Plato’s Theory of Knowledge and Ideal State
Plato’s Theory of Knowledge and the Ideal State
A. According to Plato, the last two parts of the sensitive soul disappear with the death of the body, leaving the rational part as the true nature of the soul. The dualism of Platonic philosophy addresses the problem of knowledge. Platonic epistemology proposes that we know true reality, the world of ideas, through the process of reminiscence. Plato believed that before the soul was incarnated in the sensible world, it contemplated the ideas. Upon joining the body, it forgets what it knew in its previous existence, but knowledge remains in the form of innate ideas. Thus, sensory experience challenges the soul to remember that knowledge and triggers a learning process that culminates in the contemplation of the Idea of Good, which Plato understood as the highest degree of knowledge, dialectics.
The doubling of the world, according to Plato, implies a duplication of knowledge. Therefore, he rejects sensitive knowledge, which is subject to constant change, and posits the existence of two types of knowledge: opinion, which covers knowledge from experience, and science, knowledge of ideas themselves.
The second line of argument is based on practical application in the ethical-political realm of Platonic metaphysics and epistemology. While humans are dual, only the part of them that can access true knowledge can be understood, provided it fulfills an educational system proposed by the philosopher. For Plato, education is key to detaching the natures of the world from temporary space and authentically looking at the facts, ideas. Education is not merely teaching but turning the soul to contemplate the ideas of the intelligible world.
The Stages of Plato’s Educational System
B. Plato’s educational system involves twenty years of fitness to educate the body in austerity and obedience, followed by ten years in pre-dialectical sciences to dispose of sensitive knowledge, and finally, twenty years of dialectic, which is the true knowledge, the arrival of the intelligible world. The ultimate goal of The Republic is the organization of a just political system that can only be addressed by a just ruler, who has completed the education system and has referred the Platonic idea of good. Thus, Plato presents a utopian state, a model of government by an aristocracy of virtue and knowledge, where power is grounded in the wisdom of the ruler.
Concerns in Plato’s Ideal Polity
Plato’s discovery of the ideal polity is based on the premise that man is social by nature, providing a man who is an individual and a citizen at the same time. The philosopher sees the state-city as a great human component in which each class corresponds to a part of the human soul: the working classes with concupiscence, the guardians with the irascible soul, and the rulers with the rational soul. Personal harmony is equated with justice in the city as a sine qua non condition and maximum target of perfection.