Plato, Ethics Notes and Summary

Plato lived from 428-347 B.C.E.

• One of the most influential early philosophers
• before Plato:
  • Socrates – not as much a teacher as a guy the aristocratic youth hung out with
    • often asked very annoying questions, he was a questioner
    • stone cutter by trade
    • symposium – hang out session where people get drunk and shoot the shit, talk about philosophy
    • a friend of Socrates went to the Oracle at Delphi
      • oracle said “the wisest of men is Socrates”
      • went about finding someone who was wiser than he, from which he could learn
    • wisdom was his goal
      • the path to wisdom involves recognizing ignorance
      • we are all in this quest together and learn from one another
      • “I know” → Q → Q → find ignorance → Q → Q → knowledge/wisdom/truth
    • wisdom is a virtue, a way of being
      • a head of truths doesn't make you wise, a wise person has a truth seeking disposition
      • wisdom is part of character
    • Socratic method/Socratic dialectic – start with a claim of knowledge, encounter its opposite, then out comes wisdom, even if it is about something completely unrelated to the primary subject
    • Socrates was charged with corrupting the youth – really corrupting the aristocratic youth who ended up committing treason
    • Greek aristocracy (free men – the elite)
• Plato
  • kept his distance from Athenian policy, against family
  • founded a school, like a university
  • Aristotle was a student at this school
    • Aristotle then founded his own school
    • Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great
    • encouraged Alexander the Great to not destroy the conquered people's institutions

Euthyphro

• Plato's voice comes through in Euthyphro
• Plato's first crack at answering the big questions
• careful – Socrates in Plato's writings may not always hold the same position as the actual Socrates
• Euthyphro tries to resort to higher authority to show morality – that Zeus killed his father (Euthyphro is putting his father on trial)
• Socrates (in the story) points out that the Gods fight and argue
• discussion of the law turns quickly into a discussion on morality
• Plato attempts to establish right and wrong
  • the law does not necessarily show morality → legal or not legal, not moral or not moral
  • the law can require us to do something that is not moral
• Does one model the Gods?
• Relation between Law and Morality
  • Euthyphro's obligation under law vs. moral obligation
    • the law says that any crime must be reported
    • morality often is such that one is obligated to act for one's family
    • Socrates is surprised that Euthyphro is bringing charges against his father
  • moral position of particularity - “My brother counts more to me than my neighbor”
    • position of Socrates in the story
    • a lot of people are particular about their children – demonstrate favoritism, discretion – your kid led mine astray! Little jonny is a good kid
  • moral position of universality
    • position of Euthyphro
    • if it is right to bring the guilty to justice, then it does not matter who the guilty is, even if it is his own father
  • injustice must be remedied – immediately
    • a just person cannot tolerate injustice
    • this implies that morality is not personal
    • Euthyphro – my father killed somebody; he must be punished
  • Central Problems
    • the objectivity of moral value
    • relativity – dependent on culture, time, place
    • piety, justice → virtue
      • if what is true of piety is true, then it applies to other virtues
    • leads to question of the unity of virtue
      • meta-ethical idea
    • virtue – an excellence of character, a demonstrative property
      • the more one's character is aligned with the 'good', the 'right', the 'true', then the more virtuous one is
      • is it possible to have one virtue without the rest?
      • Is it possible to be just and not be pious? Is it possible to be happy and not just?
      • If you have one, then you have them all
  • For Plato – one must find out what is right and good and then do it; one one has wisdom: knowledge of the truth – and one will not therefore act in a bad way
    • once one has knowledge of the good (knowledge stems from a search for the truth)
    • when one does evil, it is only out of ignorance of what is good
  • in Euthyphro, Socrates wants Euthyphro to be absolutely certain that his actions are
  • creating injustice occurs when a person is ignorant
  • at the end of Plato's books, the good person with their knowledge of justice can do injustice
  • in Euthyphro, Plato is looking for a measure to judge piety – how do we know that this is big and this is small;
    • in this dialogue, he fails
    • if there is no measure for justice, then all you have left are 'the many' (who are troublesome) or the gods (who represent power)
• Central Problem of the Euthyphro
  • X is good
    • b/c it is loved by the gods
  • X is loved by the gods
    • b/c it is good
• Reality understood via senses: known as 'knowledge'
  • for Plato, truth is required for it to be knowledge
    • the senses do not provide access to the truth, because they are not the right tools
    • senses tell us about what is fleeting and temporary
    • Plato says truth is permanent, cannot change
      • so even if I see a barking dog, it is not truth, the best that can be is opinion
• Plato says we can also truly understand reality using out intellect (reason)
  • using reason, we can access Truth
  • there are fundamental properties, forms, that make reality possible
    • ex. go to an art museum, and say, “ah beauty” - Plato says you are not seeing beauty, you are perceiving it by the intellect
    • beautiful things are beautiful because they possess this property of beauty
  • the good is the form that gives meaning to virtues, such as justice, piety
    • ex. somebody saves a baby, one thinks 'good!' - however what you are seeing, your senses, are sensing action; good is deeper, it is a form
  • then Plato believes this:
    X is loved by the gods
    b/c it is good
    • when the good person realizes what they have done, out of ignorance, they respond appropriately
    • anything good is good independently of whether it is loved by anybody or not

Crito

• Crito tries to convince Plato to escape because
  • your a father with children – responsibility, raising children in wisdom
  • you will ruin my reputation – owe it to our friendship, people will think I was too cheap to bribe the guards, have pity/compassion on the reputation of your friends
  • who else will teach the world? - you are one of the only truth seekers in the world
    • his God given purpose of seeking truth will end
  • this conviction is unjust – sure it was legally acceptable (if the law is considered a representation of justice), but the overall thing is unjust, regardless of what the many think
    • Crito things justice is not measured simply by the will of the jury
    • a legal procedure does not guarantee true justice – unjust laws must be resisted by the just person
    • a person concerned with the good has no obligation to comply with unjust laws
      • 'the many' may include
  • Deliberation isn't necessary because if each person is given the same information, there isn't anything else
    • disagreement occurs when some know what justice requires and some have opinions
    • in the Athenian justice system, tried by one's peers (in intelligence) – on the basis of what does being born Athenian make you a peer, that is chance, luck, random according to Plato
• the definition of justice is what determines whether Socrates will escape
• Socrates: p1: ought not to harm parents
  p2: city is like parents
  c: ought not to harm parents
  • p1: city lives by its laws
  • p2: to violate laws is to harm city
  • ought not to violate laws

• p1: escape is a violation of law
• p2: escape would harm city
• c: ought not escape
• the Truth is motivating – once you know it, you wish to do it
  • the real Truth is greater than all doubt, really needs no defense
  • Socrates, in The Apology, hopes this will be what convinces the jury
  • to know something is wrong is to be moved not to do it
  • the laws speak to Socrates – if the laws knew what justice was then the laws would change
  • the jury convicts Socrates out of ignorance
• Socrates: don't blame the jury for the injustice, for they know not what they do
• difference between Socrates and MLK Jr.
  • MLK Jr. does not settle for injustice – he is in a similar position – locked up in an Alabama jail

Plato's Euthyphro, Summary and Explanation

When asked for a third account of piety, Euthyphro states, “the pious is what all the gods love, and its opposite, what all the gods hate, is the impious.”

Euthyphro 9e

Socrates begins the elenchus by asking Euthyphro if piety is loved by the gods simply because it is piety or if something is pious because it is loved by the gods. The resulting conversation ends up in Euthyphro’s agreement to a contradiction in his beliefs.

To help Euthyphro understand his pertinent question, Socrates gets Euthyphro to agree that an affected thing is an affected thing because it has been affected, and that it is not the case that an affected thing is affected because of its being an affected thing.

Euthyphro 10c2

In other words, a thing becomes an affected thing only after it has been affected. An affected thing cannot exist prior to its being affected because the nature of language will not allow it. The word “affected” is past tense, and in being past tense, it is implying that some event has taken place which has left a thing with a new mark, or an affect. Were time not flowing forward, as it seems to, perhaps the affected thing could exist prior to the event which made it an affected thing, but such is not currently the case, at least to my knowledge.

Socrates then helps Euthyphro apply his new understanding of affected things to the topic of love. Euthyphro agrees that a loved thing has been affected by something or another, the action of which has made it a loved thing.

Euthyphro 10c7

At this point it is established that the nature of love is such that it adds a property to the thing it affects, making it a loved thing.

Next Socrates gets Euthyphro to agree to the proposition that the pious is loved by the gods because of its being pious, and that the pious is not pious because it is loved by the gods.

Euthyphro 10d5 

When Euthyphro agrees to this proposition, he presupposes the pious possess two properties which were also inherent to the examples of affected things Socrates has already given him. These implied properties of piety are that the pious must exist before it can be loved by the gods and that the form of piety would be the same whether or not the gods love it. That is to say, the love of the gods does not make the pious pious.

At this point in the conversation, a contradiction is exposed between Euthyphro's beliefs about piety and the account he has given Socrates. The basis of piety cannot necessarily include the property of being that which all the gods love if it is, at the same time, true that the nature of the pious exists independently of the love of all the gods.

In order to maintain his account of piety, namely, that “the pious is what all the gods love, and its opposite, what all the gods hate, is the impious,”

Euthyphro 9e 

Euthyphro could choose to reject Socrates' proposition which assumes the pious is a kind of thing which must be affected into an object. Euthyphro could argue that the definition of the nature of the pious is intertwined with love of all the gods, and as such an action or thing does not become the form of piety as a result of affect. This argument would stop Socrates dead in his tracks.

Euthyphro could then help Socrates understand that piety is not the kind of thing which always produces the same actions. That is to say, the piousness of an action is judged from the point of view of an individual god or a group of godly observers. Because being pious is being loved by the gods, and the gods are fickle, the pious person must be dynamic. At this point, the conversation may shift to whether pious is actually a desirable way to be.

Euthyphro’s deeper issue is that he gives up every time Socrates finds a contraction. Euthyphro may be on to something, but because he is either poorly equipped with logic, uninterested, or perhaps less motivated than Socrates, so he eventually gets so agitated he must leave before the conversation is finished. Perhaps if Euthyphro not so intent on appearing wise, they may have uncovered the true form of piety.

Comparison of Plato and Martin Luther King Jr philosophy

In Euthyphro, Plato's characters converse in attempt to determine whether there can be a universal measure in determining the virtue of piety. In this dialogue, the men agree that there is a certain unity of the virtues; that all virtues are tied together. As such, Socrates and Euthyphro's dialogue indirectly addresses the issue of whether there is a universal measure for morality in general (because it is moral to be virtuous). At the end of the dialogue, this is left unanswered.
In Crito, Plato's characters are in agreement that, “We are never intentionally to do wrong...that injustice is always an evil and dishonour to him who acts unjustly.” Though simple, this is nonetheless an answer to the question raised in Euthyphro. Based on this measure of morality, an act merely is pious if it is made with pious intention. Here is the universal measure, and it is short and to the point. So in determining whether Euthyphro is acting piously by prosecuting his father for murder, one needs only to determine if Euthyphro is acting with pious intention. According to the dialogue, Euthyphro initially believes his action is pious, else he would not have become drawn into a discussion about the nature of piety with Socrates. Therefore, Euthyphro's actions are pious.
“We are never intentionally to do wrong,” serves as an excellent moral measure for the virtuous individual, though it can be amended to be a more precise determiner of morality. In Plato's dialogue, “we must do no wrong,” is agreed upon by the characters, to which they induce, “...nor when injured, injure in return...for we must injure no one at all.” A direct relation between injury, or harm, and wrong is made here.
The word 'wrong' should be replaced with the word 'harm' in Plato's moral measure. If it is not initially interchangeable, true 'wrong' in its most basic understanding is either causally preceded or succeeded by harm. One should take note that harm in itself is not wrong; harm is a very subjective term. To intentionally produce harm, as a singular or primary motive, is the only real wrong.
As such, if the nature of right and wrong lies in the containment of harmful intention, morality is a matter of the point of view of the actor at the moment of the act.
Immediately after hearing this, one must remark on the subjectivity of such a moral measure. This is one of the strengths of Plato's measure, however, because other moral measures, especially at the time, such as relying on the judgment of the many, ultimately result in immoral or robot-like action. Freedom of will is a strength of 'do no intentional harm.'
An interesting facet of 'do no intentional harm' as a moral measure is very different, even opposite actions can be taken and both can be moral, as long as the person who is doing the action is doing so without purposeful harmful intention. A mother could use spanking as punishment one day, then a month later switch to rewarding her child's positive behavior while giving no attention to unhealthy behavior. Both stances on child rearing are morally right at the time they are used, because the mother's primary intention is to raise a respectful child, even if the former practice is physically harmful to the child. This moral measure allows the individual room to grow and improve the basis of their personal morality.
Though truly an excellent measure of personal morality when adopted on a individual basis, 'do no intentional harm' would have much difficulty being put into political practice. The past has not shown personal accountability to be a strong human trait in the whole of society. Without some sort of enforcement, it would be very difficult to get murderers, rapists or thieves to admit that their motives were to intentionally harm, when they could easily lie about their intentions. With a 'do no intentional harm' constitution, it would be likely impossible to impose any physical laws regarding conduct without contradicting the freedom of action Plato's premise requires. In any existing society, laws inevitably come out out of a need to hold accountable those who are compelled to act immorally. As there is no known way to prove intention, this moral measure would soon break down. No society is of yet ready to handle this responsibility.
In Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail, he addresses a group of fellow clergymen who did not agree with a peaceful march protesting segregation. King's ideology is poured out through this letter. His account of justice is as follows:
“Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”
This premise concisely sums up King's moral code. It proves to be a more tangible measure of morality than 'do no intentional harm.' It may not allow for as much free action as a 'do no intentional harm,' but King's premise is highly applicable to society and law. Even if the majority of a population is not accountable enough to act morally, as such was the case when King wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail and Plato wrote his dialogues, the morality measure is still strong enough to keep those immoral in check. Laws can be built from King's premise on justice. It does not matter here what the motives behind an action are, so long as the result of the action brings about an uplift in the human personality.
In the case of segregation, King stated, “It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.” Clearly this is degrading of human personality. Under Plato's measure 'do no intentional harm,' segregation could be morally permissible. Many Southern whites still honestly believed black people were less intelligent, dangerous, less civilized and overall less capable then their white counterparts. Operating on this belief, segregation made sense to them at that time in order to preserve the integrity of their 'race.' The primary motivation of these Southern whites, in allowing segregation, could have been for the good of their community. The harm done to their black neighbors, if they were aware of it, could have been an unfortunate result of their primary motive. Thus, from a white person's point of view at that particular moment, there was nothing morally wrong with segregation. Plato's moral measure falls short as a political ideology.

Critique of Euthyphro, Crito, & Letter from Birmingham Jail: Mixed Platonic Ethics

In Euthyphro, Plato's characters converse in attempt to determine whether there can be a universal measure in determining the virtue of piety. In this dialogue, the men agree that there is a certain unity of the virtues; that all virtues are tied together. As such, Socrates and Euthyphro's dialogue indirectly addresses the issue of whether there is a universal measure for morality in general (because it is moral to be virtuous). At the end of the dialogue, this is left unanswered.

In Crito, Plato's characters are in agreement that, “We are never intentionally to do wrong...that injustice is always an evil and dishonour to him who acts unjustly.” Though simple, this is nonetheless an answer to the question raised in Euthyphro. Based on this measure of morality, an act merely is pious if it is made with pious intention. Here is the universal measure, and it is short and to the point. So in determining whether Euthyphro is acting piously by prosecuting his father for murder, one needs only to determine if Euthyphro is acting with pious intention. According to the dialogue, Euthyphro initially believes his action is pious, else he would not have become drawn into a discussion about the nature of piety with Socrates. Therefore, Euthyphro's actions are pious.

“We are never intentionally to do wrong,” serves as an excellent moral measure for the virtuous individual, though it can be amended to be a more precise determiner of morality. In Plato's dialogue, “we must do no wrong,” is agreed upon by the characters, to which they induce, “...nor when injured, injure in return...for we must injure no one at all.” A direct relation between injury, or harm, and wrong is made here.

The word 'wrong' should be replaced with the word 'harm' in Plato's moral measure. If it is not initially interchangeable, true 'wrong' in its most basic understanding is either causally preceded or succeeded by harm. One should take note that harm in itself is not wrong; harm is a very subjective term. To intentionally produce harm, as a singular or primary motive, is the only real wrong.

As such, if the nature of right and wrong lies in the containment of harmful intention, morality is a matter of the point of view of the actor at the moment of the act.

Immediately after hearing this, one must remark on the subjectivity of such a moral measure. This is one of the strengths of Plato's measure, however, because other moral measures, especially at the time, such as relying on the judgment of the many, ultimately result in immoral or robot-like action. Freedom of will is a strength of 'do no intentional harm.'

An interesting facet of 'do no intentional harm' as a moral measure is very different, even opposite actions can be taken and both can be moral, as long as the person who is doing the action is doing so without purposeful harmful intention. A mother could use spanking as punishment one day, then a month later switch to rewarding her child's positive behavior while giving no attention to unhealthy behavior. Both stances on child rearing are morally right at the time they are used, because the mother's primary intention is to raise a respectful child, even if the former practice is physically harmful to the child. This moral measure allows the individual room to grow and improve the basis of their personal morality.

Though truly an excellent measure of personal morality when adopted on a individual basis, 'do no intentional harm' would have much difficulty being put into political practice. The past has not shown personal accountability to be a strong human trait in the whole of society. Without some sort of enforcement, it would be very difficult to get murderers, rapists or thieves to admit that their motives were to intentionally harm, when they could easily lie about their intentions. With a 'do no intentional harm' constitution, it would be likely impossible to impose any physical laws regarding conduct without contradicting the freedom of action Plato's premise requires. In any existing society, laws inevitably come out out of a need to hold accountable those who are compelled to act immorally. As there is no known way to prove intention, this moral measure would soon break down. No society is of yet ready to handle this responsibility.

In Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail, he addresses a group of fellow clergymen who did not agree with a peaceful march protesting segregation. King's ideology is poured out through this letter. His account of justice is as follows:

“Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

This premise concisely sums up King's moral code. It proves to be a more tangible measure of morality than 'do no intentional harm.' It may not allow for as much free action as a 'do no intentional harm,' but King's premise is highly applicable to society and law. Even if the majority of a population is not accountable enough to act morally, as such was the case when King wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail and Plato wrote his dialogues, the morality measure is still strong enough to keep those immoral in check. Laws can be built from King's premise on justice. It does not matter here what the motives behind an action are, so long as the result of the action brings about an uplift in the human personality.

In the case of segregation, King stated, “It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.” Clearly this is degrading of human personality. Under Plato's measure 'do no intentional harm,' segregation could be morally permissible. Many Southern whites still honestly believed black people were less intelligent, dangerous, less civilized and overall less capable then their white counterparts. Operating on this belief, segregation made sense to them at that time in order to preserve the integrity of their 'race.' The primary motivation of these Southern whites, in allowing segregation, could have been for the good of their community. The harm done to their black neighbors, if they were aware of it, could have been an unfortunate result of their primary motive. Thus, from a white person's point of view at that particular moment, there was nothing morally wrong with segregation. Plato's moral measure falls short as a political ideology.