*I know that the title makes me seem like a semi-pretentious blow hard, but I swear this was my prompt.
**Also, the ideas of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are supposed to be ambiguous, so if you have no idea what they mean to Plato, using your own definitions of these terms will give you the same meaning. Please feel free to contact me with any questions.
Frederick Douglass was not just a runaway slave. He was a strong and radical public speaker who risked his life and freedom living in the public sphere. Douglass’s speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” highlighted the hypocrisy in American society that celebrates a day of freedom, yet millions of people were enslaved and oppressed. The Platonic Framework of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful can be used to analyze Douglass’s major points. Douglass’s speech embodies the Good, the True, and the Beautiful with how he appeals to logic and draws from personal experience to point out the hypocrisy in American society in 1852.
The Platonic Framework of the Good can be found in Douglass’s speech with how he appeals to logic in analyzing the Declaration of Independence. In Plato’s Gorgias, evil comes to be the opposite of the Good, and would further on explain how “to do injustice is the greatest of all evils” (Gorgias 469). Plato would agree to the claim of slavery being unjust, because slavery is, as Socrates argues against, the strong taking advantage of the weak (Gorgias 488). In his speech, Douglass laments how it is ridiculous for him to argue why slavery is wrong and unjust. “What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty… to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters?” (Douglass pg. 9). The abuse of black people because of the American slave trade was known to all Americans in this time period, but slavery and abolition were controversial topics. Douglass looks to the Declaration of Independence, the cornerstone for American freedom, but he argues it only secured freedom for white American citizens. “The Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.” (Douglass pg. 7). Here he explains to the audience that this holiday celebrating American freedom is not celebrated by him and people like him because black people were not citizens and were disenfranchised. Since Douglass argues against the injustice committed against American slaves and argues for their liberty and freedom, Plato would see examples of the Platonic Good.
The True Platonic principle can be seen in Douglass’s speech with how he challenges authority and legislation that dehumanized and suppressed black people in this era. The True, like the Good, in Douglass’s speech can be examined on how justice relates to the True. One topic covered in the Gorgias is just punishment for crimes committed to ensuring order and justice. Socrates asserts that “a man who is punished suffers justly in being brought to justice.” (Gorgias 476), but just punishment was not something extended to former slaves in the Union. Douglass condemns the Fugitive Slave Law, which was a law passed that allowed Southern slave-states to get back runaway slaves and compelled citizens to assist in returning runaway slaves (Douglass pg. 12). This law “makes MERCY TO THEM, A CRIME; and bribes the judge who tries him. An American JUDGE GETS TEN DOLLARS FOR EVERY VICTIM HE CONSIGNS to slavery… [a black man’s] own testimony is nothing. He can bring no witnesses for himself.” (Douglass p 12). The Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the Constitution allow for people not have to be “witnesses against himself” and allows people to “obtain witnesses in his favor”. The former slave would then be forced back into slavery, an unjust punishment for desiring freedom. Douglass asserts how there are “seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which committed by a black man subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment.” (Douglass pg. 8). These laws continued to dehumanize and disenfranchise black people. The True is embodied in this part of the speech because Douglass challenges the lies about black people that came about because of an unjust legal system.
The Beautiful is represented in Douglass’s argument with how he uses personal and emotional references to show the injustice. Since Douglass’s speech highlights the ugliness of slavery and it rejects and condemns it, the speech shows the Beautiful. This act of condemning slavery using its ugliness and unjust characteristic further shows this. “If the acts are beautiful, they are good, being either pleasant or useful” (Gorgias 477). The slave drivers of the 19th century lived and profited off an unjust enterprise, and to Plato “any who have led their lives with justice will change to a better fate, and any who have led theirs with injustice, to a worse one.” (Phaedrus 248E). Since Douglass argues and proves the ugliness of slavery, it is not useful nor is it Good. Douglass explains a personal experience when he was a slave how “in the deep darkness of midnight, I have been often aroused by the dead heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of chained gangs that passed our door.” (Douglass 11). This experience shows human suffering, an example of the ugliness of slavery, but how shows this embodies the Beautiful.
The Platonic framework is seen in Douglass’s speech as he appeals to logic and emotion to point of hypocrisy in American society. The Good can be seen in how Douglass takes and contrasts the Declaration of Independence and America’s use of slaves. Douglass embodies the True with his arguments against a legal system built to further disenfranchise and dehumanize black people, free and slave, during this time. Finally, Douglass shows examples of the Beautiful by condemning the ugliness of American slavery with the abuse of the slaves. Douglass’s analysis of America’s hypocrisy can be used today to analyze the continued racial inequality in America. Plato would see examples of the Platonic framework in Douglass’s speech with how Douglass constructs a strong argument condemning slavery in a persuasive and clear manner.
Works Cited
Plato. Gorgias. Translated by W.C Helmbold. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, 1997.
Plato. Phaedrus. Translated by Alexander Nehamas. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1995.
Douglass, Frederick. “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” July 5, 1852.
BRIT LAVERGNE 