Lecture 06 Notes

The Pieces Come Together

I.    An Illustrated Overview of the Structure of Plato's Society
II.   The Education of Rulers and the Supremacy of Good

I.    An Illustrated Overview of the Structure of Plato's Society

II.   The Education of the Rulers and the Supremacy of the Good

A.   Maintaining the Good Society

• The burden of maintaining a good society falls most heavily on rulers. What qualities should they have? What subjects should they study?  Should they possess commercial skill like Donald Trump?  Should they possess military skills like Colin Powell?
  
• Plato argues that rulers should be those in whom the intellect predominates. It is they who:

1. Legislate to control the appetites of the rabble, those who are interested in commerce.
2. Structure the education of the military so that they know what to fear.

• In other words, their job is to make people like Donald Trump and Colin Powell good.

B.   The Object of Knowledge or Who Learns What

• Note first an important distinction between the work of rulers and the work of military and commercial classes:

1. Those in the military and commercial classes learn how to perform their craft or skill.
2. Those in the ruling class learn how to teach them to perform; how to make laws that teach others to do these things well.

• Therefore, there will be an important difference between the education of rulers and the education of the members of other two classes.

• What is this difference?  The difference, say Plato and Socrates, is that the objects of knowledge differ.  The ruler's knowledge has different objects than the others in society.
• When we begin to think about Plato's view of knowledge, we begin to encounter his Theory of Forms, perhaps the theory for which he is best known.
• Example: Throwing a Football: What is it to know about throwing a football?  There are two features:

1. Knowing how to throw a beautiful pass.
2. Knowing what makes the pass a beautiful one.

• On the one hand, to know (1), one must know how to spin the ball off of one's fingers, the precise point at which to release, how to judge the distance to the receiver, as well as the receiver’s speed.  In other words, not much abstract thought is required: all that one needs to know is that one should throw the ball to the receiver at a particular time.
  
• On the other hand, to know (2), one must know what makes an ideal pass a beautiful one and how an ideally thrown ball behaves.  This requires knowing sophisticated math.  Moreover, one must be able to judge how this particular pass compares to an ideally thrown one.  In other words, one needs to have sophisticated aesthetic appreciation and be able to apply abstract concepts to concrete situations.
  
• Clearly the distinction between knowing (1) and (2) can be applied to other areas of knowledge, including: art, music, and sculpture. Plato and Socrates apply it to all crafts and jobs in a good society, including soldiering, carpentry, seamanship, and medicine.  All can be done beautifully, such that beautiful products are made.
• We are therefore drawing an important distinction between:

1. Knowing how to perform these crafts well: having certain skills, applying them to particular circumstances.  This does not entail much abstract thought.
2. Knowing what makes a given performance good, beautiful, knowing the ideals which particular performances instantiate.  This entails reasoning about abstract concepts.

• Therefore, for all jobs in good society, there are two kinds of knowledge.  What distinguishes these two kinds of knowledge is that they are of different objects.  Knowledge of type (1) is of particulars while knowledge of type (2) is of ideals.
  

• Plato ascribes to these ideals, which he calls the forms a number of properties:
• • ETERNAL
  • UNCHANGEABLE
  • INDEPENDENTLY EXISTING
  • OBJECTS OF KNOWLEDGE
  • RESEMBLED BY PARTICULAR OBJECTS
  • RESEMBLANCE CAUSES THINGS TO BE WHAT THEY ARE