A-level Philosophy Plato

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  • Created on: 02-01-18 18:04

Plato (427 – 347BCE) age 81

One of the most important philosophers in history of the western world

Is there a world of Forms beyond the physical world?

Taught by Socrates-most of Plato’s books are based on Socrates views

Later books are based on his own thinking

Founded a school called ‘academia’ from which we get the word ‘Academy’ in English

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The Theory Of Forms

The Physical world is always changing, and that nothing ever stays the same. This is a problem to Plato as he believed that we couldn’t attain true knowledge if the object we wanted to know about were never the same from one moment to the next

Plato came to the conclusion that the objects in the physical world are always in a state of process and change, and therefore they can never be the objects of complete true knowledge

Physical world = change =  not true knowledge

Plato argued that there are other realities of which we can have certain knowledge in a different world, which are external and always stay the same

Realm of forms = external = true knowledge

What we experience in the Material World are only imitations of their perfect forms

Act of Justice = Result of ‘ true Justice’ –concept

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The Theory Of Forms

We realise that the human example of Justice that we are witnessing is not perfect Justice because in this changing world nothing is perfect

The fact that we realise it is not perfect demonstrates that we have an inner understanding of what ‘Ideal Justice’ or ‘The Form Of Justice’ might be

Plato Believed that the Physical world we live in is full of Imperfect imitations. And that we only recognise things for what they are only because of our true knowledge of their Forms.

Example: if we see a tree, we know what it is even when we have not seen that particular tree before because we understand the concept ‘tree’

We recognise it as an example of something that reflects the ‘Form of Tree’. We know the Concept ‘tree’ and can see that here we have something which imitates it – although always less than perfect

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The Theory Of Forms

In Plato’s view, the physical tree which is available to the senses in inferior to the concept or Form of Tree, because the physical tree is undergoing a process of change. However, the form of the tree is eternal. The idea or For of tree, unlike the physical tree never changes

Plato believed that the undergoing nature of the Forms made them in many ways ‘ more real’ than the ordinary physical objects we can perceive with our senses

Physical material things are given their reality by the Forms’ they ‘participate in’ the Forms

Plato also thought that we have an understanding of the Forms from Birth, even if we do not realise it. We just know by intuition, what the Form of Beauty is to the Form of Symmetry and we make judgements about different qualities of things in the physical world by comparing them with our concepts.

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The Theory Of Forms

Plato decided that as we seem to have this intuition about the Forms, it must be because at some point, before we were born, we experienced then and this led him to the conclusion that people must have immortal soul and must have lived in the realm of Forms before being born into the physical world as physical human beings.

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The Form Of The Good

Different forms were related to each other and are arranged in a hierarchy with the form of good as the most important, which illuminates all of the other Forms and gives them value.

EXAMPLE: Justice, wisdom, courage and beauty are aspects of goodness, which makes them higher forms

Goodness is seen as the purest and most abstract and the furthest away from the physical worlds and those Forms lower down in the hierarchy are ore particular and specific, such as the form of blueness and form of softness

Goodness is something we have never seen perfectly exemplified in this physical world but nevertheless, we have all seen actions and role models we recognise to be ‘good’

Because of our intuition of the Form of good, we can identify which actions are good

True knowledge for Plato is the knowledge of goodness  

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The Form Of The Good

Plato believed that countries should be ruled by philosophers as they love wisdom, meaning that they would want to put their wisdom into practice by teaching and by setting an example

Part of Plato’s  argument was that if someone knew what was good and bad they would always choose good. Only ignorance cause immortality.  E.g. people steal because they are ignorant of the form of honesty

If they looked for the form of Good, then they would make moral decisions

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Demiurge

Demiurge = Plato’s God

Demiurge means in Greek ‘craftsman’

He made the world by fashioning it out of material that was already there but which was shapeless before demiurge got to work

Demiurge = good and wants the best for humanity

Tries to make the universe as best as he can but  had limited materials

It wasn’t going to be perfect  as it was physical and therefore changeable

When Plato’s applied the word ‘good’ to the demiurge, he meant that he can be judged in comparison with the form of good

It is a being which can be measured against the external standards of the Forms

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The Analogy of the cave (The Republic)

Imagine people chained up in a cave, far underground.  The people are all facing the wall and are chained up in such a way that they can only look ahead of them at the wall of the cave.

The only light in the cave comes from a fire. There is a wall behind the prisoners and there is a fire located behind the wall. Behind the wall are other people walking up and down carrying statues on their heads in front of the fire.

What the chained prisoners see is the shadows cast by the statues on the wall in front of them. The Prisoners believe that the shadows are reality because that is all they see. If they hear the people behind the wall speaking they assume that the voices come from the shadows.

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The Analogy of the cave (The Republic)

Suppose that one of the prisoners is freed. At first, when he is turned around, he will be confused with what he sees. Gradually the released prisoner becomes accustomed to the firelight and is able to see the statues. He is in a confused state as he believes the reality is the shadows

Then if the released prisoner is dragged up a steep long ramp at the back o the cave into the sunlight, he will not be able to see and will try to flee back into the cave.

However, gradually if he is prevented from going back underground, he will be able to see the world around him.

Finally, he will look up and realise the role of the sun, supporting life and the seasons of the year. Once in this situation, he will not wish to go back underground  

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The Analogy of the cave (The Republic)

However, out of duty, the prisoner goes back underground again to teach the other prisoners about reality. When he goes back underground from the light of the sun to the darkness, he once again cannot see.

When the other prisoners hear is his story and observe that he sees little they are convinced it is better not to go above ground even wishing to out death to anyone who tries to free another prisoner.

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Meaning of the analogy

Tied prisoners are in an illusory world; what they think is reality (the shadows) is not reality at all. Plato says their situation is not different from ours – Plato believed that people do not see the forms clearly only the illusory physical world,

In addition, the people in the cave are prisoners; they need to be set free. I this sense the physical world imprisons a person by stopping them seeing the forms

The statues that the people carry are also images of the forms. These images are themselves only imitations or copies of the true reality of the forms. The people who carry the statues their heads are often thought to be people who share the same views as those chained up in the cave

The people who carry the statues shape the prisoners’ view because all the prisoners see is shadows of the statues. However, these statues are themselves only images of the form and show that the forms than do the people chained up in the cave

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Meaning of the analogy

In the Republic, Plato criticised philosophers and politicians who lead the people but do not actually know the truth (the forms). The people carrying the statues are like these politicians and philosophers

The prisoner is eventually set free but this is described as being forced on the prisoners. Plato believed that people needed to be taught how to understand the forms so that they could see clearly. However, the actual act of teaching people could be distressing and force people to change their views

This is why the prisoner is described as being dragged up into the sunlight

In addition, Robin Water filed suggests that the prisoners being attracted to the shadows from the firelight rather than the real world above represents the way in which culture, tradition and than upbringing limit people’s ability to see the world in any way other than how they were brought up  

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Meaning of the analogy

Above ground, the prisoner gradually starts to see. This is an analogy to the philosopher gradually learning to distinguish forms from the images and copies of them in the world

Eventually, the released prisoner comes to contemplate the sun. The sun represents the form of the good. This analogy also illustrates the sun as sources of the other forms.

The prisoner wants to stay above but out of duty tries to educate the other prisoners. This represents the idea that those who can see the forms should be the leader of society.

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Criticisms

People could argue that the idea of justice or beauty are not forms but ideas in people’s minds that are passed to others

You can argue that ideas are not independent of the mind in which they are preserved

Of what are there real forms?

Plato never gives us any compelling reason to accept it and simply asserts it

Many people argue that the physical world has a very definite reality, saying that if you hit your head on a bookcase, then you have a pretty good indication that the physical world is real

Scientists= physical world can give true insights into the nature of reality

Richard Dawkins – it is nonsense to talk of a transcendent ‘other world’ beyond the physical. This world might be changeable, but we can still study it with all its changes and processes and gain true and valuable knowledge which benefits our daily lives

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Criticisms

Aristotle- might be happy to accept the good qualities such as beauty, generosity, or the mathematics. However, it would be harder to accept the ideal forms of negative qualities such as jealousy or spite and harder to accept that everything has an ideal form.

Problem is that is too complicated like deciding the ideal form of a plant, is it a rose? Is it long or short? Are there big or small leaves?  Therefore, his theory is failed if pushed to logical extremes

There is no scientific evidence

It does make sense that we all have intuitive knowledge

In the paintings the death of Socrates and the school of Athens. Plato and Socrates are both pointing up which may indicate that they had a similar set of minds.

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