Читать книгу The Puzzle of Ethics - Peter Vardy, Peter Vardy - Страница 10
ОглавлениеPlato was born in 427 B.C. and was a pupil of Socrates. In 367 B.C. he was invited to take charge of the education of the young ruler of Syracuse – Dionysius II – who controlled the most powerful state in Sicily. The experiment failed, although perhaps more due to Dionysius’ personality than to defects in Plato’s philosophy. However his legacy lives on and he has had the most profound influence on subsequent philosophy.
Plato takes a more systematic approach than Socrates – Socrates’ questioning method was aimed at showing those he talked to that their supposed knowledge was, in fact, shallow and vulnerable. Socrates certainly had positive views to which he tried to direct people, although he may have lacked the philosophic backing for them for which Plato argued. When the Delphi oracle proclaimed Socrates the wisest man in Athens, he came to think (after questioning many people who thought themselves wise but who, by their answers, quickly showed that they were not) that this was because he knew that he knew nothing and that ‘that man was wisest who knew that he knew little’. We do not know how much of the discussions attributed to Socrates actually came from Socrates himself and to what extent Plato was using Socrates as a vehicle for his own ideas, however Plato’s approach to morality certainly owes much, as we shall see, to his theory of knowledge.
i) The Euthyphro dilemma
In Plato’s book Euthyphro, a discussion occurs between Socrates and a young man, Euthyphro, who intends to prosecute his own father because his father tied up a peasant who was involved in a dunken brawl, intending to report him to the authorities. However, the father forgot about him and the peasant died. Euthyphro is horrified and instead of dining with his father, sets out to prosecute him. The discussion centres on whether what human beings are morally obliged to do rests on what the gods command or whether the gods only command what is good independent of their commanding it. There are problems whichever route is taken:
1 If one sides with Euthyphro and claims that whatever the gods command is obligatory just because they command it, then the commands of the gods (or God) are clearly absolute. The problem with this is that whatever God commands is good just because God commands it. God could then command vicious actions which would appear to us to be wrong (such as in the O.T. when God is recorded as commanding the slaughter of women and children) and we would have to call these good just because they are commanded by God. God then becomes a supreme power figure who has to be worshipped and obeyed whatever God may command.
2 If one sides with Socrates and claims that there is a standard of goodness independent of God, then God is no longer the ultimate standard of morality. Plato and Socrates’ views are the same here – Plato considered that the Forms (p. 11) provide the absolute standard of goodness and, therefore, the commands of the gods can be measured against this standard. This is attractive as it provides a reason for worshipping the gods or God (God is worshipped because God is good judged by this independent standard) but the problem is that God is no longer supreme – there is an independent standard against which God can be measured, namely the Form of the Good.
Euthyphro is effectively arguing, against Socrates, for a Divine Command theory of ethics – in other words he is taking the view that morality is based on what God commands or on what God wills. Paul Helm in the introduction to Divine Commands and Morality claims that the Divine Command Theory holds that ‘God does issue commands and that these commands are to form the basis of a believer’s morality’. Theologians such as Duns Scotus and William of Ockham have supported Divine Command theories of Ethics – effectively maintaining that if God commanded adultery or theft then these would then become good actions. Others have rejected this approach. Alasdair MacIntyre is a good example:
… We ought to do what God commands, if we are theists, because it is right in some independent sense of ‘right’, rather than hold what God commands is right just because God commands it, a view which depends on ‘right’ being defined as ‘being in accordance with what God commands’.
(The Religious Significance of Atheism, p. 33)
One can attempt to get round the problems on the first horn of the Euthyphro dilemma by saying what is good is in accordance with the commands of a loving God. This would then appear to rule out some of the more objectionable commands in the Old Testatment as these could not, apparently, be commanded by a loving God. However this does not solve the problem as it is then necessary to determine what it means to be loving. This is far from clear, after all even loving human parents sometimes have to hurt their children (for instance by giving inoculations). The problem thus arises as to whether what is loving depends on God’s will or whether there is an independent standard of what it is to be loving – in other words the problem of the Euthyphro dilemma in relation to goodness is simply raised a level and arises again about the nature of love.
Plato opts for a standard of morality independent of God – and this he finds in the Forms (see p. 11). Plato was a realist as he held that moral statements were true or false in so far as they corresponded to an absolute moral order. His view can be rejected by maintaining that there is no absolute standard of morality – instead morality is relative. However, if one does not wish to take this approach, if one holds that there is an absolute standard of right and wrong and yet is unwilling to ascribe this standard to God, then Plato’s approach must still be taken seriously. Iris Murdoch (in The Sovereignty of the Good) and Stephen Clark (in The Parliament of Souls) are two modern philosophers who take a Platonic approach.
In the Theatetus, Plato sets out an alternative position which he then argues against – the position is set out by Protagoras who argues that all knowledge is relative to the individual and all morality is similarly relative. If this position is accepted, then neither horn of the Euthyphro dilemma is valid – there is no absolute standard of morality at all. Protagoras’ most quoted saying is that:
An individual human being is the measure of all things.
This used to be phrased ‘man is the measure of all things’, but the above is preferable today and is, in any case, probably a better translation. Plato sees this as referring to those things which human beings experience. Effectively Plato takes Protagoras to be arguing that things are as they seem to us that they are. There is no such thing as ‘being cold’ or ‘being hot’ independent of their relation to the observer, rather hotness and coldness are relative to the person who feels that the thing is hot or cold. ‘Really cold’ just means ‘cold for some person x’. There is no absolute standard of ‘coldness’ independent of the relation. Imagine two people – a young man and a young woman. The man says:
The Mona Lisa is ugly, the United Nations is corrupt, democracy is the best political system and it is windy today
while the woman says:
The Mona Lisa is beautiful, the United Nations is trustworthy, democracy is wrong and there is no wind today.
Protagoras’ view would hold that these statements do not contradict each other – rather both individuals are expressing their own point of view, their own way of looking at different things. It would make no sense to ask whether the Mona Lisa is beautiful in itself or whether the United Nations is corrupt in itself.
Plato asks Protagoras whether the same relativism holds true in the moral field. Protagoras has a problem here because he is a teacher and his role as a teacher would be undermined if everyone’s judgement is equally valid. If this was the case, then Protagoras has no right to teach his own doctrine (that the human individual is the measure of all things) – because this is his point of view which is no more right or wrong than anyone else’s. Protagoras’ answer to this is that some men produce better results by their judgements than others – however he still has the same problem. Is there some absolute sense of what is a ‘better result’? Protagoras’ own view means that he must deny this, but he needs to hold this position in order to answer Plato’s challenge.
Protagoras tries to argue not that what is right or wrong depends on the individual but that it depends on the state or city in which one lives. Thus he says:
Whatever in any city is regarded as just and admirable is just and admirable in that city for as long as it is thought to be so. (Theatetus, 167C)
This is an important view with great contemporary relevance. You cannot ask ‘What is good?’, but only ‘What is good in the United States?’ or ‘What is good to the Christian?’ or ‘What is good to the Hindu?’. If you would ask the question ‘How should I live?’, then the only reply on this basis is that you should live according to the rules, laws and morals of the state or society or community in which you live (this position is similar to that taken by the Victorian philosopher, F. Bradley, in his book Ethical Studies). On this basis, the conventions of our society rule. However, the problems in today’s multi-cultural society are all too evident – which community should one choose to belong to? Whose morals should I follow? Protagoras’ approach provides no satisfactory answer to these questions.
ii) The Forms and the task of the philosopher
There are many beautiful things in the world – the countryside, a baby’s first cry, the first rose of summer or a sunset. These things are all very different yet they may all be termed beautiful. Plato considered that if words like ‘beauty’, ‘justice’ or ‘good’ were applied in so many different situations, they must all have something in common. He argued that everything that we see in the world that we call beautiful in some way participates in or resembles the perfect Form of Beauty. The Form of Beauty (as of Justice, the Good, etc.) exists timelessly and spacelessly – the Forms are neither created nor do they create. Beautiful, just or good things or persons in some way, albeit imperfectly, resemble these Forms. The Forms represent Absolute Reality as opposed to the many particular things which in some small way resemble them.
If, therefore, we were to ask how it is that two people both know a carpet is red or that two people both know that the first rose of summer is beautiful, then Plato’s answer would be that since the redness of the carpet in some way resembles the perfect Form of Redness and the characteristic of the rose in some way resembles the perfect Form of Beauty, so the two people both rightly see the carpet as red and the rose as beautiful. Similarly, disputes about whether an action is good could be settled by determining whether the action can be compared with or participates in the Form of the Good.
We live in a spatio-temporal world. The whole of our world is dominated by space and time. The Forms, however, are timeless, spaceless, changeless and immutable. Plato considered that matter, the raw chaotic ‘stuff’ of the universe, is everlasting – without beginning and without end. The Demiurge, Plato’s God, took this chaotic matter and moulded or formed it into the orderly universe that we know – using the Forms as a model. However the Universe is not perfect because the Demiurge had to work with pre-existent matter which resisted his will and also because the Universe is temporal and spatial.
The world, for Plato, is a dance of shadows – we live in the shadows brought on by time and space and our task as human beings is to see beyond these shadows. Plato puts forward three famous analogies which express this view – the Sun, the Twice Divided Line and the Cave. The last will be dealt with here although the first is also important and worthy of reference (see The Republic p. 274 Penguin edition):
Imagine an underground chamber, like a cave with an entrance open to the daylight and running a long way underground. In this cave are men who have been prisoners there since they were children, their legs and necks being so fastened that they can only look ahead of them and cannot turn their heads. Behind them and above them a fire is burning, and between the fire and the prisoners runs a road, in front of which a curtain wall has been built, like the screen at puppet shows between the operators and their audience … Imagine further that there are men carrying all sorts of gear along behind the curtain wall, including figures of men and animals made of wood and stone and other materials, and that some of these men, as is natural, are talking and some not.
Socrates then says that the bound men would only see the shadows and they would assume that the shadows were the real thing and if the curtain wall reflected sound they would assume that the shadows were talking – in other words they would take the shadows to be real. Having established this scenario, Socrates continues:
Suppose one of (the men) were let loose, and suddenly compelled to stand up and turn his head and look and walk towards the fire; all these actions would be painful and he would be too dazzled to see properly the objects of which he used to see the shadows. So if he was told that what he used to see was mere illusion and that he was now nearer reality and seeing more correctly, because he was turned towards objects which were more real … don’t you think he would be at a loss and think that what he used to see was more real than the objects now being pointed out to him?
Socrates’ point is that if someone looked directly at the light of the fire he would be even more dazzled than if he looked at the objects on the road between the fire and where he was bound. If he was then dragged out of the cave and saw the sun for the first time, he would be more dazzled still. In fact he would not initially be able to see anything of those things which he was now told were real. Gradually he might become accustomed to shadows outside the cave, then to other objects and finally he might be able to look at the Sun itself. The Sun stands for the Form of the Good – which is the highest of the Forms. Socrates’ point is that the philosopher is like the man who has been untied – it is a singularly painful process to be freed from the delusion of supposed reality, from the ‘dance of shadows’ that represents the world as it appears to us. It is a long and painful journey out of the cave of misunderstanding before one can begin to see reality as it is. Once someone has done this, then those things that passed for knowledge and were most prized by those tied in the cave would no longer be of any importance. As he puts it:
There was probably a certain amount of honour and glory to be won amongst the prisoners, and prizes for keen-sightedness for anyone who could remember the order or sequence among the passing shadows and to be best able to predict their future appearance. Will our released prisoner hanker after these prizes or envy their power or honour? Won’t he be more likely to feel, as Homer says, that he would far rather be a ‘serf in the house of some landless man’, or indeed anything else in the world, than live and think as they do?
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.
Questions for discussion
1 What do you consider to be the most satisfactory solution to the Euthyphro dilemma?
2 Socrates considered that he was ignorant and yet he was wise. How should this be understood?
3 What are the strengths and weaknesses of Plato’s understanding of morality?
4 If I hold that the grass is green and you believe the same thing, how can Plato’s approach help to explain that we are both correctly seeing the same thing?
5 What point does Plato want to make in his parable of the Cave?
6 Why did Plato reject democracy? Do you think he was right to do so and why?
