Kant And Descartes Comparison Essay

The new philosophers like Kant and Descartes are very different then the older philosophers like St. Thomas Aquinas, Plato. Plato lived in ancient Greece from 428-328 B.C.E. He was taught philosophy by Socrates. St. Thomas Aquinas lived from A.D. 1224-1274, during the medieval era. Separated for more than a thousand years, these two philosophers have had a huge impact on western thought. Both introduced new ideas in the study of reality, knowledge and Both Plato and Aquinas used the same concept in their epistemology, even thou they were used differently they both had the same concept.

Plato contended that we have knowledge that exists before our birth. Our soul was directly aware of these universal forms, but this perfect knowledge was corrupted by birth. Plato believes in two separate worlds. One is the material world with which we experience through are senses. It exists within space and time and includes all objects. The other world is made up of immaterial and living force these two concepts we apprehend with our minds. According to Plato, this world of the forms is more real than the material world that we live in because our world only contains copies of the real things.

This is different from Descartes’ work, but the greatest difference is mainly Plato’s on Socrates’ discourse on ethics and morality was directed to an audience, as Descartes’ work was to himself. In Plato Socrates philosophy is about what is right and wrong. In Plato Socrates states during his apology “You are mistaken, my friend, if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action; that is, whether he is acting rightly or wrongly, like a good man or a bad one” (Plato 48). Where Descartes work resulted in a few differences from Socrates in