Plato’s Theory of Ideas: Historical, Cultural, and Philosophical Context
Historical, Cultural, and Philosophical Context of Plato’s Theory of Ideas
The theory of ideas serves as a background for all other issues and develops a complete theory of the state.
Historical Context
The historical context of Platonic philosophy is the Greek city-state (Polis) during the last third of the 5th century and the first half of the 4th century BC, especially the city of Athens. After the Peloponnesian Wars, Athens was defeated and subjected, until 403 BC, to the hegemony of Sparta. This marked the end of democracy and its replacement with a non-democratic regime: the government of the Thirty Tyrants. Plato, two of whose uncles were involved in this government, initially felt sympathy for it. However, he soon became disenchanted with the regime’s inability to restore order and act justly. He was also disillusioned by the democratic condemnation of his admired Socrates. None of the known forms of state were acceptable to him, leading him to outline a utopian model of aristocratic rule where the ruler truly knows what justice and good are. His travels and incidents at the court of Syracuse were an unsuccessful attempt to implement this state model.
Cultural Context
The 5th century BC was a time of cultural flamboyance in all fields: art, thought, and literature. Around 450 BC, Athens became the most prominent city in Greece, attracting talented individuals. Pericles famously said of Athens at this time: “We are admired by men today and will be admired by the future.”
- In architecture, there was fervent work on temples, statues, and bas-reliefs, with classicism dominating the Acropolis.
- The peak of literature occurred, with Aeschylus and Euripides writing their tragedies and Aristophanes his comedies.
- History acquired scientific status thanks to Herodotus and Thucydides.
From the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, Athens was immersed in a great intellectual, moral, and cultural crisis. Notable figures included the sculptors Praxiteles, Lysippus, and Scopas, the historian Xenophon, and the master of oratory, Demosthenes. Science in the 4th century BC advanced markedly with the systems of Plato and Aristotle.
Philosophical Context
Following the path initiated by Socrates, Plato critiqued the Sophists. According to Plato, the Sophists, masters of the art of persuasion through words, believed that truth and virtue were merely success in public matters. This, he argued, led to the destruction of the philosophical tradition of seeking truth and knowledge in Greece. Faced with the skepticism and relativism of the Sophists, Plato sought something permanent and unchanging, a stable and enduring knowledge, a science, that could settle the manifold changes of sensible things. The answer lies in the fact that while sensible things are born and die, change and transform, there is another unchangeable, eternal reality that is the essence of all things: the Idea. Thus, Plato elaborated his theory of ideas, which clearly indicates the influence of earlier writers:
- The immobility of the being of Parmenides is used to build a world of permanent and immutable ideas.
- Plato’s conception of the sensible world reflects the character of mobility, materiality, and thought of Heraclitus.
- From Pythagoreanism, with which Plato had close contact in Magna Graecia, he took the ideas of immortality and transmigration of the soul.
- Socrates imbued the whole philosophy of Plato with a spirit of granting a universal character to ideas.