Plato Was Deadass Wrong

I don't think this is poetry, but it made me pick a type and that's the best option for what it is...

Plato Was Dead-A*s Wrong

 

I could tap on neuroscience and the emotional/rational ties in the amygdala. I could talk about how the prefrontal cortex processes emotions and plays a role in our decision making. The brain processes in parallel, not serially, which Plato might not have realized at the time. I could say that Plato was wrong, and it wasn’t his fault he was ignorant of our newfound knowledge. But… More than that, I think Plato’s entire debate has a giant, slap-in-the-face fallacy�"it’s too short-sighted and too hypothetical. 

 It should be noted, he was totally okay with being wrong. He made no claim to be all-knowing and seemed to be very inviting of disagreement in the name of debate. “If this assumption turns out to be untrue, all the consequences which follow shall be withdrawn.” I don’t know that all of the consequences should be withdrawn, but some of them definitely need to be revisited. 

Plato thinks that a flourishing city is one where everyone knows their role and rigidly applies themselves to it.  He thinks that a city’s justice can be viewed by how well it is flourishing, and that it can only flourish if everyone adheres to the natural order. Plato acts like this city would just run perfectly ad infinitum and justice would be served eternal. He’s wrong.

In the natural order of things, there is always a hint chaos. That’s how we evolve, right? Like, random mutations. The natural order can only exist with a hint of disorder.

Sometimes the soldier will go against the leader’s orders, intuitively knowing that what is commanded of him is not the right thing to do. We all know of that famous hippy Jesus, who was born and raised a carpenter, but decided to put down his hammer and fight for his values. A truly just city would commend both of these people for not adhering to natural order.

Why, then, should we not occasionally discount our rational judgment in the name of what feels right? Morality, after all, is a judgement that demands some degree of emotion. Allow me to explain…

 In order to be moral, we need three things: Capacity to experience joy, capacity to experience sadness, and the understanding that other people experience these emotions as well. To be a moral person, I believe, is to understand both sides of our affective spectrum and not act in a way that would purposefully cause another individual sadness. That is, should you come upon a person who has never experienced happiness or its opposite, you cannot feel slighted if they bring you sorrow. Further, if a person doesn’t understand the consequences that may be brought about by their actions, the consequences should not be held against them.

That all being said, a truly moral person is one who uses emotion to dictate their rationale. This is because emotion and logic do go hand in hand. They aren’t opposites; they are of the same “material” and exist on opposite ends of their spectrum. We should strive to bring them together, meeting in the middle of this “material.” Plato asked whether the three qualities�"desire, knowledge, and honor�"were truly three separable qualities or if they were actually just one. In a truly moral person, these qualities would be exclusive of, and lay impression on, each quality itself.