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The Great Thinkers of Western Philosophy |
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In the Republic, Plato compares the Idea of the Good to the sun, as the supreme cause of all knowledge and existence. As the multiplicity of individuals is unified in the respective Ideas, in the same manner the multiplicity of Ideas is unified in the Idea of the Good. Hence in the Platonic system the Idea of the Good is the supreme reality on which all other ideas and all ethical, logical and aesthetic values of the sensible world depend. The Idea of the Good is the reality through which the world of becoming is made possible and rational. Thus it is truly the god of Plato. But the Idea of the Good has neither personality nor the power of creating. According to Plato, Demiurge is the divine artificer which forms the heavens and the earth by successive infusions of souls. Demiurge, however, cannot be identified with God, for if he is superior to matter, he is inferior to ideas, which furnish the model he uses to arrange matter and transform Chaos in the visible world. Since God is identified with the impersonal Idea of the Good, which lacks any activity with reference to nature and man. He can be attained only by reason, and the cult of reason is due Him. Regarding popular religion, Plato is opposed to anthropomorphism. So greatly is he opposed to it that, as we have seen, he wished to banish the poets, not excepting Homer, from the ideal state on account of the fantastic and immoral myths with which they represent the gods. He is not opposed, however, to a form of astral polytheism in which a multitude of gods subject to Demiurge animates the stars and the cosmic universe. These are the visible gods which Plato wishes to substitute for rough and uncouth Grecian mythology. XI. Insufficiencies of Plato's System The problem which most troubled the mind of Plato was that which had already been posed by the Pre-Socratics: the being of Parmenides and the becoming of Heraclitus. Plato attempted a reconciliation of these by introducing the world of Ideas, which should have given a rational explanation of both systems of thought. The being of Parmenides would be the ideal world, intelligible, the supreme Good. But differing from Parmenides, who held this being to be one, solid, and massive, Plato breaks it up, we might say, into the multiplicity of Ideas, whose unity lies in their relation to the supreme Good. Now along with this logico-metaphysical being, Plato advances another, non-being, which is co-eternal with Ideas. This is a metaphysical dualism such as is found in all Greek philosophers in the absence of a concept of creation. According to Plato, Demiurge should be the artificer which is able to find the answer to Heraclitus' problem of becoming. Plato places Demiurge before matter (non-being, opposing the intelligible, the necessary), in order that the descent of Ideas might be effected. The intelligible, through the operation of Demiurge, is imposed upon non-being. However, the non-being, the origin of evil, is never completely overcome by the intelligible. The metaphysics of Plato is essentially dualistic: the good (Ideas), and the evil (non-being). Plato unsuccessfully attempts to explain the becoming of Heraclitus by a penetration of the irrational by the rational, of matter by the intelligible. From this dualism it follows that evil is a metaphysical and insuppressible necessity. Cosmic reality is a struggle between good and evil, between Demiurge and non-being. In the face of the impenetrability of non-being, Demiurge must be declared impotent. Certainly no one has felt more than Plato the religious significance of the world and of life. However, a false notion of non-being, uncreated and co-eternal, the origin of evil, has impeded the philosopher from attaining a completely rational and religious vision of man and of nature. Plotinus was to attempt to overcome this difficulty, which would finally be answered in St. Augustine. The Academy, the philosophic school founded by Plato, lasted about a thousand years after him -- until the sixth century after Christ. It is usually divided into three periods:
But the Academy survived also these tendencies of the New Academy, and assumed its ultimate form in Neo-Platonism, which represents the last grandiose effort of Greek thought to solve the philosophical problem, by developing dualism into emanative pantheism. In The Radical Academy
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