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Plato, (born 428/427 bce, Athens, Greece—died 348/347, Athens), ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates (c. 470–399 bce), teacher of Aristotle (384–322 bce), and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence.
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When was Plato alive?
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Building on the demonstration by Socrates that those regarded as experts in ethical matters did not have the understanding necessary for a good human life, Plato introduced the idea that their mistakes were due to their not engaging properly with a class of entities he called forms, chief examples of which were Justice, Beauty, and Equality. Whereas other thinkers—and Plato himself in certain passages—used the term without any precise technical force, Plato in the course of his career came to devote specialized attention to these entities. As he conceived them, they were accessible not to the senses but to the mind alone, and they were the most important constituents of reality, underlying the existence of the sensible world and giving it what intelligibility it has. In metaphysics Plato envisioned a systematic, rational treatment of the forms and their interrelations, starting with the most fundamental among them (the Good, or the One); in ethics and moral psychology he developed the view that the good life requires not just a certain kind of knowledge (as Socrates had suggested) but also habituation to healthy emotional responses and therefore harmony between the three parts of the soul (according to Plato, reason, spirit, and appetite). His works also contain discussions in aesthetics, political philosophy, theology, cosmology, epistemology, and the philosophy of language. His school fostered research not just in philosophy narrowly conceived but in a wide range of endeavours that today would be called mathematical or scientific.
The son of Ariston (his father) and Perictione (his mother), Plato was born in the year after the death of the great Athenian statesman Pericles. His brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus are portrayed as interlocutors in Plato's masterpiece the Republic, and his half brother Antiphon figures in the Parmenides. Plato's family was aristocratic and distinguished: his father's side claimed descent from the god Poseidon, and his mother's side was related to the lawgiver Solon (c. 630–560 bce). Less creditably, his mother's close relatives Critias and Charmides were among the Thirty Tyrants who seized power in Athens and ruled briefly until the restoration of democracy in 403.
Plato as a young man was a member of the circle around Socrates. Since the latter wrote nothing, what is known of his characteristic activity of engaging his fellow citizens (and the occasional itinerant celebrity) in conversation derives wholly from the writings of others, most notably Plato himself. The works of Plato commonly referred to as "Socratic" represent the sort of thing the historical Socrates was doing. He would challenge men who supposedly had expertise about some facet of human excellence to give accounts of these matters—variously of courage, piety, and so on, or at times of the whole of "virtue"—and they typically failed to maintain their position. Resentment against Socrates grew, leading ultimately to his trial and execution on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth in 399. Plato was profoundly affected by both the life and the death of Socrates. The activity of the older man provided the starting point of Plato's philosophizing. Moreover, if Plato's Seventh Letter is to be believed (its authorship is disputed), the treatment of Socrates by both the oligarchy and the democracy made Plato wary of entering public life, as someone of his background would normally have done.
After the death of Socrates, Plato may have traveled extensively in Greece, Italy, and Egypt, though on such particulars the evidence is uncertain. The followers of Pythagoras (c. 580–c. 500 bce) seem to have influenced his philosophical program (they are criticized in the Phaedo and the Republic but receive respectful mention in the Philebus). It is thought that his three trips to Syracuse in Sicily (many of the Letters concern these, though their authenticity is controversial) led to a deep personal attachment to Dion (408–354 bce), brother-in-law of Dionysius the Elder (430–367 bce), the tyrant of Syracuse. Plato, at Dion's urging, apparently undertook to put into practice the ideal of the "philosopher-king" (described in the Republic) by educating Dionysius the Younger; the project was not a success, and in the ensuing instability Dion was murdered.
Plato's Academy, founded in the 380s, was the ultimate ancestor of the modern university (hence the English term academic); an influential centre of research and learning, it attracted many men of outstanding ability. The great mathematicians Theaetetus (417–369 bce) and Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 395–c. 342 bce) were associated with it. Although Plato was not a research mathematician, he was aware of the results of those who were, and he made use of them in his own work. For 20 years Aristotle was also a member of the Academy. He started his own school, the Lyceum, only after Plato's death, when he was passed over as Plato's successor at the Academy, probably because of his connections to the court of Macedonia.
Because Aristotle often discusses issues by contrasting his views with those of his teacher, it is easy to be impressed by the ways in which they diverge. Thus, whereas for Plato the crown of ethics is the good in general, or Goodness itself (the Good), for Aristotle it is the good for human beings; and whereas for Plato the genus to which a thing belongs possesses a greater reality than the thing itself, for Aristotle the opposite is true. Plato's emphasis on the ideal, and Aristotle's on the worldly, informs Raphael's depiction of the two philosophers in the School of Athens (1508–11). But if one considers the two philosophers not just in relation to each other but in the context of the whole of Western philosophy, it is clear how much Aristotle's program is continuous with that of his teacher. (Indeed, the painting may be said to represent this continuity by showing the two men conversing amicably.) In any case, the Academy did not impose a dogmatic orthodoxy and in fact seems to have fostered a spirit of independent inquiry; at a later time it took on a skeptical orientation.
Plato once delivered a public lecture, "On the Good," in which he mystified his audience by announcing, "the Good is one." He better gauged his readers in his dialogues, many of which are accessible, entertaining, and inviting. Although Plato is well known for his negative remarks about much great literature, in the Symposium he depicts literature and philosophy as the offspring of lovers, who gain a more lasting posterity than do parents of mortal children. His own literary and philosophical gifts ensure that something of Plato will live on for as long as readers engage with his works.
Dating, editing, translation
Plato's works are traditionally arranged in a manner deriving from Thrasyllus of Alexandria (flourished 1st century ce): 36 works (counting the Letters as one) are divided into nine groups of four. But the ordering of Thrasyllus makes no sense for a reader today. Unfortunately, the order of composition of Plato's works cannot be known. Conjecture regarding chronology has been based on two kinds of consideration: perceived development in content and "stylometry," or the study of special features of prose style, now executed with the aid of computers. By combining the two kinds of consideration, scholars have arrived at a widely used rough grouping of works, labeled with the traditional designations of early, middle, and late dialogues. These groups can also be thought of as the Socratic works (based on the activities of the historical Socrates), the literary masterpieces, and the technical studies (see below Works individually described).
Each of Plato's dialogues has been transmitted substantially as he left it. However, it is important to be aware of the causal chain that connects modern readers to Greek authors of Plato's time. To survive until the era of printing, an ancient author's words had to be copied by hand, and the copies had to be copied, and so on over the course of centuries—by which time the original would have long perished. The copying process inevitably resulted in some corruption, which is often shown by disagreement between rival manuscript traditions.
Even if some Platonic "urtext" had survived, however, it would not be anything like what is published in a modern edition of Plato's works. Writing in Plato's time did not employ word divisions and punctuation or the present-day distinction between capital and lowercase letters. These features represent the contributions of scholars of many generations and countries, as does the ongoing attempt to correct for corruption. (Important variant readings and suggestions are commonly printed at the bottom of each page of text, forming the apparatus criticus.) In the great majority of cases only one decision is possible, but there are instances—some of crucial importance—where several courses can be adopted and where the resulting readings have widely differing import. Thus, the preparation of an edition of Plato's works involves an enormous interpretive component. The work of the translator imports another layer of similar judgments. Some Greek sentences admit of several fundamentally different grammatical construals with widely differing senses, and many ancient Greek words have no neat English equivalents.
A notable artifact of the work of translators and scholars is a device of selective capitalization sometimes employed in English. To mark the objects of Plato's special interest, the forms, some follow a convention in which one capitalizes the term Form (or Idea) as well as the names of particular forms, such as Justice, the Good, and so on. Others have employed a variant of this convention in which capitalization is used to indicate a special way in which Plato is supposed to have thought of the forms during a certain period (i.e., as "separate" from sensible particulars, the nature of this separation then being the subject of interpretative controversy). Still others do not use capital letters for any such purpose. Readers will do best to keep in mind that such devices are in any case only suggestions.
In recent centuries there have been some changes in the purpose and style of English translations of ancient philosophy. The great Plato translation by Benjamin Jowett (1817–93), for example, was not intended as a tool of scholarship; anyone who would undertake such a study already knew ancient Greek. Instead, it made Plato's corpus generally accessible in English prose of considerable merit. At the other extreme was a type of translation that aimed to be useful to serious students and professional philosophers who did not know Greek; its goal was to indicate as clearly as possible the philosophical potentialities of the text, however much readability suffered in consequence. Exemplars of this style, which was much in vogue in the second half of the 20th century, are the series published by the Clarendon Press and also, in a different tradition, the translations undertaken by followers of Leo Strauss (1899–1973). Except in a few cases, however, the gains envisioned by this notion of fidelity proved to be elusive.
Despite, but also because of, the many factors that mediate the contemporary reader's access to Plato's works, many dialogues are conveyed quite well in translation. This is particularly true of the short, Socratic dialogues. In the case of works that are large-scale literary masterpieces, such as the Phaedrus, a translation of course cannot match the artistry of the original. Finally, because translators of difficult technical studies such as the Parmenides and the Sophist must make basic interpretive decisions in order to render any English at all, reading their work is very far from reading Plato. In the case of these dialogues, familiarity with commentaries and other secondary literature and a knowledge of ancient Greek are highly desirable.
Dialogue form
Glimpsed darkly even through translation's glass, Plato is a great literary artist. Yet he also made notoriously negative remarks about the value of writing. Similarly, although he believed that at least one of the purposes—if not the main purpose—of philosophy is to enable one to live a good life, by composing dialogues rather than treatises or hortatory letters he omitted to tell his readers directly any useful truths to live by.
One way of resolving these apparent tensions is to reflect on Plato's conception of philosophy. An important aspect of this conception, one that has been shared by many philosophers since Plato's time, is that philosophy aims not so much at discovering facts or establishing dogmas as at achieving wisdom or understanding (the Greek term philosophia means "love of wisdom"). This wisdom or understanding is an extremely hard-won possession; it is no exaggeration to say that it is the result of a lifetime's effort, if it is achieved at all. Moreover, it is a possession that each person must win for himself. The writing or conversation of others may aid philosophical progress but cannot guarantee it. Contact with a living person, however, has certain advantages over an encounter with a piece of writing. As Plato pointed out, writing is limited by its fixity: it cannot modify itself to suit the individual reader or add anything new in response to queries. So it is only natural that Plato had limited expectations about what written works could achieve. On the other hand, he clearly did not believe that writing has no philosophical value. Written works still serve a purpose, as ways of interacting with inhabitants of times and places beyond the author's own and as a medium in which ideas can be explored and tested.
Dialogue form suits a philosopher of Plato's type. His use of dramatic elements, including humour, draws the reader in. Plato is unmatched in his ability to re-create the experience of conversation. The dialogues contain, in addition to Socrates and other authority figures, huge numbers of additional characters, some of whom act as representatives of certain classes of reader (as Glaucon may be a representative of talented and politically ambitious youth). These characters function not only to carry forward particular lines of thought but also to inspire readers to do the same—to join imaginatively in the discussion by constructing arguments and objections of their own. Spurring readers to philosophical activity is the primary purpose of the dialogues.
Because Plato himself never appears in any of these works and because many of them end with the interlocutors in aporia, or at a loss, some scholars have concluded that Plato was not recommending any particular views or even that he believed that there was nothing to choose between the views he presented. But the circumstance that he never says anything in his own person is also compatible with the more common impression that some of the suggestions he so compellingly puts forward are his own. Further, there are cases where one may suppose that Plato sets an exercise that the reader must work through so as to gain the benefit of philosophical progress that cannot be obtained merely by being told "the answer." Although attributing views to Plato on the basis of such reconstructions must be conjectural, it is clear that the process of engaging in such activity so as to arrive at adequate views is one that he wanted his readers to pursue.
Happiness and virtue
The characteristic question of ancient ethics is "How can I be happy?" and the basic answer to it is "by means of virtue." But in the relevant sense of the word, happiness—the conventional English translation of the ancient Greek eudaimonia—is not a matter of occurrent mood or affective state. Rather, as in a slightly archaic English usage, it is a matter of having things go well. Being happy in this sense is living a life of what some scholars call "human flourishing." Thus, the question "How can I be happy?" is equivalent to "How can I live a good life?"
Whereas the notion of happiness in Greek philosophy applies at most to living things, that of arete—"virtue" or "excellence"—applies much more widely. Anything that has a characteristic use, function, or activity has a virtue or excellence, which is whatever disposition enables things of that kind to perform well. The excellence of a race horse is whatever enables it to run well; the excellence of a knife is whatever enables it to cut well; and the excellence of an eye is whatever enables it to see well. Human virtue, accordingly, is whatever enables human beings to live good lives. Thus the notions of happiness and virtue are linked.
In the case of a bodily organ such as the eye, it is fairly clear wherein good functioning consists. But it is far from obvious what a good life consists of, and so it is difficult to say what virtue, the condition that makes it possible, might be. Traditional Greek conceptions of the good life included the life of prosperity and the life of social position, in which case virtue would be the possession of wealth or nobility (and perhaps physical beauty). The overwhelming tendency of ancient philosophy, however, was to conceive of the good life as something that is the achievement of an individual and that, once won, is hard to take away.
Already by Plato's time a conventional set of virtues had come to be recognized by the larger culture; they included courage, justice, piety, modesty or temperance, and wisdom. Socrates and Plato undertook to discover what these virtues really amount to. A truly satisfactory account of any virtue would identify what it is, show how possessing it enables one to live well, and indicate how it is best acquired.
In Plato's representation of the activity of the historical Socrates, the interlocutors are examined in a search for definitions of the virtues. It is important to understand, however, that the definition sought for is not lexical, merely specifying what a speaker of the language would understand the term to mean as a matter of linguistic competence. Rather, the definition is one that gives an account of the real nature of the thing named by the term; accordingly, it is sometimes called a "real" definition. The real definition of water, for example, is H2O, though speakers in most historical eras did not know this.
In the encounters Plato portrays, the interlocutors typically offer an example of the virtue they are asked to define (not the right kind of answer) or give a general account (the right kind of answer) that fails to accord with their intuitions on related matters. Socrates tends to suggest that virtue is not a matter of outward behaviour but is or involves a special kind of knowledge (knowledge of good and evil or knowledge of the use of other things).
The Protagoras addresses the question of whether the various commonly recognized virtues are different or really one. Proceeding from the interlocutor's assertion that the many have nothing to offer as their notion of the good besides pleasure, Socrates develops a picture of the agent according to which the great art necessary for a good human life is measuring and calculation; knowledge of the magnitudes of future pleasures and pains is all that is needed. If pleasure is the only object of desire, it seems unintelligible what, besides simple miscalculation, could cause anyone to behave badly. Thus the whole of virtue would consist of a certain kind of wisdom. The idea that knowledge is all that one needs for a good life, and that there is no aspect of character that is not reducible to cognition (and so no moral or emotional failure that is not a cognitive failure), is the characteristically Socratic position.
In the Republic, however, Plato develops a view of happiness and virtue that departs from that of Socrates. According to Plato, there are three parts of the soul, each with its own object of desire. Reason desires truth and the good of the whole individual, spirit is preoccupied with honour and competitive values, and appetite has the traditional low tastes for food, drink, and sex. Because the soul is complex, erroneous calculation is not the only way it can go wrong. The three parts can pull in different directions, and the low element, in a soul in which it is overdeveloped, can win out. Correspondingly, the good condition of the soul involves more than just cognitive excellence. In the terms of the Republic, the healthy or just soul has psychic harmony—the condition in which each of the three parts does its job properly. Thus, reason understands the Good in general and desires the actual good of the individual, and the other two parts of the soul desire what it is good for them to desire, so that spirit and appetite are activated by things that are healthy and proper.
Although the dialogue starts from the question "Why should I be just?," Socrates proposes that this inquiry can be advanced by examining justice "writ large" in an ideal city. Thus, the political discussion is undertaken to aid the ethical one. One early hint of the existence of the three parts of the soul in the individual is the existence of three classes in the well-functioning state: rulers, guardians, and producers. The wise state is the one in which the rulers understand the good; the courageous state is that in which the guardians can retain in the heat of battle the judgments handed down by the rulers about what is to be feared; the temperate state is that in which all citizens agree about who is to rule; and the just state is that in which each of the three classes does its own work properly. Thus, for the city to be fully virtuous, each citizen must contribute appropriately.
Justice as conceived in the Republic is so comprehensive that a person who possessed it would also possess all the other virtues, thereby achieving "the health of that whereby we live [the soul]." Yet, lest it be thought that habituation and correct instruction in human affairs alone can lead to this condition, one must keep in view that the Republic also develops the famous doctrine according to which reason cannot properly understand the human good or anything else without grasping the form of the Good itself. Thus the original inquiry, whose starting point was a motivation each individual is presumed to have (to learn how to live well), leads to a highly ambitious educational program. Starting with exposure only to salutary stories, poetry, and music from childhood and continuing with supervised habituation to good action and years of training in a series of mathematical disciplines, this program—and so virtue—would be complete only in the person who was able to grasp the first principle, the Good, and to proceed on that basis to secure accounts of the other realities. There are hints in the Republic, as well as in the tradition concerning Plato's lecture "On the Good" and in several of the more technical dialogues that this first principle is identical with Unity, or the One.
Plato uses the term dialectic throughout his works to refer to whatever method he happens to be recommending as the vehicle of philosophy. The term, from dialegesthai, meaning to converse or talk through, gives insight into his core conception of the project. Yet it is also evident that he stresses different aspects of the conversational method in different dialogues.
The form of dialectic featured in the Socratic works became the basis of subsequent practice in the Academy—where it was taught by Aristotle—and in the teachings of the Skeptics during the Hellenistic Age. While the conversation in a Socratic dialogue unfolds naturally, it features a process by which even someone who lacks knowledge of a given subject (as Socrates in these works claims to do) may test the understanding of a putative expert. The testing consists of a series of questions posed in connection with a position the interlocutor is trying to uphold. The method presupposes that one cannot have knowledge of any fact in isolation; what is known must be embedded in a larger explanatory structure. Thus, in order to know if a certain act is pious, one must know what piety is. This requirement licenses the questioner to ask the respondent about issues suitably related to his original claim. If, in the course of this process, a contradiction emerges, the supposed expert is revealed not to command knowledge after all: if he did, his grasp of the truth would have enabled him to avoid contradiction. While both Socrates and the Skeptics hoped to find the truth (a skeptikos is after all a "seeker"), the method all too often reveals only the inadequacy of the respondent. Since he has fallen into contradiction, it follows that he is not an expert, but this does not automatically reveal what the truth is.
By the time of the composition of the Republic, Plato's focus had shifted to developing positive views, and thus "dialectic" was now thought of not as a technique of testing but as a means of "saying of each thing what it is." The Republic stresses that true dialectic is performed by thinking solely of the abstract and nonsensible realm of forms; it requires that reason secure an unhypothetical first principle (the Good) and then derive other results in light of it. Since this part of the dialogue is merely a programmatic sketch, however, no actual examples of the activity are provided, and indeed some readers have wondered whether it is really possible.
In the later dialogue Parmenides, dialectic is introduced as an exercise that the young Socrates must undertake if he is to understand the forms properly. The exercise, which Parmenides demonstrates in the second part of the work, is extremely laborious: a single instance involves the construction of eight sections of argument; the demonstration then takes up some three-quarters of the dialogue. The exercise challenges the reader to make a distinction associated with a sophisticated development of the theory of Platonic forms (see below The theory of forms). Even after a general understanding has been achieved, repeating the exercise with different subjects allows one to grasp each subject's role in the world.
This understanding of dialectic gives a central place to specifying each subject's account in terms of genus and differentiae (and so, relatedly, to mapping its position in a genus-species tree). The Phaedrus calls the dialectician the person who can specify these relations—and thereby "carve reality at the joints." Continuity among all the kinds of dialectic in Plato comes from the fact that the genus-species divisions of the late works are a way of providing the accounts that dialectic sought in all the previous works.
The theory of forms
Plato is both famous and infamous for his theory of forms. Just what the theory is, and whether it was ever viable, are matters of extreme controversy. To readers who approach Plato in English, the relationship between forms and sensible particulars, called in translation "participation," seems purposely mysterious. Moreover, the claim that the sensible realm is not fully real, and that it contrasts in this respect with the "pure being" of the forms, is perplexing. A satisfactory interpretation of the theory must rely on both historical knowledge and philosophical imagination.
Linguistic and philosophical background
The terms that Plato uses to refer to forms, idea and eidos, ultimately derive from the verb eidô, "to look." Thus, an idea or eidos would be the look a thing presents, as when one speaks of a vase as having a lovely form. (Because the mentalistic connotation of idea in English is misleading—the Parmenides shows that forms cannot be ideas in a mind—this translation has fallen from favour.) Both terms can also be used in a more general sense to refer to any feature that two or more things have in common or to a kind of thing based on that feature. The English word form is similar. The sentence "The pottery comes in two forms" can be glossed as meaning either that the pottery is made in two shapes or that there are two kinds of pottery. When Plato wants to contrast genus with species, he tends to use the terms genos and eidos, translated as "genus" and "species," respectively. Although it is appropriate in the context to translate these as "genus" and "species," respectively, it is important not to lose sight of the continuity provided by the word eidos: even in these passages Plato is referring to the same kind of entities as always, the forms.
Another linguistic consideration that should be taken into account is the ambiguity of ancient Greek terms of the sort that would be rendered into unidiomatic English as "the dark" or "the beautiful." Such terms may refer to a particular individual that exhibits the feature in question, as when "the beautiful [one]" is used to refer to Achilles, but they may also refer to the features themselves, as when "the beautiful" is used to refer to something Achilles has. "The beautiful" in the latter usage may then be thought of as something general that all beautiful particulars have in common. In Plato's time, unambiguously abstract terms—corresponding to the English words "darkness" and "beauty"—came to be used as a way of avoiding the ambiguity inherent in the original terminology. Plato uses both kinds of terms.
By Plato's time there was also important philosophical precedent for using terms such as "the dark" and "the beautiful" to refer to metaphysically fundamental entities. Anaxagoras (c. 500–c. 428 bce), the great pre-Socratic natural scientist, posited a long list of fundamental stuffs, holding that what are ordinarily understood as individuals are actually composites made up of shares or portions of these stuffs. The properties of sensible composites depend on which of their ingredients are predominant. Change, generation, and destruction in sensible particulars are conceived in terms of shifting combinations of portions of fundamental stuffs, which themselves are eternal and unchanging and accessible to the mind but not to the senses.
For Anaxagoras, having a share of something is straightforward: a particular composite possesses as a physical ingredient a material portion of the fundamental stuff in question. For example, a thing is observably hot because it possesses a sufficiently large portion of "the hot," which is thought of as the totality of heat in the world. The hot is itself hot, and this is why portions of it account for the warmth of composites. (In general, the fundamental stuffs posited by Anaxagoras themselves possessed the qualities they were supposed to account for in sensible particulars.) These portions are qualitatively identical to each other and to portions of the hot that are lost by whatever becomes less warm; they can move around the cosmos, being transferred from one composite to another, as heat may move from hot bathwater to Hector as it warms him up.
Plato's theory can be seen as a successor to that of Anaxagoras. Like Anaxagoras, Plato posits fundamental entities that are eternal and unchanging and accessible to the mind but not to the senses. And, as in Anaxagoras's theory, in Plato's theory sensible particulars display a given feature because they have a portion of the underlying thing itself. The Greek term used by both authors, metechei, is traditionally rendered as "participates in" in translations of Plato but as "has a portion of" in translations of Anaxagoras. This divergence has had the unfortunate effect of tending to hide from English-speaking readers that Plato is taking over a straightforward notion from his predecessor.
It is also possible to understand sympathetically the claim that forms have a greater reality than sensible particulars. The claim is certainly not that the sensible realm fails to exist or that it exists only partially or incompletely. Rather, sensibles are simply not ontologically or explanatorily basic: they are constituted of and explained by more fundamental entities, in Plato as in Anaxagoras (and indeed in most scientific theories). It is easy to multiply examples in the spirit of Plato to illustrate that adequate accounts of many of the fundamental entities he is interested in cannot be given in terms of sensible particulars or sensible properties. If someone who wishes to define beauty points at Helen, he points at a thing both beautiful (physically) and not beautiful (perhaps morally). Equally, if he specifies a sensible property like the gilded, he captures together things that are beautiful and things that are not. Sensible particulars and properties thus exhibit the phenomenon that Plato calls "rolling around between being and not-being": they are and are not x for values of x he is interested in (beautiful, just, equal, and so on). To understand beauty properly, one needs to capture something that is simply beautiful, however that is to be construed. The middle dialogues do not undertake to help the reader with this task.
Notice finally that because Plato was concerned with moral and aesthetic properties such as justice, beauty, and goodness, the Anaxagorean interpretation of participation—the idea that sensible composites are made up of physical portions of the fundamental entities—was not available to him. There is no qualitatively identical material constituent that a lyre gains as its sound becomes more beautiful and that Achilles loses as he ages. Plato's theory of forms would need a new interpretation of participation if it was to be carried out.
Forms as perfect exemplars
According to a view that some scholars have attributed to Plato's middle dialogues, participation is imitation or resemblance. Each form is approximated by the sensible particulars that display the property in question. Thus, Achilles and Helen are imperfect imitations of the Beautiful, which itself is maximally beautiful. On this interpretation, the "pure being" of the forms consists of their being perfect exemplars of themselves and not exemplars of anything else. Unlike Helen, the form of the Beautiful cannot be said to be both beautiful and not beautiful—similarly for Justice, Equality, and all the other forms.
This "super-exemplification" interpretation of participation provides a natural way of understanding the notion of the pure being of the forms and such self-predication sentences as "the Beautiful is beautiful." Yet it is absurd. In Plato's theory, forms play the functional role of universals, and most universals, such as greenness, generosity, and largeness, are not exemplars of themselves. (Greenness does not exhibit hue; generosity has no one to whom to give; largeness is not a gigantic object.) Moreover, it is problematic to require forms to exemplify only themselves, because there are properties, such as being and unity, that all things, including all forms, must exhibit. (So Largeness must have a share of Being to be anything at all, and it must have a share of Unity to be a single form.) Plato was not unaware of the severe difficulties inherent in the super-exemplification view; indeed, in the Parmenides and the Sophist he became the first philosopher to demonstrate these problems.
The first part of the Parmenides depicts the failure of the young Socrates to maintain the super-exemplification view of the forms against the critical examination of the older philosopher Parmenides. Since what Socrates there says about forms is reminiscent of the assertions of the character Socrates in the middle dialogues Symposium, Phaedo, and Republic, the exchange is usually interpreted as a negative assessment by Plato of the adequacy of his earlier presentation. Those who consider the first part of the Parmenides in isolation tend to suppose that Plato had heroically come to grips with the unviability of his theory, so that by his late period he was left with only dry and uninspiring exercises, divorced from the exciting program of the great masterpieces. Those who consider the dialogue as a whole, however, are encouraged by Parmenides' praise for the young Socrates and by his assertion that the exercise constituting the second part of the dialogue will help Socrates to get things right in the future. This suggests that Plato believed that the theory of forms could be developed in a way that would make it immune to the objections raised against the super-exemplification view.
Forms as genera and species
Successful development of the theory of forms depended upon the development of a distinction between two kinds of predication. Plato held that a sentence making a predication about a sensible particular, "A is B," must be understood as stating that the particular in question, A, displays a certain property, B. There are ordinary predications about the forms, which also state that the forms in question display properties. Crucially, however, there is also a special kind of predication that can be used to express a form's nature. Since Plato envisaged that these natures could be given in terms of genus-species trees, a special predication about a form, "A is B," is true if B appears above A in its correct tree as a differentia or genus. Equivalently, "A is B" has the force that being a B is (part of) what it is to be an A. This special predication is closely approximated in modern classifications of animals and plants according to a biological taxonomy. "The wolf is a canis," for example, states that "wolf" appears below "canis" in a genus-species classification of the animals, or equivalently that being a canis is part of what it is to be a wolf (Canis lupus).
Plato's distinction can be illustrated by examples such as the following. The ordinary predication "Socrates is just" is true, because the individual in question displays the property of being just. Understood as a special predication, however, the assertion is false, because it is false that being just is part of what it is to be Socrates (there is no such thing as what it is to be Socrates). "Man is a vertebrate," understood as an ordinary predication, is false, since the form Man does not have a backbone. But when treated as a special predication it is true, since part of what it is to be a human is to be a vertebrate. Self-predication sentences are now revealed as trivial but true: "the Beautiful is beautiful" asserts only that being beautiful is (part of) what it is to be beautiful. In general one must be careful not to assume that Plato's self-predication sentences involve ordinary predication, which would in many cases involve problematic self-exemplification issues.
Plato was interested in special predication as a vehicle for providing the real definitions that he had been seeking in earlier dialogues. When one knows in this way what Justice itself really is, one can appreciate its relation to other entities of the same kind, including how it differs from the other virtues, such as Bravery, and whether it is really the whole of Virtue or only a part of it.
By means of special predication it is possible to provide an account of each fundamental nature. Such accounts, moreover, provide a way of understanding the "pure being" of the forms: it consists of the fact that there cannot be a true special predication of the form "A is both B and not-B." In other words, special predication sentences do not exhibit the phenomenon of rolling around between being and not being. This is because it must be the case that either B appears above A in a correct genus-species classification or it does not. Moreover, since forms do not function by being exemplars of themselves only, there is nothing to prevent their having other properties, such as being and unity, as appropriate. As Plato expresses it, all forms must participate in Being and Unity.
Because the special predications serve to give (in whole or in part) the real definitions that Socrates had been searching for, this interpretation of the forms connects Plato's most technical dialogues to the literary masterpieces and to the earlier Socratic dialogues. The technical works stress and develop the idea (which is hinted at in the early Euthyphro) that forms should be understood in terms of a genus-species classification. They develop a schema that, with modifications of course, went on to be productive in the work of Aristotle and many later researchers. In this way, Plato's late theory of the forms grows out of the program of his teacher and leads forward to the research of his students and well beyond.
Works individually described
As noted above, studies of both content and style have resulted in the division of Plato's works into three groups. Thus, (1) the early, or Socratic, dialogues represent conversations in which Socrates tests others on issues of human importance without discussing metaphysics; (2) the middle dialogues, or literary masterpieces, typically contain views originating with Plato on human issues, together with a sketch of a metaphysical position presented as foundational; and (3) the late dialogues, or technical studies, treat this metaphysical position in a fuller and more direct way. There are also some miscellaneous works, including letters, verses attributed to Plato, and dialogues of contested authenticity.
Early dialogues
The works in this group (to be discussed in alphabetical order below) represent Plato's reception of the legacy of the historical Socrates; many feature his characteristic activity, elenchos, or testing of putative experts. The early dialogues serve well as an introduction to the corpus. They are short and entertaining and fairly accessible, even to readers with no background in philosophy. Indeed, they were probably intended by Plato to draw such readers into the subject. In them, Socrates typically engages a prominent contemporary about some facet of human excellence (virtue) that he is presumed to understand, but by the end of the conversation the participants are reduced to aporia. The discussion often includes as a core component a search for the real definition of a key term.
One way of reading the early dialogues is as having the primarily negative purpose of showing that authority figures in society do not have the understanding needed for a good human life (the reading of the Skeptics in the Hellenistic Age). Yet there are other readings according to which the primary purpose is to recommend certain views. In Hellenistic times the Stoics regarded emphasis on the paramount importance of virtue, understood as a certain kind of knowledge, as the true heritage of Socrates, and it became foundational for their school. Whether one prefers the skeptical or a more dogmatic interpretation of these dialogues, they function to introduce Plato's other works by clearing the ground; indeed, for this reason Plato's longer works sometimes include elenctic episodes as portions of themselves. Such episodes are intended to disabuse the naive, immature, or complacent reader of the comfortable conviction that he—or some authority figure in his community—already understands the deep issues in question and to convince him of the need for philosophical reflection on these matters.
The Apology represents the speech that Socrates gave in his defense at his trial, and it gives an interpretation of Socrates' career: he has been a "gadfly," trying to awaken the noble horse of Athens to an awareness of virtue, and he is wisest in the sense that he is aware that he knows nothing. Each of the other works in this group represents a particular Socratic encounter. In the Charmides, Socrates discusses temperance and self-knowledge with Critias and Charmides; at the fictional early date of the dialogue, Charmides is still a promising youth. The dialogue moves from an account in terms of behaviour ("temperance is a kind of quietness") to an attempt to specify the underlying state that accounts for it; the latter effort breaks down in puzzles over the reflexive application of knowledge.
The Cratylus (which some do not place in this group of works) discusses the question of whether names are correct by virtue of convention or nature. The Crito shows Socrates in prison, discussing why he chooses not to escape before the death sentence is carried out. The dialogue considers the source and nature of political obligation. The Euthydemus shows Socrates among the eristics (those who engage in showy logical disputation). The Euthyphro asks, "What is piety?" Euthyphro fails to maintain the successive positions that piety is "what the gods love," "what the gods all love," or some sort of service to the gods. Socrates and Euthyphro agree that what they seek is a single form, present in all things that are pious, that makes them so. Socrates suggests that if Euthyphro could specify what part of justice piety is, he would have an account.
The more elaborate Gorgias considers, while its Sophist namesake is at Athens, whether orators command a genuine art or merely have a knack of flattery. Socrates holds that the arts of the legislator and the judge address the health of the soul, which orators counterfeit by taking the pleasant instead of the good as their standard. Discussion of whether one should envy the man who can bring about any result he likes leads to a Socratic paradox: it is better to suffer wrong than to do it. Callicles praises the man of natural ability who ignores conventional justice; true justice, according to Callicles, is this person's triumph. In the Hippias Minor, discussion of Homer by a visiting Sophist leads to an examination by Socrates, which the Sophist fails, on such questions as whether a just person who does wrong on purpose is better than other wrongdoers. The Ion considers professional reciters of poetry and develops the suggestion that neither such performers nor poets have any knowledge.
The interlocutors in the Laches are generals. One of them, the historical Laches, displayed less courage in the retreat from Delium (during the Peloponnesian War) than the humble foot soldier Socrates. Likewise, after the fictional date of the dialogue, another of the generals, Nicias, was responsible for the disastrous defeat of the Sicilian expedition because of his dependence on seers. Here the observation that the sons of great men often do not turn out well leads to an examination of what courage is. The trend again is from an account in terms of behaviour ("standing fast in battle") to an attempt to specify the inner state that underlies it ("knowledge of the grounds of hope and fear"), but none of the participants displays adequate understanding of these suggestions.
The Lysis is an examination of the nature of friendship; the work introduces the notion of a primary object of love, for whose sake one loves other things. The Menexenus purports to be a funeral oration that Socrates learned from Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles (himself celebrated for the funeral oration assigned to him by Thucydides, one of the most famous set pieces of Greek antiquity). This work may be a satire on the patriotic distortion of history.
The Meno takes up the familiar question of whether virtue can be taught, and, if so, why eminent men have not been able to bring up their sons to be virtuous. Concerned with method, the dialogue develops Meno's problem: How is it possible to search either for what one knows (for one already knows it) or for what one does not know (and so could not look for)? This is answered by the recollection theory of learning. What is called learning is really prompted recollection; one possesses all theoretical knowledge latently at birth, as demonstrated by the slave boy's ability to solve geometry problems when properly prompted. (This theory will reappear in the Phaedo and in the Phaedrus.) The dialogue is also famous as an early discussion of the distinction between knowledge and true belief.
The Protagoras, another discussion with a visiting Sophist, concerns whether virtue can be taught and whether the different virtues are really one. The dialogue contains yet another discussion of the phenomenon that the sons of the great are often undistinguished. This elaborate work showcases the competing approaches of the Sophists (speechmaking, word analysis, discussion of great poetry) and Socrates. Under the guise of an interpretation of a poem of Simonides of Ceos (c. 556–c. 468 bce), a distinction (which will become thematic for Plato) is made between being and becoming. Most famously, this dialogue develops the characteristic Socratic suggestion that virtue is identical with wisdom and discusses the Socratic position that akrasia (moral weakness) is impossible. Socrates suggests that, in cases of apparent akrasia, what is really going on is an error of calculation: pursuing pleasure as the good, one incorrectly estimates the magnitude of the overall amount of pleasure that will result from one's action (see above Happiness and virtue).
Middle dialogues
These longer, elaborate works are grouped together because of the similarity in their agendas: although they are primarily concerned with human issues, they also proclaim the importance of metaphysical inquiry and sketch Plato's proprietary views on the forms. This group represents the high point of Plato's literary artistry. Of course, each of Plato's finished works is an artistic success in the sense of being effectively composed in a way appropriate to its topic and its audience; yet this group possesses as well the more patent literary virtues. Typically much longer than the Socratic dialogues, these works contain sensitive portrayals of characters and their interactions, dazzling displays of rhetoric and attendant suggestions about its limitations, and striking and memorable tropes and myths, all designed to set off their leisurely explorations of philosophy.
In the middle dialogues, the character Socrates gives positive accounts, thought to originate with Plato himself, of the sorts of human issues that interlocutors in the earlier works had failed to grasp: the nature of Justice and the other virtues, Platonic love, and the soul (psyche). The works typically suggest that the desired understanding, to be properly grounded, requires more-fundamental inquiries, and so Socrates includes in his presentation a sketch of the forms. "Seeking the universal" by taking forms to be the proper objects of definition was already a hallmark of the early dialogues, though without attention to the status and character of these entities. Even the middle works, however, do not fully specify how the forms are to be understood (see above The theory of forms).
At the party depicted in the Symposium, each of the guests (including the poets Aristophanes and Agathon) gives an encomium in praise of love. Socrates recalls the teaching of Diotima (a fictional prophetess), according to whom all mortal creatures have an impulse to achieve immortality. This leads to biological offspring with ordinary partners, but Diotima considers such offspring as poetry, scientific discoveries, and philosophy to be better. Ideally, one's eros (erotic love) should progress from ordinary love objects to Beauty itself. Alcibiades concludes the dialogue by bursting in and giving a drunken encomium of Socrates.
The Phaedo culminates in the affecting death of Socrates, before which he discusses a theme apposite to the occasion: the immortality of the soul (treated to some extent following Pythagorean and Orphic precedent). The dialogue features characteristically Platonic elements: the recollection theory of knowledge and the claim that understanding the forms is foundational to all else. The length of this work also accommodates a myth concerning the soul's career after death.
In the very long Republic, Socrates undertakes to show what Justice is and why it is in each person's best interest to be just. Initial concern for justice in the individual leads to a search for justice on a larger scale, as represented in an imaginary ideal city (hence the traditional title of the work). In the Republic the rulers and guardians are forbidden to have private families or property, women perform the same tasks as men, and the rulers are philosophers—those who have knowledge of the Good and the Just. The dialogue contains two discussions—one with each of Plato's brothers—of the impact of art on moral development. Socrates develops the proposal that Justice in a city or an individual is the condition in which each part performs the task that is proper to it; such an entity will have no motivation to do unjust acts and will be free of internal conflict. The soul consists of reason, spirit, and appetite, just as the city consists of rulers, guardians, and craftsmen or producers.
The middle books of the Republic contain a sketch of Plato's views on knowledge and reality and feature the famous figures of the Sun and the Cave, among others. The position occupied by the form of the Good in the intelligible world is the same as that occupied by the Sun in the visible world: thus the Good is responsible for the being and intelligibility of the objects of thought. The usual cognitive condition of human beings is likened to that of prisoners chained in an underground cave, with a great fire behind them and a raised wall in between. The prisoners are chained in position and so are able to see only shadows cast on the facing wall by statues moved along the wall behind them. They take these shadows to be reality. The account of the progress that they would achieve if they were to go above ground and see the real world in the light of the Sun features the notion of knowledge as enlightenment. Plato proposes a concrete sequence of mathematical studies, ending with harmonics, that would prepare future rulers to engage in dialectic, whose task is to say of each thing what it is—i.e., to specify its nature by giving a real definition. Contrasting with the portrait of the just man and the city are those of decadent types of personality and regime. The dialogue concludes with a myth concerning the fate of souls after death.
The first half of the Phaedrus consists of competitive speeches of seduction. Socrates repents of his first attempt and gives a treatment of love as the impulse to philosophy: Platonic love, as in the Symposium, is eros, here graphically described. The soul is portrayed as made of a white horse (noble), a black horse (base), and a charioteer; Socrates provides an elaborate description of the soul's discarnate career as a spectator of the vision of the forms, which it may recall in this life. Later in the dialogue, Socrates maintains that philosophical knowledge is necessary to an effective rhetorician, who produces likenesses of truth adapted to his audience (and so must know both the truth concerning the subject matter and the receptivities of different characters to different kinds of presentation). This part of the dialogue, with its developed interest in genera and species, looks forward to the group of technical studies. It is also notable for its discussion of the limited value of writing.
Late dialogues
The Parmenides demonstrates that the sketches of forms presented in the middle dialogues were not adequate; this dialogue and the ones that follow spur readers to develop a more viable understanding of these entities. Thus, the approach to genera and species recommended in the Sophist, the Statesman, and the Philebus (and already discussed in the Phaedrus) represents the late version of Plato's theory of forms. The Philebus proposes a mathematized version, inspired by Pythagoreanism and corresponding to the cosmology of the Timaeus.
But Plato did not neglect human issues in these dialogues. The Phaedrus already combined the new apparatus with a compelling treatment of love; the title topics of the Sophist and the Statesman, to be treated by genus-species division, are important roles in the Greek city; and the Philebus is a consideration of the competing claims of pleasure and knowledge to be the basis of the good life. (The Laws, left unfinished at Plato's death, seems to represent a practical approach to the planning of a city.) If one combines the hints (in the Republic) associating the Good with the One, or Unity; the treatment (in the Parmenides) of the One as the first principle of everything; and the possibility that the good proportion and harmony featured in the Timaeus and the Philebus are aspects of the One, it is possible to trace the aesthetic and ethical interests of the middle dialogues through even the most difficult technical studies.
The Theaetetus considers the question "What is knowledge?" Is it perception, true belief, or true belief with an "account"? The dialogue contains a famous "digression" on the difference between the philosophical and worldly mentalities. The work ends inconclusively and may indeed be intended to show the limits of the methods of the historical Socrates with this subject matter, further progress requiring Plato's distinctive additions.
The Parmenides is the key episode in Plato's treatment of forms. It presents a critique of the super-exemplification view of forms that results from a natural reading of the Symposium, the Phaedo, and the Republic and moves on to a suggestive logical exercise based on a distinction between two kinds of predication and a model of the forms in terms of genera and species. Designed to lead the reader to a more sophisticated and viable theory, the exercise also depicts the One as a principle of everything (see above The theory of forms).
The leader of the discussion in the Sophist is an "Eleatic stranger." Sophistry seems to involve trafficking in falsity, illusion, and not-being. Yet these are puzzling in light of the brilliant use by the historical Parmenides (also an Eleatic) of the slogan that one cannot think or speak of what is not. Plato introduces the idea that a negative assertion of the form "A is not B" should be understood not as invoking any absolute not-being but as having the force that A is other than B. The other crucial content of the dialogue is its distinction between two uses of "is," which correspond to the two kinds of predication introduced in the Parmenides. Both are connected with the genus-species model of definition that is pervasive in the late dialogues, since the theoretically central use of "is" appears in statements that are true in virtue of the relations represented in genus-species classifications. The dialogue treats the intermingling of the five "greatest kinds": Being, Sameness, Difference, Motion, and Rest. Although these kinds are of course not species of each other, they do partake of each other in the ordinary way. The Statesman discusses genus-species definition in connection with understanding its title notion.
The Timaeus concerns the creation of the world by a Demiurge, initially operating on forms and space and assisted after he has created them by lesser gods. Earth, air, fire, and water are analyzed as ultimately consisting of two kinds of triangles, which combine into different characteristic solids. Plato in this work applies mathematical harmonics to produce a cosmology. The Critias is a barely started sequel to the Timaeus; its projected content is the story of the war of ancient Athens and Atlantis.
The Philebus develops major apparatuses in methodology and metaphysics. The genus-species treatment of forms is recommended, but now foundational to it is a new fourfold division: limit, the unlimited, the mixed class, and the cause. Forms (members of the mixed class) are analyzed in Pythagorean style as made up of limit and the unlimited. This occurs when desirable ratios govern the balance between members of underlying pairs of opposites—as, for example, Health results when there is a proper balance between the Wet and the Dry.
The very lengthy Laws is thought to be Plato's last composition, since there is generally accepted evidence that it was unrevised at his death. It develops laws to govern a projected state and is apparently meant to be practical in a way that the Republic was not; thus the demands made on human nature are less exacting. This work appears, indirectly, to have left its mark on the great system of Roman jurisprudence.
The Epigrams are elegiac couplets attributed to Plato. Epigrams 1–3 are especially interesting: they may well be authentic, and if so they would give a glimpse into Plato's personal affections. Correspondence purporting to be from Plato is collected as the Letters or Epistles; their authorship is controversial, and each must be evaluated separately. The Seventh Letter contains much that is relevant to Plato's biography and to his joint project with Dion of Syracuse, as well as a criticism of putting philosophy into writing.
Three dialogues of uncertain authorship in the Socratic genre are the following. The Alcibiades depicts Socrates with the brilliant title character, whose meteoric career (before the date of composition but after the fictional date of the dialogue) contributed to the resentment against the older man. In the Clitophon, the title character objects that Socrates has awakened his wish for knowledge of virtue but has failed to help him reach his goal. The Hippias Major takes up the question "What is the beautiful (the fine)?" Widely agreed to be spurious are Axiochus, Definitions, Demodocus, Epinomis, Eryxias, Halcyon, Hipparchus, Minos, On Justice, On Virtue, Rival Lovers, Second Alcibiades, Sisyphus, and Theages.
Learn More in these related Britannica articles:
Western philosophy: PlatoBy far the most important disciple of Socrates, however, was Plato, a scion of one of the most noble Athenian families, who could trace his ancestry back to the last king of Athens and to Solon (
c.630– c.560 bc), the great social and…
Socrates: PlatoPlato, unlike Xenophon, is generally regarded as a philosopher of the highest order of originality and depth. According to some scholars, his philosophical skills made him far better able than Xenophon was to understand Socrates and therefore more valuable a source of information about…
ethics: PlatoSocrates' greatest disciple, Plato, accepted the key Socratic beliefs in the objectivity of goodness and in the link between knowing what is good and doing it. He also took over the Socratic method of conducting philosophy, developing the case for his own positions by…
epistemology: PlatoPlato accepted the Parmenidean constraint that knowledge must be unchanging. One consequence of that view, as Plato pointed out in the
Theaetetus, is that sense experience cannot be a source of knowledge, because the objects apprehended through it are subject to change. To the…
political philosophy: PlatoThe first elaborate work of European political philosophy is the
Republicof Plato, a masterpiece of insight and feeling, superbly expressed in dialogue form and probably meant for recitation. Further development of Plato's ideas is undertaken in his Statesmanand Laws, the latter prescribing…
More About Plato103 references found in Britannica articles
Assorted References
- major references
- portrayal by Raphael
- role in Greek history
- use of irony
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|An Evening of Discourse I
|The Senior Council hosted more than 70 students, staff, faculty and administrators Friday for "An Evening of Discourse" in the Knowling Fieldhouse. 'While we share a unique identity through Wabash, we are from different places and come from different backgrounds,' the invitation to Friday's conversation stated. "During the discussion we will address six difficult questions that help define Wabash. Each guest will be seated at individual table groups, where they will be challenged to address the topics at hand. The Senior Council is deeply committed to campus unity among students, faculty, and staff. Your input is highly valued and needed.'

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Last night at the Art Theater in Long Beach, California, Almost premiered its new video 5-Incher. Touted as a not-quite-full-length video, we were happily surprised when basically everyone has a full part! Willow dropped German hammers as he's known to do, Lewis Marnell came through once again just a few months after his amazing Nike part, and Youness Amrani has a rad part too. Daewon's part rocks—he took his tech and balance in an unexpected direction, and Haslam has another jaw-dropped of a part. Make sure you pick it up June 4. Nice job guys.
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As we enter the holiday season, it is worth reflecting on one of the most pernicious slow-moving crises of our time: the continued presence of hunger in a world of plenty. Ending hunger by 2030 and protecting the right of everyone to have access to sufficient, safe, affordable and nutritious food is one of the targets proposed for the post-2015 agenda by the High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, and many others are also promoting the same message. Pope Francis is the latest entrant into this debate with his announcement of a global campaign of prayer and action to end to hunger and malnutrition, "One Human Family, Food For All". The campaign includes encouragement for local, national or global level action against food waste and the promotion of food access and security worldwide. The Pope prompts us all to ask ourselves, what will it take to end hunger?
The first issue is measuring the scale of the problem. The FAO, in its State of Food Security in the World, 2013, reports that around 840 million people suffered from chronic hunger in 2011-13. This represents some improvement from the 1 billion hungry people estimated in 1990-92, and an even more impressive improvement as a share of the global population, but still remains unacceptably high in a world as wealthy as ours. A recent paper by Evans and Steven argues that progress seems to have stalled and without concerted action, hunger is likely to persist until the end of the 21st century.
The problem is that we don't really know what has happened to hunger. The FAO is in the process of sharply revising their methodology to improve timeliness in a Voices of the Hungry Project. The old methodology, based on model simulations rather than actual real-time measurements, yielded some questionable numbers. In 2009, FAO was reporting increases in global hunger to historic highs of over 1 billion attributed to increases in international food prices, while self-reported indicators (from surveys like the Gallup World Poll) were showing the opposite, that hunger levels were actually falling thanks to strong economic growth in developing countries. Academics like David Headey came down on the side of survey results and FAO, in partnership with Gallup, has devised a set of questions to arrive at a Food Insecurity Experience Scale that they will publish in 2014. This will be a great first step to resolving the measurement problem.
The second major issue is to understand that the impact of hunger goes well beyond short-term misery and indignity. Undernourished mothers give birth to undernourished babies, whose brains cannot fully develop, limiting their cognitive and physical development, leaving them permanently unable to fulfill their potential and perpetuating cycles of poverty. Even for adults, there is now compelling evidence that hunger has a physiological impact that leads to poor decision making. Sendhil Mullainathan, in a fantastic new book called Scarcity: Why Having so Little Means So Much, has put forward a powerful compendium of experiments documenting these effects.
The third issue is to track the size and nature of resources being applied to the campaign to end hunger. It will take more than business as usual.
There is no shortage of promising initiatives to tackle hunger and food security. The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) has outlined a Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) that commits countries to allocate at least 10 percent of national budgetary resources to agriculture and rural development policy implementation by 2015. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) aims to reduce food insecurity in at least 20 countries, double the incomes of 20 million smallholder farmers, and put 15 countries on track to attain and sustain a Green Revolution. The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition began in 2012 with a promise to help lift 50 million people in sub-Saharan Africa out of poverty in the next ten years by supporting agricultural development.
The problem is that few of these initiatives have a system in place for tracking resources, impact and accountability. At the macro level, only half of the money pledged by donors for the G8 L'Aquila Food Security Initiative in 2009 has been disbursed. Aid directed towards agriculture has declined since the 1980s. African leaders in the Maputo Declaration pledge to direct 10% of GDP towards agriculture, yet there is a $4.4 billion dollar shortfall to this commitment. At the micro level, there is still too little attention to transparency and evaluation of aid to ensure it is directed in a way that best promotes livelihoods and supports smallholder farmers.
In fact, the availability and quality of agricultural statistics has declined steadily since the early 1980s. Better data can enable a more concentrated effort to increase agricultural yields and productivity and raise incomes, especially for smallholder farmers.
These three steps—measuring hunger, giving it the priority it deserves by recognizing its far-reaching and long-term impact, and tracking commitments and effectiveness of programs—would go a long way to establishing accountability for the mission to end hunger.
It is so saddening that most
It is so saddening that most of African states cannot generate food for all her citizens though are possible new technologies present in the world currently.
They prefer buying arms
They prefer buying arms against their own civilians during election times in order to remain endlessly in power....
I was able to find good
I was able to find good advice from your articles.
We are living in a SAD world.
We are living in a SAD world.
Down here in Africa, we very much hoped that Hunger is to know an end soon. But what we bitterly experience each time that programs are initiated to solve a particular problem, is that the funds allocated are mostly diverted by the crowds of persons that are in power. Subsequently at the end, the problem just does persist with "NEWLY-FOUND" pretexts to explain its persistence...
I am here going to quote the now late President Mandela: "Poverty is not an accident. Like Slavery and Apartheid, it is Man-Made and can be removed by the actions of human-beings." The Golden question here, is whether Hunger could be removed by the crowds of persons that initiated it ?
Another great piece from
Another great piece from FUTURE DEVELOPMENT. Thank you.
I've heard it said more and more often - in reference to Africa at least - that agriculture must be treated as a business issue not as a development issue. It would be great to hear more thoughts on this.
With large amounts of uncultivated arable land, roughly 60 percent of the global total, Africa has plenty of space to lift production. Meanwhile productivity can also be boosted. African cereal yields are just over one-third of the developing world average, linked to the fact that as much as 80 percent of Africa's agriculture still depends on rain not irrigation.
How might it help to treat agriculture in Africa as business?
Thanks for the comment. Both
Thanks for the comment. Both the public and private sectors have a role to play - especially to achieve changes at the scale needed for agricultural transformation. Increased and improved infrastructure, irrigation, credits to farmers, increased extension services and good policy frameworks will be needed. See http://growafrica.com/ for interesting public priviate partnerships on agriculture.
Most of people in African
Most of people in African states don't care about guns. They just living day by day worrying how to get their food or medical care. It is up to developed countries to do something about leaders of those states.
Let's directly Empower
Let's directly Empower Farmers & Entrepreneurs:
It is now very important to shift from mostly supporting Africa as a "charity case" to taking business-like approaches in at-least, most of the development assistance given to the region. In every community in sub-Sahara, you can find lots of talented men and women who are operating micro-enterprises and micro-farms with tiny budgets and can't get bank loans with which to expand. The farmers have dreams to acquire modern machinery/technology to grow more fruits and vegetables for direct consumption in nearby towns and villages and for processing for local and remote/foreign markets. Most governments in Africa have not proven to be very useful for these skilled young and old farmers. Assisting them to expand is always drowned in bureaucracy, favoritism and corruption. The western world can help through bypassing inefficient African governments and making funds and other resources available, directly to the farmers in any country through social enterprise NGOs. I truly believe that it is time for the World Bank to seriously discuss how to provide food security and poverty alleviation support directly to impoverished entrepreneurs and other change makers in the African countries that have uncooperative governments. Poor people should not be punished because of their inefficient governments and we cannot blame them for electing corrupt people because in my opinion, at the level of poverty in the region (70% living on less than $2 a day), economic independence comes before democracy.
Eugene Nzeribe, Director, ICAfrica, Ottawa
It will never end.the
It will never end.the paramter of human civilisation is greed.we can never over come hunger.all we can do is minimise it with our karma.the number of living being In this earth remains same only they change the teritory ans shape if we keep good karma we minimise the bad effect I.e hunger.
You're right sanjaysethi. Two
You're right sanjaysethi. Two elements will never leave human race, greed and stupidity
Things are move ! We have to
Things are move ! We have to stay optimistes and not in blaming all time ! Mentalities of Africa Leaders are changing too ! Now they are undestand that things can not continue this way unless sinking with thier poeples ! World Bank have to double effort in teaching leaders to ! They need it ! Thanks !
Thanks for the comment,
Thanks for the comment, Nshimiyimana. Indeed, there are signs of promise: President Boni Yayi of Benin has named 2014 the "Year of Agriculture in Africa" and initiatives including Grow Africa http://growafrica.com/about show the potential for broader partnerships. We propose that these initiatives and commitments be systematically monitored and data tracked to ensure accountability.
Wow! Finally I got a blog
Wow! Finally I got a blog from where I be able to in fact
obtain helpful information concerning my study and knowledge.
Most of people in African
Most of people in African states don't care about guns. They just living day by day worrying how to get their food or medical care.
Make foods the currencies for
Make foods the currencies for payments against anykind of social labour/work in an area where hunger is maximum.let people earn food for any contribution in social uplifment..
Interesting to see ... thank
Interesting to see ... thank you it's well done
Great article. It's always
Great article. It's always nice when you can not only be informed, but also entertained!
Excellent entry!
Excellent entry!


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December 07, 2016 - Mayor Pugh first Board of Estimates and Post BOE Press Conference
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Photography by: Mark L. Dennis and Jay L. Baker
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text: > The question was raised as "When should all these servers be upgraded or replaced again?" 3-5 years, IMO. if you replace hardware in <3 years, you're obviously burning money. that's defensible sometimes, but always pretty dubious - or else you need an inflated sense of self-importance like oh, say the dearly departed financial industry ;) when pushing past 5 years, it's not terrible to keep the cluster running, perhaps by sacrificing a few nodes, but it becomes increasingly unattractive to _use_. that is, after 5 years, "current" machines will have noticably better clock, flops, cache, memory bw and latency, memory size, disk, interconnect, power efficiency, etc. there are still people who will use a 7-year old cluster, but they're outliers, one way or another ;) > But there are other factors - over time the "older systems" are harder to > maintain.... don't run newer licenses of SW products, what is this "license" thing of which you speak? ;) seriously, the industry isn't change _that_ fast. yes, you can probably find some software which doesn't bother providing ia32 versions, only x86_64, but the latter has been around for quite a while (6 years?). the big changes have been mainly cache and cores and memory. > need spare parts, some of which are hard or very hard to find (e.g. old RAM modules - on Ebay?!). ddr2 has been pretty long-lived, and it's still pretty easy to find early (low-clock) modules. that already takes you back something like 5 years. > Sometimes the newer technology uses less power and is cheaper to operate....(anyone ever create a KW/MFLOP vs. Time curve? has that really gone down? ) unambiguously, w/flop has been drastically improved, through both process and architectural changes. 65W quad-core, 4flops/cycle is pretty amazing, considering that only 3 years ago, 95W single-core 2flops/cycle was reasonable. (dual-core at the time compromised clock fairly seriously). 3-5 years ago, the main action was clock scaling from about 1.4 -> 3 GHz, but that was generally more flops for more power, rather than 4x flops for 30% _less_ power. > After several years (e.g.. 6,7, or 8) the systems Admin costs on the older systems may be higher - e.g.. more labor, specialized training, unique tools .. past 5 years is, imo, more of a museum curation effort, rather than really running a compute facility. > If we know the required life is a long time our customer insists on tracking end of life points and buying spares to have on hand. That costs more for longer time spans. you can keep doing the same thing for 6+ years, and I don't see why the costs would blow up if you're smart about spares and/or cannibalization. but you have to ask yourself: is it worth using this old stuff which is so slow and inefficient, relative to cheap new stuff? consider a car analogy - old cars can be pretty neat. but keeping a 1957 chevy running makes the most sense in, say, Cuba, where labor is cheap, replacements are difficult, and where the weather and other climate make you not care so much about whether you have side impact airbags or AWD or 40 MPG at 70 MPH or builtin gps/handsfree/blueray-player. > Do operating costs really go up as a cluster ages? What other factors are there? well, I think the main thing is opportunity costs of a new, faster, more efficient cluster. power and admin overhead don't really add up very fast, maybe 5% of purchase cost/year. I've heard people quote MUCH higher numbers than that - no doubt their sysadmins make more than me, and might have UPS for compute nodes, etc. > For some the upgrade is necessary to tackle a larger or more complex >problem - but others can just let the system churn a bit longer to get the >answer. Is that the real driver? "a bit longer" is fine - I assume you mean a base2 order of magnitude ;) the cluster closest to my chair is around .035 Gflops/W. a modern replacement would be about .256, or a factor of 7.4x better. IMO, an honest figure of merit would be higher than this, since the new machine would also give the answer faster. > I recall that one Beowulf user facility operated both a new and an old > production cluster, and replaced the "old one" with a "newer" one (the new > "new one" ) on a regular basis. my organization has a large variety of clusters, installed since 2001. in fact, we're just now decommissioning our original 2001 stuff (compaq es40's). we could have kept it going, and it still got some use. the main problems with it were that we have 20 other clusters and no excess staff, and that it's been some time since anyone produced a modern distro for alphas (which you can think of as a reiteration of the staff issue.) in the end, the fact that it was ~100 4p nodes that provided 6.6 Gflops for ~600W also factored into the decision. > Is that common? Do most of you as users see the old system just chucked > out as the new one is brought online? we overlap our systems. partly because government funding is ah, "whimsical".


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Sun staff photos can be ordered by visiting our MyCapture site.
By Christopher Scott
LOWELL -- Deborah Friedl, a 28-year veteran of the city's police department, was named interim superintendent Thursday by City Manager Bernie Lynch.
Friedl, one of the department's two deputies, now becomes the highest ranking woman in the history of the LPD.
Friedl will replace Superintendent Kenneth Lavallee, who is retiring next Friday after six years at the helm to accept a job in the private sector.
Lynch made the announcement during the department's weekly command staff meeting.
A press release from the city manager's office issued at about 10 a.m. noted Friedl has been a member of the Lowell Police Department since 1985 and has advanced through the ranks of the department from patrol officer to deputy chief. She previously worked in the Vice, Narcotics and Criminal Bureaus and is currently responsible for the day to day administrative functions of the department. She earned a bachelor of science degree in public administration, criminal justice and psychology from UMass Lowell and a master of arts degree in criminal justice from Anna Maria College. She is a graduate of the Senior Management Institute for Police and a Graduate of the Massachusetts Police Leadership Institute. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Women Police and a member of the Massachusetts Association of Women in Law Enforcement.
Lynch has begun the search process for a permanent superintendent and plans to make a permanent appoint within a 4-6 month period.
It is generally believed in the police department that Friedl, a Tyngsboro resident, is not interested in the permanent position, as are many of the other police officers Lynch interviewed for the interim position. They include the other deputy, Arthur Ryan Jr., Capt. Raymond "Kelly" Richardson, Capt. William Taylor, Capt. Kevin Sullivan, Capt. Jonathan Webb and Capt. Thomas Kennedy. Lynch interviewed all the candidates over the last several days.
Lynch said earlier that whomever is appointed interim superintendent should not assume he or she will be permanent, which is what happened in 2006 following the resignation of Edward F. Davis to become police commissioner in Boston. Lynch named Lavallee interim superintendent. Lavallee become the permanent superintendent about a year later.
For more on this story read Friday's Sun or click on http://www.lowellsun.com


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Rodriguez also gave the many composers in the room an exercise: Write a theme for your parents and children, and then set it to a home movie. He gave an example of how he did that with his own mother. "I dare you to not bawl your eyes out," he said as he choked up at the memory of his experiment.
doesn't that, like, take a while?
Mac, any idea if this is world-wide, or is it just US?
So is Volume 2 the 5th? No, its the 4th film, Volume 2.
Whats different about the Japanese version? I dont like to talk about the differences. Youre going to have to figure it out. Youre going to have to see it somehow. I dont want to give it away. Was the final battle turns to black and white for ratings purposes? I think Quentin, you know, its interesting. I love the Japanese version too. Its just different and I dont really want to talk too much about the differences at this point. At some point when everyones seen both.
apparently, the japanese version shows the other things that get cut off of sophie.
God! I want the japanese version!I want to say her breasts...cause that's the most horrible thing I can think of...legs? The other arm? To mundane... What do you think/want?I sound like sadist (much like Bill) here but I just love awful, horrible stuff on film.
QuoteSo is Volume 2 the 5th? No, it's the 4th film, Volume 2. Thank you.
So is Volume 2 the 5th? No, it's the 4th film, Volume 2.


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These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.
ICT Works
The Choice Between Facebook and Running Water Isn't Obvious
"Over the past several years two seemingly independent ideas have been gaining traction:
- New technology allows developing nations to leapfrog over traditional growth patterns (M-PESA, long-range wi-fi).
- The increasing move towards "convenience models" may be pointing the US' tech sector away from innovation (Peter Thiel's "they promised us flying cars but instead we got 140 characters").
In a recent working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, economist Robert J. Gordon writes that the US' current wave of innovation is less of a step forward and more of a lateral move, merely finding novel ways to use innovations made 20 years ago, sitting him squarely alongside Thiel. To illustrate, Gordon asks the following hypothetical question between two options, A and B:
With option A you are allowed to keep 2002 electronic technology, including your Windows 98 laptop accessing Amazon, and you can keep running water and indoor toilets; but you can't use anything invented since 2002. Option B is that you get everything invented in the past decade right up to Facebook, Twitter, and the iPad, but you have to give up running water and indoor toilets. You have to haul the water into your dwelling and carry out the waste. Even at 3am on a rainy night, your only toilet option is a wet and perhaps muddy walk to the outhouse. Which option do you choose?" READ MORE
OpenGov Blog
Open Growth
"Data has been variously described as the new oil or the new raw material of the 21st century. Like other raw materials, its value is not always immediately evident – specialist tools and effort are required to locate, extract and refine data before it yields actionable information. And, unlike natural raw materials, data is not diminished when it is consumed. This is why the data that governments and public sector bodies have worked so hard to collect and publish under open licences is of such value. It represents a vast resource that can be tapped freely, time and time again by organisations and citizens alike, whether this is to understand the inner workings of government, learn about issues affecting local communities or to enable new business start-ups." READ MORE
KM on a dollar a day
The joy of polls
"I've always been a fan of opinion polls. And after Nate Silver's triumphant predictions of the US election outcome you'd think everyone would be. But the aid/development sphere has still a way to go to catch up.
In a recent blog post I explained a little about some of the challenges in the post-2015 global consultation. A while ago week I was a "discussant" at the recent Tech Salon organized on using technology for qualitative M&E and I talked a little more about this project. In preparing my thoughts and listening to the discussion one specific idea kept coming into my mind – that is the importance of opinions and perceptions as part of monitoring and evaluation. I've written previously about the need to "listen to beneficiaries" mostly from the point of view of it being the right way to do participatory development that also has a chance of being sustainable – but it also happens to be good, if not traditional M&E." READ MORE
Transparency & Accountability Initiative
Impact case studies from middle income and developing countries
"Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have transformed the way people interact and communicate. The past two decades have seen technology being used with astonishing creativity to bring people together, collect, analyse and spread information.
ICTs hold a great deal of promise for those looking to promote transparency and accountability – yet, as this report argues, they have yet to produce a sea change in the direction of increased accountability." READ MORE
IIP Digital
More Than Elections
"In a healthy democracy, elections are the starting point for a stable government that protects minority rights, ensures free speech, respects the rule of law, and promotes a strong civil society.
Democratic elections are widely recognized as a foundation of legitimate government. By allowing citizens to choose the manner in which they are governed, elections form the starting point for all other democratic institutions and practices. Genuine democracy, however, requires substantially more. In addition to elections, democracy requires constitutional limits on governmental power, guarantees of basic rights, tolerance of religious or ethnic minorities, and representation of diverse viewpoints, among other things. To build authentic democracy, societies must foster a democratic culture and rule of law that govern behavior between elections and constrain those who might be tempted to undermine election processes." READ MORE
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