Plato’s Theory of Forms: Understanding Reality
Appearances
Appearances: Something visible but inauthentic.
Things
Things: Material objects that constitute the most perfect type of knowledge among the objects of the sensible world. Physical objects are concrete, specific, and changeable. They correspond to the level of awareness of belief (pistis).
Visible Area
Visible Area: The sensible world is that of the particular changes, pictures, and things that are apprehended by the senses. The sensible world is actually involved in the world of ideas.
Senses
Senses: Source of knowledge located in the body that captures images and things.
Images
Images: Are the most imperfect kind of knowledge among the objects of the sensible world. They correspond to the level of awareness of the imagination.
Opinion
Opinion: Knowledge concerning the realm of the changeable and perishable; for that matter, their validity is variable and relative.
Cognoscible
Cognoscible: Who can know.
Idea
Idea: The main ideas are few entities that constitute the very reality. Its main features are eternity, immutability, immateriality, transcendence, participation, and hierarchy. There have been, are, and will always exist, albeit in another dimension, do not change, lack of material content, are interrelated, and there is a hierarchy between them, being at its peak the idea of goodness.
Intelligible Field
Intelligible Field: The world of ideas is the universal, stable, eternal, consistent. All the ideas are what the world known by reason.
Truth
Truth: Truth is what is achieved through science, an absolute and unquestionable knowledge which is eternal and immutable.
Good
Good: The good is the idea of ideas from which all others depend. It is the absolute.
Sun
Sun: Plato compares well with the sun. As the sun allows us to perceive things through the senses of the sensible world, to illumine, good ideas can we know the intelligible world.
Soul
Soul: One of the two realities that make up the human being. The soul is immaterial and immortal, is completely superior to the body, is what constitutes our true self. The soul is created directly by the demiurge and joins a body accidentally. The soul has three parts:
- The rational soul: The pure thinking of the truth, located in the brain, his virtue is wisdom.
- The irascible soul: A source of noble passions, located in the chest, his virtue is strength.
- Concupiscible soul: A source of vile passions, located in the abdomen, his virtue is temperance.
Knowledge
Knowledge: Plato believed that the Sophists argue that knowledge is a reflection of false knowledge of most, a knowledge of appearances. So, when we want to know that things are, we must apply a systematic approach that takes us through the dialectic to the knowledge of ideas. Plato, knowing the difference between intelligible and sensible world, distinguishes two kinds of knowledge: science and opinion. But true knowledge is that of ideas, Plato has to justify how it is possible, knowing that the man is embedded in the sensible world and ignores the existence of the intelligible. This proposed his theory of reminiscence: the immaterial and immortal soul belongs to the world of ideas as embodied in the material and mortal body forgets where he comes and falls in ignorance. It is therefore necessary to undertake a journey in which starting from the observation of sensible things to your remembrance the soul and ideas leading to the idea of good. Knowledge is not to learn new things, but remember they already knew.
Science
Science: Science seeks knowledge of ideas and leads to the truth. They target precise definitions. There are varying degrees of science in response to the hierarchical structure of ideas from knowledge of the mathematical idea to knowledge of other ideas, ending in the idea of good, dialectics.
Dialectics
Dialectics: The Platonic philosophy can have two meanings:
- Way up that leads to human being from the only probable knowledge of perishable and changing world of reality sensitive to true knowledge of eternal and unchanging world of ideas. Thus, the chained slave is freed from his bonds and begins the road leading out of the cave to the sunlight.
- Science of ideas: the knowledge that lets us know which ideas, relationship and hierarchy between them.
Guess
Guess: The lowest degree of the opinion obtained from the images.
Myth
Myth: The highest grade of the view you get from sensible things.
Discursive Thought
Discursive thought: Study of the mathematical ideas of hypothesis and relies on material elements.
Intelligence
Intelligence: Pure intelligence is what helps us, without using the senses, discover the world intelligible.
Start
Start: The first element of all things. For Plato are material entities from which the material world is created.