Plato’s Morality: It Just Exists

Plato’s Morality: Self-Existent Moral Values

Plato, a student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, did as much as anyone to lay the foundations of Western philosophy.  He wrote about many things, including the question of morality.

Plato’s morality can be described as ‘Atheistic Moral Platonism’.  It is basically the idea that moral attributes we would ascribe to a person just exist on their own.

On this view ‘the Good’ would be a self-existent thing, independent of God…without a foundation in God’s nature.  Early Christian theologians equated Plato’s ‘Good’ to God’s nature, but Plato thought it existed on its own, apart from God..  Similarly, justice, love, mercy…and also injustice and hatred…must exist on their own as separate abstract entities of some sort.

This is difficult to see as a logical explanation for morality…it seems unintelligible.  Kindness, for example, is more of a description of how a person is…they are kind or unkind.  It makes sense to say someone is kind, but how can kindness exist apart from persons if it is a property of persons to begin with?  If there is no subject for the kindness to be given to, where is it?  How can it exist on its own as an abstraction?

Moral values appear to be properties of persons, which makes their existence as an independent abstraction in Plato’s morality unlikely.

What About Moral Duties?

The other problem with this idea is that if moral values did actually exist as abstract entities, why would we be obligated to follow one and not the other.  If justice and injustice are both exist as abstract entities, what is it that makes us responsible to act justly rather than unjustly?  This isn’t a function of a impersonal abstraction.  Plato’s morality, without a moral lawgiver, gives no good reason why we would be obligated to follow the ‘just’ abstraction over the ‘injust’ one.  Who says we are obligated to be just?  Without a moral lawgiver, there are no grounds for moral duties or obligations.

If abstract moral values did exist, and there were no God, it is also unfathomably unlikely that creatures could randomly evolve into creatures that correspond to an abstract moral realm that was already in place…that would be quite a coincidence.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to conclude that nature and morality are both controlled by a God who gave us both of them?  A God whose perfect nature is the source of our morality.

Have a great week!

Tagged as: atheistic moral platonism, Moral Duties, moral values, morality, plato's morality