Plato on the Existence of Negative Forms
The question of the origin and nature of evil in the world has preoccupied philosophers throughout history. The ancient philosopher Plato does not directly address this question in his writings, but it can be argued that the logic of his theory of forms demands the existence of forms that are negative in meaning, such as the evil and the bad. When discussing his theory of imitation, Plato alludes to the principle that whenever there are many things of the same nature, there is one form for that nature. In several passages, Plato makes mention of many negative things. It can be debated, however, whether or not the negative has a positive ontological character of its own for which there can be a form. The several senses in which an object can be considered negative must first be distinguished before the texts of Plato can be analyzed. It will be shown that, although Plato makes references in the Republic to a common nature amongst many negative things, the supposition of a negative form is not in harmony with the hierarchal structure of forms that depends on the good, which is also presented in the Republic. A solution to this problem will be presented and analyzed.
In order to understand why it is argued that negative forms must exist according to Plato's logic, one must first understand the meaning of form for Plato. Plato thinks that forms are separate and eternal entities that exist apart from the sensible world. Plato thinks that objects in the sensible world imitate a particular form and that form makes them what they are. Plato writes, "As you know, we customarily hypothesize a single form in connection with each of the many things to which w...
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Europe, in the late 1800’s, was starting for a land grab in the African continent. Around 1878, most of Africa was unexplored, but by 1914, most of Africa, with the lucky exception of Liberia and Ethiopia, was carved up between European powers. There were countless motivations that spurred the European powers to carve Africa, like economical, political, and socio–cultural, and there were countless attitudes towards this expansion into Africa, some of approval and some of condemnation.
The world of forms is a creation in the mind of Socrates that contains within it multiple ironies. Socrates claims to be closer to the real and Truth than any other man in the history of the world. Socrates claims that he has achieved this level of higher understanding through a lifetime in passionate pursuit of his personal ideal…Truth. Yet this Greek philosoph is the sole propounder of the viewpoint, which holds that there is one true example of all objects (a singular definition and model of a table or a chair).
ABSTRACT: At issue is the reliability of Heidegger’s contention that Greek thinking, especially Plato’s, was constricted by an unthought "pre-ontology." "The meaning of being" supposedly guiding and controlling Greek ontology is "Being = presence." This made "the question of the meaning of ousia itself" inaccessible to the Greeks. Heidegger’s Plato’s Sophist is his most extensive treatment of a single dialogue. To test his own reliability, he proposes "to demonstrate, by the success of an actual interpretation of [the Gigantomachia], that this sense of Being [as presence] in fact guided [Plato’s] ontological questioning . . .". I will show Heidegger’s strategy in connecting what he takes to be Plato’s naive pre-ontology — Being = Presence — to the ontology of the Gigantomachia — Being = Power. I will show that Heidegger blatantly misreads the text to make the connection: he completely misses the distinction between bodies and bodiless things. The text makes sense, I will show, if and only if its explicit ontology — Being = Power — is its implicit pre-ontology. Plato wrote his text not to discuss, but to exemplify, Heidegger’s ontology-preontology distinction. He wrote the Gigantomachia for Heidegger, but Heidegger missed it.
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The following analysis deals with the nature and source of evil and whether, given our innate motives and moral obligation, we willingly choose to succumb to our desires or are slaves of our passion. From this argument, I intend to show that our human nature requires that we play into our desires in order to affirm our free will. This is not to say that our desires are necessarily evil, but quite the opposite. In some sense, whatever people actually want has some relative value to them, and that all wanted things contain some good. But given that there are so many such goods and a whole spectrum of varying arrangements among them, that there is no way we can conceive anything as embodying an overall good just because it is to some degree wanted by one or a group of persons. In this light, there arises conflict which can only be resolved by a priority system defined by a code, maybe of moral foundations, which allows us to analyze the complexities of human motivation. I do not intend to set down the boundaries of such a notion, nor do I want to answer whether it benefits one to lead a morally good life, but rather want to find out how the constructs of good and evil affect our freedom to choose.
After the Italian second defeat, Haile Selassie led Ethiopia by the vision of modernization and advancement of his people live. Emperor Haile Selassie established modern schools, universities, and military, naval, air force and police academies. He even donated one of his palaces to the first university in th...
This essay discusses and clarifies a concept that is central to Plato's argument in the Republic — an argument in favour of the transcendent value of justice as a human good; that justice informs and guides moral conduct. Plato's argument implies that justice and morality are intimately interconnected, because the excellence and goodness of human life — the best way for a person to live — is intimately dependent upon and closely interwoven with those 'things that we find desirable in themselves and for their consequences [1]. Hence, we acknowledge that Plato Is moral thesis cannot be interpreted either as a deontological or as a consequentialist argument — or as an act centred or agent centred moral concept. Plato's thesis is informative, in philosophical terms, precisely because it enables us to find new and more fruitful ways of looking at those basic questions concerning justice and morality, and the manner in which they are interrelated [2].
For many, good is much easier to explain than evil. Good can be seen as the right or desirable quality, and evil is the opposite. If a person does something that is seen as good, or desirable, it must be the right action for either themselves or others. If it is the right action for themselves, then each person, according to Plato, is doing a good act. A person will do what is right for them, or else it was not the right action for them. For Plato, evil is the ignorance of the right action. By being ignorant, and not consciously doing harmfu...
In order to understand the influence of Platonism on Christianity, one must first comprehend the Theory of Forms. First discussed in Phaedo, Plato asserts that the Theory of Forms is an answer to the questions a...
The forms are known as universals. All particulars are flawed and the form is perfect. An example of this would be an airplane. The airplane flying in the sky is represented as the form and the shadow of the plane on the ground is the particular. The airplane in the sky is more real than the shadow of the plane. The relation between these two, the forms and the particulars, is the idea of participation. Plato states that the particular is participating in a form. This participation is known as methexis. A way to describe this is with humans. The form of human is perfect but a particular human is flawed. Plato’s studies was known as Ontology. The meaning of ontology is the study of being real things. Plato discusses the issue of one vs. many. This idea of one vs many was influenced by Socrates. This states that the one (forms) is priority over the many which is the particulars or examples. Plato discusses how we are born with knowledge of these forms. This innate knowledge is in our soul, as we do philosophy we relocate the
In this paper, I am going to discuss Plato and Aristotle's viewpoints on inconsistency within the soul in accordance with virtue and vice. Aristotle identifies bad and good states of character. The bad includes vice, inconsistency, lack of moderation, and brutality. These are mirrored alongside their positive counterparts of virtue, superhuman virtue, moderation, and consistency. This can also be extrapolated to cover softness and its opposite of endurance and courage. The problem arises when considering inconsistency and incontinence between these paralleled vices and virtues. In this Paper, I will analyze and provide an account of how the philosophers Plato and Aristotle tackle questions regarding this inconsistency. The questions that arrive regarding this are as follows. How does inconsistency arise and manifest itself, and in what way does it delineate itself from vice.
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Scarnati, J. T. (2001). Cooperative learning: make groupwork work. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 67(Fall), 71-82.
The aim of this paper is to detail the teaching strategies for collaborative learning adopted for a selected group of Nanyang Technological University (NTU), 3rd year undergraduate learners. The challenges in implementing instructional scaffolding for collaborative learning and its possible remedies are also discussed.
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