Plato's Influence and Contributions

Plato’s Influence

by

Shannon Johnson

English 122

24 August 2011
Plato 's influence There are icons that will be referenced for many years to come. They touched on many topics (including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, etc.), which influenced their philosophy. However, as humans start using more and more of their abilities or capabilities to think and having more resources to prove things, their philosophy may take a back seat to current thinking. Plato is one of the world’s well known and widely read Greek philosophers and is often reputed for his philosophical dialogues. He was a student to Socrates, and the founder of the Academy in Athens; the first known high school in the western world. He is respected for his contributions in laying the background of Western Philosophy. His sophisticated writings are evident in the Socratic dialogues with thirteen letters and thirty-six dialogues being associated with him. His dialogues have been used in teaching of logic, philosophy, ethics, mathematics, and have become much more rhetoric (Ambuel 71). Most of Plato’s work is structured in a dialogue influenced by the groups of people who often listened to his long conversations. Some of his dialogues encompassed two characters whose conversations were not audible to any other party. Early dialogue reflected on Socratic philosophy while the later dialogue reflected on Plato’s own views. Plato often implicated analogies in his arguments; for instance, the Socratic analogy of a doctor in which the doctor cures the body while the philosopher cures the mind (Bakalis 200). Metaphors were also employed in Plato’s work; for instance, that human knowledge is seen as a birdcage where the knowledge is seen as the birds flapping, whereby one tries to reach for one thought but lands at the wrong one. Plato is highly renowned for his themes ranging from art, which he advocated as the imitation of the reality as opposed to reality; to justice, where he questions about a just ruler and a just society. The theme of knowledge is given a lot of focus by Plato. He pronounced that knowledge is a matter of remembrance, not a matter of learning, study, or observation. That knowledge is never practical, but comes from divine powers (Fine 111). Other evident themes include reality and perception, custom and nature, and soul and body. Therefore, Plato remains an accepted writer both in classics and for students beginning to read about ancient writers. His conversation involves people asking and answering queries. Sentence structure implicated indirect statements, and the use of conditions and particles to advance a particular philosophical argument. Evident rhetoric elements include irony, sarcasm, and humor (Garvey 124). Plato influenced his audience through his views of metaphysics, the intellectual repercussions of denying the truth of the material world. In his dialogue, “Republic”, he tries to interpret the idea of man’s intuition about what is real and what is knowable. The essence of reality is put into the perspective. For something to be real, Plato suggested that it should be tangible in ones hands as opposed to what people do by taking objects in their senses as actual. Plato wonders why people are literally happy without thinking, and in essence such people lack the divine inspiration that gives equal minded people access to high profile insights of reality (Havelock 302). Plato is the first philosopher to discourage the use of eyes to judge reality, which was emphasized in his allegory of the cave. The cave proposed the invisible world as the most intellectual, and the visible world as the least knowable and most ambiguous. He further says that those who accept the visible world as the sense to be the best and real are pitifully living in a world of evil and negligence. The main idea was to create ideal society that is corrupt free, and able to deliver great ideas without any external influence. Plato’s audience associated the allegory of the cave with his metaphysics and epistemology connected with his political stand. That the ideal person to rule is one who has moved out of the cave of ignorance and evilness, and his or her eyes are envisaged on goodness. This enlightened that people of the society are supposed to run the state based on their mighty insights and divine contemplations, thus the ideal philosopher king (Kochin 103). The basic idea was about the wise leader, who appreciates the power bestowed on him by the wise people, who have the character of choosing a good master. Plato’s “Republic” dialogue was reputed for the idea of perfect leader for the people. Plato’s ideas about reality into the warring and conflicting domains of the spiritual and material has been of immense influence in the records of Western religion and philosophy. The acquisition of ideal knowledge is seen through his myth of the cave, where individuals are bond in the depth of the cave with restriction of vision and unable to see each other but shadows. Escaping from the darkness to the bright is a new dawn or acquisition of ideal knowledge. Hence, individuals should struggle to free themselves from the captivity of ignorance, the physical world of appearance, and match to the world of dawn, which is a full and perfect being, a world of forms, and which is the true object of knowledge. Based on reasons mathematicians are able to define what a circle is without real object, Plato observed this to be the form existing outside the world of time and space (Havelock 341). Reflected in his fictions, the idea of physical events and physical objects, which he observed as mere shadows of their perfect or ideal forms, existed only to the point that they instantiate the ideal descriptions of themselves (Jackson 46). The analogy of a shadow being temporary is equated to the physical objects, which are passing phenomena existing because of causes that are more significant. Plato was trying to bring out the idea of ideal justice, which exists but not well known and followed, and any attempt is usually a mere copy of it. Plato influences his audience greatly through his ideas of knowledge, which he believed was attainable. Knowledge is transmitted through inheritance, and people learn to develop ideas hidden in their souls. He further distinguished between opinion and knowledge, where knowledge is derived from world of essence while opinion is derived from the changing world of senses (Garvey 178). He advocated that knowledge should be infallible and certain, and it should be composed of genuine and real objects as opposed to mere appearance. The ideal object is fixed, unchanging, and permanent which is equivalent to the ideal realm of existence contrasted with world of fantasy or becoming. The basic idea was rejection of empiricism, which proposes that knowledge is a result of sense understanding. Propositions originating from sense knowledge have an extent of probability and never certain. Plato stated that objects of sense knowledge, otherwise known as common sense, are unreliable events of the physical world. Subsequently, objects of sense knowledge are not real objects of knowledge. Stated in his reputed “Republican” dialogue, the ideas of opinion and knowledge, assertions or claims about the visible world, propositions of science, and common sense observations are classified as opinion. The opinion may be well founded, but that does not make it qualify to be an ideal knowledge (Jackson 102). Plato asserted that the highest level of awareness is knowledge since it is based on reasons as opposed to sense experience. He advocated that when reasons are properly used, they result into intellectual insights that are real, and the objects of these sound insights are the permanent universals; the everlasting forms or substances that amount to the certain world. Plato’s knowledge of form was adopted to explain objects that exist outside the physical world spatial and temporally. Such forms have greater reality due to their stability and perfection as models of ordinary objects whatever their reality is. Such examples include triangles, squares, and circles taught in mathematics. Plato’s views based on forms advocated that the material world is not absolute real world, which we live in but a mere shadow of it (Fine 155). His ideas were used in formulating solution to the challenges of universal the forms are sense reflection of things in the environment. Plato’s idea of resemblance and universal terms was adopted to refer so many specific events and things. For instance, one is human to an extent that he or she appears or takes part in form of humanness, and if humanness is known for being sound and sane, then one can only be a human if he or she is sound and sane (Bakalis 279). Further, one is brave or coward to the extent that he or she takes part in that form or act while an object is pretty if only it takes part in the form or idea of pretty. It is given that everything in the spatial and temporal world is what it is by the fact of its universal form, participation in or resemblance to. A universal term can only be defined with evidence that one has the knowledge of the form to which such universal refers. Plato had a monumental influence in the world of art. He advocated that the fictions imitate the universal forms. Artists imitated the real world. For instance, a beautiful flower is an imitation of the universal form of beauty that the physical flower is removed from the reality by one-step. Further, the picture of the flower is removed from reality by two steps. Therefore, Plato observed that the artistic work was based on some inspired madness (Ambuel 103). Plato contributed immensely in the world of mathematics. He believed mathematics in its perfect form could still be applied to the heaven. He was the first one to describe the five regular solids with all lines and angles and equivalent faces, the icosahedrons, dodecahedron, octahedron, hexahedron and the tetrahedron. The dodecahedron represented the universe as whole, therefore such solids since then were known as the Platonic solids (Havelock 398). The idea of solar system has much to do with Plato’s ideas. He observed that since the heavens were perfect, the various heavenly elements would have to follow an exact ideal curve along with the perfect solids that held them intact. The solids developed by Plato are still studied under mathematics. Plato’s work was highly reputed by his original audience due to many reasons. It was from most of Plato’s work that the audience got the Theory of Forms, epistemology, knowledge, metaphysics, social ethics, mathematics, and science just to mention a few. Furthermore, modern philosophers have developed most of their work with much reference Plato. Invariably, his work will remain a perpetual backbone to current and future philosophers and scholars (Barrow 84).
Works Cited

Ambuel, David. Image and Paradigm in Plato 's Sophist. Las Vega: Parmenides Publishing, 2006. 50 – 114. Print.

Bakalis, Nikolaos. Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics Analysis and Fragments. Bloomington: Trafford Publishing, 2005.102-301. Print.

Barrow, Robin. Plato: Continuum Library of Educational Thought. London: Continuum, 2007. 79- 185. Print.

Eskritt, Michelle. The influence of symbolic literacy on memory: testing Plato’s hypothesis. Retrieved on August 9, 2011, from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1196196102000375

Fine, Gail. Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology. Turkey: Oxford University Press, 2000. 45- 201. Print.

Garvey, James. Twenty Greatest Philosophy Books. London: Continuum, 2006.103- 321.Print.

Havelock, Eric. Preface to Plato (History of the Greek Mind). Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 2005. 47- 401. Print.

Jackson, Roy Plato: A Beginner 's Guide. London: Hoder & Stroughton, 2001. 1-105.print.

Kochin, Michael. Gender and Rhetoric in Plato’s Political Thought. England: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002. 1- 200. Print.

Cited: Ambuel, David. Image and Paradigm in Plato 's Sophist. Las Vega: Parmenides Publishing, 2006. 50 – 114. Print. Bakalis, Nikolaos. Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics Analysis and Fragments. Bloomington: Trafford Publishing, 2005.102-301. Print. Barrow, Robin. Plato: Continuum Library of Educational Thought. London: Continuum, 2007. 79- 185. Print. Eskritt, Michelle. The influence of symbolic literacy on memory: testing Plato’s hypothesis. Retrieved on August 9, 2011, from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1196196102000375 Fine, Gail. Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology. Turkey: Oxford University Press, 2000. 45- 201. Print. Garvey, James. Twenty Greatest Philosophy Books. London: Continuum, 2006.103- 321.Print. Havelock, Eric. Preface to Plato (History of the Greek Mind). Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 2005. 47- 401. Print. Jackson, Roy Plato: A Beginner 's Guide. London: Hoder & Stroughton, 2001. 1-105.print. Kochin, Michael. Gender and Rhetoric in Plato’s Political Thought. England: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002. 1- 200. Print.