often tell my students that it would be nice if we had Socrates here to subject Plato to Socratic questioning at just this point, but, since we don’t, we have to make do by ourselves, and sometimes the result is productive).

Professor Seay, in the above referred to paper, noted that “there is some controversy about what is essential to philosophy as a discipline” and that there are “disagreements about the very nature of the subject . . .” (1989, p. 24). Indeed some philosophers, as well as non- philosophers, seem to deny that there is any distinctive subject matter of philosophy‘. My own view is that there would be fewer such denials, and fewer deep controversies concerning the nature of the inquiry, if more students were led into philosophy through the Socratic dialogues, and then led to reflect with Plato on what must be true of the objects of these inquiries in order for the inquiries to have proceeded, using the methods they employed, to produce the improved understanding that they do produce. Philosophical views concerning the nature of philo- sophy (be they those of Plato, Wittgenstein, Quine, Rorty, Haines, or

’ It seems reasonable to infer such a denial of a distinctive philosophical subject matter by Richard Rorty (1979). For an explicit denial see W . V. Quine, (1975).

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anyone else) must in the end be judged by how well they account for the methods, and achievements of philosophical inquiries, such as those engaged in by Socrates, Wittgenstein in the Investigations, or thoughtful children.3

Parents, however protective, cannot forever shield their children from the dangers lurking in the outside world. The same must be said of philosophy teachers and their students. In the case of philosophy, at least, that is natural and fitting, for while it may not be quite right, as Professor Seay suggests, to say that the philosopher must be “willing to follow an argument wherever it leads” (1989, p. 23) - one is reminded here of G. E. Moore’s remarks to the effect that, with regards to sume philosophical conclusions, it is much more likely that something has gone wrong with the arguments than that the conclusions are true - it is true that it is the mark of the philosopher to leave no philosophical statement, however fundamental, unquestioned. In due course it is fitting that students, nurtured on Socratic method and Platonism, be confronted with challenges of Quineans, who deny the distinctions fundamental to Platonism, some Wittgensteinans, who drew anti- Platonistic conclusions from Wittgenstein’s insightful suggestions con- cerning family resemblances, intermediate cases, etc., and many more. Teachers of philosophy will perhaps be forgiven for sharing the hope that has sustained concerned parents for centuries: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Prov. 22: 6)

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Bibliography

Quine, W. V., “A Letter to Mr. Ostermann” in Charles J. Bontempo and S. Jack Odell, eds, The Owl of Minerva: Philosophers on Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975), pp. 227-230.

Rorty, Richard, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979).

I do not suggest that Plato uttered the last word o n the nature of philosophical inquiry. For example, Wittgenstein (1958) and John Wisdom in many of his published essays, (e.g. 1970) display how attention to differences within the kind can throw light on the kind itself. However, such insights, properly understood, are to be seen as supplementing Platonism rather than contradicting it.

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Seay, Gary “Plato’s Early Dialogues as an Introduction to Philosophy,” Newsletter o n Teaching (American Philosophical Association, Vol, 89: 1, Fall 1989) pp. 21-24.

Wisdom, John, Paradox and Discovery (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970).

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, Fr. G. E. M. Ascombe (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1958, 3rd Edition).

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