Throughout the last several millennia of history, when the big questions of life that philosophy seeks to answer come up, perhaps the first name to be brought in as an answer is that of Plato; while Plato can have some good answers, there are foundational problems with his views that manifest themselves when scrutinized closely. Therefore I hold that Plato’s worldview is fundamentally flawed when compared to that of Christianity on the topics of the nature of man and the source of truth. I will seek to unearth some of the discrepancies in Plato’s philosophy by examining the following questions: what is a human being and why is it possible to know anything.
First I will examine the views of Plato concerning the question, what is a human being. What does it mean to say the “essential nature” of man? We often try to be something that we’re not or disguise ourselves to appear differently than we would appear normally; I will define the “essential nature” of man to be what man is at his core when all our deception is stripped away. This is how man would appear to a perfectly omniscient, impartial judge. With this definition in hand, we can seek to discover how Plato would answer the question, what is the essential nature of man?
Though Socrates seems to be rather guarded in how much of his own opinion he gives away and always asks for the opinions of those around him without volunteering his own, Plato tips us off to what he believes with statements like the following:
The Essay on Man vs. Nature
The natural world is superior to all of humanity. Without reason, land controls us and influences our identities. Through mankind’s power we try to suppress the natural world but never truly succeed. “Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer” by Margaret Attwood, “The Bull Moose” by Alden Nowlan and “Not Just a Platform for my Dance” are comparable poems in a way that all three deal with a theme of the ...
Socrates: Well now, a man who has learnt about carpentry is a carpenter, isn’t he?
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: And a man who has learnt music a musician?
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: And a man who has learnt medicine a doctor, and so on. In fact a man who has learnt any subject possesses the character which knowledge of that subject confers.
Gorgias: Of course.
Socrates: Then by the same reckoning a man who has learnt about right will be righteous?
Gorgias: Unquestionably.
Gorgias pg 24 section 460b
Plato’s underlying assumptions about the nature of man comes through here. His assumption is that knowing right makes someone righteous. This is more commonly reflected in the statement “If you know the good, you will do it.” Herein we have discovered a piece of the essential nature of man according to Plato. That being that man is basically good. What then prevents this basically good nature from showing more? Why do people do bad things? Plato would answer that the reason people fo bad things is ignorance. They do not know what is right or good else they would certainly do those right and good things. This mode of thinking can be seen in the following passages:
Socrates: Then by the same reckoning a man who has learnt about right will be righteous?
Gorgias: Unquestionably.
Socrates: And a righteous man performs righteous actions, I presume.
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: Then the orator will of necessity be a righteous man and a righteous man will want to perform right actions.
Gorgias: Apparently.
Socrates: Then the righteous man will never want to do wrong?
Gorgias: Never.
Gorgias pg 24-25 section 460b-c
Plato first claims that a righteous man, once he learns about right, will only want to do right and never wrong. So, if a person is educated in right then he will only ever do right and never wrong. Plato shows that he believes that people are basically good and only require knowledge to perfect themselves, taking perfect to mean only doing right and not doing any wrong. Therefore since the real problem with humanity is ignorance, the answer to all problems lies in educating all people to the nature of right and wrong.
The Essay on Platos Justice
Platos justice In the opening of The Republic, Plato seems to say that justice is a balance of the soul. (Taylor 77) As Plato is debating this question, Thrasymachus joins in and presents the first possible definition of justice as the interest of the stronger, that might is right. Socrates enters the conversation and attempts to define justice. Socrates says that subjects obey their rulers and ...
The other issue with Plato is how he says that we are able to know anything at all? Plato claims that by reasoning and discussion the truth can be arrived at. This view follows from his foundational belief that man is basically good, that is, if man is basically good there is no reason to suppose the truth would be hidden from him or beyond his reach. Man’s ability to reason is uncorrupted and thus unbounded. In the discourse entitled, Meno Plato claims to show that an uneducated slave boy can discover the Pythagorean identity when led to it by questioning. This process of asking questions to try and ‘draw out’ the truth is called the Socratic Method. It is based on the principle that we all contain the ultimate truth within our soul and have but to remember what we have forgotten. Thus we know everything; we have simply forgotten that we know it. Again, if the solution to mankind’s problems is education from the section above, this education simply must remind of us of things buried in our soul which we have forgotten.
How does the Christian worldview answer these questions? Starting at the beginning, God created man in His image and declared all creation to be very good. So man starts out being perfect, but then at the fall sin enters the picture. After this point man is still in the image of God, but is no longer perfect and is trapped in death by his sinful nature. So the essential nature of man is fallen and sinful according to Christianity. This directly opposes the view of Plato that man is basically good and is perfectible. So what proof is there for the Christian view? In Romans, the Bible states the following:
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23
“For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for the will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.” Romans 7:15b-19
The Essay on Personal Philosophy of Man , God and the World
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First of all, I am grateful to the Almighty God for establishing me to complete this project. I wish to express my sincere thanks to SOTERO H. LAUREL Librarians, for providing me with all the necessary facilities and books that I need to be able to carefully analyze all the topics that have been discuss in philosophy of human existence. I also thank Professor Josefina C. Perez, one ...
Outside the Bible there are other examples of people who would agree with the Christian view and reject that of Plato. Augustine relates a story of his youth about a pear tree. He tells how he and his friends went out to steal pears. They knew it was wrong, and they chose to do it anyway. Farther more, they were not hungry or in need of food. In fact, they simply smashed most of the pears. Augustine’s point is that they stole the pears simply because they wanted to disobey and rebel against the law. They stole for the enjoyment of stealing.
“Yet I had a desire to commit robbery, and did so, compelled to it by neither hunger nor poverty, but through a contempt for well-doing and a strong impulse to iniquity. For I pilfered something which I already had in sufficient measure, and of much better quality. I did not desire to enjoy what I stole, but only the theft and the sin itself. There was a pear tree close to our own vineyard, heavily laden with fruit, which was not tempting either for its color or for its flavor. Late one night–having prolonged our games in the streets until then, as our bad habit was–a group of young scoundrels, and I among them, went to shake and rob this tree. We carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves. Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden. Such was my heart…” Excerpt from Augustine’s Confessions Book 2 Chapter 5
It seems clear from these passages that man does indeed have a sinful nature. Certainly this seems to fit with life where we see people, similarly to Augustine, do wrong things for no reason other than simply to do wrong.
Christianity would respond to the claims of Plato that we all contain the truth by starting with God. God is the ultimate source of all truth not simply this form of the truth we find in forgotten in our own souls. It can be argued that since we are created “in the image of God” that we have all truth in ourselves, but I maintain that it is by the Holy Spirit that we are able to know anything. Our being “in the image of God” means we have reason and can arrive at truth through reasoning, but since God contains all truth it must come from Him by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, whether that guidance is apparent or not. In the book of John, Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the “Spirit of Truth.”
The Essay on God Temptation Spirit Jesus
Temptation. Introduction: Temptation is a vast topic. The bible is filled with temptation from cover to cover, mostly about how God dealt with our problem of sin and giving us victory. God deals with temptation and we deal with it too. It is reality that everybody gets tempted from time to time by the devil. Jesus also was tempted but never sinned, temptations goal is to lure you away from God. ...
“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” John 14:16-17
To summarize, Plato believes man is basically god and thus can discover all truth. Christianity counters this by saying that man has a sinful nature and all truth comes from God through the Holy Spirit. Thus I claim that Plato’s view is incompatible and wrong in these areas.
