Peter Vardy - The Puzzle of Ethics

The philosopher, then, is the person who has freed himself or been freed from the prison of appearance and has begun to see things as they really are. To such a person all the things that this world values so highly will be of no importance. If he or she tries to communicate them to others (who are still locked in the prison of the cave) the response will not be gratitude but rather anger or resentment. Most people will be content with the dance of shadows, they will be content with appearances and will reject the philosophic path.

Plato was preoccupied with the distinction between appearance and reality – reality is difficult to discern and one has to pierce through the shadows of appearance to arrive at the reality that lies beyond (C. S. Lewis sometimes talks in these terms and the title of the play Shadowlands about his relationship with his wife is based on essentially Platonic ideas). We can see from the parable of the Cave that Plato thinks the task of the individual is to leave the darkness of the cave represented by our ignorance and to come out into the light of the Sun – which represents the Form of the Good. The philosopher should be the person who has done this and who can see reality as it is.

iii) Justice and goodness

Socrates took a practical attitude to ethics – he was concerned with the question of how an individual should live in order to achieve happiness. Happiness is perhaps the best translation for the Greek word Socrates used which was eudaimonia but it is still inadequate as the Greek word has more to do with an individual having that which is desirable in the form of behaviour rather than simply living what he or she considers is a fulfilled life. Warm toes in front of the television screen is not an adequate understanding of eudaimonia ! Indeed Plato and Socrates specifically reject the idea that ‘The Good’ can be defined in terms of pleasure. It is worth remembering that Socrates died for what he believed in which would scarcely fit with the conventional understanding of happiness.

For Plato, for a person to act justly means having the three parts of their personality in proper balance:

wisdom which comes from reason;

courage which comes from the spirited part of man and

self-control which rules the passions.

So a person cannot be just without being wise, brave and self-controlled – and only if this balance is maintained will a person be happy. Plato’s argument in favour of this last point rests on the claim that happiness depends on internal mental states. This seems an odd definition of justice (even from the individual’s point of view) as it defines justice in terms of a person’s mental states and not in terms of how we treat other people – although Plato would maintain that if the proper balance is maintained within each individual, then they would treat other people correctly.

Plato held that justice in the state mirrored justice in an individual (or, to put it another way, justice writ large in the state is analogous to justice writ small in the individual). In a just state the various parts co-operate harmoniously in their proper roles, just as, in an individual, the various faculties should also work together. The individual must rule himself, but state government is needed by properly trained philosopher-guardians, who are carefully educated and are not motivated by self-interest, to ensure that the proper balance essential to justice is maintained. If the majority of people live in the cave in the shadows of ignorance, they would not be in the best position to govern the state in the way it should be governed.

Plato was strongly opposed to democracy, as this gives power to the greatest number of people, because what the greatest number think may well not be correct. The mass of people are also easily swayed by rhetoric – as Socrates found to his cost when rhetoric persuaded the Athenian population to condemn him to death. Given the ease with which politicans and advertising can sway large groups of people today, Plato’s suspicion of democracy should, perhaps, be given more weight than it often is, although the dangers of those who think they know best and who decide to impose their will on others are probably greater than the dangers of democracy. However, Plato still provides a challenge to our accepted western liberal assumptions about government which is worthy of more consideration.

Plato’s approach is élitist – most people are in the shadows of ignorance and it is the philosopher who, after much study, can pierce through these shadows to see the world ‘rightly’.

On Plato’s view, virtue is knowledge – Plato did not think anyone willingly acted immorally. People acted wrongly due to ignorance and he effectively denies weakness of the will. If, therefore, people could be brought to understand their error and to appreciate what was right, they would then act accordingly. This approach is based on the Socratic idea that no one would voluntarily choose what was not good for him or herself. Once one comes out of the cave of ignorance and sees the truth or what is morally right, Plato assumes that one will act accordingly. This, however, rests on a considerable error. It is perfectly possible for a person to say:

1 I know that action X is wrong, yet

2 I choose to do action X.

There could be any number of examples of this. Smokers know that smoking will seriously damage their health – yet they go on smoking. St Paul put this point very well when he said:

For the good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. (Romans, 7:19)

Knowledge does not lead to virtue – and the whole of Plato’s moral philosophy rests on the claim that it does.

For Plato and Socrates behaving morally or justly is always better for the individual even though this may lead to suffering and even to death. This was based on their view that the soul is a prisoner of the body and survives death and that if one does a bad act then one harms one’s soul (which is one’s very self) most of all. This leads to Socrates’ view that it is better to suffer harm rather than to inflict it because if you inflict harm on others the person you are really harming most of all is yourself as you are adversely affecting your soul. In Plato’s Gorgias , Socrates is portrayed as confronting Polus who holds that immoral acts can often bring an individual the greatest amount of pleasure or be in some way better for the person performing the action. Polus measures actions in terms of their material consequences for the person who performs them, Socrates measures actions by the effect they have on the soul of the individual. Effectively Socrates can be seen as saying:

Think hard enough and you will always find that doing the right thing is best for you

(Quoted in Peter Singer’s A Companion to Ethics , Blackwell, p. 125)

However, this will be easier to accept if one first agrees with the presuppositions of Socrates and Plato – particularly those governing the irnmortality of the soul.

One of the gravest problems in Plato’s approach is that individuals can never be sure that they have arrived at a correct understanding of virtue and the nature of the good – how does one know that one has emerged from the cave and is not still in shadow? In his own authorship Plato may have moved from seeing this process as involving the individual thinking by himself to the idea of arriving at these values by looking at the good for the community. However, no clear criteria are provided. The second major problem is that Plato’s approach is far from practical and gives no guidance as to how to act in the day-to-day situations which individuals face. However Plato’s realist understanding of the nature of moral claims is particularly important and still remains an important alternative to moral relativism that merits further consideration and development. As we shall see in a later chapter, an Aristotelian approach to virtue may once again be coming into vogue, but Plato’s understanding remains an alternative which needs to be taken seriously.