Plato, The Good, And The God.

Deep within the first utopia, Plato's dialogue known in english as The Republic, lies the renowned "allegory of the cave."  In brief, the allegory goes like this:  There are prisoners chained to chairs with their necks and bodies fettered forward, so as to disallow any turning of their vision away from the end wall of the cave they're in.  Far above and behind them is a fire casting shadows on the wall before them--but, of course, they don't know the reality of anything behind them.  Between them and the fire is a raised road with a high wall, which is blocking the shadows of people who pass on the road.  The people are carrying constructed objects--like cardboard cutouts of sheep and boxes and children--putting them above the wall.  The objects cast shadows on the wall before the chained prisoners.

It's like a puppet show.  These shadows are all that the prisoners know.  They have games and honors for the prisoner who can guess which figure will dance next as a shadow across the wall before them.

Plato compares the shadows on the wall to the objects of our imagination...

Someone comes and frees one of the prisoners and points out to him the road and the cardboard cutouts themselves which cast the shadows.  But the prisoner still believes that the shadows are more real, for, indeed, they're all he's ever known.  He's terribly confused.

The things above the wall which the prisoner now sees, they are, for Plato, "things themselves."  Or, the things which we experience with our senses.

Now the prisoner is dragged by force up the difficult path to the exit of the cave, into the light of the sun.  He's blind.  The light burns his eyes and he falls to the dirt, feeling his way in the newfound light of day.  It takes him a great deal of time to adjust to the light.  At first all he can see are reflections of things in the water, for he cannot look up; the sky is too bright.  Then, when night falls, he can look up and see the stars and the light of the moon.

All of these things, the reflections during the day and the scenes at night, Plato relates to our thoughts.  They are like ideas.  They don't quite grasp the things in the light of day.  The sun still hurts.

Then, in the morning, as dawn breaks and the sun rises, the prisoner can finally look around and see the things themselves.  These are what Plato calls "forms."  They represent the actual things which were only manufactured as puppets and carried above the wall in the cave, casting shadows.  But they're more than things.  More on that in a moment.

Eventually our prisoner can look up and see the sun as it sets.  He sees it and reflects on it.  He recognizes it as that which allows him to see the world of forms around him.  Not only that, but he recognizes it as that which causes the growth of the things in the world.  The sun is the creator of all material things as we know them.  He understands this.

Plato refers to this understanding as...well...understanding.  But it's more than our typical notion of understanding.  It is a moving back, a zooming out.  It is the understanding of the creator of all that is and the understanding of forms.

Let me quickly explain forms.  Think about bees.  There are honeybees and hornets and bumblebees and wasps.  And many more.  And within each of those families there are dozens of subspecies, within which are worker bees, queens and warriors.  What is it that makes all these things bees?  Is it color?  I can show you a picture of a black wasp.  Plato's idea is that there are "forms."  There are bees and there is Bee.  There are planets and there is Planet.  These "forms" are the most basic categories of understanding, but they're difficult to put a finger on.  They are what tie our understandings together.

This is Plato's "Divided Line."  The allegory of the cave is an allegorical representation of this line. Mathematical forms are things like shapes and numbers and formulas.  Higher forms are things like justice and virtue and, at the highest place, The Good. Grasping these forms requires something more than what we usually consider "understanding."  For the full effect, try to think about what "justice" really is.  Don't think about certain examples of justice, but justice itself.  What is it?

Now, back to our prisoner and his thoughts about the sun.  The sun is not only that which allows things to be seen, but it also causes things to be.  Without the light that the sun provides there would be no life, at least not as we know it.  The sun, then, causes the possibility for the form of the Bee.  Without the sun there would be no bees, and therefore no form, Bee.

We're almost there.

Now, what about forms of other things, philosophical things?  There are things that are just and then there is justice itself.  The form of justice.  Perfect justice.  But it is a form, we only see shadows of it in this cave called earth, or, as some like to call it, "reality."

Justice is a virtue.  Peace and love and courage are virtues.  There are many virtues.  But what is it that ties all the virtues together?  "Virtue."  The form.

Consider a beautiful sunset, a rainbow, a bluebird.  There are beautiful things and there is Beauty.

All of these things we call "good."  Justice, virtue, beauty.  They are good.  What is "good"?  The form, "The Good"?

The Good, for Plato, is for the realm of understanding what the sun is for the physical realm.  It allows us to see virtue and beauty and justice and peace. It allows us to think and understand and relativize.  It allows us to determine the course of our lives.  It allows us to consider the benefit of the sun itself.  And, it actually creates the possibility for the sun itself.  Just as there would be no Bee without the sun, there would be no Virtue or Beauty or Justice without the Good.

The form of the Good and the understanding of it makes life a blessed experience.

I want to argue that the form of the good must be personal.  Because the best things in life are the good things that people do.  I am awed by a sunset, but I am blown away by a man dying for his fellow soldier on a battlefield, or a woman standing up to gunfire for the rights of her sisters.

The creative power of laughter.  The healing of a gentle and thoughtful word.  The power of tears.

The best things in life are personal.  They are the most good.  They resemble the Good most closely.  They are Goodlike.

If the Good is the creator of all things, makes the sight of all things possible and within it dwells the forms of things such as justice and virtue and beauty, and it is diametrically opposed to the Evil, what could we call such a thing?  Especially if we agree that the best things (that is, the most Good) are the personal "goods," what is this Good?

Blessed be the name of the Good.

God.

Now, I challenge you, seek truth.  Go.  Find the true Good and don't stop till you do.  Don't let your fears of being thought of as "religious" stop you.  Why not battle to find that which allows beauty to be seen, justice to be reasoned, peace to be realized?

Perhaps you might allow me, as a long time seeker, to provide you with a precious clue on your own search.  Good is manifest in the form of divinity and humanity in the person of Jesus the Messiah.



"...Platonist writings conveyed in every possible way, albeit indirectly, the truth of God and his Word."
Saint Augustine's Confessions

"But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally--either in public or private life--must have his eye fixed." 

~Plato, The Republic.

Read these two passages with the forms in mind:

  Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
(1 Corinthians 13:8-13 ESV)

Lift up your heads, O gates!
And be lifted up, O ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The LORD, strong and mighty,
the LORD, mighty in battle!
Lift up your heads, O gates!
And lift them up, O ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The LORD of hosts,
he is the King of glory! Selah
(Psalm 24:7-10 ESV)