How Plato Solves The Meaning Crisis
Edited essay version of the first Plato lecture
Introduction
This lecture is the first of 11 lectures on Plato's Republic, arguably the greatest work of Western literature and Western philosophy. First work of political science, cognitive psychology, and one of the primary foundational texts of Western civilisation.
Over these 11 lectures, I will go through each book of The Republic in detail, exploring the different philosophical ideas and the quest that ties it all together on the nature of justice, which could be translated better as our word morality. The Republic is Plato's attempt to ground morality in something other than Homeric mythology and the encroaching relativism of the Greek scientific revolution.
Part One: The Athenian Meaning Crisis
To begin, what does ancient Athens have to do with the modern age? Why should you, as a modern person, care about the Republic?
Philosophy itself had begun just before Plato, with a group of philosophers referred to as the natural philosophers, in Greece's sixth and fifth centuries, particularly around Ionia. The natural philosophers rejected the Homeric mythic explanations and sought to explain phenomena naturalistically. For example, Anaxagoras, a foreign-born natural philosopher who lived in Athens, articulated that the sun was not the god Apollo but just a flaming ball of molten rock. Another called Thales, one of the first philosophers in the West, was able to predict a solar eclipse and create what is commonly known as science.
The natural philosophers began a new way of understanding nature, not as imbued with the power of the gods, but instead focusing on mechanistic explanations. Plato understood that this burgeoning scientific revolution threatened the myths and stories that grounded the cosmic justice that Athenian morality and law were based upon. People were just because they thought there was an afterlife, that there would be consequences, and that vice was punished and virtue was rewarded by the gods. Therefore, if there were no gods and everything was mechanical, what would stop people from behaving viciously rather than virtuously?
Plato grew up after the golden age of Athens when the city-state was in decline and plagued by political chaos. The Athenian democracy, under the powerful steering of their leading statesman, Pericles, had become the dominant power in the Hellespont. But after losing to Sparta in the Peloponnesian war, they essentially fell from grace to become a Spartan-subjugated city-state. Athens was ruled then by a group called the 30 Tyrants, a Spartan-backed oligarchy. Plato and Socrates initially supported the 30 tyrants, seeing that the decadence of Athenian democracy had driven the thirst for conquest that led to their own undoing. In the first years of Plato's life, he would have seen the different forms of governance he discusses in the Republic (Aristocracy, Timocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy, and Tyranny) in the Greek city-states and neighbouring Persia up close and personal. The political chaos of ancient Athens was the perfect testing ground for Plato's early theorising.
In this political chaos of ancient Athens, another breed of philosophers started to emerge in ancient Greece. These teachers were called the Sophists, and they were professional rhetoric teachers. Their job was to teach people the art of persuasion and influence people's behavior. And they weren't particularly concerned with the truth. These days, they'd be like professional debating coaches or bullshitters, to use Harry Frankfurt's term, which teaches people how to win at arguments without any real concern for whether the arguments are true or false.
The philosophy of the Sophists was that if there are no gods and there's no cosmic justice, Winners are going to win and losers are going to lose - wouldn't you rather be a winner than a loser? Wouldn't you rather be a lion than a sheep? One of the most famous sophists, Protagoras, summed up the philosophy of the sophists in his phrase, "man is the measure of all things". We don't have access to true reality; therefore, man's subjective judgement decides what is real and what is not. This opens the door to relativism, which was a big problem for Plato because the people who trained the most powerful people and became very powerful themselves didn't care about the truth. The sophists were becoming more and more influential but less and less rational and wise.
So combining these two types of philosophy for Plato, the natural philosophers who were essentially undercutting the Homeric and Hesiod myths, and the sophists who were arming people with compelling arguments but didn't care about the truth at all had led to a perilous situation coupled with the political chaos of ancient Athens.
In summary, ancient Athens was undergoing what John Verveake calls a meaning crisis:
The old gods were being called into question by a scientific revolution that threatened the foundations of morality, truth and knowledge itself.
The political chaos was leading to questions about governance, democracies versus tyrannies.
Moral relativism had led to a very Machiavellian culture in the Sophists in that people weren't concerned about truth. They were more concerned with becoming powerful and influencing other people's behavior, not unlike our own internet society today.
Part two: the meaning crisis.
In this section, we will explore our current context in the 21st century, philosophically and theologically, through John Verveake's concept of the Meaning Crisis.
We're living in this post-God world that Nietzsche announced at the end of the 19th century; the Aristotelian Christian worldview that was the dominant framework for the last 2,000 years has been undercut by a mechanistic model of the universe. One that doesn't include things like value, consciousness, or ethics and has created a version of reality in which humans are epiphenomenal, that we are not made in the image of God, and a destabilised sense of human value.
Arguably, the ideological wars of the 20th century are wars for political supremacy in a world without a unified account of reality. Big-picture ideologies that clash and claim to offer solutions to our very existential problems, politically or economically. Plato's solution to these problems isn't a specifically political or economic solution, although he does talk about politics. Plato's solution to the Greek meaning crisis is an ethical, theological and psychological transformation.
So what is a meaning crisis?
A meaning crisis is the collapse of a worldview that makes sense of our lives and gives us a sense of purpose and the ability to normatively evaluate our progress. The idea originates from Canadian cognitive scientist John Verveake and his awakening from the meaning crisis series. The literature on The psychology of meaning in life has three dimensions: coherence, purpose and significance. As we dive into this tripartite model of meaning in life, it'll be easy to see how these three significant dimensions are threatened in the modern world.
Coherence, which is that your life makes sense to you. It's very hard to have a coherent worldview in our pluralistic, internet society; everybody says one thing, and everybody else says something else.
Purpose, higher order goal or narratives to pursue in your life. The question of narrative now is reified in a distinction between fact and value. There's a world of mind-independent objective facts and then subjective values which are less real than the facts, that would be very alien to an ancient culture. In a scientific society, that's non-teleological. There isn't an overarching narrative or goal to pursue in human life. A mechanistic account of the universe precludes a transcendent purpose or any teleological explanations. So, purpose is another dimension under threat.
Significance is that your life is connected to something real and valuable. Under a materialist reductionist paradigm, what is most real is dead matter, and what is true is what is reducible to the lowest level of reality. Therefore, it is nearly impossible to account for the value or reality of human lives under that worldview.
What are the consequences of the meaning crisis?
Not having a stable worldview leads to increased volatility and chaos, experienced stress and difficulty, and a rise in existential issues such as nihilism, alienation, despair, anxiety, purposelessness, and addiction. These existential issues fuel a mental health crisis and create a market for many pseudo-religious ideologies that make sense of one's life and provide a sense of purpose and a path of progress but often turn into manipulative, weird sex cults that aren't good for people. Arguably, this is our context, and it's as chaotic as Plato's was at the fall of the golden age of Athens. Plato's quest to root morality in something solid can offer insights into our reeling worldview.
In summary,
In the West, the dominant Aristotelian Christian worldview is undercut by the scientific revolution. Science provides a mechanistic account of the universe that does not explain consciousness, value, action, or ethics. Hence, we get a split between science and mythology.
The wars of the 20th century were about the dominance of a particular ideology, a low-resolution story of reality. We're still in that competing space where different ideologies fight.
The divide between science and mythology, fact and value, is not healed. Bad actors sell pseudo-religious ideologies to offer dimensions and meaning to people that are ultimately short-term and self-destructive.
Part three: The Greek solution.
"are you not ashamed, citizens of Athens, to be pursuing money, reputation, and honor, placing no value at all upon wisdom and truth and the care of your souls, and ensuring that your souls will be as good as they can be?" (Socrates, The Apologia)
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had a solution to the Greek meaning crisis: to become rational and wise. The alternative to the pseudo-religious ideologies is moral self-cultivation. It's taking on the responsibility of becoming transformed, purifying your character, and turning your soul to the Good. Plato provides a roadmap for this transformation that is very much integrated with his moral philosophy, psychology, and theology in a way that's incredibly powerful once you understand it.
Who was Socrates?
In order to dive into the Greek solution, we must introduce one of our main characters, the father of western philosophy, Socrates (471 B c. to 399 B c).
Socrates was a middle-class youth from a suburb of Golden Age Athens. His father was a stonemason, and his mother was a midwife. He worked as a youth in his father's stonemason workshop but became infatuated with philosophy at a young age. He was influenced by the early natural philosopher Anaxagoras and the female philosopher Aspasia. If you want a great book on Socrates life and philosophical formation highly recommend Donald Robertson's new book "How To Think Like Socrates".
Socrates' true quest for wisdom only began in his early thirties when his friend Chearophon went to ask the oracle of Delphi, the centre of the Greek world, who is the wisest of all men? And the oracle told him that "Socrates is the wisest of all men". Socrates was very thrown by this because he knew he didn't have any wisdom. Why would the oracle say that Socrates was the wisest of all men when he, in fact, knew he had no wisdom? This started a quest for Socrates to speak to people considered to be wise because he knew he didn't have any wisdom, so maybe somebody else did?
However, as he spoke to the supposedly wise people of his day, he quickly found out that they didn't know any more than he did. For example he would question a military general about courage and he would find out that despite being a military general, the man didn't really know the definition of courage any better than Socrates did. Socrates realised that maybe the reason the oracle said he was the wisest of all men was that he knew he didn't know anything, whereas these other people thought they knew something and actually didn't? They had a 'double ignorance' (Robertson's term). Whereas Socrates had a single ignorance in the sense that he at least knew that he didn't know anything.
This Socratic method of questioning people to almost strip away their assumptions, to get to a state of what's called aporia, just completely hitting the wall intellectually, was actually an improvement for Socrates. He thought that it was his job in Athens to ask people questions, get to the bedrock of their assumptions, and show people that we didn't really know what we thought we knew. That was actually moral progress.
Socrates came between the ancient Greek philosophers. The natural philosophers wanted truth without wisdom, and the sophists wanted power without truth. He wants power and knowledge combined. Francis Bacon's famous quote, "knowledge is power". For Plato and Socrates, knowledge is not power: knowledge is knowledge, power is power. Oftentimes, the people in power don't have knowledge, and the people with that knowledge don't have any power.
In conclusion, Socrates transforms philosophy. He focuses on ethics and how best to live, and his solution to the chaos of Athens is to become rational and wise and criticise science and mythology properly to understand reality and to self realise; this is his third way between the obstacles faced in ancient Greece. Unfortunately, he didn't get very far with his mission because he was put to death by the Athenian democracy.
The Death of Socrates
To explain the death of Socrates, we have to realise that in ancient Greece at the time, there was a clash of values. Because the 30 tyrants had been overthrown and the Athenian democracy restored, they wanted to immediately implement order, they wanted to consolidate their power. But unfortunately, this guy, Socrates, the gadfly of Athens, was asking people very inconvenient questions. The Sophists who already didn’t like Socrates, whipped people up against him and he was put on trial for charges of corrupting the youth and atheism for worshipping false gods.
Socrates is put on trial, but the trial was a fix, it wasn't meant to kill Socrates. It was meant to scare him, to stop him from doing philosophy and potentially get him to leave Athens. But when Socrates refused to leave or to stop doing philosophy things got serious. He stated at the trial, "The unexamined life is not worth living, " making Socrates a kind of philosophical martyr.
After the verdict, Socrates' friends tried to convince him to leave Athens and run away. But he explained to them that he had a daemon, a voice that told him when not to do something and that he'd always listened to this voice. Maybe that was what separated him from other men and that he was guided by this higher-order angel or guardian spirit of some sort. When he asked the daemon if he should run away from the trial, it said he shouldn't. His conclusion was he'd had a good life and that, you know, it would end at some point? He was 70 years old, and so this was the end of the road for him. He was put to death by drinking hemlock.
Who was Plato?
Somebody was present at this time of Socrates death, one of his students who loved him very dearly, named Plato. Plato was 25, and he was so traumatised by the death of Socrates that he left Athens altogether, a city which he loved and went traveling. We can see that he comes back to this again and again, the main body of his dialogues features Socrates as the main character, and Socrates is, for him, the epitome of a wise and just and good person. He is the ideal. And so he was trying to grapple with the issue of how the city that he loved, could put to death the guy who was the best? A theme that we'll see played out in Christianity later as well with the death of Christ. How can the most virtuous, the most just person be put to death in the most unjust and cruel ways by the very people they benefit? How can you square that the people in power put to death the guy with the knowledge? And we see this in the Republic again and again. How do you get the people in power to have knowledge? How do you get the people of knowledge to be in power? Plato's solution is the philosopher Kings, which we'll discuss later in Book Five and Book Six of The Republic.
To introduce Plato, Plato lived 427/428 BC to 348 BC. He was born named Aristocles, meaning best reputation. He gets the nickname Plato from his wrestling coach, which means broad. So he was very big, he had a broad head, which was good for wrestling, and he came from a very wealthy family; He was a descendant from Kings.As a youngster, he initially wanted to be a dramatist, but he burned all his plays after meeting Socrates.
He really wanted to be like Socrates. I mean, he thought Socrates was the best. And was a committed follower of him. So that's why his death had such a profound effect on him. And really, motivates his quest to understand the dialogues. At the age of 40, he started the first university in the world, at the academy where he trained Aristotle, who then later went on to train Alexander the Great - quite the legacy!
Interpreting Plato
After Plato's death, there was a lot of conflict around Plato's legacy. I Share this quote from Olympodoros where he says,
"when he was about to die Plato saw in a dream that he had become a swan moving from tree to tree and in this way caused much trouble to the bird catchers. Simeon the Socratic judged from this that he would not be captured by those desiring to interpret him."
Plato writes in dialogue form (He wrote nearly 40 dialogues). He doesn't write treatises or monographs like a lot of modern philosophers or essays. These are both literary and philosophical.
(1) Some argue that these dialogues form a system in Plato making arguments in them and that you can logically evaluate these arguments in and of themselves, like modern philosophy, and this is what first-wave Platonism did with very little success. If you take the arguments out of their context, a lot of the time, they don't make sense. They're not really very good arguments. You really miss the point of what Plato is actually talking about.
(2) This led to second-wave Platonism, which is the dialogues are purely sceptical, rhetorical, and literary; they're not actually meant to be like philosophy. you shouldn't evaluate them for truth claims. And this kind of, again, lowers it to just, Some slightly dodgy literary works by Plato that, you know, plays that if you put them on stage put people to sleep.
(3) The frame I will use for this series is third-wave Platonism. Third-wave Platonism argues that Plato's philosophy is not separable from the dramatic form. The fact that a character blushes is just as important as what the character says. So, Plato's dialogue is an argument. It's not just in each line of dialogue or in each scene or in each beat, the dialogue demonstrates the dialectical method, a journey we have to undertake ourselves. This dialectical method is summed up in the myth of the cave, a myth of enlightenment that will meet in book seven. The point is that. You can't separate the literary from the philosophical in Plato; the fact that it's a story with dialogue is very important to its interpretation. Throughout the series, we'll pay attention to the bits of dialogue and the essential narrative quality of the story.
I will rely a lot on D. C. Schindler's, Plato's Critique of Impure Reason, as a secondary source. It's an absolutely amazing book. Perhaps after reading The Republic, it would be good to continue studying it, because it is really brilliant. I'm using this copy of The Republic by Alan Bloom.But also the G M A Grube (edited CDC Reeves) edition, which is the most typical one you find in the complete works of Plato is a very good translation.
So, in summary, in part three:
The Socratic solution to the Athenian meaning crisis is to become rational and wise, criticise both myths and science properly.
But then Athens puts him to death so Plato takes on, The Socratic educational mission, but also with this problem of politics, of the polis and the conflict between truth and power, which obviously comes to fruition in the Republic.
Plato searches for a cosmic grounding for truth to refute moral relativism. Then, there was also the old chaotic polytheistic tradition of Athens to a kind of monotheism in The Good.
Conclusion
In summary, my argument for the relevance of Plato's Republic is that Athens was undergoing a meaning crisis similar to our own. We are undergoing a meaning crisis, where we have this powerful scientific revolution that undercut mythologies that were grounding justice, and morality. From this Platonic dialogue, we can learn a way out, to become wiser and more rational in order to understand science and mythology in its place. Plato offers us a way out of the meaning crisis. That is a return, but it also is new to most people.
So, over the next 11 lectures, I'm going to go through the Republic book by book and introduce the main ideas for you. Here is a free PDF of the book, but do recommend getting a hard copy to read as there is a lot of depth in the text.