What can a philosopher who lived 2,400 years ago teach us that is useful for living a better, more meaningful and happier life in our time? What we are wondering here is whether Plato 1) provides useful and meaningful answers to the intellectual, moral, and practical problems of contemporary life, and 2) can help us make important decisions about how to think, how to act, and how one has to live one’s life. Plato viewed education as the fundamental method for achieving both individual and social justice. In his dialogues he advises individuals to strive for excellence: to realize their full potential by acquiring the required knowledge. According to him, no one can pursue the right thing without knowledge, which is true even today. The main prize after a lifelong effort to think and act right is happiness: eudaimonia.
Plato
Plato was born in Athens during the Peloponnesian War, in 428 or 427 BC, a year or two after the Athenian statesman and general Pericles died. Due to his distinguished background, he seemed destined for a political career, but his meeting with the charismatic Socrates made him deviate from this path. He was a student and follower of Socrates until he died in 399 BC. was convicted and died after drinking the prescribed poison cup. After this terrible event, most of Socrates’ friends left Athens for a while. Plato visited the cities colonized by Greeks in Sicily and southern Italy and made political and scholarly friends there. By 385 B.C. he was back in Athens and, near the forest of the hero Academus, founded the Academy, which can rightly be called the first university. In total, Plato wrote about thirty dialogues in which he addressed all kinds of philosophical questions.
Emphasis on ethics and practicality
The ancient philosophers like Plato believed that philosophy should somehow help improve one’s life. This beautiful ambition is almost completely absent in modern philosophy, which deals with problems that do not interest the ordinary person. What he or she desires, for example, are guidelines for a happier, more meaningful life, not theoretical knowledge such as that provided by Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard and Deleuze. This development is regretted by some modern philosophers such as Alain de Botton. De Botton therefore founded a new school that corresponds more to what the ancients saw as the task of philosophy.
Although we usually associate the new with the superior, the ancient philosophers offer a lesson in modesty. It seems that the first thinkers had a better idea of the task of philosophy than their successors. It encourages the philosophical establishment even more to be modest when students discover all this for themselves. This initiates change in the way the subject is taught, and leads the way back to the comforting company of Plato and Epicurus.
-Alain de Botton
In contrast to the emphasis in modern philosophy courses on sub-areas such as epistemology, logic and political philosophy, ethics was given the main role in ancient Greek philosophy. Epicurus even stated that any philosopher who did not care about human suffering was a worthless philosopher. It can also be said of Plato’s dialogues that they always serve a practical purpose and raise important questions.
Main ideas
What the Plato-Socrates tandem gave us was the important lesson to learn to think for yourself and not to simply adopt popular opinions like headless chickens. This means: subjecting our ideas to examination instead of acting impulsively… This type of examination is called a Socratic discussion. British philosopher and bestselling writer Alain de Botton points out four big ideas that Plato had to make life more meaningful, ideas that still have value:
Know Thyself (Think More!)
Plato sees philosophy as a kind of therapy to make someone a better and more conscious person. Opinions (,doxa,) lead to wrong values. Through Socrates, Plato says, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” So roll up your sleeves: do your own research and don’t act on the basis of prejudices, superstitions and what others tell you.
Allow your loved one to change you
In his dialogue Symposium, Plato says that true love is admiration. If you choose a partner, he or she should have admirable qualities, in other words: qualities that you do not have yourself. When you enter into a relationship with that person, they help you grow through his or her presence. The partners both realize their full potential when they commit to teaching the other. Actually, says Plato, it comes down to the fact that everyone should try to make the other a better version of themselves.
Decode the message of beauty
Beautiful things whisper important truths to us about the good life. They attract us because they have qualities that we lack in our own lives, such as harmony, balance and peace. Beautiful things, says Plato, therefore have a very important function: they help educate our soul.
Reform society
Plato had particularly idiosyncratic ideas about the ideal state, in which everyone would be happy by adapting to the role assigned to him. According to him, the end, making everyone happy (eudaimonia), justified the means. We and our politicians do not immediately have to follow Plato, but the (just) organization of a society does form the basis for a happy and meaningful existence. So this really needs to be carefully considered.
Meaning and legacy
Plato himself was the embodiment of what he considered the true, ideal philosopher. He debated ethical questions previously raised by Protagoras and Socrates, but he was the one who first explored the path to true knowledge. His student Aristotle was influenced by him, even though they fundamentally disagreed on the theory of forms. Plato’s ideas later found their way into the philosophy of medieval Islamic and Christian thinkers, including Augustine of Hippo, who combined and reconciled Plato’s ideas with those of the Church. Plato was also the one who used reason instead of observation to acquire knowledge, thus paving the way for the 17th century rationalism of Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza.
Plato’s influence is still felt today. The wide range of topics on which he wrote led 20th-century British logician Alfred North Whitehead to say that all Western philosophy after Plato consisted ,of a series of footnotes to Plato., Through his dialogues, for example, Plato contributed to art theory, in particular dance, music, poetry, architecture and drama. He discussed a range of ethical and metaphysical topics, including reflections on immortality, man, the mind and the nature of reality.
Renewed interest in ancient philosophers such as Plato
It is therefore without doubt that it has great literary and cultural historical value. However, it is something else to claim that philosophical ideas such as the Theory of Ideas (the doctrine of Forms) and the organization of the state have any influence on modern philosophy, let alone on everyday life. However, Plato, and by extension other ancient philosophers, increasingly seem to be filling a shortcoming caused by an overly theoretical, academic approach to modern philosophy since the 17th century.
Philosophy that stands in life
For the ancients, philosophy was primarily an activity aimed at answering questions that we still ask ourselves today, such as: ,How do you become happy?, ,What is the meaning of life?, ,How do I raise my child?, ,What can I know?, and other questions about life, illness and death. Philosophizing was done while walking, or during a chat in the bathhouse, and was integrated very informally into daily life. It was the art of debating together and helping each other find the right answer. From Socrates/Plato we inherited the Socratic method, which is still taught in, for example, lawyer training.
Philosophy as an institution
The institutionalization of philosophy began with Plato: people went to the Academy for philosophy training. Over the course of its history, Western philosophy changed its face thoroughly under the influence of faith in reason and scientific-technical progress. She became more theoretical and abstract. Perhaps as a result it has lost some of its appeal to students who expect philosophy to provide them with a wise guide to life. Hence the renewed interest in the philosophers of the ancient period.