Ancient philosophy - Plato

• Plato was a rationalist and believed that not only that some truths were only knowable by mind and reason, but also that reason is what separates humanity from animals.  
• Plato was influenced by... 

  • Socrates: Mentor and muse. Put to death in 399 BC for corrupting Athenian youth. 
  • Pythagoras: Involved with maths, but also made a sharp distinction between material body and spiritual soul. 
  • Heraclitus: “No man can step in the same river twice" - Everything is in a constant state of flux. 
• Plato used the analogy of The Cave to explain his view of reality. 

  1. Prisoners are watching shadows on a wall. 
  2. One prisoner escapes and leaves The Cave. At first, he is in immense pain, but soon he is able to see again. 
  3. He goes back to tell the others, but they shun him. 
• What does The Cave analogy mean? 

  Cave = Our world. 

  Prisoners = Humanity. 

  Shadows = False reality  

  Escape = Painful to learn truth. 

  Son = “Form” of the good. 

  Because philosophers can escape false reality, Plato said they should rule the world. 
• Strengths of the analogy of the cave:

  • Explains how everyone's reality is different
  • Chains are social constraints
  • Being lied to then discovering the truth is painful
• Weakness of Plato's theory:

  • What makes the escapee's reality more real than the prisoner's reality?
  • Hume – Plato has no evidence for an alternative reality. 
  • Plato has created a world of complete gloom inside the cave. Is that really all this world offers? 
  • Aristotle – evidence is needed before conclusions can be made.  
  • Plato is being very elitist in his conclusions that only philosophers can know the truth and should be the only ones ruling the country 
• More weaknesses of Plato's theory:

  • Swinburne – On the whole we can trust our senses. If we couldn’t then we wouldn’t survive. 
  • Are the prisoners (humans) really totally miserable in their existence? 
  • Popper – wanting something to be certain does not make it so. Because Plato can't find certainty in this every changing world then he has created a new one. 
  • People are not doing wrong because they don't know what is right and true... some people know very well that what they are doing is wrong but do it anyway. Willingly staying in the cave.
• Plato wants to understand the world through reason. He is searching for Truth but cannot accept that truth can change. Since the physical world is in a constant state of flux, any truth found in this world is subject to change. 
• Everything on the earth is actually an imperfect copy (particular) of an ideal and permanent ‘form’ that exists somewhere beyond our universe. This can be an object or idea. The ideal forms can be found in a spiritual realm known as the World of Forms. 
• Properties of the forms: 

  • Transcendent. 
  • Perfect. 
  • Unchanging. 
  • Ultimately real.  
  • Pure
• Before we are born, our souls are in the world of forms, and so when we are in a bodily form, we are remembering the perfect form. 
• The form of the good: 

  • Above, yet within everything.  
  • Needed to understand (enlighten the rational world) 
  • Think of the Sun. 

  • “Gives knowing to the knower”
• The world we live in is called the world of appearances, and we have to rely on our senses to understand it. The world of the Forms can only be grasped with our minds. 
• Even more weaknesses of Plato's theory: (1)

  • Irrelevant 
  • Knowledge of the forms has no relevance to our world 
  • Knowledge of the form of the good can't tell us how to behave 
  • How we behave is physical so is separate from the forms  
  • Perfect? 
  • No logical reason there is a perfect form of everything 
  • We all have different perfects  
• Even more weaknesses of Plato's theory: (2)

  • Aristotle argues that good comes in too many varieties – there cannot be one specific form of the good as everything has a different purpose 
  • Stephen Law – said as well as perfect forms, there should be perfect forms of bad concepts as well. He stated that this heavenly plane of existence wouldn't be such a nice place to live.