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    Chapter 6 PLATO Knowing The Real and The Good Edit 1

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    Plato was a Greek philosopher who founded the Academy in Athens and developed the theory of forms. He believed that true knowledge is about eternal, unchanging forms rather than the fluctuating physical world perceived by the senses. According to Plato, forms like beauty, justice, and squareness are more real than any object embodying them. He used allegories like the divided line and the allegory of the cave to illustrate that the physical world is just a shadow of the higher forms, and true knowledge is attained by rising above the senses to understand the forms.

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    Chapter 6 PLATO Knowing The Real and The Good Edit 1

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    GenesisPianoTranscriber
    251 views16 pages
    Plato was a Greek philosopher who founded the Academy in Athens and developed the theory of forms. He believed that true knowledge is about eternal, unchanging forms rather than the fluctuating physical world perceived by the senses. According to Plato, forms like beauty, justice, and squareness are more real than any object embodying them. He used allegories like the divided line and the allegory of the cave to illustrate that the physical world is just a shadow of the higher forms, and true knowledge is attained by rising above the senses to understand the forms.

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    Chapter 6 PLATO Knowing the Real and the Good Edit 1

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    Plato was a Greek philosopher who founded the Academy in Athens and developed the theory of forms. He believed that true knowledge is about eternal, unchanging forms rather than the fluctuating physical world perceived by the senses. According to Plato, forms like beauty, justice, and squareness are more real than any object embodying them. He used allegories like the divided line and the allegory of the cave to illustrate that the physical world is just a shadow of the higher forms, and true knowledge is attained by rising above the senses to understand the forms.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    251 views16 pages

    Chapter 6 PLATO Knowing The Real and The Good Edit 1

    Uploaded by

    GenesisPianoTranscriber
    Plato was a Greek philosopher who founded the Academy in Athens and developed the theory of forms. He believed that true knowledge is about eternal, unchanging forms rather than the fluctuating physical world perceived by the senses. According to Plato, forms like beauty, justice, and squareness are more real than any object embodying them. He used allegories like the divided line and the allegory of the cave to illustrate that the physical world is just a shadow of the higher forms, and true knowledge is attained by rising above the senses to understand the forms.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 16

    Chapter 6: PLATO

    Knowing the Real and the Good

    1
    PLATO (c. 428 – 348 B.C.)
     30 years old when
    Socrates died
     Traveled
     Returned to Athens and
    started “The Academy”
     Inquired, taught, wrote
    the dialogues
     Will demonstrate that
    there is truth about
    reality and it can be
    known
     Refutes skepticism and
    relativism

    2
    Knowledge and Opinion
    The four criteria distinguishing knowledge from opinion.

    Opinion Knowledge
     Is changeable.  Endures or stays put.
     May be true or false.  Is always true.
     Is not backed up by  Is backed up by
    reasons. reasons.
     Is the result of  Is the result of
    persuasion. instruction.
    The Eagles
    are the best “The team that wins
    team!
    the Super Bowl is the
    3
    best team.”
    Knowledge and Opinion
    Mathematical examples (like doubling the square) show that we do have some knowledge of the truth.

    From Plato’s Meno Doubling the square


     Soc. And at present these notions have just been
    stirred up in him, as in a dream; but if he were
    frequently asked the same questions, in different
    forms, he would know as well as any one at last?

    Men. I dare say.

    Soc. Without any one teaching him he will recover


    his knowledge for himself, if he is only asked
    questions?

    Men. Yes.

    Soc. And this spontaneous recovery of knowledge


    in him is recollection?

    Men. True.

    Soc. And this knowledge which he now has must


    he not either have acquired or always possessed?

    Men. Yes.

    4
    Knowledge and Opinion
    Knowledge (which endures) must be about objects that endure.

    Recap The Square and Euthyphro

     Knowledge is enduring,  “Here we are reminded of what


    true, rational belief based Socrates is looking for. Remember
    that when Socrates questions
    on instruction. Euthyphro, he isn’t satisfied when
     We do have knowledge. presented with an example of piety.
    What he wants is something common
     This knowledge cannot be to all pious actions, present in no
    about the world revealed impious actions, and which accounts
    for the fact that pious actions are
    through the senses. pious.
     It must be about another
     “. . . Because the Square Itself does
    world, one that endures. not fluctuate like visible and tangible
     This is the world of the squares, it can qualify as an object of
    knowledge.”
    Forms. (Melchert 123)

    5
    Knowledge and Opinion
    Three avenues of approach to the Forms, and how they cohere:
    Epistemological, Metaphysical, and Semantic.

    Epistemological knowled
    ge

    Forms are realities


    that are eternal and
    unchanging.
    Metaphysical being Huey
    Rumble
    The similarity among
    “things” indicates that
    they have something in
    common.

    Semantic
    words
    Whenever we give the
    same name to a
    plurality of things, we Gertrud
    are naming a Form. e
    6
    The World and the Forms

    Forms
    make intelligible (explain) and
    produce (bring into being) things in the
    visible world.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7xjoHruQfY

    7
    The World and the Forms
    The Divided Line

     Consult Melchert’s visual on page 131.


     Explain Plato’s thought in your own words.
     The visible
     The invisible (intelligible)
     Imagination
     Opinion
     Sciences
     Dialectic

    8
    The Myth of the Cave

    Read Melchert pp. 134 – 135 “Imagine people living in a cavernous


    cell. . .” )
    9
    The ladder of love and its goal:  Beauty Itself

    Beauty itself

    The beauty of
    knowledge

    The beautiful of laws and


    institutions

    Beautiful souls

    All beautiful bodies

    A beautiful body

    10
    Review
     https://youtu.be/B0_N4nX2G5w

    Learning Activity 3
    Purpose: to understand Plato’s Theory of the Forms
    and the Allegory of the Cave in your own way.

     Recall the Theory of the Forms and the Allegory of the Cave.
     Read the excerpt from Plato’s Republic: Melchert pp. 134 –
    136.
     Demonstrate in some way that you understand Plato’s
    Theory of the Forms and/or the Allegory of the Cave.
     Due: Wednesday, March 15, 2017.

    11
    The Ring of Gyges
    What if . . . Read Melchert p. 146.

     You had a ring and it made you invisible?


     What would you do?

    12
    The moral of the monster- lion-man image
    S: Make a model, then, of a creature with a 1. Moral actions flow from a
    single – if varied and many-headed – form,
    arrayed all around with the heads of both soul in harmony.
    wild and tame animals, and possessing the 2. A harmonious soul is a
    ability to change over to a different set of
    heads and to generate all these new bits happy soul.
    from its own body. 3. Happiness is a natural good.
    I: That would take some skillful modeling,
    but since words are a more plastic material 4. So morality is itself a natural
    than wax and so on, you may consider the good.
    model constructed.
    S: A lion and a man are the next two
    5. So acting morally is not
    models to make, then. The first of the good simply for its
    models, however, is to be by far the consequences, but is
    largest, and the second, the second
    largest. . . .
    something good in itself.
    S: And for the final coat, give them the (The Form of the Moral
    external appearance of a single entity. participates in the Form of
    Make them look like a person, so that
    the Good.)
    anyone incapable of seeing what’s inside,
    who can see only the external husk, will (Melchert 148)
    see a single creature, a human being.

    13
    “The state is the soul writ large.”

    The Soul The State

    REASON Philosophers/ki
    ngs

    SPIRIT Producers
    Guardia
    (laborers,
    ns carpenters,
    merchants. . .)
    DESIRES

    14
    A Problem with the Forms
     The Third Man Paradox
    →→
    Lg Lh (Form)
    Gertrude and Huey
    Lg Lh
    ↓

    L(F2)
    L(F)
    L(F)
    Lg Lh
    Lg Lh

    15
    References

    Melchert, N. (2014). The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction


    to Philosophy, 7th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

    PHOTO CREDITS

    • Plato and Aristotle www.flickr.com (Cover)


    • Eagles logo kti2009.wikispaces.com (S. 3)

    16

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