Lemuel Gulliver wrote:I don't think so. Proceeding Socraticall--it's too difficult to separate Plato from Socrates--leads one to more and better questions, not necessarily finite answers. [The forms thing gets overplayed.] That said, the better questions suggest indications to answers for previous questions. What idealism I find in Platonic political philosophy is a reflection of the flaws in nature and human nature in particular. Not trying to correct such flaws would be vulgar. See, Hobbes basing things on life being nasty, brutish, and short. It is, but shouldn't we aim higher?
I agree that we should try to correct our flaws, whether in the context of a city, or just for our own benefit.
But one of the things Plato is notorious for is his denigration of the realm of "becoming", and his idealization of the realm of "being". This is a complex subject, of course--and, no doubt, I don't need to tell you what you already know--, but the gist of Plato's opinion is that a philosopher should be like a mathematician, focusing solely on the forms of actually existing things, and ignoring as much as possible their phenomenal occurrence in the real world. For example, we should strive to keep firmly rooted in our minds the concepts of "justice," "holiness," "beauty," etc., and we should measure all of the things we experience in terms of their relationship to those ideal standards.
The funny thing is that there is an element in much of Socrates' conversation that resists this pull to idealization. For example, in
Euthyphro, Socrates embarrasses Euthyphro by letting him see that, by refusing to "go with his gut" (i.e. to let his emotions govern his decision) and by prosecuting his father because of the latter's allegedly "unholy" act, he is acting in an inhuman way. The irony is that, try as we might to set up ideal standards, they are often faulty and misleading when we try to put them into practice.
This is the dialectical struggle that I mentioned between idealism and empiricism. This is part of what my own thesis is about; another aspect of it deals with the ways in which Nietzsche provides the best example of an "experimental" (his own self-description) philosopher, one who champions the realm of "becoming" and mocks the realm of "being". Nietzsche, in my view, is primarily interested in the way sexuality is our determining factor as humans, and in how it conditions even our most "rational" thoughts. Sexuality, as I interpret it, is the "will to power".
There is a sense in which, by taking into account both Plato's and Nietzsche's ideas, we can come to an appreciation of
both: liberated sexuality and moderation; experience and judgments; emotions and concepts.