Plato’s Enduring Influence on Western Thought
Impact on the History of Philosophy
The idealist and rationalist conception has had a profound influence on philosophical and scientific thought.
San Agustin
For him, the truths found in the soul, and to achieve them, require interiorization, a process similar to Platonic recollection.
Theory of Ideas and Idealism
These are the two main theses of the rationalists Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, who say that knowledge of reality can be constructed deductively from certain ideas and principles, and that the order of thought is consistent with the order of reality. The Platonic ideal has been present in all streams of idealists from Hegel (everything real is rational) to the present day.
Anthropology and Ethics
This has been constant in Western culture.
Politics
The influence on Thomas More in his Utopia, which presents an Ideal State following the example of Plato’s Republic.
The Validity of Platonic Thought
Nietzsche believes that Western culture is based on a serious error: Platonic metaphysics and its influence on Christianity, because it believes in two worlds, and the most important is that of Ideas.
The philosophy that has been done since Plato has to do, in one way or another, with all later philosophy. Nietzsche is anti-Platonic, and therefore his philosophy would not exist without the philosophy of Plato. Moreover, Heidegger sees in Plato the beginning of a long history in which truth ceased to be understood as a discovery and passes from objective being to human thought. Chatelet thought the original philosophy is Platonism.
Also, thanks to the academy he founded, Plato’s thought continued for several centuries. The Platonic ideal continued, but had several changes, and the final position of the Academy would end up having a skeptical tone. It says that truth is the absolute rule of thought, but man is denied the possibility of knowing it.
Neoplatonism is a metaphysical and spiritual repercussion of Platonic thought, and whose representative was Plotinus. The whole is a process that starts from the One, and to the One returns.
The Allegory of the Sun
The Sun represents the son of Good and is the representation of good in the world of sense. This is the supreme god of the sensible world and the Good of the intelligible world. To view it, you need the “light” coming from the sun, which brings us closer to the Idea of Good. The light is knowledge, and the darkness is ignorance. The eye would be the organ that is most like the sun and watch the power granted to it by the sun. There is also an intelligible conception of the soul like an eye which focuses attention on an object illuminated by the truth and being then he knows and demonstrates intelligence. But when fixed on something that is involved in shadow, it does not see well. The soul does nothing but devise ever-changing views and seems to be devoid of any intelligence. These shades are identified by changing things and seem born and belong to the world of sense. In conclusion, only the contemplation of the essence produces genuine knowledge, and instead, looking on sensible things in the world produces mere opinions.
It is in the similitude of Plato’s line where we see a series of steps that has the vision to follow up intelligence, from ignorance to true knowledge.
The Myth of the Cave
- Meaning: The general myth is a dramatic story of the human soul in the search for Truth and the role of paideia in that search.
- Plato understands education as a series of transformations that will take you to the contemplation of reality and therefore of truth. That is why education is the means to liberate the soul.