The Platonic Contradiction

I believe I speak for many polemicists when I identify that special sense of serendipity that comes with building an argument as impregnable as the one to follow. However, today I find my struggle to see the way in which I am wrong somewhat perturbing, adding to the peculiarity of this situation. I am no philosopher, no expert, and no genius. In fact, I have delayed the official composition of these ideas for quite some months now, waiting, almost hoping, for someone to prove me wrong. The devil on my left says it’s simply that I, with all my superiority, happened to debunk one of the fathers’ of Western society’s biggest ideas while the angelic voice on my right tells me I’m only too blinded by pride to observe the obvious flaws in my logic. 

Humbly, though I come at this, I fear I might be right. I fear I may have found a contradiction in the Great Philosopher’s reasoning.

As if to come full circle, the contradiction lies in his first and fifth Dialogue, Euthyphro and Phaedo, respectively. Firstly in Euthyphro, when discussing the definition of the word “pious”, the fictional Socrates is quick to ask Euthyphro if something is pious because the gods love it, or if the gods love it because it is pious. They both agree that the pious exists as such because it is “god-loved”, and is god-loved because it is pious. In other words, because it was interacted with (loved by the gods), it naturally entered the transformed state (the state of piety, as that is its definition. 

In Phaedo, hours before his execution, Socrates' (fictional) conversation with various other intellectual figures concerning the soul’s path through life and death is where Plato splits with the Christian theology that is to come. Not only does Socrates surprise the reader with his rather extreme gnosticism, but it influences his belief in reincarnation soon after, positing that the only reason one thing may be alive is because it must have once been dead, just like the only reason you are awake is because you were once asleep, and vice versa. 

Is it possible Plato forgot that he had written an entire argument contrary to this line of reasoning just four dialogues ago? Ironically, in Phaedo, Socrates employs a circular argument to argue for life’s cyclicism. But it still begs the question of how Plato came to this conclusion. To back himself up, Socrates proves that something must always come from its opposite by alluding to temporary states of being like sleep, melting and freezing, and strength and weakness. Falling prey to overgeneralization, this is where Socrates loses his argument, as everyone can agree that not every state of being is temporary. A cake that is fully baked can never again transform back into batter just as a ripped piece of paper can never unrip itself. 

So how does cake batter gain its meaning? If certain things cannot come from their opposites, where does their meaning come from? While temporary things come from their opposites, such as sleep comes from awakeness, some permanent things come from the potential to be what they have not yet been. Cake batter’s status does not come from its opposite, (a baked cake), but from its potential to be a fully baked cake, just as life does not come from death but from the being’s inevitable future of death. This way of thinking appropriately returns us to the thing’s status as being in the transformed state because it was interacted with. A person is alive not because he was once dead, but because he was once conceived, (life is the transformed state because its components were interacted with). 

Maybe I’m overthinking this, reading too deep into his arguments. Maybe he’s like Dr. Fauci in that he is simply just too learned of a person for our simple intelligence to understand. Maybe his intellectually untouchable status renders us unable to comprehend the hidden complexity of his logic. Maybe we should just lay off and trust the expert, but I think Plato would appreciate the scrutiny. In being a true lover of knowledge, he would revel in the chance to clarify his points and educate the masses of modern thought.