Plato’s Republic is generally considered the greatest work, and it is certainly the best known; most anyone in the West will open to him at some point in his college career. The principal theme of the state is justice: in the individual and in the commonwealth. However, in several places Plato touches on another matter that has fascinated humanity for millennia: the nature of God and the Divine.
It begins in the second book, where it is debated about justice in the most formidable context – an argument – as possible, against which Socrates brings his great faculty of genius. But the end is a more perfect understanding of the nature of justice. To this end a common opinion is proposed, that in this life and in the next the gods reward the just and punish the unjust. Although the poets contradict this word, the gods lead many good people to destruction, and many bad people to wealth and power. Further, the gods are said to be appeased by sacrifices and devotions. Socrates was asked: what does justice have to do with doing the right thing if it does not guarantee certain results and even the gods themselves “can be bought?”
Socrates’ answer to this question is simple: poets tell lies about the gods. The Greeks knew, as most people know, that the gods, according to the poets, ride on a multitude of mortal toys. Jupiter was best known for being a woman, others were always less involved in quarrels and other divine matters. Is that the kind of behavior he wants to instill in his children? For if one finds no fault in the corrupt vice of a god, how can one simply blame a corrupt mortal who has imitated the gods? To the second reply that, according to Socrates, the true quality of God must always be attributed to him. Likewise, according to Socrates, God is always good. No good can be hindered by anything, therefore God never does harm. For God is the source and cause of all good, but not of evil. God is simple, unchanging, and completely truthful. From every side of the divine there is falsehood. Therefore God does not deceive, nor does He change Himself, nor does He deceive others by signs and visions. These considerations lead him to propose strictures in education: the two canons above delineating the foundation of the state.
In the third, Socrates brought more about the loss of the poets and their reputation of the gods; Gods and demigods (born of gods and mortals) he always argues as paragons of behavior; lest intemperance be wasted as laughter. Let the gods never lie, nor accept gifts. Achilles, for example, was never portrayed as greedy or arrogant. Neither Theseus nor Pirithous was ever said to have abducted them.
In the fourth book there is only an indirect mention of the gods, when Socrates asserts that his city, based on the definition of justice, was founded only for religious rites. As a rule, Socrates prefers to leave the sacraments to the priests. But a curious question is never addressed here. He commanded the gods not to accept gifts. And what is sacrifice but an offering to God? Or maybe my question is too dogmatic.
Book 6 involves an interesting development. Hitherto, in the manner of the ancients, more or less, the gods have been discussed as personalities of immense power and prowess, which pertain to the constitution and administration of the world. But in the sixth book Socrates begins with the form of good, with the highest forms in the hierarchy of forms established in the well-known theory of forms. Socrates claims not to have final knowledge of this form, but gives a metaphor to outline some of his thoughts on the matter. Next to him the sun is “the offspring of Good.” That is, the sun and the living world are the most similar form of Good to know the world, and therefore the ultimate structure of things. Put it in words: vision has to do with the visible, what reason has to do with the rational. Vision requires the existence of light, which has the ultimate author, the Sun. It has the form of good that the final author is understood to have the objects of the account. The form of good is not cognitive, but a cause; it is the source of knowledge and truth, but surpasses them in beauty. The astute reader, who compares what he said about God before and what he said here, will notice that the two concepts are very similar. Indeed, the question is clear: the form of a good God? Or property (as most other forms are considered)? Or are the two concepts separate but related? Or what? For the characteristics of analytic philosophy, Plato made a well-known distinction between what is a “property” (e.g., color, orange, black), and an “individual or object” (e.g., a tiger). This distinction is well-known. Plato’s bifurcation. Typically, when one is introduced to the Theory of Forms, one begins with simple properties such as red or blue or mathematics. According to Socrates, all reds are united by the form of redness. Every red object shares the form of redness, the idea that transcends all particulars or instances red color. But form allows one to say that two objects are of the same color. Things start to get weird when he starts talking about forms of “tree-ness” or “human-ness”. From Plato’s bifurcation, though, many philosophers tend to think that goodness or goodness is a kind of property and nothing else. If this is so, Plato’s bifurcation effectively kills God in the intellectual sense. Morality, which is based on goodness and goodness, does not need God if goods and virtues are reduced to objective properties in things. That is, because it is good and therefore desirable, not because God said so. In these conditions God becomes superfluous. He himself was brought up Catholic and studied philosophy at this College. This question gave me enough offense, and it had defeated Plato for some time. In any case, Socrates asserts that he does not have the highest form of knowledge, so the question becomes contentious as to the republic. the last sentence in this dialogue is not given. (Perhaps it is argued that because of the narrowness of our intellects we cannot comprehend God except as a property.) In any case, it seems that the form of good, or God, has reached the state of a necessary being. no different than in the Hebrew “I am who I am” and Aristotle (of course) the motionless motor.
As the form of goodness is ultimately the source of justice, and the republic is about justice in both personal and political spheres of life, the consequences are political. According to Socrates, only those who rise to the comprehension of the form of good are fit to rule the state. Only the dialectician can do this and give a full account of the good. Translating this into a theological discourse: only those who rise to understand God are fit to rule, and only the dialectician can do this.
In the last book X of the Republic, Socrates continues to describe how Good/God makes other forms and other things even gods. Curiously, though, Good/God can only cast one form, or produce any other form, for that material. If he produced two, then the idea by which each bed was called would transcend and become a form.
Finally, according to Socrates, the gods can tell the just from the unjust. They reward the just and punish the unjust.
Plato’s God never lies, deceives, changes shape. Nor does he seem to be omnipotent. This, however, differs from most religious conceptions of God. For example, from what little I know of the Hindu religion, most of the minor deities are all manifestations, at least to some degree, of the major gods simply appearing in a different form. Also, Plato’s God is not omnipotent, because he can only make one species of form at a time; that is, there are not two species of Tree, only one, and as many as there may be. Of course, as the theory of forms coincides with the very structure of logic, this may be a reflection of some typical logical problems with the concept of God, omnipotence, omniscience, etc. “Can God make the Euclidean square round?” or “Can’t God make a stone?” Both questions involve various logical paradoxes. But I have written about such things elsewhere, and I will not dwell on them below.
The theme of God and the divine occurs in two of Plato’s other dialogues, Parmenides and Timaeus. In the end, Plato and Socrates were always seen in the same divine honor, and always talked about him. But they reserved the right to question and analyze any human doctrine pertaining to it, regardless of the number of adherents. For, as they say (I have omitted the most important dialogue) ‘Above all, one thing is certain… Men are not gods.’
