Plato

Question 1

What is mans essential virtue?

Answer 1

Justice

Question 2

What does justice bring?

Answer 2

Harmony and happiness, good in its own right and beneficial to society

Question 3

What is the purpose of the noble lie?

Answer 3

To invalidate feelings of dissatisfaction in class

Question 4

What does the bible lie state?

Answer 4

That our natures are determined by metals from the ground. Rulers are Gold, auxiliaries are silver and craftsmen are bronze. It maintains the division of power for the benefit of all.

Question 5

How is an individual just?

Answer 5

If reason, emotion and desire within an individuals mind is balanced

Question 6

What are cardinal virtues of the state?

Answer 6

Wisdom, courage, temperance, harmony and justice

Question 7

What does Plato claim poses the greatest harm to the state?

Answer 7

‘Interference by the 3 classes with each other’s jobs does the greatest harm to our state’

Question 8

What makes a guardian?

Answer 8

• best of the best ( including women)
• happiness not required
• no family
• no property- all is held in common
• lovers of wisdom
• mature
• shouldn’t fear death
• passed a series of rigorous tests

Question 9

What is the role of a guardian?

Answer 9

• to maintain peace
• to love wisdom
• to keep the classes in order
• to protect the state
• to breed in mating festivals to produce the best

Question 10

What are criticisms of Plato’s guardians?

Answer 10

• not required to be happy- Aristotle- need to be happy to flourish
• live in peace - Hobbes - naturally selfish- reason of guardians is to override human instinct
• lovers of wisdom- any teaching that is censored/ ignorant necessitates lack of wisdom

Question 11

Why does Plato raise the genders equally?

Answer 11

• if men and women are to be used for the same purpose they need the same training and education
• women shouldn’t be confined to domestic duties- the ‘tearing of their puppies incapacitates them’
• ‘ only difference is that the female bears and the man begets’, which is irrelevant in a society where women aren’t constrained to raising children
• Plato accepts that ‘ a great many women are better than a great many men’- and gives then the opportunity to be the exceptions
• ‘ natural capacities are similarly distributed in each sex’

Question 12

How does Plato contradict his statements on gender equality?

Answer 12

• ‘ all in all women will be the weaker partners’

- ‘ women and children are to be held in common by men’

Question 13

How does Plato defend women in his family policy?

Answer 13

• he believes that child bearing incapacitates women from their full achievement
• all female guardians are in common to all male guardians in reproductive practice

Question 14

Why does Plato call for an end to the family?

Answer 14

He wants equal opportunities for women and children and ultimately the best guardians possible.
He believes that unanimity is the greatest good for peace- society is the large family

Question 15

What is the breeding prime?

Answer 15

Men- 20-40

Women-25-55

Question 16

Why are generational names used for each other?

Answer 16

• as a preventative against incest

- respect for elders

Question 17

What is a philosopher?

Answer 17

A lover of wisdom, someone who devotes themselves to the truth

Question 18

How does Plato justify that a philosopher should know the forms?

Answer 18

• a lover of something loves the whole of it, not merely one aspect
• the lover of truth lives the one thing that is evident in the forms
• the lover of sights lives sensible instances of beautiful things, not beauty in its pure essence in the forms, the whole of beauty
• the philosopher who loves the whole of knowledge knows the forms and is truly awake

Question 19

What does Plato imply in the analogy of the ship?

Answer 19

• the captain is society and is ‘ larger and stronger than the crew, but a bit deaf and short sighted with limited seamanship
• the crew are politicians and are ‘quarrelling with each other about how to navigate, each thinking he ought to be at the helm’, ‘controlling the captain by force and fraud’
• navigator is the philosopher, sailors ‘regard the true navigator as a word spinner and star gazer, of no use to them at all’

Question 20

How does Plato explain the influence of society on philosophers?

Answer 20

He describes the philosopher to be ‘carried away with the stream until he finds himself agreeing with the popular ideas’. This is comparable to the impression of the mass media on the individual.

Question 21

How does Plato suggest that the philosopher succeed?

Answer 21

They must ‘ live quietly and keep to themselves’

Question 22

What are the forms?

Answer 22

Eternal truths that are the source of all reality

Question 23

Why does Plato compare ‘the good’ to the sun?

Answer 23

Because like all our awareness of the world is dependent on the sun, all knowledge in the forms is dependent on ‘the good’

Question 24

What are images equal to in epistemology?

Answer 24

Opinion

Question 25

What are objects of sight equivalent to in epistemology?

Answer 25

Belief

Question 26

What are scientific concepts equivalent to in epistemology?

Answer 26

Understanding

Question 27

What are the forms equivalent to in epistemology?

Answer 27

Pure reason

Question 28

What is the highest form of knowledge?

Answer 28

The good

Question 29

Why is knowledge needed?

Answer 29

For justice

Question 30

What is belief compared to?

Answer 30

The visible realm, ordinary physical objects, the reflection of knowledge in the visible world. The transition state between the real and unreal.

Question 31

What is it to be ignorant?

Answer 31

To be a lover of sight, living in the shadow world, dreaming. Focusing on imitations of sensual objects, like the prisoners in the cave

Question 32

What happens in the analogy of the cave?

Answer 32

There are prisoners tied up facing a wall for life who can see shadows of life behind them- they believe that the shadows of objects are real as they have never believed anything else. One prisoner escapes and sees objects and learns that the sun is the source of life and perception. The other prisoners don’t believe him and threaten him if he tries to set them free.

Question 33

What are strengths and weaknesses of the forms?

Answer 33

- S- we can observe our ever changing material world and see knowledge, like maths, remain permanent, like the forms - CA- mathematical fact is learnt from experience rather than the realm of forms- Aristotle - S- it is impossible defeat argument as it defends itself within- any lack of understanding is because we do not have knowledge of the forms - W- hard to know whether understanding of the forms is in fact from experience because a priori- could in fact be one and the same - W- does everything ( negative things, that are not yet discoverable, or perishable) have a form? Do forms derive from individual things or the larger component which they make us? And would there be an overlap between these things? - CA- we cannot know of this until we have knowledge of all things from the forms - W- ‘the good’ implies an absolute morality- so which one? and those who follow a truth surely should have knowledge of all other things, which they don’t