Plato’s Metaphysics: Theory of Forms, Knowledge, and Ideal State

Posted on Nov 25, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

Plato (428 – 347 BC)

Ser = Immutability

The Foundation of Metaphysics: 1st and 2nd Navigation

Metaphysics (also called first philosophy by Aristotle) deals with realities beyond the physical and tangible. It asks about the Ente, the first principle of knowledge: what cannot be simply demonstrated but becomes the basis of all knowledge, unifying all human understanding.

For Plato, metaphysics is linked to what he called the 2nd navigation. The first, “driven by the winds” (naturalist philosophers), failed to explain the sensible world through the senses alone. They used physical causes like fire or water to explain existence.

The second navigation, driven by Plato’s intellectual efforts, posits that the cause of the physical cannot be something of the same nature. Mechanical or physical causes are secondary. This new approach aims for the intelligibility of being, discovering a supersensible world grasped by intellect, not the senses.

He sought higher causes through the participation of empirical things.

According to Plato, things are beautiful not because of their color or shape (simple causes), but because they participate in the pure idea of Beauty itself. This idea manifests through physical attributes like shape, color, and size.

Thus, the second navigation establishes two planes of being: one phenomenal and visible, and another objective and invisible, grasped by the mind, where true being resides.

The Theory of Ideas

The causes of non-physical nature are called by Plato: “Ideas” which means Form; are entities substances (and not just concepts) being by being itself, the absolute stability.

They are the essence of things, what makes these what they are and not others. These ideas are “whether” and “if” that implies that they are drawn into the transformations undergone sensible things. Are absolute and immutable as is applied to the sensible.

In the Phaedrus the set of ideas is called Hiperuranio “place on the sky”, or the physical cosmos, which indicates that the place where are located these causes is a NO PLACE supreme: the place of the purely intelligible world nonspatial. According to Plato this world is only perceived by the highest part of the human soul, our intellect. The thought may think the ideas-only when it is released from the sensible.

Structure of the world of ideas: the world is composed of a multiplicity of ideas, immutable, eternal, absolute representing different: ideas of ethical, aesthetic, and so on.

In one of his dialogues, Plato posed the impossibility of the existence of the One altogether, because the one is not without the multiple and the multiple is also not without one.In this sense agrees with Parmenides that there is NOT, as a negation of being, but nevertheless understands that an idea has a certain degree of being, as it is a certain thing, and in turn this idea has no infinite -be within, since being a certain thing, it not being a myriad of existing altreidades. Thus Plato can explain the existence of the manifold and not-being in the world of ideas.

AAala supersensible ideas in the world are in stillness and motion. The stillness is linked to the idea itself, because each mode is still itself, the movement is changing ideas about other ideas to the extent that engages them or exclude participation of other .

At the apex of the world of ideas in which a mean to higher Plato establishes the idea of goodness as the principal. above. This well, has a functional principle in the creation called UNO, one summarizes the good, since everything that one creates is good. The second principle which gives rise is the dyad, and duality of large and small, is unlimited and indefinite.

All ideas come from the cooperation of these two principles, one acts as a formal principle-limiting and unlimited determinant on the multiplicity and the latter acts as a substrate

ONE:

· Principle be: because only the unlimited scope of what gives rise to being.

· Principle of truth and cognocibilidad: determined only for the mind is knowable and true

· Value principle: the definition implies order and perfection.

There is no seasonality in the genesis of ideas from one and the dyad, it is rather a hierarchy (before and after) ontological ideas on others.

Genesis and structure of the sensible world, the role of the demiurge

In the creation of the sensible world back to the world of ideas, since it comes from the ideas that act as formal principles of the material principle, unlimited and indeterminate: the physical reality. But the intelligible ideas to act on the CHORA (receptacle sensitive, indeterminate and unlimited) needs a mediator to which Plato called the Demiurge. This “God maker” that love of goodness, are modeled to Hiperuranio and chora generating plasma in the physical cosmos.

In the drawing, the architect (intellect) and the model used (the ideas) are both eternal, unlike creation (the world of sense) to have a genesis that is not eternal but nor perish, since it possesses a soul, a body and an intellect given by the Demiurge, who very well because he made the world and not leaving space for the venality that will never perish, becoming an ordered cosmos in a god and so are the stars and the stars.

The demiurge, as maker or creator is lower and depends on the world of ideas, as well as we can say that it predates the chora. Nothing that has occurred by the demiurge is subject to death.

The man in Plato

Unlike the relationship between ideas and things, Plato presents a dual composition of man. This consists of two opposing dimensions: body (physical dimension) and soul (or intelligible metaphysical dimension).

• In the Alcibiades: Expose the body as a prison of the soul, as a place of atonement. While we have a body we are dead because ultimately we are our soul and it is found in a tomb, our physical body. The body is the root of all evil, origin of passion, hatred, dementia and all sorts of evils that if they carry our souls to death.

• In the Phaedrus: the myth of the winged chariot. The souls who fail to achieve the plain truth in the promotion, huddle and break their wings falling to earth and giving rise to a new life that is superior, the more time referred to above is the heavenly truth. the death of the body where the soul was imprisoned, it becomes his penalty trial lasted a millennium. After the 10mil years all the souls back in the company of the Gods.

• In the Republic: the myth of Er. Reincarnating souls before and after 1000 years of earthly life are the Laquensis Moira, (the daughter of need) who offer them (not being able to live or not) choice paradigms of lives that have below. Once each soul chose this paradigm is irreversible, then after drinking from the river of forgetfulness fall to their bodies to carry out the chosen lives.

The history, the root of knowledge

Refuting the statement by the Eriste, about the inability to find or know the unknown, Plato proposes that the history as a way of knowing based on the memory, in a reemerge of ideas (as known by the soul and past lives) which have always existed in our soul. These ideas are reminiscent of the world of ideas (religious mythical explanation) that the soul is immortal being met and to have seen the supersensible world, therefore it must remember to learn, ie to extract from the knowledge itself but who knows forgotten.

Indeed Perspective: Plato manages to ground his theory through the Socratic maieutics that lets you “draw the soul of a slave ‘knowledge of geometry he had never purchased. Induced questions of the philosopher, the slave concluded and solution problem; what Plato meant that he himself had drawn from such knowledge.

Philosophy: Another way to check this is discussed in the Phaedo, which explains that necessarily must be some place where those skills come from “perfect” that we have in our ideology (the perfect circle with all points equidistant from the center). Here the theory revolves around discovering plus whence it follows that between the margin between the knowledge given by the senses and that we possess as individuals than it is a circle. Everything we perceive the sensible approach is far from our idea of a circle, so this perfect idea must come from within us, because we perceive the outside world circles just about perfect. This track talks about a discovery and not a creation, as Plato also serves to support the history.

The degrees of knowledge

The knowledge of the intelligible world is always in Plato’s history, reminiscent of the ideas once referred to, however we must determine the ways in which they can learn according to what is known. Knowledge is relative to the level of being, which is why it is not and can not be known just what it is (which is maximally be) may be known by the episteme or science. But as the world exists somewhere between being and nonbeing matter is sensitive (being subject to the contingency) platter also concludes that there is a third way of knowing linked to the substance to be calleddoxa, opinion.

Antagonistically with the unveiling of the truths of science and opinion are, art is directed toward the opposite end. According to Plato, art is three times farther from the truth, for printing a copy and come from the irrational faculties of the soul. The poets are the only exception since neither copied nor reason, these are driven by a divine plan.

The state

For Plato the state is an extension of the human soul is born as humans because we can not live in isolation, we need others. The policy in this regard must convert the soul in the most virtuous as possible to ensure the welfare of the state.

People are in the writings divided into three estates that reproduce themselves.

1. Presidents or senior guards: are those who should love the city more than any other. They are the brains of the city, who should know the ideas, look good and law enforcement.

These should govern the wisdom and the rational soul. They should educate themselves for over 50 years in philosophy in order to get to look at it dialectically.

Community property.

2. The guardians assistants: are men with predominantly irascible force of the soul, and where lies the protection of the city. They should strive for the welfare and order, avoiding both internal and external risks. They must fight for every citizen has the position it deserves and education.

They should dominate the courage, fortitude and courage. Her musical education is gymnastic-over 20 years. They have the vice of lust for power and honor.

Community property.

3. The people: They are the possessors of wealth. They dominated the soul concupiscible and shall prevail to counteract temperance, allowing them to submit to the upper classes dominate the attraction of pleasures. They have no special education and ultimately outweigh their rights than duties.

The health of the state, ie of this great soul or body, depends on each of its three parts has a good performance in their duties. They establish unity of multiplicity, in justice and goodness. The same applies to the individual to achieve inner balance, in a part of his soul, achieves unity of multiplicity.

It matters little if the ideal state exists or not, since it is considered more important than each individual to perform the Platonic city inside.

With regard to the sovereignty of the state, Plato says that by analyzing the actual state and its citizens in the daily actions, it is very difficult to find the right person to practice virtue and wisdom with the government, which is why the law should govern through written constitutions.

· Monarchy: a man who imitates the ideal political

· Aristocracy: rich men who imitate the ideal political

· Democracy: All the people who imitate the optimal policy rules

Tyranny

· Oligarchy

· Demagogy

Sexuality (the platonic love) as a route towards the absolute alogical

The doctrine of Platonic love is intimately linked to the search of the One, that sensitive level, it manifests as beautiful: Eros (the god) is a demon mediator, intermediate between ugliness and beauty, wisdom and ignorance, is a force that through beauty elevates us to the good, good, through various degrees that form the ladder of love.

The beauty platter then binds to the theme of love, Eros. Here love is constituted as a mediator between the sensible and the supersensible is the force that gives wings and rises to the beauty metaempirica itself (through varying degrees of love). As it rises to Eros, the erotic is composed as a alogical way to reach the absolute. Love is a thirst for beauty and goodness, wisdom, happiness, immortality, love is an “intermediate” between God and man, for this is that the philosopher is one who aspires and is always in the pursuit of knowledge is not all-knowing god nor an ignoramus, an “intermediate.”

As such, love has different routes to arrive at good, good lover is he who knows all to see and visit them at all. Scale of love according to their grades:

· Physical love: it is the lowest in the ladder of love, is the desire to possess the body for the purpose of breeding, to achieve immortality through the creation of another being. The friendship also falls within this degree, because on one hand is not linked to eros mediate not passion, but on the other the friendship is seeking a fine not to have and yearn

· Lovers: they are fruitful in the body but not their souls, is a spiritual love. In an ascending scale found here are the souls who love the arts, justice, law and pure science.

• The culmination: the last step matches the brilliant vision of the idea of beauty itself, the absolute

Platonic love and yearning for the Absolute is transcendent to the metaphysical tension, a force that pushes us to be with the gods, to rise.

The allegory of the cave

The four meanings of the myth of the cave.

1. The ontological levels of reality: the genera of being sensible and supersensible and its divisions along with their respective degrees of knowledge.

i. The shadows of the cave are the mere outward appearances of things, its reflection. His knowledge is Eikasia, or mere imagination

ii. The statues represent the sensible objects. Your knowledge or belief is called Pistis and is linked to sensible things themselves.

iii. The wall is the line between the sensitivity of the supersensible and ideas.

iv. The ideas of numbers or mathematical objects and visual ideas is at a point between the light from the outside world and the cave. The knowledge here is knowledge Dianoia or medium.

v. The ideas and the idea of good are represented in the intelligible world, by being in sunlight, the absolute. Here knowledge is noesis Speaking of purely intelligible ideas.

2. Life on the scale of sense and sensibility, is life in the cave. While life in the spiritual dimension of life is full light. The move is the sensible to the intelligible is represented as a liberation from bondage. The vision of the sun and the light is good in itself.

3. Conception policy. The return to the cave by one who knows the world of ideas to save the rest: it recognizes the true politician. This is so because it sees the light and yet, despite wanting to stay looking down (knowing that he risks being killed, as happened to Socrates) is a man who does not love the command but use it and provides the service of good.

Lack of Ethics!