Platonic epistemology

Plato’s Foolishness

1Co 3:19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. 1 Co 3:19 I Jon 5:19 And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. The root our wickedness is found in the focus of Plato. Why is he so widely acclaimed? Because the world is guided by vain deceit as spoken of in the warning in the Bible in Col 2:8 “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”

To illustrate this from the beginning we see that the first principal of Socrates was foolish. He says that not any one knows anything. He had to be a irrational or crazy to make such a statement. He perhaps means to say that no one is absolutely sure about any opinion. For I am sure that I am sitting. I am sure that I can see the computer. I am sure that I am not in the United States but in Caracas Venezuela. If you think that is crazy listen to his first step to wisdom is that you accept that you know nothing. Every man has a conscience and God is speaking to him about right and wrong. Using of this conscience to speak about right and wrong and ignoring the voice of Jesus Christ who created man was the root of his and other men’s foolishness. Our schools of philosophy are foolish when they insist that we put the suicide of Socrates on the level of the voluntary sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for our sins. They really must be ignoring the voice of God speaking to them in their conscience to accept such a thing. Socrates was deemed as a perverse element in the society because he took the side of the tyrants against the rule of the 500 after many had been killed in several wars. His teaching agitated the young being based on the foolishness that one man is better than another. This brings about more and more war as men take sides of one tyrant against another. Jesus was killed because he brought everyone to God the Father directly and thus the religious leaders were furious and killed him for envy. They wanted to be superior. Is there any reason to elevate Socrates to such a level? Yes, it is because they and their students are under a spell best described as vain deceit. The refusal of Plato to accept that all men are created equal and that God is no respecter of persons is the wicked premise of the foolishness of Plato. When you believe this you are in a state of “vain deceit”. Plato says that good represents the foundation of all human relations but never defines what good is. This certainly is not the work of a careful thinker. I understand good to be that which is best for God the Creator, and for all moral beings, for all eternity, while evil is that which works against this. (See Finney’s foundation of Moral Obligation.) Plato foolishly never mentions the Creator, substituting his undefined good for God. He says in Ethyphro that the fundamental virtue of the Greek citizen is religious piety which he defines as the art that regulates the interchange of benefits between the gods and men, in which men offer sacrifice and worship and the gods give advantages and helps. Ignoring his foolish motive of the supposed manipulation of the gods, which is a theme of all false religions, he plunges into a dilemma about things please the gods because they are holy or are they holy because they please gods. If he would have had a definition of good he would have been able to have a definition of holy, he could say that everything that is dedicated to what is best for God and all moral beings for all eternity is holy, be it man or object. Instead in his foolishness he says that which involves worship is a part of justice and thus connects all government and the military together with religion. Note how this filled the Coliseum with people to be tortured and sacrificed in elegant reenactment of death occurring in the myths of the gods, with judges filling quotas of death sentences to supply enough people to die in the dramas in the Coliseum; Pagan bishops calling them selves Christians while taking their wealth and burning thousands at the stake in the inquisition. All based on the foolishness of Plato's justice. Plato’s foolishness is to think that God can be manipulated instead of understanding that God knows the most intimate thoughts and intents of all men. Plato begins by teaching that we know nothing then in Banquete and Phaedros defines love as a fellowship or a special relationship that goes father than intellect or reason. Building on the concept of love by Socrates who said that love comes from the desire for something that we do not possess. Aristrofanes by use of a myth tells how primitive men and women were cut in half to illustrate their individual insufficience. He interprets this by calling man the son of poverty and of conquest. Man is not a God on the contrary he is a demon. He does not possess beauty on the contrary he desires it. The search for it makes him a philosopher. So there you have it. Plato's foolishness: A man knows nothing: A man has no beauty: does not possess and therefore out of this nothingness of man comes a desire which is called love. This desire is for beauty. The following of this desire makes one a philosopher. The Christian definition of love or charity makes Plato out to be nonsense. God having the quality of affection declared, "Let us make man in our own image." We being in the image of God have this quality of caring for others. Plato in his foolishness said we have nothing. We have the superlative of affection called love or charity in which we are to love God with all our might and our neighbor as our self. Instead of coming from nothing we are urged to unselfishly use the affection that everyone innately has after the pattern of his Creator and commanded to go and to apply it to everyone in the world. Plato's foolishness aims at ruining the family by calling people away from their families to live in communes dedicated to consulting the familiar spirits and practicing free love which he called an academy. Plato's foolishness not only says we know nothing, and that we have no natural affection, also pretends that nothing in the world is real. He uses in Phedo the myth of a team of horses in the spirit world which is he says the realm of perfection falling immediatly into foolishness and contradiction with the great imperfection of one of the horses completely disobedient and worthless. Do you not see here his foolishness in arriving in the spiritual world of perfection and being given a perfectly imperfect team of horses? With great difficulty he drives to the center of reality where the gods have the headquarters of being and finds the true reality. He says that here is the eternal idea from which all the ideas in this passing world are derived. These are called substance. Foolishly he ruins both the word idea and the word substance by making this distinction. These ideas-substances in their fullness he says form the perfect beauty which is justice in essence, temperance in essence etc. The name of Plato meant big chest. His followers in foolishness stick out their chest and supposedly deem themselves unquestionable authoritative philosopher-kings who are, because of the superiority of his teachings, to rule over the rest of humanity. The nations are founded on Plato's foolishness being patterned after his most famous work "The Republic" in which utopia is promised by using and combining the principles we have seen advocated thus far. According to Plato, all of the bad things going on in the city could be eliminated, and the society could be brought into perfect harmony, and everyone could be perfectly happy and well adjusted, if injustice could be enlightened. This is to be done by submitting to the “vain deceit” possessed by the philosophers as supposedly being superior, following their principles of philosophy and giving the philosophers first place. Plato advocates a situation where the governors and kings are dedicated publicly and privately with them to truth and justice, only then can the corruption of the human race be dominated. (Is he not saying first of all, if you just let me run everything I can fix the problems, I promise you utopia?) We have the chance to see how the sad history of two thousand years proves that Plato was not wise but foolish in his understanding of justice. When he could not even see the corruption in his own life of accepting everyone’s kiss in fornication and having no children of his own. How could he wisely deal with corruption in others? Plato's foolisness begins by dividing every body into classes. What is the objective and foundation of this utopian community? Really, who are the philosophers? Plato gives justice as the answer to the first question. Here he is determining the nature of justice. He says that even a group of bandits must have justice in their group to exist. The state is born on the principle of justice. It should consist in three social classes, they who govern, they who guard that is to say the soldiers, and everybody else (the riffraff, that’s us). Plato foolishly rations out his virtue giving only one to each class. Prudence is the quality of the first class, strength for the second, and temperance (is he is saying passivity?) for all classes is necessary in that they accept this type of government. Doesn't everyone have all of these qualities in some measure? Should not all men have prudence strength and temperance for society to live in justice? Plato says that all of these virtues working together represent the justice, as each one attends his own work in the system. There is such a wide variety of tasks, each one must find his own and dedicate him self to it. This way, each one will make the state unified and complete. (Isn’t he saying you do the work and I will govern and manage your resources?) The justice guarantees the unity and thus the strength of the state, and the usefulness of the individual. Plato divides the person also into the rational part in which the soul dominates the impulses, the passion part of the impulses, and the irascible or balky, questioning of conscience which is the helper of the reason and influences one to obey it. The rational principle will be the prudence and the irascible will be the strength which is related the temperance. The individual will also enjoy justice when he gives each of his parts the proper place. The realization of justice for the state and the individual has to develop step by step together with both parts in partnership. (visualize a conversation between Plato and the street sweeper where he is exhorted to do his part). As they work toward this goal together they also work out the unity of the state. Eliminate the poverty and the riches Plato says two conditions are necessary to bring about this justice, the first is to eliminate poverty and riches because both eliminate the possibility of the fulfilling one’s mission. Plato says that the two highest classes, that of Philosopher-king and the guardians, should not be able to hold property or receive salaries, except that which is necessary to live on. The other part of society can own and distribute what they have under the governments direction. (You can see where socialism comes from.)

 Elimination of Family Life and Selective Breeding

Plato says that the second thing is the absolution of the family life for these two classes that form the aristocrats. He says in the Republic 15 that in this small elite class of those who govern whom he calls "perfect guardians" the community should be composed of women as well as the men. These will be temperate in their appetites, that is to say will be masters of themselves and their appetites. (430e) That they will be in use of their three parts. That in the third part when they serve the appetites, referring to the pleasures of eating or of procreation in brotherhood, that with all their heart they engage in them when they take them up.(436b) Since he envisions the incorporation of the women into the governing society as equals according to their capacity, it is necessary that the children be raised by the state and the state should decree the union for procreation according to the systems desire for healthy offspring. (selective breeding!) Since the children are raised and educated by the state, the guardians that govern the state becomes one big family. Men and women exercise together naked In Book 5 he expands the idea that the women are to be equal in everything. He says (452d) that it has been found that the exercise of the gymnasium is better when practiced naked. That the equality of the women be extended to the practice of the women and men together doing the gymnasium exercises together naked. That the women be chosen to be well formed to be among the guardians are be given the same training in music and gymnasium. (456b) That the women be held in common by all of the men among the guardians. They may not have any woman in particular. That the children be in common so that no child could say that any particular man was his father, nor the father be able to claim a particular child as his own. The older children and the women all must go to war with the men and fight together naked. As it was the custom for the warriors to fight naked. (457) That the young men who are the most able in war, physical prowess or intellectual pursuits, be given honor and license to lay with the greatest number of women possible thus producing the greatest number of children possible. (460b) That it be law among them that no one can refuse the kiss of another, in case that a man or woman are in love that they may better think of earning the premiums and abandon the attachment.(468a) It is necessary to remind a young man who has fallen in love to not forget that all of the young women in their flower smite and impersonate, that he might not lose out making love with all who are in the flower of life. (474d) These conditions are made possible because of the just administration by the philosopher king and his fellow philosophers. (Can you see why Plato has been a poison root in society among the aristocrats of all ages and the impossibility of reconciling Plato with Christianity?) Plato teaches that it is possible to indirectly understand what is just by determining what is unjust. The state advocated by Plato is the aristocratic state in which the task of government belongs only to the best, the elite. He claims this is very different from all of the other existing governments which are representative of the failures of the individuals. The first is the timocracy, a government founded on honor that is based on ambitious men who become large property owners who love to give orders and receive honor but dislike the philosophers. The second form is the oligarchic government founded on those families who have the wealth generation in generation and men who are covetous of getting more, and work at it constantly. The third is the democratic government in which everyone is free to do what he wants to and tends to loose its way in immoderate desires. As a result of the excessive liberty of the democracy it is replaced by the worst of governments which is the tyrannical, and is governed by the tyrant or dictator, who seeks to save himself from the hatred of the citizens surrounds himself by the worst sorts. Wayne Searfoss P.O.Box 638 Alamo, Texas 78516-0638 Tel. (956) 994-1498 781-2361 The Martyr Call www.whidden-creek.com/martyr_call/martyr_home.htm Email searfoss@who.net wsearfoss@yahoo.com wsearfos@hotmail.com