Plato and Aristotle

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“[460c] The offspring of the inferior, and any of those of the other sort who are born defective, they will properly dispose of in secret, so that no one will know what has become of them. That is the condition of preserving the purity of the guardians’ breed.” Plato (Republic)

But he forgot to consider acorns. And perfect oceans, and perfect stars, and perfect newborn babies. For the Living God mirrored His own vitality in His creation. However by Augustine’s lifetime commitment to philosophy, he imposed Plato’s perspective on Christianity. But Augustine loved the guy, so perhaps he’s not so bad? Well, he will remind us why God despises paganism, by this glimpse into his Greek mind, from Plato’s Republic, Book VI. For Plato recommended a utopian state in which he would require for the philosophers and the soldiers:

that the wives of our guardians are to be common, and their children are to be common, and no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent… [and] a woman, I said, at twenty years of age may begin to bear children to the State, and continue to bear them until forty.”

But what if a teenager or a fortyish woman becomes pregnant? Plato has a delicate solution: just kill the baby. For if he became ruler (the wise philosopher king), Plato would allow childbirth:

“only to those who are within the specified age [with] strict orders to prevent any embryo which may come into being from seeing the light; and if any force a way to the birth, the parents must understand that the offspring of such an union cannot be maintained, and arrange [that is: kill it] accordingly.

It is this same Plato of whom we read, by Augustine, City of God, Book VIII, Ch. 4:

But, among the disciples of Socrates, Plato was the one who shone with a glory which far excelled that of the others, and who not unjustly eclipsed them all… To Plato is given the praise of having perfected philosophy… We must, nevertheless, insert into our work certain of those opinions which he expresses in his writings, whether he himself uttered them, or narrates them as expressed by others, and seems himself to approve of,-opinions sometimes favorable to the true religion, which our faith takes up and defends, and sometimes contrary to it… Plato… is justly preferred to all the other philosophers of the Gentiles…