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¶ … Plato's concept of the forms, one must first understand the myth of the cave, as delineated in Book VII (515-518) of The Republic. The myth of the cave states that human beings dwell in insightful darkness, like imprisoned individuals chained from the neck up trying to stay alive in a cold cave illuminated only by a fire. The 'truths' of our existence are found in the fire, and in the actual human essences of the individuals. However humans mistake the shadows on the wall for what is real, rather than looking at reality fully in the face. In the myth, neck braces prevent the cave dwellers from seeing one another, and behind the captives is a place where the captors of the people parade statues of men, animals, and artifacts of all kinds carved from stone or wood, copies of real things. The dwellers discuss what they see, the shadows of these copies without accessing the true or original reference of the thing itself, were they "able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them," states Socrates to Glaucon, even though they were seeing copies, as the dweller's world of conscious experience was of the shadows of things rather than of the true things. Yet, because...
Ordinary objects are imperfect and changeable, but they faintly copy the perfect and immutable Forms. Thus, all of the information we acquire about sensible objects (like knowing what the high and low temperatures were yesterday) is temporary, insignificant, and unreliable, while genuine knowledge of the Forms themselves (like the geometric proof Socrates leads a slave boy through in the dialogue entitled "Meno") are perfectly certain forever. For example, a young girl might receive a "My Little Pony" doll, and decide she loves horses. Gradually, she grows dissatisfied with the artifact, and desires 'the real thing' -- she recieves a more realistic model, but that proves unsatisfactory, then moves on to riding lessons where she engages with the real thing that seems closer to the Platonic form of 'the horse.' However, this engagement through horse shows strikes her as a false and artifical way of apprehending horses too, until she experiences a horse in its wild, natural environment, unadorned…
Works Cited
Plato. The Republic. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. New York: Penguin, 1993.
"Meno." From The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton' Princeton University Press, 1961)
Plato and Death One of the most influential minds in western philosophy describing this search for meaning was Plato. Plato lived from 422-347 B.C, and was born into an aristocratic family in the city of Athens where he became a student of Socrates, and eventually a teacher of Aristotle. As a student of Socrates, Plato followed the structure of philosophical agreement to ensure a just society - no laws are to
It is very dark in the cave, and everything, including the face of the person next to them, is in deep shadows. It is never mentioned whether the people are happy or sad, or whether they speak to each other. It is assumed that they speak at least enough to put names to the shadows they see on the far wall. According to some, the chains that bind the
Plato on Justice The Greek word which Plato uses to mean "justice" -- dike or dikaios -- is also synonymous with law and can also mean "the just"; as Allan Bloom (1991) notes, Plato uses a more specific term -- dikaiosyne -- in the Republic, which means something more like "justice, the virtue" (p. 442). Gregory Vlastos (1981) goes even further to note that, with Plato's very vocabulary for these concepts
To paraphrase Marx several centuries later, this can most easily be summed up as "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs," or, for Plato, "if each person does one thing for which he is naturally suited, and does it at the opportune moment" (48). Here, Plato is acknowledging that not every individual is equal, nor has the same abilities as everyone else. This, in
Plato and Machiavelli, and how their ideas on leadership compare and contrast with each other. To do this, their respective works the Republic and the Prince will be used. In addition to the works by the two main authors considered, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy will provide important insight on Machiavelli and his work. Indeed, the piece authored by Nederman (2009) contains a section that specifically considers The Prince and
Science, Religion, And the Making of the Modern Mind: Plato and Aristotle The question of whether or not knowledge is identical to mere true belief goes as far back as Plato, as he argued that correct judgment, though a necessity for knowledge, is not sufficient for it. To reinforce his argument, Plato explains the nature and structure of human knowledge using a set of relevant theories and dialogues. Aristotle, a student