2. What pre-Socratic influences can you identify in Plato? Be specific: e.g., “Plato, like Paramenides, believes that…”)
Plato, like Pythagoras, believes that knowledge of pure Forms and of “Being” is the direct path to someone living a life of salvation and of the highest quality. Plato, like Pythagoras, also believed that all of the forms are geometric figures and mathematical in nature. Also, Plato, like Heraclitus, believed that our world is constantly changing, or in a constant flux. Plato, also agreed with Parmenides, who believed that the real world is not the same as the world of our experience.
3. What traditional metaphysical issues seem important today?
Metaphysics is the study of the way the world really is. A metaphysical issue
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Therefore, many of the philosophers disagreed with each other and came up with very different answers for the same concepts. Plato also did not know the answers to all of the questions that arose in the pre-Socratic era. Plato decided to look back on the pre-Socratics era in particular at the philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides. He agreed with Heraclitus who believed our world is constantly changing and with Parmenides who believed that the real world is not the same as the world of our experience. Plato chose to look at materialism and also his theory of Forms in a two-world setting in order to attempt to answer the questions of the universe. The two worlds Plato is talking about are: a world that is in constant flux (the world we live in) and a world that is ever-changing (the real world, otherwise known as Forms). Plato’s Forms distinguishes things that are real from things in our mind that we perceive as real. Plato also made the argument that reality is different than our worldly experience. Plato believed that material objects can imitate the forms because they have order, however, Aristotle’s disagreed. However, Aristotle thought that Plato’s concept of “participation” didn’t make sense. Aristotle believed that the world we live in is our reality and he argued that Plato’s idea of forms
The best way to examine this would be to pick at the individual premises that Plato makes. An outline of these premises in Plato’s final argument and his conclusion are as follows:
Plato registered the world around him as two separate realities, the visible world and the intelligible world. The essential difference in these worlds is in that the visible world is changing whereas the intelligible world is unchanging and eternal. The visible world consists of physical objects in their images, shadows, and reflections. Physical objects are in a constant state of flux, they are transient
Plato’s notion of the Forms vs. the physical realm is quite and interesting topic. I believe something very similar to what Plato thinks about the Forms and our physical reality. Plato says that there is nothing that is perfect in this reality that we live in. And the Forms are the perfect ideals or thoughts that we are striving to achieve throughout our lives. Plato says it is impossible to reach the Forms in our current reality and that it is only possible to achieve perfect knowledge and truth after our soul leaves our body and goes to the next realm where we can become or attain the Forms.
Plato has had a lot of influence on the philosophy that we have today. In this modern time we do not really have our own philosophy we are learning our philosophy from a guy that wrote it hundreds of years ago. It is really significant that we are still going with his thoughts on justice and things like that, but the ideas are a little old and not very well applied to the modern ways of life. I found this person who was writing about why Plato was wrong and she made some very good point in which the language and arguments make no sense and there really is no information there. “Plato takes forever to say anything, spinning what should be a single sentence into a page or more. This makes it very difficult to quote his argument directly so that
Plato. The Works of Plato. Trans. Irwin Edman. New York : The Modern Library, 1983.
He argues that non-physical forms or ideas represent the most accurate reality. There exists a fundamental opposition between in the world like the object as a concrete, sensible object and the idea or concept of the objects. Forms are typically universal concepts. The world of appearance corresponds to the body. The world of truth corresponds with the soul. According to Plato, for any conceivable thing or property there is a corresponding Form, a perfect example of that or property is a tree, house, mountain, man, woman, Table and Chair, would all be examples of existing abstract perfect Ideas. Plato says that true and reliable knowledge rests only with those who can comprehend the true reality behind the world of everyday experience. In order to perceive the world of the Forms, individuals must undergo a difficult
For Plato, the rigorous dichotomy between the visible and the intelligible realms was always central to his views as philosopher, particularly in the case of the good. The common citizens of ancient Greece, as was mentioned in Book VI, often tended to regard the good as something material that can be touched; therefore they praised beauty and deemed pleasure as the example of the good. Plato’s argument was that their position was false as the good was intelligible and could not be explained by the visible. Here comes another important aspect to grasp from Plato’s philosophy: the existence of Forms – Ideals. To him, the true was what did not change. Opinions change, beliefs change, but forms – or ideas - do not as they are universal. Nor are they divisible and could be represented in the material form. The people of ancient Greece were considered by him to be obsessed with that which changes over time; since the forms were universal, the people mistakenly called all beautiful things the good things and took opinions for ideas.
For the Greeks philosophy wasn’t restricted to the abstract it was also their natural science. In this way their philosophers were also their scientist. Questions such as what is the nature of reality and how do we know what is real are two of the fundamental questions they sought to answer. Pythagoras and Plato were two of the natural philosophers who sought to explain these universal principles. Pythagoras felt that all things could be explained and represented by mathematical formulae. Plato, Socrate’s most important disciple, believed that the world was divided into two realms, the visible and the intelligible. Part of the world, the visible, we could grasp with the five senses, but the intelligible we could only grasp with our minds. In their own way they both sought to explain the nature of reality and how we could know what is real.
Firstly, Plato's concept of reality contrasts with Aristotle's concept. Plato's theory of ideal forms claims that a perfect world exists beyond the world around us. Our world contains forms imperfectly copied from the ideal forms in the world beyond. In contrast, Aristotle's theory of the natural world states that our world is reality. Aristotle thought the world consists of natural forms, not necessarily ideal or imperfect. Our senses can correctly perceive the natural forms. Basically, reality became a debate between Plato's two worlds and Aristotle's single world reality.
Plato’s view on existence can be understood by discussing his theory of Forms. The theory of Forms or Ideas is about the existence of ideas in higher form of reality, the existence of a reality inhabited by forms of all things and concepts. Plato used example of objects such as table and rock and concepts like Beauty and Justice to illustrate the notion of Forms. Plato further describes Forms as a being possessed by concepts. For example, Virtue has different characters; but they all have a common nature which makes them virtuous.
Aristotle and Plato were both great thinkers but their views on realty were different. Plato viewed realty as taking place in the mind but Aristotle viewed realty is tangible. Even though Aristotle termed reality as concrete, he stated that reality does not make sense or exist until the mind process it. Therefore truth is dependent upon a person’s mind and external factors.
According to Plato, his Theory of Forms states perfection only lives in the realm of thought. There only exists one of every ideal and the rest is just a copy. This one creation is called a form, the most flawless representation of an idea. In the physical world everything is a copy of these forms and all copies are imperfect. Plato believed in two worlds; the intelligible world and the illusionistic world. The intelligible world is where everything is unchanging and eternal. We can only grasp the intelligible world with our mind. It is the world of ideas and not senses. A place where there are perfect forms of the things we know on Earth. According to Plato everything in the world we live in is an illusion. All objects are only shadows of their true forms. His theory further states every group of objects that have the same defying properties must have an ideal form. For example, in the class of wine glasses there must be one in particular that is the ideal wine glass. All others would fall under this ideal form.
Plato was born into an aristocratic Greek family between 428–427 BC. At the age of twenty he became a disciple of the philosopher Socrates. Socrates continued to be an enormous influence on Plato throughout his life. Plato was an idealist and believed that everything that we see in this world is a less accurate representation of what its true form should be. He believed in a world of unchanging and unrelated forms that corresponded to universal definitions. This belief led to his theory of forms and became an essential part of his philosophy. Plato demonstrated this idea in one of his most popular works entitled the Republic.
Plato, Complete Works ed. By John M Cooper and D.S. Hutchinson, Hackett (1997 p. 15)
Plato is one of the most important people in the history of Philosophy. Throughout his life, he had made many contributions to the world of philosophy, but the most important contribution that he is most known for is his theory of the Ideas or Forms. Throughout his many works such as the Phaedo and Symposium, he presented his theory of Ideas by using both mythos and logos in his argument for support.