56 Moral Philosophy: Ideas of Good and Evil, Right and Wrongexecution of Socrates, which shattered Plato’s faith in politics
and in democracy. After the death of Socrates, Plato withdrew
from politics and devoted himself to philosophy. He used the
Socratic method and continued to investigate the nature of ideas.
For about ten years after Socrates’ death, Plato traveled; he
also began to write. The attempt to put his writings into a
sequential order has been made by many authorities, and it is
generally accepted that in his “Socratic” period he wrote Apol
ogy, Euthyphro, Crito, Charmides, Laches, Protagoras, Meno,
Euthydemus, Gorgias, and Lysis. During the “Platonic” period
he wrote Cratylus, Symposium, the Phaedo, the first part of the
Republic, then the Phaedrus, Theaetetus, and Parmenides and
the rest of the Republic, and finally the Sophist, Politicus,
Philebus, Timaeus, Critias, and the Laws.
At about the age of forty Plato settled down in Athens and
established a school to teach and explore the ideas learned from
Socrates. In his works, Protagoras and Meno, he questioned
whether it is possible to teach such ideas, and determined that it
was possible. Thus was bom the Academy.
Plato devoted the latter part of his life to teaching and
lecturing at the Academy, where his most famous pupil, Aristotle,
studied. His Dialogues, of which the Republic is the most
famous, is the earliest masterpiece of philosophy. He began his
life believing that politics was the means to the good life, and
ended his life looking to philosophy as the answer to life’s most
crucial issues.
Before we begin the study of Plato’s moral philosophy, we
should examine his concept of the nature of ideas. To Plato all
sense experience is faulty and transient. For example, the straw
in a half-filled glass of water looks crooked due to the illusion
caused by refraction. Our sense of sight, then, deceives. If we
touch dry ice, it feels hot, when, in fact, it is cold. We cannot hear
the high pitch of a dog whistle, yet dogs react immediately. Our
senses often deceive us. If this is so, then the experiences to
which we give so much credence are flawed. Certainly, true
knowledge cannot be obtained from the actual world. Note that
he uses the word “actual,” not “real.” The material substances
which make up the phenomenal world are less real to Plato than
the idea (form) of the thing itself. What are these ideas, and how
does Plato explain them? Before we undertake to understand this