Comparison of Plato, Aquinas, Aristotle and Augustine
Plato Truth and Reality- "And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are. " Truthfulness. He will never willingly tolerate an untruth, but will hate it as much as he loves truth... And is there anything more closely connected with wisdom than truth? (Plato, 380BC)
Reason Reason is knowledge of things like mathematics but which require that some postulates be accepted without question, and "intelligence," which is the knowledge of the highest and most abstract categories of things, an understanding of the ultimate good.(Plato)
World/Universe The intelligible world is made up of the unchanging products of human reason: anything arising from reason alone, such as abstract definitions or mathematics, makes up this intelligible world, which is the world of reality. The intelligible world contains the eternal "Forms" of things; the visible world is the imperfect and changing manifestation in this world of these unchanging forms.(Plato)
Virtue Virtue can indeed be taught, not merely by words, but "in" and "through" a vision of the exemplary acts of its bearers." (Plato)
God God is an intangible, impersonal entity that encompasses and is the precondition for all ideas, all reality, all of the "Forms" but is not a religious interpretation and thus does not coincide with any standard view of who or what God is. The point is not to establish an idea of God, but instead to determine what is right, good, just, and true; God is the precondition or origin of the Forms or the "timeless, abstract, unchanging objects of the understanding." (Plato 412
Aristotle
Truth/Reality Reality is real; contradictory predicates cannot apply to the same thing, in the same way, at the same time; human beings prefer to live; and that facts are facts. I therefore reject the rejects the mystical Platonic notion
Reason Reason is knowledge of things like mathematics but which require that some postulates be accepted without question, and "intelligence," which is the knowledge of the highest and most abstract categories of things, an understanding of the ultimate good.(Plato)
World/Universe The intelligible world is made up of the unchanging products of human reason: anything arising from reason alone, such as abstract definitions or mathematics, makes up this intelligible world, which is the world of reality. The intelligible world contains the eternal "Forms" of things; the visible world is the imperfect and changing manifestation in this world of these unchanging forms.(Plato)
Virtue Virtue can indeed be taught, not merely by words, but "in" and "through" a vision of the exemplary acts of its bearers." (Plato)
God God is an intangible, impersonal entity that encompasses and is the precondition for all ideas, all reality, all of the "Forms" but is not a religious interpretation and thus does not coincide with any standard view of who or what God is. The point is not to establish an idea of God, but instead to determine what is right, good, just, and true; God is the precondition or origin of the Forms or the "timeless, abstract, unchanging objects of the understanding." (Plato 412
Aristotle
Truth/Reality Reality is real; contradictory predicates cannot apply to the same thing, in the same way, at the same time; human beings prefer to live; and that facts are facts. I therefore reject the rejects the mystical Platonic notion