Plato’s Republic is generally regarded as his greatest work, and is certainly his most well-known; most undergraduates in the West will be exposed to it at some point in their college careers. The central theme of the Republic is justice: in the individual and in the state. However, at several places in the work, Plato touches on another subject that has fascinated humanity for millennia: the nature of God and the Divine.
It begins in book II, where the gods are discussed in relation to justice in the context of presenting as formidable-an-argument-as-possible against which Socrates is to bring to bear his considerable intellectual ability. The end goal is a more perfect understanding of the nature of justice. To that end, it is put forth that the commonsense view is that, in this life and the next, the gods reward the just and punish the unjust. At the same time, however, the poets contradict this saying the gods lead many good men to ruin, and many evil men to wealth and power. Further, it is said that the gods can be appeased through sacrifices and spells. The question posed to Socrates is: what is the point of justice if behaving appropriately does not guarantee positive results and even the gods themselves can be “bought off?”
Socrates response to this question is simple: the poets tell lies about the gods. As most people know, the Greek deities, according to the poets, were well-known to be ridden with a host of mortal-like foibles. Zeus was well-known to be a womanizer, the others were always engaged in quarrels and other less-than-divine acts. Is that the kind of character one wants to instill in one’s children? For if one can find no blame in a corrupt deity, how can one find blame in a corrupt mortal simply doing his best to follow the deities’ example? According to Socrates, the true quality of God must always be attributed to Him. Again, according to Socrates, God is always good… always. No good thing can ever cause harm, so God never causes harm. Indeed, God is the source and cause of all good things, but not evil. God is simple, unchanging, and utterly truthful. From every viewpoint, the divine is free of falsehood. It follows that God does not deceive nor change himself, nor does he deceive others through signs and visions. These considerations lead him to propose strictures in education: two canons delineating the above at the founding of the state.
In book III, Socrates goes on to give some more particulars concerning the damage done by the poets and their ilk to the reputations of the divinities; he argues that the gods and demigods (the children of a god and a mortal) should always be portrayed as paragons of morality; they should not give themselves to excesses like laughter. The gods should never lie, nor accept bribes. Achilles, for example, should never have been portrayed as greedy or arrogant. Neither should it ever have been said that Theseus or Pirithous raped anyone.
In book IV the only mention of the gods is an indirect one when Socrates states that with the definition of justice given his city is founded except for religious rituals. As a rule, Socrates prefers to leave religious rituals to the priests. However, there is a curious problem here that is never addressed. He has stated that the gods do not accept bribes. And what is a sacrifice, except a bribe offered to a god? Or perhaps that is too cynical a question on my part.
Book VI involves an interesting development. Up to that point, the gods have been discussed in a, more or less, traditional fashion, as personalities of immense power and virtue responsible for the creation and administration of the cosmos. However, in book VI, Socrates begins discussing the Form of the Good, the highest of the Forms in the hierarchy of Forms established in his well-known Theory of Forms. Socrates claims not to have ultimate knowledge of this Form, but he does give a metaphor to help delineate some of his thoughts on the subject. According to him, the sun is “the offspring of the Good.” That is, the sun relates to the world of the living much like the Form of the Good relates to the world of knowing, and, therefore, the ultimate structure of reality. Put in his terms: vision is to visible objects what reason is to rational objects. Vision requires the existence of light, which has as its ultimate author the sun. Comprehension of the objects of reason has as its ultimate author, the Form of the Good. The Form of the Good is not knowing, but its cause; it is the source of knowledge and truth, but surpasses them in beauty. The astute reader who references what he said earlier regarding God and comparing it to what he has said here, will note that the two concepts are very similar. Indeed, the obvious question is: is the Form of the Good God? Or a property (like most other Forms are considered)? Or are the two concepts separate, but related? Or what? For those familiar with analytical philosophy, Plato made a well-known distinction between what is called a “property,” (e.g. color, orange, black), and an “individual or object” (e.g. a tiger)-this distinction is known as Plato’s Bifurcation. Typically, when one is introduced to the Theory of Forms one begins with simple properties like red or blue or mathematical objects. According to Socrates all red things are unified by the Form of Redness. Every red object participates in the Form of Redness, an Idea that transcends all mere particulars or instances of the color red. It is the Form that allows one to say that two objects are the same color. Things start to get weird when one starts talking about the Forms of “Tree-ness” or “Man-ness.” As a result of Plato’s Bifurcation, though, many philosophers tend to think that good or goodness is a type of property and nothing else. If this is so, Plato’s Bifurcation effectively murders God in an intellectual sense. A morality based on good and goodness has no need of a God if good and goodness are reducible to objective properties in real things. In other words, a good action is taken because it is good and therefore desirable, not because “God said so.” Under those conditions, God becomes superfluous. For myself, I was raised Catholic and studied philosophy in college. This problem provided quite a stumbling block for me, and for a while I thought Plato had won the day. Anyway, Socrates claims not to have knowledge of the Supreme Form, so the problem becomes moot as far as the Republic is concerned; a final opinion is not given in this dialogue. (Perhaps he would argue that, because of our limited intellects, we can only comprehend God as we can a property.) In any event, it seems clear that his Form of the Good, or God, has reached the status of a necessary Being, much like the Hebrew “I Am Who Am” and Aristotle’s (of course) Unmoved Mover.
As the Form of the Good is ultimately the source of justice, and the Republic is about justice in both the personal and political arenas of life, there are political consequences. According to Socrates, only those who ascend to comprehension of the Form of the Good are fit to rule the state. Only the dialectitian can accomplish this and give a full account of the Good. Translating this into theological-speak: only those who ascend to comprehend God are fit to rule, and only the dialectitian can do this.
In book X, the final book of the Republic, Socrates goes on to describe how the Good/God makes the other Forms and all other things, including the gods. Curiously, though, Good/God can only produce one Form of a Couch, or any other Form, for that matter. If it were to produce two, then the idea by which each was called a couch would transcend both and become the Form.
Finally, according to Socrates, the gods can tell the just man from the unjust. They reward the just and punish the unjust.
Plato’s God never lies, deceives, or changes shape. Nor does it seem to be omnipotent. This differentiates it from a number of religious conceptions of God. For example, from what little I know of the Hindu religion, most of their minor deities are all manifestations-at least at some level-of the major deities simply appearing in another shape. Likewise, Plato’s God is not omnipotent because it can only make one type of Form at a time; that is, there are not two Forms of “Tree-ness,” only one-and that’s as many as there can be. Of course, as the Theory of Forms is so wound up with the structure of logic itself, this may be a reflection of some of the typical problems logic poses to the notion of God, His omnipotence, omniscience, etc… For example, “Can God make a Euclidean Round Square?” or “Can God make a stone He cannot lift?” Both questions involve different logical paradoxes. However, I have written elsewhere about such things and I will not dwell further on them here.
The topic of God and the divine comes up in other dialogues of Plato, the Parmenides and the Timaeus being two. In the end, Plato and Socrates always seemed to have a high regard for the divine itself, and always treated it with respect when they spoke of it. They did, however, reserve the right to question and analyze any human doctrine relating to it, no matter the number of adherents. For, as they said (I’ve forgotten which particular dialogue), “Above all else, one thing is certain… Men are not gods.”
