Plato Essay
1. a) Explain how Plato’s epistemological assumptions shape his metaphysics (Why does he think that there must be Forms? Hint: Plato says (in effect): “Since knowledge is certain, therefore the objects of knowledge must be unchanging.”).
b) Define Plato’s Forms and present the theory of Forms by explaining the “divided line.” (You can use the visual image, but explain it.)
Plato was extremely devoted in answering the sophists’ skepticism about reason and morality. To do so, he spent more time than any philosopher before him studying knowledge, or epistemology. He realized that to answer the sophists’ skepticism he had to first solve the three main problems that earlier philosophers had left behind; the problems of change, the “one” and the “many”, and the problem between appearance and reality. Plato started where Heraclitus, who said that everything is changing, and Parmenides, who said that nothing ever changes, left off. He said that both philosophers were correct in their assumptions, for they were talking about different types of objects. Heraclitus is correct in terms of the sensible realm; it obviously exists, and is a flux that conforms to the “measures” as he suggested. Parmenides was correct in terms of the intelligible realm. Plato thought that beyond the world of physical objects in space and time is another world that is nonphysical, non-spatial, and non-temporal. He called this the world of ideai, or forms. These forms are nonphysical, non-spatial, non-temporal objects of thought that are more real than anything else. Whenever we are thinking, according to Plato, what we are thinking about is a form. For example, a triangle drawn on the board in class, no matter how perfect and real it may appear is merely a copy of the form of triangle; a plane figure enclosed by three straight lines. It is like a triangle and looking at it helps us think of the real triangle, but it only relates, or “participates” in Plato’s terms, to its’
b) Define Plato’s Forms and present the theory of Forms by explaining the “divided line.” (You can use the visual image, but explain it.)
Plato was extremely devoted in answering the sophists’ skepticism about reason and morality. To do so, he spent more time than any philosopher before him studying knowledge, or epistemology. He realized that to answer the sophists’ skepticism he had to first solve the three main problems that earlier philosophers had left behind; the problems of change, the “one” and the “many”, and the problem between appearance and reality. Plato started where Heraclitus, who said that everything is changing, and Parmenides, who said that nothing ever changes, left off. He said that both philosophers were correct in their assumptions, for they were talking about different types of objects. Heraclitus is correct in terms of the sensible realm; it obviously exists, and is a flux that conforms to the “measures” as he suggested. Parmenides was correct in terms of the intelligible realm. Plato thought that beyond the world of physical objects in space and time is another world that is nonphysical, non-spatial, and non-temporal. He called this the world of ideai, or forms. These forms are nonphysical, non-spatial, non-temporal objects of thought that are more real than anything else. Whenever we are thinking, according to Plato, what we are thinking about is a form. For example, a triangle drawn on the board in class, no matter how perfect and real it may appear is merely a copy of the form of triangle; a plane figure enclosed by three straight lines. It is like a triangle and looking at it helps us think of the real triangle, but it only relates, or “participates” in Plato’s terms, to its’