The classical world utterly failed in their attempt to bring people to moral goodness says the late Dr. Dallas Willard.* Early thinkers like Plato and Aristotle (along with the Stoics and Epicureans later) did not ultimately understand the root of moral reality. This is what he means:
"One of the most wonderful books in the world besides the bible is Plato's Republic.... And Plato's Republic looks like it is about 'the republic,' but its actually about the human soul. It's a study of the human soul and how the soul works and in particular it is devoted to the question: "How can we train and develop people so that their soul actually works as it should? Some of you may have read it and you know that Plato's view was that the good person is one with a balanced soul. In particular it is a soul where the reason is doing its job, the appetites are doing its job, and the emotions are doing their job. And the idea is that the emotions are supposed to align with reason to govern the appetites. Well its certainly a fascinating theory and a wonderful story. And his view is that the way you get this is you develop an educational system in which people who are able to reason well rise to the top. And they then are able to get the emotions in order and so that will handle the appetites. And then the state would also reflect that same order.
"And then Aristotle basically has the same theory, except his view is that you don't get this by education, you get it by legislation. And what you do is you organize the government in such a way that you establish institutions that shape souls that are good. And then people do the things they are supposed to, and so on. But of course it didn't work.
"If you look at the history of Greece and the history of Athens and you'll see the miserable thing it fell into. The Greeks couldn't stop killing one another. And actually Greek history as an independent deal up until very recently ended when they had to invite the Romans in to keep them from killing one another. The world in which the people before Christ existed and the world in which the people at Christ's time existed (the Epicureans included) was one where people were just striving to somehow get a hold of moral reality. And they never could do it."
* Willard begins this discussion at 1:01:40 of the video. He continues afterward to make some interesting observations about how ancient Christianity and how our contemporary culture much later deals with these very same questions.
"One of the most wonderful books in the world besides the bible is Plato's Republic.... And Plato's Republic looks like it is about 'the republic,' but its actually about the human soul. It's a study of the human soul and how the soul works and in particular it is devoted to the question: "How can we train and develop people so that their soul actually works as it should? Some of you may have read it and you know that Plato's view was that the good person is one with a balanced soul. In particular it is a soul where the reason is doing its job, the appetites are doing its job, and the emotions are doing their job. And the idea is that the emotions are supposed to align with reason to govern the appetites. Well its certainly a fascinating theory and a wonderful story. And his view is that the way you get this is you develop an educational system in which people who are able to reason well rise to the top. And they then are able to get the emotions in order and so that will handle the appetites. And then the state would also reflect that same order."And then Aristotle basically has the same theory, except his view is that you don't get this by education, you get it by legislation. And what you do is you organize the government in such a way that you establish institutions that shape souls that are good. And then people do the things they are supposed to, and so on. But of course it didn't work.
"If you look at the history of Greece and the history of Athens and you'll see the miserable thing it fell into. The Greeks couldn't stop killing one another. And actually Greek history as an independent deal up until very recently ended when they had to invite the Romans in to keep them from killing one another. The world in which the people before Christ existed and the world in which the people at Christ's time existed (the Epicureans included) was one where people were just striving to somehow get a hold of moral reality. And they never could do it."
* Willard begins this discussion at 1:01:40 of the video. He continues afterward to make some interesting observations about how ancient Christianity and how our contemporary culture much later deals with these very same questions.