Plato and Socrates

Can evil befall a good person?

I. Historical background

A. “Modern” ideas in 5^th-century Athens

1. The playwrights: embracing ambiguities

2. The Sophists: “man is the measure of all things,” no higher truth

B. Plato and Socrates in 5^th/4^th centuries

1. Teach that there is a Truth (“The True, the Good, the Beautiful”)

2. Socrates’ relations with other Athenians

a. “Gadfly”

b. Teacher of youths, incl. some who became traitors

3. Plato’s Academy

C. Philosophy after Plato and Socrates

1. Aristotle

2. Neo-platonism

3. Influence on Roman and Christian thought

4. Renaissance (16^th/17^th centuries AD): revival of interest in Plato and Aristotle

II. Key points of Platonic thought

A. The ascent to wisdom

1. Moving from fantasies to practical understanding (deductive)

2. Above practical understanding: grasping abstract concepts (inductive, not from the material world)

3. Above abstract concepts: the “forms,” then “The Good, True, Beautiful”

B. The duty to lead others to wisdom

C. The just society

1. Justice: “giving each man what is his”

2. Goal of leaders: bringing people to the good

D. The just person

1. Fully realized, possessing not goods but the good

2. Just behavior ß possession of the good

3. Can evil come to such a person?

a. Deprivation?

b. Death?