Parmenides: The One

I would like to continue this discussion about the forms and this description of “the one” in Parmenides. First, I would like to conclude that the forms and “the one” are the same thing because the context seems to imply that this is the case even though it is not explicit despite the passage that seems to separate the two things. However, in making this conclusion, as brought up in class, how do we explain that more than one thing can embody the same form if it (the form) is one and cannot be divided? Could we offer the conclusion that more than one thing is a reflection of a form but does not acquire an actual piece of that form? Or should we go with Socrates' theory of the sunlight? Or should we conclude the theory of the sail that was proposed in the text? I would like to propose my personal theory that I just mentioned regarding a reflection. Perhaps each form is like a mirror. A mirror is able to reflect multiple different things at one time without being divided. Also, in terms of being in parts or being a whole, the mirror analogy also fits well. I would like to argue that forms do not have parts. Forms, like a mirror, do not require to be in parts to reflect, or to embody multiple things.

Now, in terms of "the one" being in neither in rest or in motion as discussed in Parmenides, how does that come to be is the big question. One automatically assumes that if something is not in rest, then it is in motion, and if it is not in motion, then it is in rest. It seems that it is only two options here and no between. However, maybe one could suggest that it is in this state of becoming in which it was in this state of rest and is becoming in motion, or it was in motion and is becoming at rest. In other words, it is in neither rest or motion because it is in its becoming stage. However, there is never any indication by the text that it will ever reach a state of rest or motion, so if we go with my theory, then the one will always remain in the becoming stages of being in motion or in rest.

What can Parmenides tell us about Being?

What can Parminedes tell us about being? He offers a description and gives a few arguments. He argues that being is eternal and being cannot come into being and also that it cannot go out of being. Being cannot come into being because the problem would then become where did it come from. So if being were to come into being then it would have to come from something that is not being. And also, what is non being? Parminedes says that non being cannot be a concept. Another thing is that being cannot go out of being because then where would it go? I think that this is where Parmenides gets his concept of eternal from.

Parmenides also claims that being is indivisible, that it cannot be divided into parts. Being is one, according to Parmenides. If being were to have parts then we would have to say that this one thing is a part of being and this other thing is a part of being, etc. I mean, with the example from my hand on my body. I know that my hand is different than my foot, right? My hand is not my foot. But with being this concept is difficult because we cannot say something like “not being” because Parmenides rules out the concept of not being. From this Parminedes concludes that being is one.

From this I am assuming that Parmenides is referring to reality being one. I think Parmenides is a genius.

Theory about Plato

I was thinking that maybe the reason why Plato never answers any of his questions in a more direct manner is because he does not want to influence our answers. While he tries to teach us the right way to think about a topic and guide us towards certain topics worth exploring, he does not impose us his ideologies. Reading his works separately I will admit is not an easy task; relating them under one umbrella however, for me particularly, make all his ideas more sensible.

While Plato seems to specifically dissect the human soul in the republic; I have come to believe that most of his works have one specific goal to analyze the different parts of human nature, and to help individually define who we are. The books that we’ve covered thus far examined virtue, perception, justice etc; they all have a common thread and its man’s true nature.

Is it possible that Plato knew the answers to the questions he sought? Is it possible that he did not answer them to give our own conclusion a sense of individuality? I know of course that it is probably a possibility I’d be grateful to know why exactly it would be a plausible theory?

Plato: Godfather of Soul

I believe that at this point, I could portray fairly accurately the model of the soul for Socrates. Firstly, the soul is immortal, unable to be broken, and exists in an immaterial sense. It is the master of the body (not vice-versa), yet can still be influenced by bodily pleasures. It leaves the body upon death (in a sense, it causes the death of the body and causes the life of a new body) and goes into the realm of forms where it commutes with all forms and gains all possible knowledge. Aside from all of this, I am interested as to where the soul originated.

In the Timeaus, there are two accounts given of the creation of earth: the first account is that of the Intellectual and the second account being that of Necessity.  I am particularly curious about the second account's claim that there are three things that existed even before the universe existed (out of necessity): being, becoming, and space. I am curious as to how the soul would exist in one of these three conditions if it were to exist before the universe came to be* (for lack of a better word). If the soul were to exist as being, then it would be unable to change; that is, it wouldn't change from one body to the next, or change from the material realm to the form realm. If the soul were to exist as becoming, it is necessary that it would always be changing and becoming. This condition would render the soul as being made and then destroyed constantly if this cycle were to come close to being in the infinite nature of the soul. But this wouldn't be the same soul in a sense, it would be a new soul created and destroyed each time. Yet, surely, the soul doesn't exist in space which is to be understand as simply the place for something to be or become.

If I am to salvage the image of the soul for me, I'm left to consider a few new possibilities: a) the soul might not be immortal, b) the soul has a part that is immortal and a part that isn't immortal (one part that is being and another part that is becomming), or c) the soul came after the universe was made. In the nature of Socrates, I wish to maintain that the soul is immortal; however, I wish to shine light on the fact that Socrates has proposed a model of the soul that contained different parts that were constituted an entire soul. Perhaps, in a sense, it is possible to present this model altered for our purposes. Perhaps the soul is that which is composed of both being and becoming at once; that is, perhaps it has a certain nature of actualization (to coin Aristotle) and a nature of potentiality. The soul would have two distinct parts that constitute a sense of worldly being that is constantly becoming something new so as to correspond to the world in flux and it would have a part that always is the same and doesn't change to the world. To think of this graphically, the part of being (not changing) would be like the center with the part of becoming (changing) on the outside.
Yet, even with this model, I'm afraid that more problems arise; is it possible to both be and to also become? If this is so, there would be no necessity for the soul to enter the body to be its master (if it has the power to actualize all at once with no body).

Final thought: the soul of the world must have come after the universe existed, or at the same time by both necessity and by wordily definition. If the soul of the world came after the universe existed, then it seems to follow by sub-alternation that the souls of people came afterward as well.

Families

I want to talk about the subject in 18d of the Timaeus reading when they were talking about the procreation of children. This subject was odd for me because Timaeus and Socrates said that they agreed that everyone should have spouses and that things should be put into place that hinder people from recognizing his or her own child. Also, everything would be set up so that everyone would look at each other as family. To me, this sounds like some kind of communist way of thinking. I can’t imagine why they would agree that this system of raising families would possibly be sufficient. In my opinion, this would be the worst system because it would prevent everyone from knowing what a real family is. How could this system possibly work?

Forms and Creativity

In Phaedo, Plato discusses his theory on forms. He argues that forms hold the true meaning of things in themselves. For instance, Plato speaks about beauty. He says,

[I]f someone tells me that a thing is beautiful because it has a bright color or shape or any such thing, I ignore these other reasons--for all these confuse me--...that nothing else makes it beautiful other than the presence of, or the sharing in, or however you may describe its relationship to that Beautiful we mentioned, for I will not insist on the precise nature of the relationship, but that all beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful. ...[I]t is through Beauty that beautiful things are made beautiful (Plato 100d-100e).

Plato is arguing that when we apply the term beautiful to an object, we explain this by verbalizing how it exemplifies beauty in describes the characteristic of that thing. However, only the form of beauty can exemplify what beauty is in itself absent from material objects. Also, in relation to the forms, Plato uses the example of height. Plato argues that we become tall after being short in terms of the theory of opposites; however, based on the theory of forms, tallness does not derive from shortness. Tallness is a form that already exists and is separate from shortness. Plato implies that new forms cannot be made instead they are merely discovered. In The Courage to Create, Plato’s theory fits in perfectly with Rollo May’s definition of the courage to create which is “the discovering of new forms” (May 21). So, perhaps, to be creative does not mean one is creating something purely and entirely new, but one is simply discovering something new that no one else has seen. A true artist is able to tap into the realm of the forms and come back bearing gifts of new discoveries. Plato argues that only the soul is able to experience the universe of forms, and to do so, the soul has to be separated from the body. If Plato’s theory is true, then it is as if artists are capable of out of body experiences, and these experiences provide us with art.

May, Rollo. The Courage to Create. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994. Print.

Phaedo and Cratylus

In Phaedo, Socrates claims that a true philosopher should not be afraid of death but should look forward to it. For, in death, the soul is separated from the body, and this separation from the body allows the soul to obtain true knowledge through reason. Socrates argues that the body is incapable of obtaining true knowledge because its senses are deceiving, and according to Socrates, “the soul reasons best when none of these senses troubles it” (Phaedo 65c). Socrates claims that the body is unable to understand things in themselves. The soul is only capable of achieving this. For example, the term “beautiful” in itself cannot be explored by the senses of the body. The body is capable of applying this term to objects saying, “this painting is beautiful because of the arrangement of colors,” but the body is not able to adequately explore the term “beautiful” absent of an object. However, the soul has the ability to examine the term “beautiful” in itself.

This theory that Plato introduces in Phaedo mirrors the theory of names that is presented Cratylus. Plato argues that in obtaining knowledge, or an understanding about something, one should not seek for this knowledge in the object’s name but in the object itself. Now, in the Cratylus, Socrates not does provide a means of achieving this. He claims that this process of gaining true knowledge of an object with the absence of the object’s name is “too large a topic” to be discussed. Well, I am proposing that this theory that is proposed in Phaedo is precisely the answer of how to obtain knowledge about an object absent of its name--you achieve this through the soul.

Da soul and da philosopher's profession

In the Phaedo dialogue, Plato brings up some serious speculation about souls and the afterlife. I say “serious speculation”, not because the subject matter is serious (although it is) but because the arguments and reasoning used by Plato is highly conjectural. For example, Socrates makes use of an old legend in order to state that the “living come into being again from the dead” (pg. 53, 70d). This eventually leads to his “opposites from opposites” argument, which I think everybody thought was ridiculous in class. This is important to note because I find it really interesting how Socrates says “true philosophers make dying their profession, and that to them of all men death is least alarming” (pg. 50, 67e). I’m wondering how the philosopher’s profession could primarily be about a topic that is so indefinite. Philosophy to me seems to be about knowledge, and the philosopher’s profession would be one that pertains to a bit more certainty and conclusiveness than Plato suggests here. However a thing that is entailed in the philosopher’s preparation for death is the nourishment of the soul through doing philosophy, and doing philosophy in of itself has a definite degree of certainty. The only uncertainty is in terming the philosopher’s profession as one of dying and/or preparing for death.

Also, I think Plato would regard the soul as being something more animate and alive, rather than ethereal and mysterious. An example of this would be when he is talking about how the philosopher “frees his soul from association with the body” (pg. 47, 65a). This implies that the soul is a living thing because only living things can be trapped and/or freed. A further example is just in the length of his discussion of the soul. He talks about it a lot, which probably shows that he does not regard it as something beyond his comprehension.

Using Phaedo to Define a Soul

I am going to focus on the discussion in Phaedo that starts at 77b about how the soul can continue to exist after the body has died. By this point Socrates has already established a soul that exists before the body and is used to enable individuals to think they are learning new information, they actually are recalling information that their soul had access to before it was confined to a body.

Throughout 78 and 79 Socrates argues that there are two kinds of substances in the world, the visible and the invisible. He defines the invisible as being noncomposite and unchanging. While at first he just makes the case that forms are in the invisible category he quickly groups souls along with the invisible category. This categorization quickly becomes a problem because Socrates then tries to distinguish different kinds of souls from one another. In doing so he sets up a system of how the soul is supposed to interact with the body. For Socrates the greater the impact the body has on the soul the worse it is for the soul and the soul becomes weighted down and can therefore not reach the level of the forms after death and instead is reincarnated as either an animal or if the individual was good enough a human. In making it so that a soul can inhabit bodies of different species Socrates is making a statement about the nature of the soul. This means that the soul does not have anything to do with reason since that differs on a species basis. This also means that the soul does not contain the inner monologue that an individual has since not all species are capable of language (the inner monologue depends upon language).

As mentioned earlier Socrates thinks that the more of an impact the body has on a soul the more weighed down the soul becomes. This is a problem because of Socrates earlier categorization of souls with the invisible, unchanging, and noncomposite beings. Having the soul in this category was important for Socrates because many people in his time believed that when you died your soul dissipated like a breath and could fade away.

What you end up with is a soul that does not have memory of anything besides forms (because of how language is connected to memory and language is species based), that cannot reason, that does not maintain an inner dialogue, that is weakened by the attachment of a body, and that may or may not be in the same category as forms. Even if the soul is in the same category as forms and is thus unchanging, what you are left with is at most some basic features of the soul as a sort of guiding principle (as discussed in the Republic) that may contain key personality traits (since people become animals that they resemble in personality). I doubt this form of a soul, with so little left to its name, would be much comfort to anyone as a form of eternal life.

Is Plato still relevant today?

Plato, through the spokesperson of Socrates, makes many assumptions about the world and how it operates, both physically and metaphysically. In Phaedo, Socrates is determined to prove the immortality of the soul and his Theory of Recollection. Mixed in all of this is his discussion about Forms. While Socrates’ theories might have been applicable over two thousand years ago, are they still applicable now?

When Socrates discusses sight, for him, the eyes emit light and they observe things, something we know to be false. Similarly, we know what color consists of, it is the wavelengths in the spectrum of light, a concept unfamiliar to Socrates. Another major issue is his belief in the immortality and reincarnation of the soul. While the concept of immortality of the soul is still an on-going discussion today, there are several flaws with his belief in the reincarnation of souls as it applies to his (completely baffling) Theory of Opposites. If souls are immortal and reincarnated, then there must be an infinite minus one number of souls, or else there would be no room for population growth. However, this still seems to contradict Socrates’ Theory of Opposites, which is all about balance. If that many souls exist, then those that are currently “dead” or not in a current incarnation, would vastly outnumber the amount of “living” souls, and the imbalance would have been even greater in the time of Socrates.

Secondly, I am still not convinced by Socrates’ Theory of Recollection. If all knowledge is already there in the soul and we must simply “remember” it by asking the right questions and pursuing philosophy, there where is the room for innovation and invention? How can a society make strides in new technology, or fiction exist as a genre of literature? Unless there is a Form for imagination that is unlimited (but I’m still not entirely sure how that would work) space travel and each alien species created in the imagination would prove this theory wrong.

If all of this is true, then is Socrates' theories only valid if applied to his socio-cultural environment? Does his philosophy exist in a temporal vacuum limited to Ancient Greece? If not, then how do his concepts of the world hold up to all the knowledge and advancements in today’s society?