My name is Christina Hendricks and I teach
philosophy at the University of British
Columbia in Vancouver BC Canada. In this
video I'm going to give you some of the
historical and political background for
Plato and Socrates to help you better
understand Plato's dialogues.
This is video one of two videos so be
sure to catch the second one as well.
Socrates was a philosopher who, so far as
we know, went around Athens engaging
people in philosophical conversations.
Young men of Athens would follow him
around and learn how to have
philosophical discussions themselves.
There are no records of Socrates having
written anything down, only that he
talked with people in person.
Plato appears to have been one of those
people who in his youth followed
Socrates. Later, Plato started a
philosophical school and also wrote
numerous philosophical texts. Many of
these are dialogues, fictional
conversations between characters. Most of
Plato's dialogues feature Socrates as
one of the characters speaking. To get a
better sense of what is going on in
these dialogues we need to know a bit of
the political history of Athens at the
time of Socrates and Plato. Athens at the
time was a direct democracy, which means
that everyone who was a citizen could
vote in the assembly. But not every adult
was a citizen. Only those who were male,
over the age of 20, and had Athenian
parents. No women, foreigners, children,
or slaves could vote. So I've crossed
them out in this picture. The image at
the bottom shows the area of Athens
where the assembly of citizens would
meet. There were about 40 such meetings
per year at the time that Socrates and
Plato lived. There would be about 5,000
to 6,000 people at a time the Assembly.
Citizens got money to attend, which was a
way to try to get the voices of
people who didn't have a lot of money as
well as the voices of the rich. Anyone
who wished to speak would go up onto the
speaker's rock (shown in the top image) to
address the crowd. This rock is on the
right in the bottom image. As you can
imagine, one had to learn how to speak
loudly and also persuasively to get many
people to vote for your proposals. The
Assembly's job was to vote on laws and
other proposals, which were put forward
by a group called the Council of 500.
The Council of 500 was a group of people
who were chosen by lottery out of 10
different areas of Athens to ensure
geographical representation. You did have
to fulfill some criteria to be eligible,
though: you had to be older than 30, pay
taxes, and have a good moral reputation.
The council prepared proposals for the
Assembly to vote on and they served for
one year. 10 people on the council served
as presidents for part of the year, and
then another 10 for another part of the
year, and so on. The presidents set the
agendas for the meetings of the council.
There was one person per day who was the
chairman of the presidents for the day.
The order was chosen by lottery. This
person would take care of day-to-day
issues, great foreign visitors, hold the
keys to the Treasury. But then the next
day it would be someone else, and so on.
You should be getting the sense that
Athens valued equality; they shared power
amongst many citizens ,choosing people
even just by lottery. At this time in
Athens it was important to learn how to
speak well in front of large groups of
people. In addition to the assembly, if
you went to court you had to argue your
own case; there were no lawyers to do
that for you. So wealthy families would
hire travelling teachers called Sophists
who would teach young men how to
persuade others with speeches.
The Sophists had a reputation for not being
concerned so much with persuading others
to get the truth, but rather to get what
you want for yourself--to win in the
assembly and the law courts. They were
known for teaching people how to make
bad arguments sound good in order to
persuade others and win debates. Yhis
point is referenced in Plato's text
called Apology, in which Socrates says
people think this is what he does. Many
Sophists were relativists: they didn't
believe there was any objective truth or
moral goodness. What is true or false,
morally right or wrong, they thought
didn't exist objectively; it just
depended on when a group of people said
these were. Sometimes groups agree on
some things being morally right but not
others, thus groups 1 and 2 in the image
have a bit of a crossover.
Plato disagreed. Plato was an ethical
objectivist: he thought that what was
morally right was so for all people at
all times in places, and thus in this
image group 2 has the objective truth
about morality. We can see Plato's moral
objectivism in the dialogue called
Euthyphro which depicts Socrates
speaking to a priest about the nature of
piety. Socrates is looking for a single
definition of piety that is universally
valid, and Euthyphro tries but is unable
to come up with one. That doesn't mean
though that Plato thinks there is no
universally valid definition of piety;
this dialogue depicts Socrates searching
for it and only shows that Euthyphro the
priest doesn't have it even though he
claims to do so...a theme we will revisit
again in Plato's text called Apology
