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 Plato
“The true lover of knowledge
naturally strives for truth, and
is not content with common
opinion, but soars with
undimmed and unwearied
passion.”
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 Plato
• Student of Socrates
• Born 427 B.C.E
• Born in Athens, Greece.
• Statesman until the Death of Socrates;
then devoted his life to philosophy
until his death.
• Died 347 B.C.E.
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 After Socrates Death

• He left Athens and visited

Libya ( for mathematicians)
Egypt (for prophets and mystics),
Italy (the Pythagoreans) and Sicily
(where, as tutor to the royal family).

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 After Socrates Death

• He was sold as a slave - but

was freed by a Libyan friend
who also gave him money to
buy some land back in Athens.

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 Plato’s Lifeline

• In this land (about 380 BCE) he

founded the Academy - so-
called because it was in the
middle of beautiful parkland
near a grove sacred to an old
hero called Academus.
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Site of Plato’s Academy:
Athens

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What it looks like today

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 After Socrates Death

• There he stayed , discussing

philosophy and teaching
students both male and female
until his death at the age of 81.

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 Pioneer of women rights

• Plato explained why he believed

women should be educated also.
He said that a state that does not
educate and train women is like a
man who only trains his right arm.

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 Marilyn vos Savant
• Marilyn vos Savant
is an American
magazine columnist,
author, lecturer, and
playwright who rose
to fame through her
listing in the Guinness
Book of World
Records under
"Highest IQ".
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 Alfred North Whitehead
• “ All philosophy is nothing more than a
footnote to Plato.”

• Referring to the fact that Plato was the

first philosopher to develop
philosophical notion of human nature,
human knowledge, and metaphysics.

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PLATO: lesser known facts
Aristocratic man with plenty of money
and was a physically strong man.
Won two prizes as championship
wrestler. (Passed all performance enhancing
drug tests)
Real name: Aristocles.
Plato was a nickname referring to his
broad shoulders.

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 Plato quote
.
• “And the climb
upward out of the
cave into the upper
world is the ascent
of the mind into the
domain of true
knowledge.”

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The Myth of the Cave, Plato

• In his book, The Republic.

• Plato believes that there is an

Absolute Knowledge/Truth and that
is obtainable.

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Myth of the Cave’s purpose:

“And now let me describe the human

situation in a parable about
ignorance and learning……”

Text:Pg 426-429 “Myth of the Cave”

Illustration next PP:Read

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Illustration

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 Plato’s Cave: Simply Put
Plato suggested that we are all like
men shackled in a cave, staring at
a wall, seeing only reflections and
shadows and mistaking them for
the real thing---the substantial
realities are outside the cave,
beyond what our senses can now
show us.
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Plato highlights four crucial aspects of
what philosophy means.
• 1. Philosophy is an activity. Ascending
upward from the cave (of ignorance) to
the light.
• 2. Philosophy is a difficult activity.
The journey upwards involves
questioning our most basic beliefs.

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 Highlights continued…
• 3. Philosophy’s aim is freedom.
Ignorant are not free. (“Let the truth
set you free!”)

• 4. That philosophy is the most basic

concern of human existence. To
grapple with and seek to understand
the most basic issues of our lives.
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 Plato and the Soul

• The soul, Plato claims, has no

parts. Therefore,it cannot be
broken down into component parts.
Therefore, it cannot be destroyed.
It is immortal.

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 Plato’s Eternal Soul
Plato believed that our soul’s were
eternal. Our souls exist beyond this
earthly world and prior to our
existence in the physical world.
Where we once came was a place
of unchanging truths. (Explain)
Our time here is just a mere
shackling of that soul into a human
body.
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 Recollection:
All the knowledge of forms, or
universals, is already in our minds.
Our sense experience can, at best, only
have the incidental effect of jarring our
memory, and bringing to our conscious
attention information that is within us,
but of which we have not yet become
aware.
We gain our knowledge through
recollection. (aha moment)
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 It is through this recollection and
thought that we can truly understand.
• Our soul is what recollects this place
whence we came where there exists
unchanging truths.

• Plato held that the clearest evidence of the

immaterial nature of the the soul is
provided by our mental activities: our
ability to think.
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 In Plato’s Phaedo he explains…
• Socrates: Consider perfect equality or
perfect beauty or any other ideal. Does
each of these always remain the same
perfect form, unchanging and not varying
from moment to moment?
• Cebes: They always have to be the same,
Socrates.

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• Socrates: And what about the many
individual [material] objects around us__
people or horses or dresses or what have
you…Do these always remain the same or
are they changing constantly and becoming
something else!

• Cebes: They are continually changing.

Socrates
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• Socrates: These changing [material]
objects can be seen and touched and
perceived with the senses [of the body].
But the unchanging Ideals can be know
only with the mind and are not visible to
the [body’s] senses…So there are two
kinds of existing things: those which are
visible and those which are not…The
visible are changing and the invisible are
unchanging.
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• Cebes: That seems to be the case…
• Socrates: Now which of these two kinds of
things is our body like?
• Cebes: Clearly it is like the visible things…
• Socrates: And what do we say of the soul?
Is it visible or not?
• Cebes: It is not visible.
• Socrates: Then the soul is more like the
invisible and the body like the visible.
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• Cebes: That is most certain, Socrates.

• Socrates: When the soul turns within and

reflects upon what lies in herself
[knowledge of Ideals], she finds there the
perfect, eternal, immortal, and unchanging
realm that is most like herself. -end-

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 Plato believed…
• We are creatures with rational minds that can
control our appetites and aggressions.
• We can see ourselves as distinct from the
matter of the world because our mind enables
us to stand apart from our material
environment.
• That freedom is a function of discipline and
knowledge; ignorance and the lack of self-
control put us on the road to bondage.
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 Forms
• Form - According to Plato’s metaphysical
theory, there is an aspect of reality beyond
the one which we can see, an aspect of
reality even more real than the one we see.
This aspect of reality, the intelligible
realm, is comprised of unchanging,
eternal, absolute entities, which are called
“Forms.” These absolute entities—such
as Goodness, Beauty, Redness, Sourness,
and so on—are the cause of all the objects
we experience around us in the visible
realm.
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 Forms
• An apple is red and sweet, for instance,
because it participates in the Form of
Redness and the Form of Sweetness. A
woman is beautiful because she
participates in the Form of Beauty. Only
the Forms can be objects of knowledge
(that is, Forms are the only things we can
know about).

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 Forms
• The visible objects in our world
never perfectly embody their forms:
visible objects are only imperfect
and changing reflections of the
invisible, perfect and changing
reflections of the invisible perfect
and unchanging forms.
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 Forms
• Each of the many horses in our
world, for example, is an imperfect
duplicate or copy of the one perfect
form of horse, just as each human
is a replica of the one perfect form
of human being.

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 Plato Concluded…
That there are two real worlds: the nonvisible
world of unchanging perfect forms and the visible
world that contains their many changing replicas.

In fact, Plato held, the forms are more real than
their replicas, since somehow (Plato suggested that
God was responsible) the forms are the basic models
according to which their imperfect replicas are
made.

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 Plato states…
* “These ideal are like patterns that are
fixed into the nature of things. Each of
the many things is made in the image of
its ideal and is a likeness to it. The many
replicas share in the ideal insofar as they
are made in its image.”
• *Plato, Parmenides.

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 Merging of Age Old Pre-Socratic
Dilemma

• Parmenides= world as unchanging

permanence. (Reason=Rationalist)

• Heraclitus= All is change: Our senses tell

us so. (Empiricist= knowledge through
senses)
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 Merging of Age Old Pre-Socratic
Dilemma
• Plato’s solution to this monumental conflict
between reality-as-change and reality-as-eternal
was both brilliant and problematic.

• Plato simply created the idea of “Two Worlds.”

• One world, the world of Becoming, it the world

we are familiar with,the physical world we
inhabit.
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 Merging of Age Old Pre-Socratic
Dilemma
• The other world, the world of ‘reality,’
is much different. This is the world of
‘Being,’ a realm that is eternal,
unchanging, and knowable through the
faculty of reason.
• Our material world/The immaterial
world of the Forms.
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 Plato’s Goal:True knowledge

• “And the climb upward out of the

cave into the upper world is the
ascent of the mind into the
domain of true knowledge.”

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 Plato’s Goal:True knowledge
• Plato’s metaphysical view enables
him to achieve his epistemological
goals, employing clear rational
criteria to distinguish
unsubstantiated and transient
opinion, from the eternal realm of
knowledge.
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 Plato’s Goal:True knowledge
• Plato’s metaphysical doctrine of
the Forms provides him with a
rational grounding for true
knowledge, which enables him to
escape from the snare of relativism
and “unanchored” changeable
opinions. (End)

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