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Athens 367 BC: Writing about Aristotle without mentioning Plato is difficult. Maybe impossible. And with Plato comes Socrates into the picture.
Plato is not only well-educated and rich. He is also a powerful and experienced soldier with awards for bravery. A man of the world with connections among kings and businessmen. It is an impressive person that the 17-year-old Aristotle meets.
He is certainly not satisfied, however. The 40 year older man is rather disillusioned after many setbacks. After the defeat in the war against the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War, he ventured into politics, at the age of 23. He joined the 30 tyrants, those who threw out democracy and took over the state. The maternal uncle and Socrates' good friend Charmides was one of the leaders. But it did not turn out as Plato had expected. He quickly had enough of the tyrants' brutal methods and retreated.
New hope was lit when the tyrants' rule was overthrown a few years later and democracy was reintroduced. But although commerce and trade were running well again, it became clear that Athens' heyday was over. Democracy was probably not the best solution, which he had certainly heard before. Plato's aristocratic family had never had much faith in democracy.
The signs were obvious. In the south, the Spartans, black soup slurping with militarised brains, had proved stronger in battle. In the north, war drums were heard from the increasingly strong kingdom of Macedonia. No, Athens' political life of lies and excesses did not impress. The only wise man was probably the man who claimed to know nothing, Socrates.
He could never get over Socrates' fate, which Aristotle eventually wrote about. Plato was less than 28 when the death sentence was handed down. The city council claimed that Socrates had corrupted the youth and was therefore to blame for the loss of Athen's greatness.
According to Plato, the truth had indeed come from Socrates himself during the defence speech. Certainly it was so, that Socrates with sharp questions and biting irony had provoked the council members, exposed their ignorance. He made them unresponsive and stupid.
When the sentence came, he refused to plead for his life. He also declined a friend's offer to help him escape from custody. Instead, he asked them to send his wife and children home. They wouldn't have to witness the end.
He had emptied the goblet of hemlock with his own hands. He had laid down on his back, waiting for the paralysis that had already started in his feet and was now spreading upwards. The friends burst into tears and Plato comforted them. He was old, seventy one. He said that death was nothing dangerous but more to be considered a dreamless sleep. Wasn't it good to sleep without being bothered by dreams?
Plato could not let it go. Miserable, he set off. First to Egypt and then to Italy where he made the acquaintance of disciples of Pythagoras. A Greek mathematician who had lived in Croton in Southern Italy in the 5th century BC.
The Pythagoreans fascinated him. Their religious faith, rationality - numerological mysticism and mathematical precision made an impression. They carried the idea that reality could be described with numbers, which suddenly seemed self-evident for Plato. The goal of scientific thinking – reality, must be expressible in mathematical terms—the most precise and definite kind of thinking of which we are capable.
Plato was also convinced by the Pythagoreans' belief that the earth was spherical - that the entire cosmos was spherical with celestial bodies and stars in Pythagorean orbits. Exact, infallible. Mathematical.
Astronomy was certainly nothing new to the well-educated Plato. As a young man, he had studied under Cratylos, who in turn had been a student of Heracleitus, known for a cosmology based on fire being the basic material of the universe. Now he had new ideas to deal with.
After the trip, at the age of 32, he once again went to war, the Corinthian. It was there that he received awards for bravery. It was also during the war that he began writing down his ideas in dialogues, starring Socrates; the ever-questioning and the revealer of ignorance.
He probably also worked with the idea of starting the Academy in order to produce a more capable generation of political leaders, a philosophical elite with the knowledge that contemporary leaders obviously lacked.
But more important to this story is that, inspired by the Pythagoreans, he began to form his image of the cosmos, which he would eventually pass on to the knowledge-hungry Aristotle.
To be continued
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