Plato's Contract

1150 words, 5 minute read

Plato is notoriously mistreated on this website. He took the insightful but spare constructions of the pre-Socratics (Parmenides, Heraclitus, et al.) and covered them over with ‘five and dime’ tinsel and grotesque ornaments. 

Yet in my view at least, he did not reach the depths plumbed by Sts. John and Paul (or even by George and Ringo). Sucks to be Plato! He’s a classic middle child wedged between Parmenides and Paul in the P-family’s genealogy.

Still, there must be some reason we continue to read him. Take a look at the Epilogue Plato attached to his most popular Dialogue, The Republic. It tells the story of Er, a mythical character who returns to life after being dead for a short period of time. (Sounds familiar?)

Plato uses this forum to present a complex theory of reincarnation that includes cross species metempsychosis, karma, free will, chance, necessity, and fate (Fates = Norns?). One stage of this reincarnation process involves God presenting each emigrating soul with a Contract (actually more  of a Waiver of Liability) to be agreed upon prior to the awarding of a new body:

“Ephemeral souls - now is the beginning of another cycle where every birth is a harbinger of death. No daemon (guardian angel) shall cast lots for you; rather you shall choose your own daemon (fate). 

“Let him to whom the first lot falls pick first the life to which he shall be chained. Virtue is not relevant here; each soul will share in virtue according to how it values it. All blame belongs to him who chooses; God is blameless.”

Let’s unpack. Each soul chooses (not ‘designs’) the circumstances into which it is born, i.e. mis-en-scene, facticity (Sartre), Actual World (Whitehead). Souls choose from a pre-set inventory of available life situations and they select in an order determined by the casting of lots. 

Caveat: Getting the #1 draft pick is not necessarily an advantage; the temptation to choose wealth and power often proves overwhelming. Sometimes the very last pick is best because it comes with the least risk of attachment. Nobody else wanted it; why should you? Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Unlike Christian and Hindu eschatology, there is no connection here between virtue and one’s life circumstances. Effectively, Plato is addressing a question posed in the Book of Job: Why do good things happen to bad people? 

Answer: people choose their own lives ab initio. That choice determines one’s circumstances. And once the choice is made, it’s locked in…at least for this cycle of birth and death. 

What people do with these lives, to what extent they choose virtue over vice, is an individual decision unrelated to the vicissitudes of Hogwarts’ Sorting Hat (Harry Potter). That’s why we often see great piety among the disadvantaged and debauchery among the favored few. 

This, however, raises some important issues not considered by Plato. We may wish to assume, for example, that virtue-loving parents are more likely to provide their offspring  with a nurturing environment. 

Therefore, society’s collective level of virtue would play a differential role in quality of life for future generations, but there is no one-to-one connection. A rising tide does indeed raise all boats; we really are ‘all in this together’. No one is ‘saved’ until everyone is saved?

Sidebar: Judeo-Christian theology (e.g. Jeremiah, Ephesians) puts a little different spin on this. All life circumstances are intentionally prepared by God as opportunities for each of us to step in and make the most of them.

But back to Plato: each soul makes two choices, one irrevocable, the other moment-by-moment: (1) Which of the remaining available life situations do I choose for my upcoming incarnation? (2) To what extent will I dedicate this life to the pursuit of Virtue?

All ‘blame’ (if any) belongs to the one who chooses (us). God is blameless. If this is meant to be a theodicy, it certainly gets high marks for originality. I am envisioning a rewrite of Schopenhauer’s classic: The World as Chance (lots), Necessity (circumstances), and Free Will (virtue).

The moral quality of the universe is solely the product of the freely willed actions of its intentional agents. The Devil didn’t make you do it! However, your Free Will operates under circumstances you chose but did not design.

Adding another layer of complexity, your will, while 100% free, may be influenced by experiences from your past lives. You may wish to repeat comfortable patterns or you may have learned to avoid those habits at all costs; either way, those experiences will likely influence your choice of birth parents. 

Of course, those of us who believe in old fashioned biology, sociology, and psychology can account for exactly the same phenomena via a totally different pathway: A child inherits parental traits (DNA), imitates adult behavior (upbringing), absorbs society’s ambient norms and values (culture), and reacts in a unique way to the universal ‘whips and scorns’ of childhood (personality). 

To Plato’s credit, his model allows three apparently incompatible modes of being (Chance, Causality, Consciousness) to function harmoniously in a single, integrated process. However, it’s not exactly ‘Occam-friendly’.

Still, 2400 years later, there are important parallels between Plato’s model and today’s (post-1900) cosmological consensus. Chance is no longer a bit of chaos intruding on cherished order; it is an irreducible element in all quantum mechanical processes. And we now know that things separated by spacetime can nevertheless be linked by a phenomenon known as ‘Entanglement’. 

Plus, we no longer think of consciousness as something uniquely human. Most of us acknowledge consciousness in various primates and among certain sea mammals, but many see evidence of self-awareness and agency throughout the Animal Kingdom…and beyond (e.g. plants, fungi, even bacteria).

And that’s just Team DNA. We need our model of consciousness to extend to non-carbon life forms as well (AI & SETI). 

Finally, it is increasingly clear that ‘the problem of consciousness’ is not going to find a solution within the realm of classical physics. Current theories speak of consciousness in terms of quantum processes, universe-spanning fields (panpsychism), recursive loops, differance (Derrida), and/or holography (fractals).  

Plato’s dialogs are full of stuff and nonsense…and profound insights! When we view the Platonic corpus through the lens of 20th century (sic) science and philosophy, it is easy to spot the gems and extract them from the withered husks that clutch them.

The recent (2025) discovery of a new state of matter, Rondeau Time Crystals (RTC), has provided Plato’s model with important confirmation. In an RTC each ‘quantum of process’ cycles endlessly through repeating phases that seem to align perfectly with Plato: chaos/chance, causality/necessity, and consciousness/free will. Perhaps the old guy was on to something after all.1150 words, 5 minute read

Plato is notoriously mistreated on this website. He took the insightful but spare constructions of the pre-Socratics (Parmenides, Heraclitus, et al.) and covered them over with ‘five and dime’ tinsel and grotesque ornaments. 

Yet in my view at least, he did not reach the depths plumbed by Sts. John and Paul (or even by George and Ringo). Sucks to be Plato! He’s a classic middle child wedged between Parmenides and Paul in the P-family’s genealogy.

Still, there must be some reason we continue to read him. Take a look at the Epilogue Plato attached to his most popular Dialogue, The Republic. It tells the story of Er, a mythical character who returns to life after being dead for a short period of time. (Sounds familiar?)

Plato uses this forum to present a complex theory of reincarnation that includes cross species metempsychosis, karma, free will, chance, necessity, and fate (Fates = Norns?). One stage of this reincarnation process involves God presenting each emigrating soul with a Contract (actually more  of a Waiver of Liability) to be agreed upon prior to the awarding of a new body:

“Ephemeral souls - now is the beginning of another cycle where every birth is a harbinger of death. No daemon (guardian angel) shall cast lots for you; rather you shall choose your own daemon (fate). 

“Let him to whom the first lot falls pick first the life to which he shall be chained. Virtue is not relevant here; each soul will share in virtue according to how it values it. All blame belongs to him who chooses; God is blameless.”

Let’s unpack. Each soul chooses (not ‘designs’) the circumstances into which it is born, i.e. mis-en-scene, facticity (Sartre), Actual World (Whitehead). Souls choose from a pre-set inventory of available life situations and they select in an order determined by the casting of lots. 

Caveat: Getting the #1 draft pick is not necessarily an advantage; the temptation to choose wealth and power often proves overwhelming. Sometimes the very last pick is best because it comes with the least risk of attachment. Nobody else wanted it; why should you? Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Unlike Christian and Hindu eschatology, there is no connection here between virtue and one’s life circumstances. Effectively, Plato is addressing a question posed in the Book of Job: Why do good things happen to bad people? 

Answer: people choose their own lives ab initio. That choice determines one’s circumstances. And once the choice is made, it’s locked in…at least for this cycle of birth and death. 

What people do with these lives, to what extent they choose virtue over vice, is an individual decision unrelated to the vicissitudes of Hogwarts’ Sorting Hat (Harry Potter). That’s why we often see great piety among the disadvantaged and debauchery among the favored few. 

This, however, raises some important issues not considered by Plato. We may wish to assume, for example, that virtue-loving parents are more likely to provide their offspring  with a nurturing environment. 

Therefore, society’s collective level of virtue would play a differential role in quality of life for future generations, but there is no one-to-one connection. A rising tide does indeed raise all boats; we really are ‘all in this together’. No one is ‘saved’ until everyone is saved?

Sidebar: Judeo-Christian theology (e.g. Jeremiah, Ephesians) puts a little different spin on this. All life circumstances are intentionally prepared by God as opportunities for each of us to step in and make the most of them.

But back to Plato: each soul makes two choices, one irrevocable, the other moment-by-moment: (1) Which of the remaining available life situations do I choose for my upcoming incarnation? (2) To what extent will I dedicate this life to the pursuit of Virtue?

All ‘blame’ (if any) belongs to the one who chooses (us). God is blameless. If this is meant to be a theodicy, it certainly gets high marks for originality. I am envisioning a rewrite of Schopenhauer’s classic: The World as Chance (lots), Necessity (circumstances), and Free Will (virtue).

The moral quality of the universe is solely the product of the freely willed actions of its intentional agents. The Devil didn’t make you do it! However, your Free Will operates under circumstances you chose but did not design.

Adding another layer of complexity, your will, while 100% free, may be influenced by experiences from your past lives. You may wish to repeat comfortable patterns or you may have learned to avoid those habits at all costs; either way, those experiences will likely influence your choice of birth parents. 

Of course, those of us who believe in old fashioned biology, sociology, and psychology can account for exactly the same phenomena via a totally different pathway: A child inherits parental traits (DNA), imitates adult behavior (upbringing), absorbs society’s ambient norms and values (culture), and reacts in a unique way to the universal ‘whips and scorns’ of childhood (personality). 

To Plato’s credit, his model allows three apparently incompatible modes of being (Chance, Causality, Consciousness) to function harmoniously in a single, integrated process. However, it’s not exactly ‘Occam-friendly’.

Still, 2400 years later, there are important parallels between Plato’s model and today’s (post-1900) cosmological consensus. Chance is no longer a bit of chaos intruding on cherished order; it is an irreducible element in all quantum mechanical processes. And we now know that things separated by spacetime can nevertheless be linked by a phenomenon known as ‘Entanglement’. 

Plus, we no longer think of consciousness as something uniquely human. Most of us acknowledge consciousness in various primates and among certain sea mammals, but many see evidence of self-awareness and agency throughout the Animal Kingdom…and beyond (e.g. plants, fungi, even bacteria).

And that’s just Team DNA. We need our model of consciousness to extend to non-carbon life forms as well (AI & SETI). 

Finally, it is increasingly clear that ‘the problem of consciousness’ is not going to find a solution within the realm of classical physics. Current theories speak of consciousness in terms of quantum processes, universe-spanning fields (panpsychism), recursive loops, differance (Derrida), and/or holography (fractals).  

Plato’s dialogs are full of stuff and nonsense…and profound insights! When we view the Platonic corpus through the lens of 20th century (sic) science and philosophy, it is easy to spot the gems and extract them from the withered husks that clutch them.

The recent (2025) discovery of a new state of matter, Rondeau Time Crystals (RTC), has provided Plato’s model with important confirmation. In an RTC each ‘quantum of process’ cycles endlessly through repeating phases that seem to align perfectly with Plato: chaos/chance, causality/necessity, and consciousness/free will. Perhaps the old guy was on to something after all.

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Apollo and the Continents is a dynamic 18th‑century oil sketch by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo in which the sun god Apollo is placed at the center of a cosmic allegory, surrounded by planetary deities and personifications of the four continents to suggest a worldview of celestial harmony and worldly reach.