Plato’s Dual Reality: Exploring the World of Ideas and Sensible Things
Plato’s Theory of Forms
Early Influences and the Problem of Knowledge
Plato (428-347 BC), originally named Aristocles, received an elite education. He initially pursued poetry and literature, but after encountering Socrates, he reportedly abandoned these pursuits. He studied under Cratylus, a disciple of Heraclitus, and became acquainted with Heraclitean philosophy. Plato also recognized Parmenides as a significant thinker. He grappled with the conflicting doctrines of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Heraclitus’s emphasis on constant change challenged the possibility of knowledge, while Parmenides’s focus on the unchanging One, though offering a solution to the problem of knowledge, raised questions about the knowability of the changing natural world.
Plato’s Dualistic Solution
Plato sought a middle ground between these two perspectives, developing his own unique philosophy. He posited a dualistic view of reality, distinguishing between a real reality and an apparent reality. This distinction might seem counterintuitive, but Plato argued that true knowledge comes from grasping essences. The essence of something is its unchanging nature, what makes it what it is. Essences are grasped not through the senses but through the intellect.
The World of Ideas
Plato argued that essences exist independently of the sensible world, in a separate dimension he called Topos hyper Ouranos, the World of Ideas or Forms. Sensible things merely participate in these essences, a relationship sometimes described as metaxis or mimesis. This participation explains how we can recognize the same essence in different instances of a thing, despite their changing appearances.
The Soul and the State
In his later works, particularly the Republic, Plato draws a parallel between the individual soul and the state. He sees the state as a larger version of the individual and the individual as a microcosm of the state. Just as the ideal state is divided into three classes, the human soul is composed of three parts: the rational, the spirited (irascible), and the appetitive (concupiscible).