thinkthinkfeel

[kimberkit]

So, a rambly, chatty post. I've been reading Sophie's World lately (it was popular years ago, and essentially it's a story of the history of some of the major philosophers). I'm just up to the section on Plato.

Now, when I first read Plato's Republic, at age 16, I thought that Plato must have been a completely totalitarian fascist. He wanted a world ruled by the intelligentsia -- because it was only the intelligent who could perceive ideal forms, and who could rule wisely. Er, to back up for a second, the idea is that everything has an ideal form -- that somewhere, in looking at a flower, there must be an ideal conception of a flower. In looking at hundreds of gingerbread cookies, there must be an ideal shape for a gingerbread cookie.

Coming back to Plato now, though, I'm not so sure he's completely off his rocker about ideal forms. Surely there must be an ideal, if different, shape for different humans; surely there exists a perfect shape for what things should be.

I guess the problem for me, back then and now, is that I wonder whether we can really find that ideal shape purely through intellect. How can it be that only philosophers think that there's an ideal? How can only philosophers have a monopoly on how the world should run? A carpenter, shaping things every day with his hands, surely knows that there is an ideal shape for whatever it is he's making. And the same with other trades. I think we find our ideals by searching with our hearts, and with practice and interaction with the world.

I'm sure I'm going to get corrected by someone-or-other on my facts. Fire away, people :)

Comments

[jul3z.livejournal.com]

what about the ideal shape being in the dna? every cell knows what it should be like to form the perfect body/animal/flower/etc, although it doesn't always get it right. that would make it material rather than conceptual.

Sophie's World is my all-time favourite book, btw. I'm on my second book now because the first one got read so much by so many people that it fell apart while the current borrower had it in China.

[aussie-nyc.livejournal.com]

Which also means that there are millions of ideals floating around, all a little different from one another and gradually evolving. (Oooh, how did that word get in there?)

When I was younger I had this romantic notion that there would be just one brief moment when I was my ideal self. All grown up and at maximum musculature, but just before I started truly aging. But of course the grey hair set in before my acne disappeared, and... yeah. There's a lot of clocks in there keeping time, not just one master chronometer.

[jul3z.livejournal.com]

hehe you're just so eager to get to Darwin and we've only just gotten out of Greece!

so your conceptual ideal self was different than the material ideal self? so then does that mean that material reigns over concepts since we can't will ourselves to be ideal, we can only hope that we have the genetic stuffs to get us there?

[aussie-nyc.livejournal.com]

You could make that case. Or, perhaps more optimistically, you could see a four dimensional ideal: the lifetime of me, not just a frozen moment.

[jul3z.livejournal.com]

ah, but then the self is no longer a solitary unit because the lifetime view would have to take into account experiences and other external influences. so does the ideal take these things into account? because with a lifetime view of an ideal self, that starts to look like destiny.

[aussie-nyc.livejournal.com]

I speak merely in general, physical terms. A growing of height, then a gradual shrinking. A growth of hair, greying, disappearing. Eyesight becoming keener, then less so. Skin clearing to apparent flawlessness until it begins to discolour. One's experiences may alter this flow, certainly, but that would be a deviation (small or great) from the apparent ideal, which would involve a certain balance in nutrition and exercise and sleep and daylight and whatnot that helps the human form thrive.

[ultiville.livejournal.com]

See, the problem here is that Plato has this concept of *a single ideal* that seems to me to have been deeply harmful, especially contrasted with some of the earlier Greek ideas having much more to do with looking at the totality of a life, etc, etc. Here's the problem: if you're a Platonist in this sense, it seems to me that you can't care about meaningful diversity. There's an ideal which we all participate in/aspire to. We achieve it to a greater or lesser extent, but if we were all to succeed, we'd all be (fundamentally) the same. We might want to say some things aren't included (though Plato wouldn't, I suspect) but we couldn't say that any of them are *morally relevant* (if we're talking about the form of the good). In other words, if we're Platonists, the methods we use to come to our moral conclusions don't matter at all, just whatever it is we end up doing, and if I'm wiser than you, I can say not only, "I wouldn't behave like that" but also "neither should you".

Of course, any civilized society needs some cases where someone can say that, and all of us are perfectly justified in saying that to people from time to time. Also, the idea of trying to conform to a form gives the idea of striving, change, and progress that, I think, is very good. But if you're going for the idea that what you're striving for is a single pinnacle state rather than something more complex, then you, by implication if nothing else, are dedicated to the idea that success is an important kind of sameness, rather than the idea that just as there are many ways to fail to be morally successful, there may be many ways to succeed...

But of course, some of this is my reaction to Plato's legacy, which has been overwhealmingly reductionist in this sense.

[osirusbrisbane.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, this reminds me of Tolstoy's "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

The carpenter analogy reminds me of that quote "Carving a dolphin is easy. You just take a big block and carve away anything that doesn't look like a dolphin."

But I'll say this: I think ideal forms may well have to be grasped through intellect alone if you're looking for the ideal ideal forms and not merely the ideal possible forms. Finding the latter likely involves some dickering with the world to establish the borders of possibility, whereas it seems to me that the former should be unburdened by such constraints.

[renaissancekat.livejournal.com]

A carpenter, shaping things every day with his hands, surely knows that there is an ideal shape for whatever it is he's making. And the same with other trades. I think we find our ideals by searching with our hearts, and with practice and interaction with the world.

I think that is a lovely and beautiful sentiment. I agree. :>

[yoda4554.livejournal.com]

I may be wrong, but the notion of the philosopher-king is one who attempts to understand the ideal of absolutely everything, systematically, and thus can best understand the world as a whole. Thus, there's nothing to say that a carpenter can't understand the ideal of what he's making, just that his scope is limited.

I also disagree with the ideal on principle, but arguing the inverse position (which I do from time to time) does lead towards denying the existence of things like physical laws.

Of course, I think it's questionable how seriously The Republic is intended. Socrates always liked taking logic as far afield as possible, and there are a number of very bizarre conclusions reached in that book. It's been a couple years since I've read it, so I can't quite quote all of them off-hand, but the "noble lie" and the banishment of most of the arts seem nearly satiric (particularly given Plato's own obsession with Homer).

[jesebelle.livejournal.com]

there's also the theory of the psychologist who claim there is more than just one kind of intelligence. There was the Reading, Writing, And 'Rithmetic (sp? ack, oh well), but there were something like six other forms of intelligence. Anyhoo, just a burp from the neighborhood Jesebelle.