Plato's teaching about man. Plato: doctrine of man, society and state

Plato writes that an “ideal” society should have at least four main virtues: wisdom, courage, prudence, and justice.

All residents of the state cannot have wisdom, but the rulers-philosophers, the chosen people, are certainly wise and make wise decisions.

More people have courage, these are not only rulers-philosophers, but also warriors-guardians. Consequently, the division of people into classes is of great importance for Plato, determines the existence of an “ideal” state, and violation of the caste system is considered the highest crime. It is characteristic that Plato, who lived during the time of the general slave system, did not pay special attention to slaves. In the “state” all production concerns are entrusted to artisans and farmers. In connection with the considered division of people into categories, the question arises: who will take upon itself the responsibility of determining a person’s ability to do a certain task, and only to it? Apparently, in an “ideal” state, this function will be assumed by the wisest and fairest people, rulers and philosophers. Thus, philosopher rulers decide the destinies of all other people. They not only determine a person’s abilities, but also regulate marriage and have the right to kill young children with physical disabilities.

Philosophers, on the basis of reason, control the other classes, limiting their freedom, and warriors play the role of “dogs” keeping the lower “herd” in obedience. This aggravates the already cruel division into categories. Warriors do not live in the same places as artisans and working people. People of the “lower” breed exist to provide the “higher” with everything they need. The “higher ones” protect and guide the “lower ones,” destroying the weakest and regulating the lives of the rest.

In the division of labor, he sees not only the basis for the division of society into classes, but also the basic principle of the structure of the state. The rational structure of a perfect state, according to Plato, should be based primarily on needs. Also the workers who make for all these specialists the tools and tools they need for their work. Trade requires the specialty and activity of intermediaries in buying and selling, importing and exporting. For the full implementation of the economic life of the state, Plato also considers it necessary to have a special category of servicing hired workers who sell their labor power for a fee. Thus, the ruling classes of Plato's state constitute a communist unity. This communism, as already mentioned, does not allow poverty or wealth among the upper classes, and, therefore, according to the author’s logic, eliminates discord among them. The prototype of power in Plato is a shepherd tending a flock. If we resort to this comparison, then in an “ideal” state, shepherds are rulers, warriors are guard dogs. To keep a flock of sheep in order, shepherds and dogs must be united in their actions, which is what the author strives for. Plato's state treats the “human flock” like a wise but hard-hearted shepherd treats his sheep. This is a totalitarian program in which a handful of people (even the wisest) subordinate “...the pathetic desires of the majority... to the reasonable desires of the minority.”

All the tempting designs of the state since the time of Plato remained unrealizable, utopian, literally “having no place on earth” (Greek Ou - “no”, topos - “place”), the property of great dreamers. And the founder of countless utopias, being on the verge of death, was still developing projects for the best state in the world (“laws”), which would be governed by ten wise elders who established harsh legislation so that people would rely only on them, and not on their will and passions . And how can a person have his own will, argued old Plato, if we are all dolls whose threads are set in motion by the divine hand. Therefore, we must limit our needs, abolish wealth and luxury, think about the benefits of society, singing in round dances the wisdom of the laws. And this is another utopia of Plato, harshly and forcibly limiting man.

Plato, despairing of the practical transformation of an unjust tyrannical state, sometimes calls for distant antiquity, where all responsibility falls on the shoulders of wise elders, and sometimes he strengthens the morality and foundations of the state by force, the same cruel ones that were customary among tyrants.

Respectful fear of gods and laws, supposedly illuminated by divine will, turns out to be the basis of a happy society. The hopelessness of such a utopia is quite obvious. And Plato himself feels it perfectly when he calls both the “state” and “laws” nothing more than “myths,” the implementation of which he attributes to the unknown future, not really believing that it will come.

In the “state,” Plato, proceeding from the best intentions and intentions regarding an ideal life, built a state system that is so ideal and so absolute that no shifts, no movement forward can be imagined in it, and no historicism is incompatible with it. But if here everything is sacrificed to the motionless and eternal kingdom of ideas and the philosopher, on this basis, could still to some extent appeal to constancy and immobility, then in the “laws” the situation is much worse. Here no kingdom of ideas is preached, which the state should serve; Plato himself declares that here he intends to build a state “second after the best,” promising, moreover, that after this he intends to build another state - “third after the best.” Plato never had time to draw this third state, but he devoted a huge many years of work to the second state, after the best one, since the “laws” were written during the last seven years of Plato’s life and remained unfinished. The main idea of ​​his projects was to make it as easy as possible for people to transition to an ideal state. The utopia to which the dialogue “state” is dedicated is now considered by Plato to be too difficult and impracticable. He wants to bring his new utopia somewhat closer to reality. But how does he do it?

“laws” amaze with their petty regulation of all manifestations of human life without exception, including marriage and family relationships. It is rare to find in the history of human thought such a terrible utopia as Plato proposes here. Not only is there a complete absence of the theory of ideas that previously inspired his utopia, but Plato’s socio-political assessments are now far from being as fundamental as they were before.

Religion and morality must now play a role, not because gods exist, but because the law dictates so. If it is possible to persuade, the legislator can convince people of the existence of gods. But persuasion is not only a temporary remedy. It is necessary, if anyone shows himself to be disobedient to the laws, one should be sentenced to death, another - to beatings and prison, a third - to deprivation of civil rights, while others should be punished with confiscation of property and exile. War, which was previously excluded by Plato as the greatest evil, now comes to the fore and is inseparable from the functioning of laws.

Conclusion

Plato wanted to understand and appreciate life. This, apparently, is his fatal mission, that purpose, without which neither further ancient life, nor centuries of subsequent culture would have been unthinkable.

Plato preached universal harmony all his life. When he wanted to define the subject of his aesthetics, he called it nothing less than love. Plato believed that only love for beauty opens eyes to this beauty and that only knowledge understood as love is true knowledge. The harmony of the human personality, human society and all nature surrounding man is Plato’s constant and unchanging ideal throughout his entire creative career.

Plato is one of the most complex and painfully contradictory figures in the history of philosophy, one of the most difficult to understand historical-philosophical self-contradictions.

Constructive and logical principles of thought, the preaching of selfless service to an idea, the pathos of world harmony, fundamental anti-systematism and anti-dogmatism, restless dramatic dialogue and language - this is the solution to the mystery of Plato’s thousand-year significance.

Plato is always relevant in the high sense in which the spiritual experience of the past is relevant. Plato is a great phenomenon; as a figure - philosopher, scientist, writer - he belongs to all humanity. Plato is one of the teachers of humanity.

Bibliography

1. Blinnikov L.V. Great philosophers: dictionary-reference book. - M.: Logos, 1998.

2. Great Soviet Encyclopedia / ed. B.A. Vvedensky. - M.: Russian scientific publishing house. - t. 33. 1955.

3. Large encyclopedic dictionary / ed. A.M. Prokhorova. - M.: scientific. Publishing house Great Russian Encyclopedia, 1998.

From what has been said, it is clear that Plato quite sharply distinguishes and contrasts soul and body.

Physical birth, as already mentioned, Plato by no means considers the beginning of our existence. On the contrary, for Plato it is extremely important to show and prove that the human soul is immortal by nature (of course, it is always immortal, it is such that it cannot be different).

In the Phaedo, Plato argues for the immortality of the soul. The most significant of them has already been cited: in order to conclude that these logs are equal, or that this girl is beautiful, one must already know about equality and beauty as such. That is, according to Plato, just our ability to think/not to think - animals can also be smart, catching the cause-and-effect relationship of phenomena in a given situation - namely, to think, to bring a specific sensory perceived thing under a general concept /, /our ability, looking at things, to remember something more, to which they hint/, indicates the involvement of the human soul in some other nature, another world, which does not know destruction and birth, a world outside of time (the divine world).

If you think that Plato is too much like a theologian, note that you will not find evidence for the existence of God in him. Plato, in essence, does not care whether the Demiurge exists, or whether this is just a technical device to explain the relationship of things and ideas. But if you remove the thesis about the immortal nature of the soul from Platonism, there will be nothing left of it (at best, only distant echoes).

One can even say that the idea of ​​an immortal (by nature immortal) soul conflicts with the idea of ​​God: an immortal by nature (certainly immortal) soul is self-sufficient and does not need any salvation or protection of a deity.

So, according to Plato, the soul is immortal, participates in the divine world and has no place here (in the world of sensory things). She needs to go back.

Finding itself connected to the body, the soul suffers. 1) She seems to go blind: she ceases to see things as they are, in their true light. 2) She ceases to understand what she really wants, she begins to mix her desires with passions and animal impulses of the body. 3) And, of course, she forgets everything, loses her memory (all her knowledge).

According to Plato, the body is the prison of the soul, the cage into which it has fallen and from which it needs to get out.

How did she get into this dungeon? Due to weakness, unable to stay in the heavenly world. Physical birth, according to Plato, is a fall, an unhappy event.

Another answer (from Timaeus): everyone had to live at least one life in the body, this is a test, an exam that not everyone passed the first time.

When discussing the journey of the soul, about what happened to it and what awaits it, Plato very often speaks in the language of poetic metaphors. It is clear why this happens: he tells a certain myth that hints / at the real state of affairs / at the truth.

In the dialogue "Phaedrus" Plato compares the soul to a chariot drawn by two horses (the charioteer is the mind). The human soul (unlike the souls of the gods) has one bad, restive horse, and therefore over time it falls (slides) down into the sensory world.

In Tim, Plato says that human souls were created according to the number of stars. And everyone needs to return to their star.

The soul has fallen and needs to go back. Death will not solve the problem, because, being connected to the body with its thoughts and desires, it is too heavy and will not land on any star. She needs to cleanse herself during her lifetime, remember who she is, where she comes from (remember that world). And she can remember that world because this world resembles that one. The path of purification, according to Plato, is the path of knowledge.

In order to get rid of the captivity of this corporeal world, not to be born again and after death to go to his star, a person needs to live his life as a philosopher (having learned to think correctly and spending his life precisely in thought). That is philosophy, according to Plato, is a means of saving the soul.

He also calls it “the art of dying” (“Phaedo”): a philosopher is one who, during his lifetime, learned to separate soul and body (the desires of the soul from the desires of the body), and therefore death (the separation of the soul from the body) is his shouldn't be scary.

This paragraph is called “Plato’s doctrine of man.” But this name is not entirely accurate: Plato is only interested in the human soul. He considers the body to be just her temporary shelter (not the best). Therefore, he easily talks about the possibility of transmigration of souls: the soul (of a person) can move into some other body, for example, the body of an animal.

But what about the person? But this is exactly what Plato talks about a person: as a body and a soul, not very connected, and mostly at war. /Plato cannot say anything about man (in general), except as a problem (the problem of the relationship between soul and body)/.

And when Plato tries to give some external (descriptive) definition of man / as a living being among other beings /, he comes up with something stupid: “featherless biped.”

/In response to this, Diogenes, as oral tradition tells, came to Plato’s “academy”, bringing with him a plucked rooster, and said: “Here is your man.”/

The basis of Plato's philosophy is his ideas about ideas. Plato's theory of ideas represents them as certain divine essences, eternal, independent of space and time. They control the Cosmos; the entire life of the Universe is summarized in them. These are eternal patterns, according to which the whole variety of real things is formed from amorphous matter. They have their own existence, and things in the world exist only because they represent this or that idea, since it is present in them. The idea in relation to a sensory thing is both its cause and the goal towards which the being of the sensory world strives. Ideas relate to each other according to the principles of hierarchy, coordination and subordination. The highest is Good, the source of beauty, truth and harmony.

The class of artisans-farmers is formed from people in whom the lustful principle predominates. The warrior class is formed from individuals in whom the strong-willed principle predominates. The duty of a warrior is to protect the state from both internal and external danger. According to Plato, the state can only be governed by aristocrats as the wise and best citizens. And the rulers should be those who love their City-State more than others, who are ready to fulfill their duty with the greatest diligence. But the most important thing is that they should be able to cognize and contemplate the Good, that is, the rational principle should prevail in them and they can be called sages. So, Plato’s ideal state is one where moderation dominates in the first class, strength and courage in the second, and wisdom in the third.

The idea of ​​justice is that each inhabitant should do what is due to him; this applies to both citizens in the City State and parts of the soul. Plato's ideal state must have perfect education and upbringing. Plato attaches great importance to the education of warriors as the most active part of citizens, from whom rulers can later emerge. The training and education of rulers must combine practical skills with the study of philosophy.

At the end of the work, he writes that it is not so important what Plato’s ideal state should be, it is enough that at least one person will live according to the laws of this City-State, that is, according to the laws of Justice, Goodness and Goodness. Before appearing in external reality, the ideal City-State of the thinker must be born in the soul of every person. Plato's ideal state is built on these principles.

Where does evil come from in the world? And what can you do to avoid being involved in it? - Plato asks such questions and comes to completely Christian conclusions: a person will achieve immortality if he leaves his attachment to the sensory world and strives for the Truth.

Is matter evil?

Plato comes to the idea of ​​the existence of a world of ideas: in addition to our sensory material world, which is subject to change, there is an eternal, unchanging world of ideas, and Plato proves this based on the existence of objective truth. Truth is eternal and unchanging, therefore its subject must exist, equally eternal, unchanging, and therefore immaterial. But besides truth and knowledge, there is error and ignorance. So, for some reason a person may mistake a stump for a dog and make a mistake in his calculations. The reason for the existence of delusion is the existence of matter. After all, everything material is changeable.

The philosopher is interested in this topic not out of idle curiosity - he is concerned about the existence of evil in the world. And here we come to the answer to the question: where does evil come from? A real problem arises: the world of ideas is completely good, but if every thing participates in its good idea, then everything must be good. But there is evil in the world. Therefore, in addition to ideas, the world must have another principle - matter.

If idea is knowledge, then matter is ignorance; if idea is existence, then matter is non-existence

Matter is understood by Plato very simply. We usually say: the material world is clear to us, but the immaterial world is a mystery, it is unclear. With Plato it's the other way around. He reasons like this: if an idea is knowledge, since it is from the world of truth, so we can know everything about it, then matter is its opposite, which means we cannot know anything about it. If idea is knowledge, then matter is ignorance; if idea is being, then matter is non-being; if the idea is eternity, then matter, accordingly, exists in time; if idea is unity, then matter is chaos. And the main conclusion: if idea is good, then matter is evil. The reason for the existence of evil in the world has been found!

Each individual thing is involved in the world of ideas and the world of matter. Let's say there are several chairs, they are all different, although in essence they are chairs, that is, their essence, their idea is the same, although they differ from each other. At the same time, the essence of any chair is ideal - perfect, good. But a particular chair may have a wobbly leg, or be too heavy, or too high, or too low - and these are all disadvantages. It turns out that we are dealing with not always successful material implementation of an idea. This is how evil comes into this world: when a good idea is always implemented into matter.

Here is Plato's first discovery: the source of evil is in matter.

Feelings pull us into the material world, reason into the world of ideas, and it depends on our free will which principle we give preference to.

How will Christianity later respond to this thought of Plato? The Church will argue with this teaching because, firstly, it presupposes two independent, co-eternal worlds - the world of ideas and the world of matter, and secondly, Christianity affirms the creation of matter by God, and everything that God creates is “good.” very much."

Three principles in man

Continuing his reasoning, he turns his attention to the person himself. A person is a being that consists of a soul and a body. The soul is immortal and strives for truth, the body is mortal and leads away from the truth. Plato contrasts body and soul and calls the body the tomb of the soul. Later, already in the Christian era, the Gnostics and Manichaeans would teach about the dualistic nature of man, that the body is the tomb of the soul, and the soul itself is immortal.

Plato develops in detail the doctrine of the soul. The soul has various functions or, as the philosopher writes, “beginnings.” There are three of them: in Plato's terminology, these are furious, lustful and reasonable. By the way, this understanding of the soul as having three principles and even the terminology will be accepted by many Church Fathers - St. Maximus the Confessor, the Cappadocian Fathers and other theologians who read Plato’s works in the original.

In modern terminology, Plato's theory of the soul will look like this: a person has free will (the violent principle), feelings (the lustful principle) and reason (the rational principle). They can act in harmony, or they can contradict each other.

As usual, Plato describes this relationship in the form of the following myth. The human soul is like a winged chariot with two horses and a charioteer. One horse constantly stumbles and is pulled down; another horse, a stately one, pulls us up... That is, our feelings pull us into the material world, our minds pull us up, and it depends on our free will which principle we give preference to.

Based on this, we can draw another conclusion about the source of evil: not only matter itself is evil, but it also depends on us, on our free will, on the violent principle, whether we will enjoy the feelings, follow the lustful principle, or Let us comprehend the world of truth, strive for the divine world. If we strive into the divine world, into the world of ideas, then we will do good. And if we strive into the world of evil, the material world, then, accordingly, we will do evil. And people, alas, are inclined towards material things: even Socrates, who said: “Strive for the truth,” they answered: “You prevent us from enjoying the things of our world.”

Evil itself, of course, exists - Plato talks about this. It can manifest itself without a person: wood rots, iron rusts, everything collapses - this is a consequence of the materiality of the world and a normal process. But evil also manifests itself through a person if he makes a free choice in favor of matter.

Plato's teaching about freedom as the cause of evil was accepted by the Church Fathers. And the doctrine of three principles in the human soul too.

The Holy Fathers will also accept another component of Plato’s doctrine of the soul: his proof of the immortality of the soul.

Proven Immortality

Plato was the first to prove that the soul not only exists (everyone already knew this), but that it is immortal. He gives six proofs, and some of them will be literally repeated by many theologians and Church Fathers, such as St. Gregory of Neocaesarea, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximus the Confessor, Origen.

Here's one of them. How is the soul different from the body? The body occupies some space, has a size, composition. Therefore, it consists of parts. That's why it's mortal! After all, what is death? Senseless destruction, division into component parts. And the soul is immaterial. Because of this, it has no spatial dimensions, does not take up any space, therefore it is indestructible - it cannot be divided into parts: it has no parts. And if it cannot be divided into parts, then it is immortal!

Christian theologians will have a very serious debate about the immateriality of the soul. Some will accept Plato’s position (for example, St. Maximus the Confessor), while others will say that the soul still occupies some place, is some kind of subtle matter, and therefore its immortality is not by nature, as Plato claims, but by grace. In the 19th century, Saints Ignatius (Brianchaninov) and Theophan the Recluse would argue on this topic. Saint Theophan is an obvious Platonist; he will quote Maximus the Confessor, Saint Gregory the Theologian, Bl. Augustine... St. Maximus the Confessor, in particular, speaking on this topic, gives another proof of Plato. Movement always occurs due to some external cause. What moves my body? Of course, the soul. What set my soul in motion? She set herself in motion. And if it set itself in motion, then motion is inherent in the soul by its nature. And the ability for self-propulsion is life. Thus, Plato concludes, “if this is so, and that which moves itself is nothing other than the soul, it necessarily follows that the soul is immortal.” St. Maximus argues in exactly the same way, but goes a little further. He develops this reasoning of Plato as follows: “If they say that we move initially from God, then, since it is known that for the most part our movements are absurd and vile, our opponents will inevitably have to declare the Divinity as their cause.”

Another argument of Plato: the soul is immaterial, which means it is an idea. An idea is something that, when in contact with matter, introduces some property into the matter. The carpenter processed the wood, it became a table - he brought into it the essence of a table. And the soul brings life to matter. But the opposite is also true: when the soul leaves the body, the body is deprived of life. Therefore, Plato argues, the soul is the idea of ​​life, it has life by its nature. Can the idea of ​​life die? No. It's as if the idea of ​​life has ceased to be the idea of ​​life. Therefore the soul is immortal.

Salvation according to Plato

We looked at how Plato answers the questions: where does evil come from in the world and how to gain personal non-involvement in evil. But he asked himself another very important question - the question of the salvation of the soul. Why, he argues, do souls travel through bodies all the time? Because they cannot rise above bodies. They are, as it were, attached to the body by the lustful principle. If a person loves the material world, sensual pleasures, then he will constantly return to different bodies. And if he loves the world of ideas, then after death he will remain in the world of ideas - such a philosophical line of Plato actually turns into a religious teaching about salvation.

Ideal State

There is another important question that Plato asks: is it possible to correct the state, make it fair, free from evil, so that people like Socrates are held in high esteem and not languish in prison? In the dialogue “State” he told how to build such an ideal state.

The state does not arise artificially, but naturally, out of necessity: it is necessary because people need each other’s help

This rather voluminous work of his can be reduced to two main issues: the emergence of the state and the construction of an ideal state. Plato believes that the state arises not at someone’s whim, not artificially, but naturally, out of necessity; it is necessary because people need each other's help. Some people know how to sew, some people know how to build, some people know how to cook, some people know how to plow, so people come together to share the results of their work. Then the division of labor becomes more complicated, people now have personal property, which leads to all other troubles... Why troubles? Because when I say: “This is mine, not yours,” you feel offended, and in response you say: “But this is mine, not yours.” This is where the hostility begins. Why? - Because people say: “You have it better, but I have it worse.” And they begin to strive for big acquisitions, and some want to own the entire state and have power. This is how irregular states arise, which replace one another: timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny - depending on who seizes power: a cruel, strong-willed person, or a rich person, or in general a crowd that needs nothing but its own pleasures. Thus, from a means of helping people, the state, according to Plato, turns into a source of misfortune and injustice.

A fair state is one in which every person minds his own business.

How to build a fair state? Plato says: “A fair state is one in which every person minds his own business,” that is, the peasant plows, the seamstress sews, the carpenter builds, and not vice versa. And here we remember the doctrine of three principles in the soul. In accordance with them, there are three types of people: those who are dominated by a violent, lustful or rational principle. Those in whom the lustful principle dominates must engage in crafts. Those in whom a fierce, strong-willed principle predominates are brave, courageous people, they must be warriors. And those in whom the rational principle predominates, philosophers by nature, must rule. They know the reasons for the emergence of the state, they know the principles by which the world and man are structured, so they can build a state on the basis of justice. This is the ideal model of the state that Plato built.

He also proposed specific mechanisms for doing this. And they are such that many evaluate Plato’s ideal state as the first example of a totalitarian communist system.

We remember where misfortunes begin in the state: with the emergence of property. Therefore, if we do not want misfortune, property, according to Plato, must be eliminated. Everything should be common. Absolutely everything - even wives, husbands, children - should be common.

Why even wives and husbands? Because someone has a beautiful wife, and someone has an ugly wife; Some have a skillful husband, while others have a bungler - these are the only preconditions for envy! Therefore, the birth of children, says Plato, should be handled by the state: it should choose healthy men, healthy women and give them permission to have children. A child is born - professionals should take care of his upbringing. This cannot be left to chance, because everyone must mind their own business, and education is the work of professional educators who take children and raise them according to the rules developed by philosophers.

What are these rules? Plato believed that strong people need to be raised: they need gymnastics and physical exercise; You need to educate smart people - they need mathematics; You need to educate spiritually beautiful people - there is poetry for this (although it must be correct, edited). For example, Homer’s poems need to be rewritten, otherwise the gods in them harm each other, cheat, lie, etc.... If education is built on the rules set out above, then spiritual, healthy, strong people will grow up, and, having received an education, the smartest of these boys and girls (by the way, Plato believed that boys and girls are exactly the same in nature and differ only in physical strength) will become philosophers, and they will be entrusted with running the state.

Plato is accused of preaching communism and totalitarianism. To some extent, this is true, but let's not forget that he was the first in history to say that the state should be governed by smart and fair people. He challenged the modern state, in which power could fall into the hands of any rogue or tyrant. Plato first declares that the state must be built according to the laws of human nature and society. And some Church Fathers approved of certain thoughts of Plato about the state. For example, Saint Justin Martyr writes: “If rulers and peoples do not philosophize, then civil societies cannot prosper,” and Saint Augustine in his work “On the City of God” points out: “Shouldn’t we rather give preference to the Greek Plato, who, depicting the ideal state, believed that poets should be expelled from it as enemies of truth?

Creation according to Plato

It is interesting that for many centuries in the West Plato was known not so much as a philosopher who formulated the theory of ideas, which was expounded in his various dialogues, but only as the author of one dialogue - “Timaeus”: in Western Europe they did not know the Greek language and only this Plato's dialogue was translated into Latin.

We may not agree with all the ideas in this work, but in Timaeus Plato writes about something that no Greek philosopher even thought of!

The ancient Greeks were convinced that the world exists forever. And Plato writes that the world at some point arose, or rather, was created by God.

The Fathers of the Church would later wonder: where did Plato come up with such an idea? Because a person cannot come up with something like this on his own. People will speculate whether Plato borrowed this idea from the Jews. Perhaps, they believed, when Plato was in Egypt, he read the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis, and interpreted it in his own way. He will even be called “Moses who spoke Greek.”

And although the demiurge is good, the world he created from matter will be imperfect

But the world is created from matter, which, as we remember, is the source of evil and imperfection. And this means that, despite the fact that the demiurge is good, in the world he created there will be some, albeit relative, imperfection.

We will not go into the details of this theory of Plato, we will only note one thing: according to Plato, first the demiurge creates an immaterial world soul in order to then place the material world in it - otherwise it will fall apart, but the soul will contain it in integrity and give it beauty and movement. The demiurge places the atoms of earth, fire, air and water - the four elements - into the world soul, and these atoms have a clear geometric nature, that is, in Plato’s philosophical constructions the idea of ​​geometry appears as the inherent primary structure of our world. But everything else in the world is created from these atoms. In addition, the demiurge creates time, “a kind of moving semblance of eternity.” So time appears along with the world - an amazing anticipation of modern scientific discoveries!

"Once And Plato's ideas"?

Let us now look at Plato's philosophy from the point of view of Christian theology.

The attitude of the holy fathers to Plato's ideas was very ambiguous. Some, like, for example, Blessed Augustine, said: Plato is the greatest of philosophers, he was almost a Christian before Christ. Others were critical of the philosopher. Thus, Saint Gregory the Theologian writes in his “First Word on Theology”: “Once And Plato’s ideas, migrations and cycles of our souls.” Often formulas like the first and second are taken out of context, and we hear: “Plato is the best religious philosopher” or, conversely, “Plato has nothing to do with Christianity.” It will be fruitful to perceive Plato's philosophy in its entirety.

On the one hand, he has brilliant insights: about the immortality of the soul, about the creation of the world by God (although, of course, not in the fullness that we received from Revelation), the doctrine of the eternity of the divine world of ideas, about its perfection and goodness. On the other hand, his dualism, the pre-eternity of matter, the idea of ​​​​the transmigration of the soul through bodies - all this is really far from Christianity.

The different attitudes of the Church Fathers towards Plato's philosophy are explained by the fact that some paid attention, first of all, to the negative in his teaching and warned about the danger of getting carried away by this negative, which could lead to heresy, for example to; others appreciated what is positive in Plato’s philosophy, which is not only possible, but also must be taken into account when doing theology in a Christian way. Especially when we prove the existence of the divine world, the immortality of the soul, we talk about the source of evil in the world, despite the fact that God is one and good.

Space. On the relation of ideas to things. Plato says: “The world is not just a corporeal cosmos, and not individual objects and phenomena: in it the general is combined with the individual, and the cosmic with the human.” Space is a kind of work of art. He is beautiful, he is the integrity of individuals. The cosmos lives, breathes, pulsates, filled with various potentialities, and it is controlled by forces that form general patterns. The cosmos is full of divine meaning, representing the kingdom of ideas (eidos, as they said then), eternal, incorruptible and abiding in their radiant beauty (1). According to Plato, the world is dual in nature: it distinguishes between the visible world of changeable objects and the invisible world of ideas. Thus, individual trees appear and disappear, but the idea of ​​a tree remains unchanged. The world of ideas represents true existence, and concrete, sensory things are something between being and non-being: they are only shadows of ideas, their weak copies (2).

Idea is a central category in Plato's philosophy. The idea of ​​a thing is something ideal. So, for example, we drink water, but we cannot drink the idea of ​​water or eat the idea of ​​bread, paying in stores with the ideas of money: an idea is the meaning, the essence of a thing. Plato's ideas summarize all cosmic life: they have regulatory energy and govern the Universe. They are characterized by regulatory and formative power; they are eternal patterns, paradigms (from the Greek paradigma - sample), according to which the whole multitude of real things is organized from formless and fluid matter. Plato interpreted ideas as certain divine essences. They were thought of as target causes, charged with the energy of aspiration, and there were relations of coordination and subordination between them. The highest idea is the idea of ​​absolute good - it is a kind of “Sun in the kingdom of ideas”, the world’s Reason, it deserves the name of Reason and Divinity. But this is not yet a personal divine Spirit (as later in Christianity). Plato proves the existence of God by the feeling of our affinity with his nature, which, as it were, “vibrates” in our souls. An essential component of Plato's worldview is belief in gods. Plato considered it the most important condition for the stability of the social world order. According to Plato, the spread of “ungodly views” has a detrimental effect on citizens, especially young people, is a source of unrest and arbitrariness, and leads to the violation of legal and moral norms, i.e. to the principle “everything is permitted”, in the words of F.M. Dostoevsky. Plato called for severe punishment of the “wicked.”

Let me remind you of one thought from A.F. Loseva: Plato, an enthusiastic poet in love with his kingdom of ideas, here contradicted Plato, a strict philosopher who understood the dependence of ideas and things, their mutual indissolubility. Plato was so smart that he understood the impossibility of completely separating the heavenly kingdom of ideas from the most ordinary earthly things. After all, the theory of ideas arose with him only on the path of realizing what things are and that their knowledge is possible. Greek thought before Plato did not know the concept of “ideal” in the proper sense of the word. Plato singled out this phenomenon as something self-existent. He attributed to ideas an initially separate and independent existence from the sensory world. And this, in essence, is the doubling of being, which is the essence of objective idealism.

The idea of ​​the soul. Interpreting the idea of ​​the soul, Plato says: the soul of a person before his birth resides in the realm of pure thought and beauty. Then she finds herself on the sinful earth, where, temporarily being in a human body, like a prisoner in a dungeon, she “remembers the world of ideas.” Here Plato meant memories of what happened in a previous life: the soul resolves the main issues of its life even before birth; Having been born, she already knows everything there is to know. She chooses her lot herself: it is as if she is already destined for her own fate, destiny. Thus, the Soul, according to Plato, is an immortal essence; three parts are distinguished in it: rational, turned to ideas; ardent, affective-volitional; sensual, driven by passions, or lustful. The rational part of the soul is the basis of virtue and wisdom, the ardent part of courage; overcoming sensuality is the virtue of prudence. As for the Cosmos as a whole, the source of harmony is the world mind, a force capable of adequately thinking about itself, being at the same time an active principle, the feeder of the soul, governing the body, which in itself is deprived of the ability to move. In the process of thinking, the soul is active, internally contradictory, dialogical and reflexive. “When thinking, it does nothing more than reason, questioning itself, affirming and denying” (3). The harmonious combination of all parts of the soul under the regulative principle of reason provides a guarantee of justice as an integral property of wisdom.

About knowledge and dialectics. In his doctrine of knowledge, Plato underestimated the role of the sensory stage of knowledge, believing that sensations and perceptions deceive a person. He even advised to “close your eyes and plug your ears” to learn the truth, giving space to your mind. Plato approached knowledge from the position of dialectics. What is dialectics? This concept comes from the word “dialogue” - the art of reasoning, and reasoning in communication means arguing, challenging, proving something and disproving something. In general, dialectics is the art of “searching thinking,” while thinking strictly logically, unraveling all sorts of contradictions in the clash of different opinions, judgments, and beliefs.

Plato developed in particular detail the dialectics of the one and the many, the identical and the other, movement and rest, etc. Plato's philosophy of nature is characterized by its connection with mathematics. Plato analyzed the dialectic of concepts. This was of great importance for the subsequent development of logic.

Having admitted with his predecessors that everything sensible “eternally flows,” constantly changes and is therefore not subject to logical understanding, Plato distinguished knowledge from subjective sensation. The connection that we introduce into judgments about sensations is not a sensation: in order to cognize an object, we must not only feel, but also understand it. It is known that general concepts are the result of special mental operations, “the initiative of our rational soul”: they are not applicable to individual things. General definitions in the form of concepts do not refer to individual sensory objects, but to something else: they express a genus or species, i.e. something that refers to certain sets of objects. According to Plato, it turns out that our subjective thought corresponds to an objective thought that resides outside of us. This is the essence of his objective idealism.

About categories. Early Greek thought considered the elements as philosophical categories: earth, water, fire, air, ether. Then the categories take on the form of generalized, abstract concepts. This is how they still look today. The first system of five main categories was proposed by Plato: being, motion, rest, identity, difference.

We see here together both the categories of being (being, movement) and logical categories (identity, difference). Plato interpreted the categories as sequentially arising from each other.

Views on society and the state. Plato justifies his views on the origin of society and the state by the fact that an individual person is not able to satisfy all his needs for food, housing, clothing, etc. In considering the problem of society and the state, he relied on his favorite theory of ideas and ideals. The “ideal state” is a community of farmers, artisans who produce everything necessary to support the lives of citizens, warriors who protect security, and philosopher-rulers who exercise wise and fair governance of the state. Plato contrasted such an “ideal state” with ancient democracy, which allowed the people to participate in political life and to govern. According to Plato, only aristocrats are called upon to rule the state as the best and wisest citizens. But farmers and artisans, according to Plato, must do their work conscientiously, and they have no place in government bodies. The state must be protected by law enforcement officers, who form the power structure, and the guards should not have personal property, must live in isolation from other citizens, and eat at a common table. The “ideal state,” according to Plato, must protect religion in every possible way, cultivate piety in citizens, and fight against all kinds of wicked people. The entire system of upbringing and education should pursue these same goals.

Without going into details, it should be said that Plato’s doctrine of the state is a utopia. Let us just imagine the classification of forms of government proposed by Plato: it highlights the essence of the socio-philosophical views of the brilliant thinker.

Plato highlighted:

a) “ideal state” (or approaching the ideal) - aristocracy, including an aristocratic republic and an aristocratic monarchy;

b) a descending hierarchy of government forms, which included timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny.

According to Plato, tyranny is the worst form of government, and democracy was the object of his sharp criticism. The worst forms of the state are the result of the “damage” of the ideal state. Timocracy (also the worst) is a state of honor and qualifications: it is closer to the ideal, but worse, for example, than an aristocratic monarchy.

Ethical views. Plato's philosophy is almost entirely permeated with ethical problems: his dialogues discuss such issues as the nature of the highest good, its implementation in the behavioral acts of people, in the life of society. The moral worldview of the thinker developed from “naive eudaimonism” (4) (Protagoras) - it is consistent with the views of Socrates: “good” as the unity of virtue and happiness, the beautiful and useful, the good and the pleasant. Then Plato moves on to the idea of ​​absolute morality (dialogue “Gorgias”). It is in the name of these ideas that Plato denounces the entire moral structure of Athenian society, which condemned itself in the death of Socrates. The ideal of absolute objective truth is opposed to human sensual attractions: good is opposed to pleasant. Faith in the final harmony of virtue and happiness remains, but the ideal of absolute truth, absolute goodness leads Plato to the recognition of another, supersensible world, completely naked of the flesh, where this truth lives and is revealed in all its true fullness. In such dialogues as “Gorgias”, “Theaetetus”, “Phaedo”, “Republic”, Plato’s ethics receives an ascetic orientation: it requires purification of the soul, renunciation from worldly pleasures, from secular life full of sensual joys. According to Plato, the highest good (the idea of ​​good, and it is above all) resides outside the world. Consequently, the highest goal of morality is located in the supersensible world. After all, the soul, as already mentioned, received its beginning not in the earthly, but in the higher world. And clothed in earthly flesh, she acquires a multitude of all kinds of evils and suffering. According to Plato, the sensory world is imperfect - it is full of disorder. The task of man is to rise above him and with all the strength of the soul strive to become like God, who does not come into contact with anything evil (“Theaetetus”); is to free the soul from everything corporeal, to concentrate it on itself, on the inner world of speculation and deal only with the true and eternal (“Phaedo”). It is in this way that the soul can rise from its fall into the abyss of the sensory world and return to its original, naked state (5).