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Critique Of Plato’S Ideas And Influence
Critique Of Plato’S Ideas And Influence
The school of thought of plato
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Aristotle and Plato are two of the most influential philosophers in history. Plato was Socrates’ greatest student and in turn taught Aristotle. In time, Aristotle became Plato’s greatest student. Together Aristotle and Plato, along with Socrates, laid the groundwork for what we now know as Western philosophy and science.
Plato, in addition to being a philosopher, wrestled at the Olympic level, is one of the classical Greek authors, mathematicians and the founder of The Academy, the first higher learning institute in the west. In short, Plato is one of the great thinkers in history and his contributions to philosophy, ethics and politics are many and varied. One of Plato’s main philosophical ideas is based on the idea that the world around us is not the most real world it is only the image of the real world. The material world around you can change, as can your perception of it. The material becomes immaterial and so is weaker and less defined than abstract ideas. The most real world therefore is defined by conceptual but substantive forms. The material world mimics the forms. As an aid to understanding the idea of forms he wrote the “Allegory of the Cave.” The story goes, if from birth people were immobilized and forced to stare at a wall in a cave where shadows of people walking by could be seen and echoes could be heard but not the people or the original sounds. Might not the people, when removed from the cave, believe that the only real things are the shadows and echoes? This is an analogy for how Plato’s idea of the world of forms works. The shadows are the material world while the physical people represent the forms.
Aristotle is a perfect example of a polymath, perhaps only second to “the Renaissance Man” Leonardo Da Vin...
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.... Trying to decide who is most important is an exercise in futility.
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Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” explains his beliefs on education of one’s soul and the core of the way they shape themselves. The rhetorical devices that Plato represents inside of his story explains how much freedom is worth in this world. The deeper meaning inside of what Plato describes can further be found out once a reader realizes the type of rhetorical devices are being used. For example, Plato portrays prisoners being locked inside of a cave without a way out. These prisoners never got to see the outside world, yet he mentions they “see shadows” which explains they are only able to catch a glimpse of reality from the outside. Plato’s use of imagery gives us a mental picture on the tease we may feel to notice reality but not be able to experience it. In reality, we do not value freedom as much as we are supposed to. We seem to not see the world as he sees it. With the help of personification, Plato uses human like characteristics to describe non-living things to give
Aristotle is undoubtedly a great philosopher whose contributions in many fields, including rhetoric, constitute a foundation of our modern education and research. However, many scholars suggested that his theory was an evolution of a preliminary sophistic rhetoric that developed through the years by a group of travelling teachers who formed this art and played a major role in reinforcing democracy in Greece.
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
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
Plato states that “‘the world of our sight is like the habitation in prison,’” (citation). To convey this message he describes a cave, which represents the physical, sensory world that possesses people who believe empirical knowledge to be true knowledge. Within the cave the people only see shadows, mere reflections of the truth, which represents the falsehood in their perception of genuine knowledge. The dreariness of the cave is meant to exemplify how an "unexamined life" can be a mental prison; a suppressed mindset that yields impaired intellect (Robinson 25). However, the outside of the cave represents the ideal, true world; an escape from the confinement of ignorance. The prisoners who escape the cave through philosophical curiosity ascend into reality in pursuit of wisdom and understanding. The discovery of Forms, perfect, eternal, and unchanging entities, will lead to the comprehension of factual knowledge and endless wisdom. Plato’s Theory of Forms also illustrated the crucial link between knowledge and goodness. The highest Form of all the Forms is the Form of the Good, which illuminates all of the other Forms. Plato believes that the Form of the Good “‘is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and
Plato’s concept of The Allegory of the Cave is an idea based on his theory of forms. The theory argues that our knowledge of reality/forms is not real knowledge; only our knowledge of these forms can be considered as real knowledge. The Allegory of the Cave was a conversation between Glaucon and Socrates. Socrates was explaining the cave to Glaucon. There’s a group of prisoners who ...
For Plato, Forms are eternal and changeless, but there is a relationship between these eternal and changeless Forms and particular things we perceive by means of our senses in the world. These particular things change in accordance to the perceiver and the perceiver’s environment and this is why Plato thought that such things do not possess real existence. For Plato, onl...
We have two great philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. These are great men, whose ideas have not been forgotten over years. Although their thoughts of politics were similar, we find some discrepancies in their teachings. The ideas stem from Socrates to Plato to Aristotle. Plato based moral knowledge on abstract reason, while Aristotle grounded it on experience and tried to apply it more to concrete living. Both ways of life are well respected by many people today.
The basic premise of Plato's allegory of the cave is to depict the nature of the human being, where true reality is hidden, false images and information are perceived as reality. In the allegory Plato tells a story about a man put on a Gnostics path. Prisoners seating in a cave with their legs and necks chained down since childhood, in such way that they cannot move or see each other, only look into the shadows on the wall in front of them; not realizing they have three-dimensional bodies. These images are of men and animals, carried by an unseen men on the background. Now imagine one of the prisoners is liberated into the light, the Gnostic path will become painful and difficult, but slowly his eyes will begin to accommodate what he sees and his fundamentalist view about the world will begin to change; he sees everything through an anarchic thinking and reasons. When he returns into the cave, his fellow prisoners will not recognize him or understand anything he says because he has develop a new senses and capability of perception. This is the representation of the human nature, we live in a cave with false perception of reality that we've been told since childhood, but we must realize that these present perception are incomplete.
In his dialogue ‘The Republic” Plato offered the “Allegory of the cave” one of the first meditations on nature and reality. In his allegory Plato imagined a group of slaves who from birth have been changed up and can only face forward, towards a rocky wall. To the slaves, their entire world was that wall and all of the shapes and shadows on it. Oblivious to the slaves was that behind them there was a simulator projecting shadows and shapes onto the wall. The images and shapes that the slaves were seeing was their whole reality, and thusly their reality was merely a projection of the images and shapes on the simulator. Platos po...
...died with Plato at his academy. Aristotle learned a great deal from Plato but was impressed with Plato idea of the significance of logical and critical thinking. Socrates was already working with Plato and eventually Aristotle joined them.
Plato's Theory of Forms draws parallels to The Allegory of the Cave, highlighting the concept of human beings being ignorant to true perfection. In the writing Plato uses symbols to convey a veiled meaning. The philosopher says, “The prisoners s...
Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato were two of the most influential and knowledgeable ancients in our history. Their contributions and dedication to science, language and politics are immensely valued centuries later. But while the two are highly praised for their works, they viewed several subjects entirely differently, particularly education practices, and human ethics and virtue.
...ed knowledge beyond ordinary people’s understandings. However, in some ways Aristotle did a better job than Plato. As a result, his ideas will continue to exist in this world for the generations yet to come.
Aristotle made contributions to logic, physics, biology, medicine, and agriculture. He redesigned most, if not all, areas of knowledge he studied. Later in life he became the “Father of logic” and was the first to develop a formalized way of reasoning. Aristotle was a greek philosopher who founded formal logic, pioneered zoology, founded his own school, and classified the various branches of philosophy.