Taylor Hoogendoorn

Plato  

2.18.14

            The Phaedo by Plato was a very interesting read. In it, he tries to explain his quest for the nature of causality to Cebes, evidently one of his followers.  He begins with a very interesting analysis of the nature of the numbers one and two. He says that when you put two groups of one thing together they become two things, yet when you take one group and divide it into two parts, it also becomes two things. From this analysis, he determines that causality must be something that we assign in our minds, rather than something that is absolute. This is, in many respects, a funny argument to me as one could view a single thing, say a square, as two things at any point in time. In other words, although it is true that a square becomes two things when it is split into two right triangles, it can also be viewed as two right triangles when it is arranged as a square. There is no true creation or demolition of a thing when you move around the pieces.

            One idea that really stood out to me was Plato’s suggestion that you have to choose one rule that is most important to you and then discard those things that contradict that rule. This has interesting ties into Reformed Theology. In Reformed Theology, God’s omnipotence is viewed as the central tenet of the faith. Other rules and theories must conform to this underlying principle. I think that Plato really hits the nail on the head with his “most important rule” suggestion.