The Sophists, Socrates & Plato

Investigation Shifted from Nature to

Ideas
 The SOPHISTS
• Sophists = wise and informed persons
• They made a living by teaching the citizens for
money.
• They’re critical of traditional mythology and
cosmology
• For them philosophical speculations are fruitless, man
cannot know the truth about nature and the universe. -
SKEPTICISM
• They’re concerned with man and his place in society.
– trying to replicate in the domain of ethics and
politics what the Presocratics had achieved in the
domain of physics.
 Sophists…
• Our conduct is ruled by social convention.
• Cultural relativism to ethical relativism to
epistemological skepticism
• “Man is the measure of all things.” – Protagoras
• All opinions are equally true.
• Truth or good is a matter of preference.
 Socrates
– (470 – 399)
 Son of sculptor and midwife
 Married Xanthippe, but had probably fallen in love
with Alcibiades, a young soldier.
 Extremely ugly: short an stout, potbellied had
bulging eyes and a snub nose.
 But inside he was “perfectly delightful”, “the
wisest, and justest, and best of all men whom I have
ever known.” - Plato
 He was irritated by the Sophists and their
promotion of the idea that all things are relative.
 Never wrote down his ideas, thus he is known only
through the writings of his student, PLATO.
 The Art of Discourse
• Socrates did not teach nor instruct people, rather he
discussed with them.

• Knows nothing: He started with the admission that he

does not know anything and that he desires to learn
from others.
• By his questioning his interlocutor, they resolve the
issue and the idea or truth is given birth.
• So, like his mother who was a midwife, Socrates
assisted in giving birth to ideas which he believed is
always within us.
 The Art of Discourse
• This is also called “Socratic irony”
• “Athens is like a sluggish horse, and I am the gadfly
trying to sting it into life.”
 Right Insight to Right Action
•“He who knows what good is will do good.”
-When we do wrong it is because we don’t know any
better.
 He holds that there is a universally valid
definition of right and wrong.
- The ability to distinguish between right and wrong
lies in people’s reason and not in society.
 Knowledge is virtue.  A wise man is a good
man.
 Plato
• (437 – 347) his actual name was Aristocles
• Son of a wealthy and powerful family.
• At about 20, became student of Socrates
• After Socrates’ death he wandered around
Greece and Mediterranean.
• Founded the Academy in 386.
• “Let no one ignorant of mathematics enter here.”
(Placed above the doorway of the school)
• Died at the age of 80, in his sleep.
 Plato

School of
Athens
 Theory of Forms
• Gk. Eidos = Idea, Form
• How does one get the idea of Form or Idea?
• [Refer to the explanation in Sophie’s World]
1. The gingerbread men in the bakery example
2. The Lego horse example
• Forms are archetypes of everything existing
in the visible world
• Not physical nor mental
• Cannot be perceived by the senses, but can
be grasped by the intellect
 Theory of Forms…
Reality
That which really exists is to be
apprehended only through thinking.
Sensible objects could not possibly be
real; they could at best be “copies” or
“images” of underlying realities.
In short, what we usually call “the real
world” is not real at all, but is rather just
an appearance (phenomenon).
 Theory of Forms…
Our knowledge of forms
We cannot apprehend forms by our senses.
We see the beautiful person, but beauty itself is
not something we can see or hear.
Thus, we apprehend the forms with the Intellect,
and forms, like “Beauty”, really exist.
Another example: What is a circle?

Circle = plane figure composed of a series of points all of which

are equidistant from the center.
No one has ever seen a circle!
 Theory of Forms

“This woman is beautiful.”

Can this be genuine knowledge?

In logic, knowledge can be expressed only in

universal propositions, not in singular
propositions.
Thus, with Plato we say, scientific statements are
not about particular objects but about
universals.
 Two Worlds

World of the
Senses World of Ideas
 World of Ideas
• Ultimate reality
• Permanent, unchanging
• Eternal, immutable
• Spiritual
• Perfect
 World of the Senses

• Phenomenal world – appearances, the manifestation of

the ideal.
• Illusions
• Flowing, ever-changing
• Decay, corruption
• Like soap bubbles
Example: Idea horse vs. particular
horse
TRUE KNOWLEDGE
We can never have true knowledge
of anything that is in a constant
state of change. We can only have
opinions (doxa) about things that
belong to the world of the senses,
tangible things. We can only have
true knowledge of things that can
be understood with our reason.
 TRUE KNOWLEDGE
We can only have inexact
conceptions of things we
perceive with our senses.
But we can have true
knowledge (episteme) of
things (forms) we
understand with our
REASON.
 The real knowledge of anything (hence
science) depends upon the recognition of
the idea apart from sense objects which
vary from place to place or from person
to person.
 Knowledge by remembering:
Doctrine of Anamnesis
• Since our souls have come from the World
of Ideas, perceiving the things in the World
of the senses as copies of the ideas the souls
can vaguely recollect the ideas that they
once viewed directly.
• Human knowledge results when objects of
sense cause our souls to remember the ideal
forms of the perceived objects.
Science (and knowledge in general) is a
grasping of the universal Idea or Form, which
is changeless and eternal through its various
manifestations in physical things.
A person tied exclusively to the physical
world gains only opinion—at times illusion—
from the senses.
Knowledge, on the other hand, is of universal
ideas and gained through pure reason.
 Two kinds of knowledge
• Episteme = true knowledge – knowledge of
the eternal ideas
• Doxa = opinion – knowledge of the things
through sense perceptions, ever-changing
and transient to produce true knowledge.
 Astronomy for Plato
• 4 SCIENCES
• Astronomy
• Arithmetic
• Geometry
• Harmonics
The sciences are to lead the mind away from the
material world to a knowledge of the immutable
and eternal forms.
Thus, astronomy’s role in education is to guide
the intellect away from sensible appearances to
the intelligible Realities lying above them.
 Mythical Cosmology
Plato’s main discussion on cosmology is found in the
dialogue Timaeus.
The heavenly bodies exhibited perfect geometric form.
The world is created by the Demiurge, the divine
craftsman who forms the world from chaotic materials.

FIVE REGULAR SOLIDS

Tetrahedron Hexahedron Dodecahedron

Octahedron Icosahedron
 TETRAHEDRON

This solid has four triangular faces, four vertices,

and six edges. The acuteness of its angles led Plato
to name it fire.
 OCTAHEDRON

This solid has eight triangular faces, six vertices

and twelve edges. Air is the name given to the
octahedron, because it was seen as an intermediate
between fire and water.
 CUBE

This solid has six square faces, eight vertices and

twelve edges. The stability of the cube led Plato to
associate it with the element earth.
 ICOSAHEDRON

This solid has twenty triangular faces, twelve

vertices and thirty edges. Plato called the
icosahedron water.
 DODECAHEDRON

This solid has twelve pentagonal faces, twenty

vertices and thirty edges. This is the most
mysterious and powerful of the five regular solids.
It embodies the other four; Plato therefore said that
the dodecahedron is the cosmos. He sensed that it
was used by God to embroider the heavens.
 3 components
1. The eternal world of Forms as the model of
creation symbolizing the perfect, unchanging,
eternal order of Reality;
2. The Divine Craftsman or Demiurge symbolizing
the rational causal agency inducing intelligent
order, and purpose in a recalcitrant world;
3. The Receptacle as the spatial container of the
materials for the creative process symbolizing the
sensory, imperfect, ‘discordant’ world of
becoming.
• Unlike the Milesians, Atomists, and modern
scientists, Plato did not believe that a strictly
scientific explanation of the empirical world –
the inchoate world of change and becoming –
was possible, and hence a more faithful account,
even if largely symbolic, would be one that
described the world not as arising accidentally or
from sheer necessity, but as fulfilling a rational
purpose.