Platos Philosophy of the World - Essay Example

We can be made to understand that for the faculty of reason described above, one that transcends real-world boundaries, there must be a corresponding level of universal reality. These two different factors are divided into what Plato called the world of becoming and the world of being. In the world of becoming, the forms do not change eternally and have non-objective characteristics like beauty and justice. Conversely, the world of depicting that the beautiful forms seen in everyday life are infinite copies of the forms described above. Plato considered that objects can acquire and/or lose beauty, but the essence of beauty is such that it has a distinct existence from the objects in the world. Plato insists that the physical objects seen in the world are perfect copies of the world of forms or Triangles.

Plato’s philosophy of the world of being and that of becoming was mainly influenced by Heraclitus, another philosopher during Plato’s time. Plato thought that the world that we experience in our inner senses is a world of becoming, where the forms were not of complete being. Conversely, the world of being consists of complete realms of forms. In Plato’s view, if Heralictus insisted on flux in reality, the only way of knowing the world would be through opinion. In this case, the opinion points towards an unchanging and unknown world. Plato also insists that philosophers want more than anything to understand the true nature of forms, and in this case, the person holding the opinion cannot describe the essence of justice. Knowledge is concerned with the world of being and seeks what exists in the world. In contrast, the physical world, the world known by the human senses, is dynamic, a world of becoming. Plato then states that the forms have an infinite and singular existence in the world of being, as contrasted to the world of becoming.

Plato’s explanation of the forms indicates that our souls were indicated with the forms before the bodies, and the mind realizes the forms in different ways. The first way of recognizing the forms is through recollection, where it is understood the soul was acquainted with the forms before the body. In this case, an individual can recollect the knowledge of the soul before the existence of the body. In this case, the existence of physical objects is just a reminder of the beautiful essences of the forms, and education is a way of remembering the forms that existed before the body. The second way of realizing the forms is through speech and dialect, where an individual learns to separate objects and discover how the various splits of knowledge are related. The third way of discovering the world of being or the forms, is through the power of love. In the symposium, Plato states that the power of love leads an individual from a beautiful object to a beautiful thought and finally to the discovery of the essence of beauty itself.

Plato’s two distinct ideas, the world of being and the world of becoming, can be explained using different parables or metaphors that he postulated. The first metaphor, the allegory of the cave, is an embracement of two allegories and describes both forms of becoming and being. The allegory asks us to imagine ourselves as prisoners in an underground prison, where we are chained without access to the outside. In the cave, there is a fire, a raised path, and a wall through which the prisoners can see some form of the people passing behind the wall. The prisoners would only be able to see the forms of the people passing behind the wall and carrying different objects.

According to the world of Being and Becoming, Plato states that a freed prisoner would discover different forms of reality, he would first see the objects and light in the cave, then see the shades of the people passing outside, then their reflections, and finally the objects in the outside world. The last object that the prisoner would see is the sun, which is a metaphor that represents the ruler of the world of being. Conversely, the metaphor of the divided line describes both worlds, where a line is divided to depict the intelligible world and the visible world as seen by an individual. Read More