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A biography of the father of Western philosophy

In Plato’s Lysis, two boys, Lysis and Menexenus, argue about who is the elder. This seems odd, until one realizes that people back then did not have birthdays, but only birth years or birth cohorts.

Plato is likely to have been born in 428/427 BCE. His father Ariston claimed descent from Codrus, the last king of Athens (d. c. 1068 BCE), who himself claimed descent from Poseidon. His mother Perictione descended, more humbly but in a shorter line, from the law-giver Solon. She had Charmides for a brother and Critias for an uncle. Out of a desire to rehabilitate his mother’s family line, or hark back to happier times, Plato often featured his relatives in his dialogues: not only Critias and Charmides, but also his brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus.

Plato probably bore the name of his father’s father, Aristocles, but his wrestling coach Ariston of Argos took to calling him ‘Plato’ on account of his broad shoulders. Alternatively, the nickname derived from the breadth of his eloquence, or his large forehead. Had it not stuck, he might have been known to us as Aristocles of Collytus. According to some later writers, he was not the son of Ariston but of Apollo himself—earning him a couple more epithets, ‘Son of Apollo’ and ‘Divine teacher’. In another legend, as the infant Plato slept on Mount Hymettus, the bees settled upon his lips to augur the honeyed words that would one day flow from his mouth.

Childhood and Siblings

When Plato was still a boy, his father died, and his mother married Pyrilampes, her widowed maternal uncle. Pyrilampes already had a son, Demus, who was famed for his good looks, and went on to have another son, Antiphon, with Perictione—making Antiphon Plato’s half-brother. Shortly before marrying Perictione, Pyrilampes suffered a shoulder injury at the Battle of Delium, and it might have been from him that Plato first heard about Socrates and his bravery on the battlefield. Pyrilampes enjoyed a close friendship with Pericles, the de facto leader of Athens. After the birth of Antiphon, Pericles dispatched him to Persia to represent Athens. When he returned from the court of Darius with a pride of peacocks, scurrilous tongues accused him of breeding the birds to procure freeborn women for Pericles. Possibly, it is he who first introduced the peacock to Europe.

Plato no doubt took an engaged interest in the education of Antiphon [‘Responsive voice’, the root of ‘anthem’]. In Plato’s Parmenides, one Cephalus encounters Glaucon and Adeimantus in the agora and asks to meet Antiphon, who happens to be acquainted with the famous conversation that passed between Parmenides, Zeno, and the young Socrates. But Antiphon has, by now, given up philosophy for horses: when the party arrives at Antiphon’s house, they find him with a smith fitting a bridle.

Plato’s eldest brother Glaucon [‘Owl-eyed’, ‘Bright-eyed’, or ‘Grey-eyed’] enjoyed music and mathematics and naturally fell under the spell of the Pythagoreans. Both he and Adeimantus distinguished themselves in the Battle of Megara of 424, and in Plato’s Republic Socrates commends him for his ‘godlike virtues in battle’. In his mid-thirties, Glaucon suffered a minor injury, and thereafter devoted himself to finery, frivolling away his fame and fortune on a large estate that he filled with hunting dogs and pedigreed cocks.

In the Republic, Adeimantus [‘Without fear’] claims that most philosophers are ‘strange monsters, not to say utter rogues’ who are made utterly useless by their study (487d). When, in discussing the ideal state, Socrates proposes that the guardians be without property, he objects that they would be unhappy without luxuries.

Neither Plato nor his three brothers had any children, leaving the joys and burdens of family life to their sister Potone, who had no choice in the matter. Pyrilampes and Critias married her off at an early age to Eurymedon of Myrrhinus, whose greatest achievement was to father Speusippus, the nephew who would follow Plato at the head of the Academy.

Early Years and Socrates

The young Plato excelled in his studies, including in gymnastics; according to Aristotle’s student Dicæarchus, he was a well-known wrestler and competed at the Isthmian Games. It is said that Plato started out as a poet and tragedian, but burnt his works after meeting Socrates. Probably, it is Critias who introduced him to Socrates, who must have seemed like a breath of fresh air after his eccentric tutor, the Heraclitean Cratylus.

Socrates too would have been delighted to meet Plato: it is said that, the night before their first meeting, he dreamt of a cygnet on his knees, which at once sprouted feathers and flew up uttering a loud sweet note.

Socrates too would have been delighted to meet Plato: it is said that, the night before their first meeting, he dreamt of a cygnet on his knees, which at once sprouted feathers and flew up uttering a loud sweet note.

Plato frequented Socrates for, or over, several years. Had Athens been at peace, he might have spent all his days basking in his sunlight. He must have despaired of army life, which he likely looked upon as a rite of passage for a political career.

With the coming of the Thirty Tyrants (following Athens’ defeat by Sparta), Plato may have hoped for a new age of rational government by philosophical men such as Critias and Charmides who embodied the sound values of his aristocratic class. But when, in 404, Critias invited him to join their administration, he held back, repelled by its oppression and, more particularly, its attempt to implicate Socrates in the execution of the innocent Leon of Salamis.

Mercifully, the regime only held out for a matter of months before being routed by the democratic forces in exile, with both Critias and Charmides killed in the heat of battle. If the initial restraint and moderation of the restored democracy did fill Plato with renewed hope, the trial and execution of Socrates would have put paid to any remaining illusions that he might have entertained about Athenian politics.

Travels

After the fall of the Thirty Tyrants, Plato’s name turned from a major asset into a major liability, and his background, politics, and association with Socrates all sat uncomfortably with the mood of the times. In consequence, he retired with other Socratics to Megara in West Attica, where he resided with Euclid, a Socratic and Eleatic who had been present at the death of Socrates.

Euclid, under the influence of the Eleatics, argued in the manner of Zeno, lending force to his ideas by disproving or discrediting those of his opponents. Socrates thought poorly of such eristics and, in his living, had encouraged him to prefer the more cordial and constructive dialectic method. Despite Euclid’s antagonistic debating style, Plato, Euclid, and the other Socratics must have had many fertile conversations in Megara. By marrying the ideas of Parmenides and Socrates, Euclid would go on to establish the Megarian school of philosophy.

According to Diogenes Laertius, after a time in Megara, Plato crossed to Cyrene, the Libyan birthplace of both Aristippus and the geometer Theodorus. As he had a higher opinion of Theodorus than of Aristippus, he probably stayed with the former, who features as a friend and contemporary of Socrates in three of his later dialogues, the Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman.

From Cyrene, Plato may have proceeded to Egypt, before, perhaps, being recalled to Greece to serve in a fresh anti-Spartan alliance.

Travels in Italy

If Plato did get embroiled in the so-called Corinthian War, he may have returned to Athens after the Battle of Coroneia in 394 BCE. Now in his mid-thirties, he no doubt received several marriage proposals, which he turned down in favour of philosophy. He may have started on his dialogues as early as Megara or Cyrene, but now he doubled down. By the time he left for Italy in around 388, he had already written several works, including the Apology, Laches, and Protagoras.

In Taras [modern-day Taranto] on the heel of Italy Plato visited the foremost Pythagorean philosopher Archytas, with whom he may have discussed the problem of doubling the cube, or so-called Delian problem.

According to Plutarch, the forever feuding Delians had turned in despair to the Delphic oracle, who advised them to double the size of their altar to Apollo. In obeisance to the oracle, they built another altar with sides twice as long—but, if anything, their problems only got worse.

When the Delians wrote to Plato for advice, he replied that the oracle may have meant doubling the volume of the cube, rather than simply doubling the length of its sides—in which case their new altar was four times too large. But since no one knew how to calculate the length of side required to double the volume of a cube, the god may in fact have been telling them to moderate their passions by taking up the study of mathematics and philosophy.

In Taras, Archytas is likely to have introduced Plato to his teacher Eurytus, who had himself been a pupil of Philolaus. Like Philolaus, Eurytus believed that numbers give limit to the limitless and form to matter, and that their odd and even values account for opposites such as rest and motion, light and dark, and one and many. The concept is not dissimilar to modern binary code.

Plato was deeply impressed by Archytas and the Pythagoreans, whose influence is evident in middle works such as the Meno and Phaedo. In Taras, Plato may also have met Timaeus, if there did exist a historical Timaeus. If not, he might have calqued the Timaeus of the Timaeus on Archytas and other Pythagoreans.

First Trip to Syracuse

At the invitation of a philosopher called Dion, Plato left Taras for the court of Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily.

Dion’s father Hipparinus had been instrumental to the rise of Dionysius, first to supreme military commander and then to tyrant. Dionysius had in turn married Hipparinus’ daughter Aristomache, making Dion his brother-in-law and, later, his adviser and close confidant.

Although taken by Dion, Plato had grave reservations about the dissolute Dionysius, who had made himself tyrant by staging an attack upon his own life and using the attack as a pretext to set up a ‘guard’—really, a private army. But Rome had recently been sacked by the Gauls and Plato may have been running out of places to go.

Dionysius sought to surround himself with lettered men to flatter his artistic pretensions and lend himself the aura of an enlightened despot. But he also had a predilection for turning upon them, so that when the dithyrambic poet Philoxenus declined to praise his verses, he condemned him to hard labour in the quarries. 

Plato’s criticisms of the sybaritic court of Syracuse angered Dionysius. Plato had argued, among others, that a slave with a just and ordered soul is happier than an unjust tyrant. To test this theory, Dionysius sold Plato into slavery!

According to Diogenes Laertius, the Cyrenaic philosopher Anniceris ransomed Plato from Dionysius for twenty minas. 

Upon returning safe and sound to Athens, Plato resolved to remain there once and for all.

The Academy

In 387, the King’s Peace, negotiated by all belligerents and underwritten by the Persian king Artaxerxes II, brought the eight-year-long Corinthian War to an end. Hoping that the Peace would last, Plato purchased a large house some six stadia (around half a mile) beyond the north-western Dipylon gate. The house gave onto the precinct of the Akademeia, named after the Attic hero Hekademos.

The Akademeia contained a sacred grove of olive trees that produced the oil for the victors at the Panathenaic Games. Hippias, the son of Peisistratos, had walled the garden and raised statues and temples. Cimon, the son of Miltiades, had diverted the Cephalus river for irrigation and planted large trees including oriental planes, poplars, and elms. By the time Plato arrived, a gymnasium had been added to one corner. Several athletic and religious events took place or ended within the garden, including the Dionysiac procession from Athens and the torch-lit night race to the altar of Prometheus.

Plato applied for the permission to establish a school—on paper, a thiasos, or religious confraternity. In a nod to the Pythagoreans, he inscribed on the lintel above the door, ‘Let none but geometers enter here.’ Scholars and students took up residence in neighbouring houses, and those of meagre means lodged with others or further out. When he arrived, Eudoxus of Cnidus could only afford an apartment in Piræus, and, each day, walked the seven miles in each direction. Later, his friends and colleagues raised the funds to send him to Heliopolis in Egypt to pursue his study of astronomy and mathematics.

Gatherings often took place in the garden or gymnasium. In many European languages, secondary schools that prepare students for higher education are still, for this reason, called gymnasia. Although Plato privileged the dialectic method, he also encouraged senior members to deliver the occasional public lecture. The Academy’s public lectures became popular, and, after some years, Plato obtained permission to construct a small amphitheatre in which to accommodate them. Plato himself once delivered a lecture entitled, ‘On the Good’, and it may have been the desire to speak to a lay audience that led him to invent striking metaphors such as the sun, line, and cave.

In his forty years as scholarch [head] of the Academy, Plato must have seen through hundreds of students, not least Aristotle, Speusippus, Xenocrates of Chalcedon, Heraclides of Pontus, Hestiæus of Perinthus, and Philip of Opus.

Among all the men, he is known to have admitted at least two women, Axiothea of Phlius and Lastheneia of Mantinea—who were nevertheless required to dress like men so as not be mistaken for hetairai [courtesans].

Second Trip to Syracuse

In 367, twenty years after the foundation of the Academy, the tyrant of Syracuse Dionysius I competed with a play, The Ransom of Hector, which won first prize at the Lenaia festival. Dionysius celebrated by drinking himself to death.

Although Dionysius had married Dion’s sister Aristomache, he had also married Doris of Locri, and while Aristomache bore him four children it was Doris who produced his heir apparent, also called Dionysius. As the older Dionysius lay on his deathbed, Dion tried to talk him into anointing an heir born of Aristomache, who, unlike Doris, was Syracusan and popular with the people. Hearing of this, the younger Dionysius had his father poisoned by way of his doctors.

The paranoid Dionysius had kept his son and heir confined and uneducated, and Dion felt that education might transform Dionysius the Younger if not into a philosopher-king, then at least into a half decent ruler. On this pretext, Dionysius and the Pythagoreans persuaded Plato to return to Syracuse.

Plato did not have high hopes for Dionysius but felt bound to Dion and reluctant to pass over even the slimmest chance of putting theory into practice. When Plato’s trireme docked into Syracuse, Dionysius sacrificed to the gods. But Plato’s arrival, and his grip on Dionysius, did not please the tyrant’s jealous advisors, who accused Dion of plotting against their man.

As his advisors dripped poison into his ear, Dionysius grew suspicious of the able, experienced, and popular Dion, who behaved or acted as ruler in all but name. In 366, Dionysius walked Dion down to the beach and bundled him into a boat bound for Italy. To prevent Plato from protesting or leaving, he removed him to the citadel and placed him under a ‘guard of honour’. In time, Plato cajoled him into letting him go.

Third Trip to Syracuse

When Plato returned to the Academy, he found a new face in the teenage Aristotle, a man, at last, with real and lasting power. Making the most of exile, Dion soon re-joined them in Athens.

Dionysius did everything in his power to persuade Plato to return to Syracuse, even bargaining with the fates of Dion and his wife. In 361, Plato sailed to Syracuse for a third and last time.

Unsurprisingly, the trip did not go well. When Plato kept on advocating for Dion, Dionysius banished him to the barracks to live amid his hostile guards. Plato would have been reminded of Socrates, of his experience with Alcibiades and Charmides, and of his conviction that virtue cannot be taught.

Fortunately, Dionysius soon returned Plato to the palace. And after a time, Plato once again coaxed the tyrant into letting him leave—promising himself, this time, never to return. Later, Dionysius sent a letter to Athens in which he expressed the fear that Plato would complain about him to the other philosophers at the Academy. Plato curtly replied that he would never be at such a loss of subjects to discuss as to seek one in him.

When Dionysius sold Dion’s estate and forced his wife Arete to marry another, Dion led a revolt, ousting the tyrant and confining him to the citadel. Dion ruled chaotically for three years before being assassinated by Calippus, a close friend and student of Plato who had been bribed by Dionysius.

Although Dion had once been popular with the Syracusans, his failure as tyrant to pursue democratic reforms led them to turn against him—demonstrating the difficulties in setting up anything approaching Plato’s Republican ideal. The same could be said of the broader Syracusan adventure: Dionysius I had loved the arts, Dionysius II Plato, Dion wisdom… and yet.

Final Years

When Dion died in 354, Plato was in his seventies. He was still writing, now faster than ever, and had also developed a set of more mystical unwritten teachings [ágrapha dógmata]. Although predisposed to the highest abstraction, he was keen to show the practical significance of all his theorizing, which he did in his last and longest work, the Laws, which remained unpublished at the time of his death in 348.

See my related article, The Life of Aristotle.

Neel Burton is author of The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero.

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Should free speech be curbed to promote a more inclusive society?

Once, upon being asked to name the most beautiful of all things, Diogenes the Cynic (d. 323  BCE) replied parrhesia, which in Greek means something like “free speech” or “full expression”. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle (d. 322 BCE) says that parrhesia is a trait of the magnanimous or great-souled man, the megalopsychos. The Greeks did not conceive of parrhesia as a right or privilege, but as a virtue or perfection, as well as a moral and social obligation. Living in a much more oral society, and having but one word, logos, for both speech and reason, they understood the close connexion between freedom of speech and freedom of thought.

In Athens, parrhesia underpinned the democracy. For a democracy to flourish, or even merit the name, citizens must be free, able, and willing to speak their mind. Free speech not only enables a democracy, but also legitimizes its laws and protects it from aspiring tyrants. Undermine free speech, and you undermine democracy—which is why free speech is enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Undermine free speech, and you undermine human dignity, which is why free speech is enshrined in Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to see, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

“Free speech” is something of a misnomer. It includes not only free speech but also other forms of expression, such as writing a book, drawing a cartoon, or burning a flag. Taking inspiration from the French libre expression, we might more accurately refer to “free speech” as “freedom of expression”.

Today, many people, especially younger people, believe that freedom of expression can conflict with minority rights, and ought to be curbed to promote a more inclusive society. Is this argument worth entertaining?

Let’s begin by looking more closely at the benefits of free speech. Often, it is by articulating it to others that we are able to determine what we think on a particular issue. And in arriving at what we think, it helps if we are being encouraged, assisted, and challenged—which is why tutorials and communal meals are (or ought to be) an important part of university life.

Even if an opinion is untrue, it may still serve to clarify or reinforce the truth. Moreover, many misguided opinions contain aspects of the truth. Plato himself doubted his Theory of Forms, which nonetheless remains of immense value. Rousseau, who pushed back against the Enlightenment, may have been wrong to idealise the state of nature, but was right to point out that progress has downsides. Even when securely established, a living truth risks stultifying into a dead dogma if it is not regularly challenged.

So far, we have been talking about the kind of constructive, co-operative discourse that graces academia. But are bitter bigots also entitled to freedom of expression? Or to put it another way, do the intolerant also merit tolerance?

If bigots were unable to air their opinions, or simply denied a platform (“no-platforming”), these and they would go unchallenged. Feeling vindicated and persecuted, the bigots would recast themselves as tellers of uncomfortable truths, and, in time, recruit a following. Feeling unheard and unrepresented, this growing mass may resort to violence and destruction, including sabotage of the political system.

Censoring bigots also risks giving their opinions greater appeal and publicity. Prosecuting David Irving for Holocaust denial put him onto the front pages, and turned him from obscure and discredited historian into something of a free speech martyr. Banning The Satanic Verses and issuing a fatwa to kill the book’s author and publishers turned it into a must-read all-time classic.

Conversely, those who engage in “cancel culture” are likely to invite resentment and, in so doing, harm their cause—to say nothing of the extra-judicial and often disproportionate damage done to the reputations and careers of their targets. In such a climate of fear, self-censorship, even by constructive academics and liberals, makes it difficult to calmly and rationally discuss sensitive topics such as transgender rights.

Of course, we do already police free speech. In the words of Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., free speech does not include the freedom of shout “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. John Stuart Mill (d. 1873) drew the line at incitement to physical violence.

But beyond this (and a few other cases such as libel and false advertising), where might we redraw the line between the acceptable and the unacceptable? Socrates, Christ, and Giordano Bruno all lost their lives expressing what came to be regarded as seminal ideas.

Once we had redrawn the line, would the temptation not be to keep redrawing it? The Spanish Inquisition began as one thing and ended up as quite another. And it made no difference if some of the inquisitors were well-intentioned.

Today, the public square has moved online, and it is unaccountable tech giants, rather than the church and state, that are being expected to police free speech—when they might simply begin by ensuring that each of their accounts is genuine and accountable.

As they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant. The best response to a bad opinion is not censorship, but good argument and rhetoric. And yes, this might sometimes include mockery and derision and causing offence—although we should not go out of our way to cause offence, as with “hate speech”. Our focus ought to be on the facts, and not on the characteristics (although maybe the character) of our opponent.

In a society in which suffering is medicalized, there is a tendency to assimilate psychological offence with physical violence, with an implication or suggestion that retaliatory physical violence might be justified. But “free speech” includes the right not to listen. Taking offence, as the Stoics taught, is always a choice. Offence exists not in the insult but in our reaction to it, and our reactions are completely within our control. It is unreasonable to expect a boor to be anything but a boor; if we take offence at his bad behaviour, we have only ourself to blame.

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Plato’s Forms are at the root of Western psychology, philosophy, and theology.

In the Genealogy of Morality (1887), Nietzsche calls Plato ‘the sincerest advocate of the beyond, the great slanderer of life.’

The dichotomy between truth and appearance, and the devaluation of appearance, is rooted in pre-Socratic philosophy. Just as Plato leant upon Heraclitus’ flux for his conception of the sensible world of appearance (the world as we see it), so he leant upon Parmenides’ unity for his conception of the intelligible world (the world when we think it), which he rendered as the ideal, immutable realm of the Forms.

The Genesis of the Forms

Plato’s authorship spanned some fifty years, from the death of Socrates in 399 BCE to his own death in c. 348. He is traditionally ascribed with 35 dialogues, although around ten of these are or may be spurious. Today, the dialogues are often classified into three periods, ‘early’, ‘middle’, and ‘late’, based on their presumed order of composition.

The early dialogues are relatively short and accessible. They are sometimes referred to as the Socratic dialogues because they set forth more of the historical Socrates, typically debating ethical subjects such as temperance, courage, or friendship with youths, friends, or a supposed expert.

From these beginnings, Plato gradually developed distinct philosophical ideas, such as his Theory of Forms, which features in middle dialogues such as the Phaedo, Symposium, and Republic. In these long, literary dialogues, the character Socrates is less of the historical Socrates and more of a mouthpiece for Plato. He is accordingly more didactic, putting forth positive doctrines and no longer content merely to question and refute. Other middle dialogue doctrines that are unlikely to owe to Socrates include the Theory of Recollection, the Theory of Reincarnation, and the Theory of the Tripartite Soul—which are each connected to the Forms.

The FORMS IN THE Phaedo

The Phaedo is named for the young Phaedo of Ellis, whom Socrates had rescued from slavery. For the first time, Plato explicitly appeals to the Forms, although does not do much to explain them. He also assumes reader familiarity with the Meno and the Theory of Recollection, which the Phaedo builds upon.

In the Phaedo, which used to be called On the Soul, Socrates offers four arguments for the immortality of the soul, among which the Theory of Recollection and the Theory of Forms. The supposed immortality of the soul enables Socrates to remain sanguine in the face of his pending execution, and offers the ultimate justification for the life of virtue. The dialogue ends with a myth of the afterlife and, of course, the dramatic drinking of the hemlock.

Socrates argues that that which is compounded is dissoluble, but that which is uncompounded is indissoluble and therefore unchanging. The Forms (for instance, Beauty), which are unchanging, are uncompounded, but their particulars (for instance, a beautiful horse), which are in a constant state of composition and degradation, are compounded. Particulars are apprehended by the senses, but the Forms can only be apprehended by the mind. Since the soul cannot be apprehended by the senses, it must be immortal.

The embodied soul employs the body as an instrument of perception, but what the body perceives is in a perpetual state of flux, so that the soul is thrown into confusion. But when the soul is once again detached from the body, or when it turns inward to contemplate itself, it passes into the realm of the unchanging and approaches wisdom.

Upon death, not all souls suffer the same fate. The soul of the philosopher, being the most detached from the body, is able to reach the realm of the unchanging, where it ‘lives in bliss and is released from the error and folly of men, their fears and wild passions and all other human ills…’ But unphilosophical souls, which have been weighed down by worldly cares and bodily desires, remain earthbound and pass into another body.

Socrates affirms that the Theory of Forms is the most plausible theory of the deep causes of things. On this account, something is beautiful because it participates in the Form of Beauty, two is two because it participates in the Form of Duality, and so on. A thing that participates in a Form also participates in other closely connected Forms. For instance, three bundled pencils participate in the Form of Oddness as well as the Form of Threeness. However, opposite Forms such as Even and Odd cannot admit of each other. Whenever a soul is embodied, there is invariably life, indicating that the soul is closely connected with life, and thus that it cannot admit of its opposite, death.

The Symposium: Love as the engine of wisdom

In the Symposium, Socrates relates the time when the priestess Diotima taught him the proper way to learn to love beauty. A youth should first be taught to love one beautiful body so that he comes to realize that this beautiful body shares beauty with every other beautiful body, and thus that it is foolish to love just one beautiful body. In loving all beautiful bodies, the youth begins to appreciate that the beauty of the soul is superior to the beauty of the body and begins to love those who are beautiful in soul regardless of whether they are also beautiful in body. Having transcended the physical, he gradually finds that beautiful practices and customs and the various branches of knowledge also share in a common beauty. Finally, on the highest rung of the ladder of love, he is able to experience Beauty itself, rather than its various apparitions. By exchanging the various apparitions of virtue for Virtue herself, he gains immortality and the love of the gods.

The Republic: The Form of the Good

In Book 5 of the Republic, in discussing the ideal state and the education of its guardians, Plato introduces the elusive Form of the Good. It is by attaining the Form of the Good that the philosopher-king is made fit to rule. As the Form of the Good is impossible to describe, and difficult to imagine, Socrates tries to convey its essence through three interconnected metaphors: the famous sun, line, and cave, which I discuss in a separate article.

LEGACY of the Forms

In the Phaedo, the Theory of Forms is presented as ‘the most plausible theory’, without any backing or questioning. In later dialogues, Plato becomes more doubtful—and in the Parmenides, has Parmenides demolish his pet Theory of Forms.

Arresting though it may be, the Theory of Forms is never definitive, and features less prominently in the late dialogues. Part of the pleasure and privilege, and seduction, of reading Plato is that he is thinking with us, rather than simply telling us what he thinks, or what to think.

In any case, our main interest in the Theory of Forms is not in its logic or coherence, but in its impact and influence. The Phaedo entrenched most of the divisions or dualities that mark the Western mind, including soul and body, mind and matter, reason and sense experience, reason and emotion, reality and appearance, good and evil, heaven and hell… In the Western tradition, since the Phaedo, the body is the source of all evil. But in the Eastern tradition, for instance, in yoga, we can take control of the mind through the body.

Although the Phaedo is at the root of Western psychology, philosophy, and theology, it is also deeply Eastern in advocating supreme detachment and ego suppression or disintegration as the route to salvation. Also, death is an illusion … we will be reincarnated … according to our deeds (karma). These, however, are not the aspects that the West has retained.

Neel Burton is author of The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.

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Why the tyrant is the unhappiest of people, and three things to guard against tyranny.

Nero and Seneca, by Eduardo Barrón (1904).

Tyranny is back on the table, but the ancients thought hard about how to avoid it. One of their most interesting arguments is that the one who suffers most in a tyranny is… the tyrant himself.

When Lydia was conquered by Persia in around 540 BCE, the Greek cities of Ionia were ruled by tyrants nominated by the Persian satrap in Sardis, the former Lydian capital. These tyrants, backed by the Persian power, had no need to moderate their rule, and began to give tyranny, and Persia, a bad name to the Greeks.

The definition of “tyrant” is malleable, and has shifted many times over the centuries. All in all, a tyrant is an absolute ruler who is illegitimate and/or unrestrained by law. To maintain himself in such a precarious position, he (for it is invariably a “he”) usually resorts to oppression and cruelty. Even then, “the strangest thing to see is an aged tyrant”—as the philosopher Thales of Miletus noted more than 2,500 years ago.

In On Clemency, written for the emperor Nero, the Roman philosopher Seneca (d. 65 CE) says that clemency is the quality that most distinguishes a king from a tyrant: “A tyrant differs from a king in his behaviour, not his title … It’s because of clemency that there’s a big difference between a king and a tyrant.” For Seneca, a ruler’s glory depends not on his power, but on its proper exercise. Moreover, if people can see that their ruler is “for them as much as he is above them,” they will be loyal to him and act as his eyes and ears. Clemency, then, not only ennobles rulers but keeps them safe: “It is at one and the same time an adornment of supreme power and its surest security.”

The calm and deliberate exercise of power, says Seneca, is like a clear and brilliant sky, but when the ruler is unrestrained all becomes murk and shadows: “People on every side tremble and start at sudden sounds, and not even the one who causes all the alarm is left unshaken.” The tyrant is then caught in a vicious circle: he is hated because he is feared, and must make himself feared because he is hated. For everyone he kills, there are fathers and sons, brothers and friends, who will rise up in their stead. 

In 68 CE, Nero preferred to commit suicide than let himself be killed.

Socrates on tyranny

One of Socrates’ most famous arguments is that no one ever knowingly does evil. People do wrong not because their ethics are overwhelmed by a desire for pleasure, as is often thought, but because they are unable to weigh up pleasures and pains. They act with recklessness or cowardice or foolishness or vice (which are really all one and the same thing) because, from their limited perspective, it seems like the right or best thing to do. But in the longer term, their actions undermine both their and our happiness—and never more so than if they happen to be a tyrant.

In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates makes the case that the tyrant is the most miserable of men because he is in a stronger position to harm himself and others—which is why those whom Homer has in Hades suffering eternal torment are not ordinary people but potentates such as Sisyphus, Tantalus, and Tityus.

In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates ranks people according to how much of the ideal Forms their souls are supposed to have seen, with philosophers, artists, and true lovers in the first class, followed by kings and generals in the second class … and tyrants in the ninth and final class.

Elsewhere, Socrates calculates that the king is precisely 729 times happier than the tyrant.

Plato and Aristotle on tyranny

The best rulers are those who are most reluctant to govern, and the most eager the worst—said Plato.

Plato did not care for Athenian democracy, but the tyranny of his own aristocratic relatives had proven much worse. In the Republic, he claims that the degeneration of the ideal state ends in democracy, followed by tyranny.

In Book 9 of the Republic, Plato gives a detailed account of the origins, mindset, and modus operandi of the tyrant, thereby demonstrating that this most unjust of men is also the most slavish and unhappy. The soul of the tyrant is so disordered that he is unable to do, or even know, what it truly desires—which is, of course, to be happy, and therefore good.

The life of the political tyrant is even more wretched than that of the private tyrant, first, because the political tyrant is in a better position to feed his disordered desires, and, second, because he is everywhere surrounded and watched by his enemies, of whom he is, in effect, the prisoner.

The Republic ends with the Myth of Er, according to which the souls of tyrants and murderers are barred from reincarnation and condemned to an eternity in the underworld.

Aristotle too suggested that there is no worse criminal than the tyrant: “Men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold; and hence honour is bestowed, not on him who kills a thief, but on him who kills a tyrant…”

In Book 2 of the Politics, Aristotle says that the Carthaginian constitution is so superior to any Greek one that the Carthaginians have never suffered a rebellion or been ruled by a tyrant.

How to protect against tyrants

So, what might the ancient philosophers have to say about today’s democracies?

First, we need to ensure that a life spent in politics remains an attractive prospect, or at the very least a tolerable one, or else sensible people will be put off from going into politics, hollowing out the center and leaving us to be governed, or misgoverned, by disturbed and power-hungry fanatics.

Second, we need to think more carefully about education, and what it means to be educated. Unless we transform ourselves by carrying out the work of the mind, we could be rich, powerful, and famous, like Nero, or Putin, and still be utterly miserable. Playing the tyrant, and taking everyone down with us, is not, as Seneca reminds us, what human beings are for.

Third, a country’s constitution or political settlement must contain sufficient safeguards to prevent or arrest the rise of a potential tyrant, or simply of a less than decent or competent leader. This is not the case in the U.S. and no longer the case in the U.K. where recent changes to how the main political parties select their leaders have enabled the rise of such improbable figures as Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson, who, as prime minister, purged his party of competent moderates and attempted to prorogue Parliament.

Since the time of Plato, humanity has made great strides in science and technology, but far less progress in politics. The world, now armed with nuclear weapons, is still crying out for fail-safe systems of government.

That, surely, is not beyond us.

Neel Burton is author of The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.

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Aristippus and his companions after being shipwrecked, by A Zucchi (1768).

Aristippus was far more radical than the more famous Epicurus.

Ancient philosophy, for all its theoretical underpinnings, was above all an art of living, which aimed, through self-transformation, at controlling the passions, relieving suffering, and attaining wisdom. Philosophy was to the soul, or mind, as medicine is to the body, and the professional philosopher was, first and foremost, a healer of the soul. In the words of the Roman statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero, “Unless the soul is cured, which cannot be done without philosophy, there will be no end to our miseries.” According to the Roman Stoic Musonius Rufus, “We must live like doctors and be continually treating ourselves with reason.”

This notion of philosophy as therapy, or an art of living, can be traced back to Socrates. After his heroic death by hemlock in 399 BCE, his nearest students ran off each with a different aspect of his teaching. While Plato and the Platonic Academy which he founded inherited his theoretical side, Antisthenes embraced his ethical or practical side, advocating an ascetic life of virtue and laying the foundations for the Cynic school. A third follower, Aristippus, had a very different take on their master’s ethics and established the Cyrenaic school, which taught that the only intrinsic good is pleasure, especially momentary pleasures and above all physical ones—a position far more radical than that eventually espoused by Epicurus.

The Life of Aristippus

Aristippus of Cyrene (435-356 BCE), who died before Epicurus was even born, emphasized present and physical pleasures over long-term pleasure or tranquillity. For Aristippus and his followers the Cyrenaics, pleasure meant not merely the absence of pain but positively making the most out of every moment.

Aristippus had been a follower of Socrates, and once had the temerity to tell him that he lived in Athens so as not to be embroiled in the politics of his native city—the kind of remark that turned other students of Socrates, notably Plato and Xenophon, against him. Aristippus was the first of the Socratics to take money for teaching. When he demanded five hundred drachmas out of a man for tutoring his son, the man protested, “For that much money, I could buy a slave!” “Go ahead” he replied, “then you’ll have two.”

Many saucy stories are told of Aristippus. One day, Diogenes the Cynic was washing the dirt from his vegetables, and, seeing him pass by, called out, “Had you learnt to make these your diet, you would have no need to pay court to kings.” “And you, Diogenes” he shot back, “had you learnt to associate with men, you would have no need to wash these vegetables.”

When someone chided him for his extravagance in catering, he retorted, “Wouldn’t you have bought this if you could have got it for three obols? Very well then, it is no longer I who am a lover of pleasure, but you who are a lover of money.”

When someone remarked that philosophers always seem to be at rich men’s doors, he replied, “Physicians are always calling on those who are sick, but no one on that account would prefer being sick to being a physician.”

When Dionysus I, the tyrant of Syracuse, asked him why he had come to his court, he said, “When I needed wisdom, I went to Socrates; but now that I am in need of money, I come to you.”

One time, Dionysus spat in his face. When someone reproached him for putting up with this, he said, “If fishermen are prepared to be drenched in seawater in order to catch a gudgeon, should I not be prepared to be sprayed with spittle in order to take a blenny?”

When Dionysus gave him his choice of three courtesans, he carried off all three, explaining, “Paris paid dearly for preferring one out of three.”

He was for a long time intimate with the courtesan Lais of Corinth, who was said to be the most beautiful woman in all of Greece.

The Cyrenaic School of Philosophy

But appearances, especially when it comes to the hedonists, can be deceptive. Aristippus was far from amoral. He simply believed that we ought to make the most out of every situation. Upon being criticised for his love of pleasure, he replied, “It is not abstinence from pleasures that is best, but mastery over them without ever being worsted.” One time, as he entered the house of a courtesan, one of the lads with him blushed. Seeing this, he said, “It is not going in that is shameful, but being unable to come out.”

Vitruvius, in his treatise on architecture, relates the story of Aristippus’ shipwreck. Upon being cast ashore on Rhodes, he repaired to the city and made straight for the gymnasium, where he spoke so eloquently that the Rhodians provided for all his needs and all his companions’ needs. When his companions wished to return to their country and asked what message they might bear from him, he bade them say this: that children ought to be provided with property and resources of a kind that can swim with them even out of a shipwreck.

Despite having two sons, Aristippus designated his daughter Arete as his successor at the head of the Cyrenaic school, and it was Arete’s son, Aristippus the Younger, who formalized the principles of Cyrenaicism.

A number of later Cyrenaics departed from this canon; for instance, Theodorus the Atheist (c. 340-c. 250 BCE) emphasized mental over physical pleasures and defined the good as prudence and justice. Hegesias of Cyrene (fl. 290 BCE), who might have been influenced by Buddhist missionaries sent forth by Ashoka the Great, argued that, since happiness is impossible to achieve, the goal of living ought instead to be the avoidance of pain and trouble. According to Cicero, he wrote a book called Death by Starvation that persuaded so many people that death is preferable to life that Ptolemy II Philadelphus banned him from teaching in Alexandria.

Cyrenaicism died out within a century to be replaced by Epicureanism.

Read my related article on Epicurus, The Arithmetics of Pleasure.

Neel Burton is author of Stoic Stories: Stoicism by Its Best Stories.