Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Hermarchus, Mark Colyvan and Plato

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9 ideas

28. God / A. Divine Nature / 2. Divine Nature
Only divine things can always stay the same, and bodies are not like that [Plato]
     Full Idea: It is fitting for only the most divine things of all to be always the same and in the same state and in the same respects, and the nature of body is not of this ordering.
     From: Plato (The Statesman [c.356 BCE], 269b)
Even the gods love play [Plato]
     Full Idea: Even the gods love play.
     From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 406c)
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 3. Divine Perfections
Gods are not lovers of wisdom, because they are already wise [Plato]
     Full Idea: No god is a lover of wisdom or desires to be wise, for he is wise already.
     From: Plato (The Symposium [c.384 BCE], 204a)
The mind of God is fully satisfied and happy with a vision of reality and truth [Plato]
     Full Idea: The mind of a god, sustained by pure intelligence and knowledge, is satisfied with the vision of reality, and nourished and made happy by the vision of truth.
     From: Plato (Phaedrus [c.366 BCE], 247d)
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 4. Divine Contradictions
If Plato's God is immaterial, he will lack consciousness, wisdom, pleasure and movement, which are essential to him [Cicero on Plato]
     Full Idea: Plato holds God to be without a body, immaterial; but this is an incomprehensible idea. Such a god would inevitably lack any consciousness, any wisdom and any pleasure (…or motion), all of which are bound up in our idea of God.
     From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') I.30
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 6. Divine Morality / b. Euthyphro question
It seems that the gods love things because they are pious, rather than making them pious by loving them [Plato]
     Full Idea: So things are loved by the gods because they are pious, and not pious because they are loved? It seems so.
     From: Plato (Euthyphro [c.398 BCE], 10e)
     A reaction: Socrates' answer to the Euthyphro Question (see Idea 336). The form of piety precedes the gods.
Is what is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it? (the 'Euthyphro Question') [Plato]
     Full Idea: Is what is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it?
     From: Plato (Euthyphro [c.398 BCE], 10a)
     A reaction: The famous Euthyphro Question, the key question about the supposed religious basis of morality. The answer of Socrates is Idea 337.
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 6. Divine Morality / c. God is the good
God must be the epitome of goodness, and we can only approach a divine state by being as good as possible [Plato]
     Full Idea: It is impossible for God to be immoral and not to be the acme of morality; and the only way any of us can approximate to God is to become as moral as possible.
     From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 176c)
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 6. Divine Morality / d. God decrees morality
In 'The Laws', to obey the law is to be obey god [Plato, by MacIntyre]
     Full Idea: The divine is important in 'The Laws' because it is identified with law; to be obedient before the law is to be obedient before god.
     From: report of Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.6
     A reaction: Christian conservativism in a nutshell. Plato is rejecting his view in Euthyphro that piety (etc.) must precede the will of the gods. The obvious problem is bad laws, made by corrupt rulers.