- . .

1. - . .

2. Plato “The true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion.”

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. Site of Plato’s Academy: Athens

6. What it looks like today

7. 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 notions of human nature, human knowledge, and metaphysics.

8. 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.

9. Socrates/Plato • Most of what we know about Plato’s philosophy is based on the many dialogues he wrote in which the character of Socrates is the major speaker. In his early dialogues, Plato more or less faithfully reported Socrates' views. But as Plato grew older and his own theories began to develop, the character of Socrates increasingly became the mouthpiece for Plato’s own views. In Plato’s later dialogues the vies expressed by the character Socrates are entirely those of Plato.

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

11. The Myth of the Cave,Plato • In his book, The Republic. • Plato believes that there is an Absolute Knowledge/Truth and that is obtainable.

12. Myth of the Cave’s purpose: “And now let me describe the human situation in a parable about ignorance and learning……” “Myth of the Cave”

13. Illustration

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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. • Our time here is just a mere shackling of that soul into a human body.

19. 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.

20. It is through this recollection and thought that we can truly understand. • Our soul [mind] 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.

21. 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.

22. 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

23. 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.

24. 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.

25. 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-

26. 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.

27. 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.

28. 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).

29. 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 unchanging forms. Visible objects participate in the ideal forms.

30. 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. Horses in the visible world participate in the forms to one degree or another.

31. 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 the forms are the basic models according to which their imperfect replicas are made. • Imagination is a replica of the visible world, so art and other creative endeavors are twice removed from the reality of the forms.

32. 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.

33. 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.”

34. 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.

35. 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.

36. Three-part soul/three part state • The soul contains elements of reason, appetite, and spirit. • The state is made up of classes guided by each of the three elements of the soul. • Workers are guided by appetite • Military and others are guided by spirit • Rulers should be guided by reason