Understanding Plato’s Philosophical Concepts and Ideas
Descriptions
Alma: For Plato, the principle that gives life to the body and the beginning of knowledge. Its proper function is knowledge of the truth. He argues that the soul has had a previous existence and tends to rid the body, which is actually a prison. You have to distinguish three parts in the soul: rational, irascible, and appetitive.
Anthropology: The branch of knowledge that deals with the study of man and nature.
Cavern: This word is used by Plato in the allegory of the cavern. It speaks of a dark underground that symbolizes ignorance and is called the sensible world.
Dialectic: The supreme knowledge about ideas and their relations, especially the relations of all ideas with the ultimate idea of good. It is the only way of true knowledge and the last and main lesson of the education of the philosopher-ruler.
Doctrine of the Ruling Philosopher: Plato’s political proposal whereby the evils of humanity will not cease until philosophers assume leadership of state affairs or rulers convert to philosophy.
Epistemology: Generally, the theory of knowledge is considered the branch of philosophy that deals with problems related to knowledge. The essence of Platonic epistemology is the defense of the existence of some innate knowledge in the minds of individuals, as well as the distinction between two levels or degrees of knowledge and the possibility of eternal truths and objective knowledge.
Ideas: Intangible realities, conceptual, eternal, immutable, and transcendent, accessible only to intelligence. They constitute the essence, perfect and ideal models that imperfectly mimic or copy sensitive things. Ideas are therefore the cause of the being of sensible things that involve them. The ideas exist independently of men and human opinions.
Idea of Good: According to Plato, intelligence and only with great effort can we perhaps come to understand that quality common to all things we call beautiful, which makes them beautiful. It is possible that after that, we can offer a definition that incorporates the essence of the beautiful, eternal, and unchangeable, which all things we call beautiful share. Once we attain the knowledge of beauty in itself, if good is the essence, we will be able to distinguish more clearly when a particular thing is really beautiful and when it is not. This means we will have reached the criterion of the beautiful, eternal, and unchanging, which is what Plato calls the idea of beauty and the idea of the good.
Light: Light can have two meanings. The first is related to the fire inside the cave; the light from the fire projects shadows of objects, which is the only truth known to the prisoners—a false truth. However, if the prisoner escapes and comes to light, the fire symbolizes the world of sense and the intelligible world. The second meaning is related to the external light produced by the sun, which signifies absolute truth and absolute knowledge. m.de ideas: m. eternal and immutable essences, nested around the supreme idea of good. The m of ideas represents the eternal order of being and is located in a plane of transcendent and intangible reality.
M. Intelligible: Represents the area of intangible realities, eternal, unchangeable, abstract, and invisible. Although sometimes used synonymously with m. of ideas, it should be noted that the m intelligible covers both ideas and mathematical objects, which, though intangible, eternal, and immutable, constitute a level lower than that of ideas.
M. Sensitive: The world of material realities, changing, constantly subject to becoming, birth, and death. M is the things we perceive through the senses, created by the demiurge in imitation of the eternal ideas. The sensible world is the m of natural beings and materials, but also the m of human affairs.
Ontology: In general, ontology is called the theory of reality, a part of philosophy concerned with investigating the essence of what is real. Platonic ontology establishes the existence of two kinds or levels of reality: the level of eternal essences, intangible and immutable, represented by the m of ideas, and the level of sensitive situations and changing materials, which are just simple copies of the ideas and are represented by the m sensitive.
Sol: The sun for Plato is the metaphor that expresses the vision of the intelligible world. The sun produces light, which is the sovereign and producer of truth and knowledge.
Sombras: This word is used by Plato in the allegory of the cave. These shadows translate only a part of the truth and are sources of hope. This concept is within what he calls the sensible world.
Housing-Prison: This is the metaphor used by Plato to explain the loss of levels of knowledge. It explains the material world, which is the lower section of knowledge. It describes that one can reach the upper section of knowledge with the ascension to the intelligible world, but this rise involves difficulties. The prison-house is described as a cave, in which men are bound neck and feet and have only seen the shadows cast by the light of a fire.