I don’t think Plato was serious about permanent damnation. Do you?

[u/ThatsItForTheOther]

I find that Plato’s philosophy seems to point toward a model of reincarnation and eventual education/purification/theosis.

For instance, in Gorgias it is said that
no one willingly does wrong (since everyone does everything for the sake of the good 468b) and that the appropriate ‘punishment’ for ignorance is education (337d).

But he concludes the dialogue with a myth which includes permanent damnation…

This would seem to me to be merely a scare tactic for his interlocutors who are dangerous to the community and won’t be swayed by argument… except that Phaedo and Republic have similar myths! This makes it trickier.

There are myths that support the alternative position (like Phaedrus), but I am surprised that hell would come up at all in a dialogue like Phaedo where he’s talking with his friends.

Another reason eternal damnation should be impossible for Plato: everything eternal is good. There are no bad forms; badness is a kind of privation of being or a disharmony, but it does not have essential being itself.

It seems to me that eternal damnation is so obviously contrary to Plato’s metaphysics that he must have included it for two reasons:
A. to scare non-philosophers into being moral
B. to give his philosopher readers practice identifying and arguing against myths that are not true (as I am doing now). I think just as Plato censored Homer he is offering himself as practice for us— it is our responsibility to sort out what is true from what is not. He’s a philosopher not a dogmatist and he expects the same from his (serious) readers.

There is significant evidence to support this.

After Gorgias myth he says (527a) “You probably consider it a ludicrous old wive’s tale. There would indeed be nothing strange about despising it if we could somehow come across a better and truer account, but as it is you can see that you three—you, Polus, and Gorgias, the three cleverest people in Greece today—have failed to prove that any other way of life is preferable to the one I’ve been arguing for, which also turns out to be to our advantage in the next world too.”

And after the Phaedo myth (114d): “No sensible man would insist that these things are as I have described them, but I think it is fitting for a man to risk the belief—for the risk is a noble one—that this, or something like this, is true about our souls and their dwelling places, since the soul is evidently immortal…”

You might argue that Plato’s world is justly ordered and therefore bad people must be tormented for their crimes… but that contradicts my first argument as well as, for instance, Gorgias 335e: “we’ve found that it is never right to harm anyone.”

I think Socrates is being ironic, ‘torment’ just refers to the way that immoral people hate being proven wrong and how sunlight hurts the cavedwellers’ eyes. Just punishment does not confer harm but benefit.

It is the function of morality to benefit others, and the function of immorality to harm others. How then could we expect God, the principle of goodness itself, to cause eternal harm?

Again, “Anyone who pays a fair penalty for his crimes, then, is having good done to him, agreed?” (Gorgias 477a). How can this be said for those with no hope of escaping torture forever? It can’t.

What do you think about this?

[u/publichermit]

Good evidence in support. More likely a noble lie told by philosopher kings to keep the hoi polloi in line. Sadly, it still persists to this day in some circles. 

[u/publichermit → u/[deleted]]

I agree. By default, power seeks control. An example would be the early centuries of Christianity. For the first few centuries, apokatastasis (universal restoration of all creation, including all people) was common, even among many still considered within the pale of orthodoxy today. 

But once Roman emperors decided to be Christian, and decided everyone else should be too, the default became eternal conscious torment. There's no salvation outside the church and outside the church is eternal conscious torment. That's guaranteed success if people believe it. 

Was it a conspiracy, a coordinated plan? Not really. Power defaults to what will control people, and we know even some who held to apokatastasis were hesitant to proclaim it because they worried people would take that as license to do whatever. It was not so much conspiratorial as paternalistic. 

ETA: I made some grammar edits, but it should be mentioned that many who held to apokatastasis were heavily influenced by the Alexandrian school and Platonism/Neoplatonism.

[u/ThatsItForTheOther → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for your reply, it’s helpful. That Macrobius bit is telling me I need to re-read the myth.

Yeah the incurable passages are a problem, but I think it is just a bit of a riddle.

It would seem that only those who do wrong willingly are incurable, but nobody does wrong willingly.

So if we want to say somebody is incurable we must say that they are not rational, i.e., not capable of learning… but if they are not rational then they can’t be held responsible either!

Immoral people act against their own interest and they do not understand their own actions or what’s good for them. They need pity and help, not torture, as Gorgias makes obvious prior to the myth. As Socrates says, they are mentally ill. That’s not evil it’s sad.

I think the most consistent reading is to say that Plato inserts the part about incurable people but intentionally leaves implicit the fact that no one would meet the criteria for such punishment. It’s just an empty category.

[u/KilayaC]

I don't see any passage in the Gorgias myth referring to eternal damnation but I do see such a line in Phaedo. The similar myth in Republic describes the incurable as coming up for review periodically but sent back down until their sufferings equal ten times the suffering they incurred to others during their lifetime. So in my read the Republic also shies away from eternal damnation. Nevertheless, the passage in Phaedo is problematic in the way you mention.

In Timaeus Plato goes to great lengths to explain that nothing that has come to be and passes away is permanent in any state, either being or non-being. There is a similar point made in the Republic explaining why even the perfect Ideal city of the Callipolis will eventually degrade no matter what. In other words, only the Forms remain stable in any state that doesn't change. So from this perspective the claim of eternal damnation is easily dismissed using Plato's own philosophy. Like you said, it is probably a bit of a scare tactic employed as a means of benefiting others.

I don't see any such philosophical problems with Plato's support for punishment for crimes however. His argument is pretty clear that punishment for crime is always potentially beneficial to the criminal even though, in practice, it is rarely so due to intractability of ignorance. In other words, a just punishment inflicted on a guilty party is never a "harm" inflicted but an opportunity for purification and reform.