The Philosophy of Plato - Essay Example

PLATO Plato was a famous philosopher and he lived in ical Greece. He was also a mathematician, a to Socrates and a philosophical dialogue writer. He is the founder of the first institution of higher learning in western world after he founded the Academy in Athens. Together with his student Aristotle and his mentor Socrates, they played a significant role in laying foundations of western science and philosophy. He wrote thirty six dialogues and thirteen letters (Reeves 21). His writings have been published in various versions hence leading to many conventions regarding the naming and referencing of his texts. The writings also get used to teach various subjects like mathematics, religion, ethics, logic and philosophy. His exact place and time of birth is not known but it is certain that it came from an influential and aristocratic family. In his writing about Phaedo, Myth of Theseus, he writes about Socrates’s last days. He narrates that Socrates got condemned for polluting the youth of Athens and assisting in the introduction of the worship of strange gods. In the city they wanted him to die through consuming hemlock. However his death was postponed because there was a religious festival that had just started during the trial and according to the Athenian law executions were prohibited during the festivals so that the city could be kept pure. The festival was about commemoration of the event where Theseus traveled with fourteen people to King Minos and they wanted to defeat Minotaur. Plato highlights that the dialogue was ongoing against his knowledge of it and also the fact that the dialogue involved Phaedo and thirteen people, he expects the readers to identify the parallel and expect an outcome similar to the one in his tale (Plato 52). As Theseus moved with the fourteen Athenians who were threatened through Minos to challenge and slay Minotaur known to be monstrous. Also Socrates traveled with thirteen philosophers in the call for argumentation to challenge and eliminate what threatened him and his companions, known as the fear of death. So as Theseus could triumph against Minotour and free Athenians Socrates could also triumph over death. According to Plato, philosophy as a practice is for dying because like philosophy death separates the body from the soul. He argues that philosophers always distance themselves from the body as long as they disdain honors and wealth. He says the body acts as an obstacle in the process of acquiring knowledge, which is the core pursuit and intention of philosophers. According to Plato senses do deceive in some cases but philosophers seek knowledge and truth (Plato 112). He also says that sensuous pleasures and senses distract people from reasoning. According to Plato philosophy is a form of purification which frees the soul off contact from the body. He argued that Socrates had a reason to hope he would be better off if he drunk the hemlock as he would probably find out the truth upon his death and he would also find better friends and masters. He argues that the soul is immortal and it does not die. According to him all generation is cyclical and life equates the opposite of death and the souls of those who are living originate from the souls of the dead. He says that the body dies and decomposes and it cannot be revived but the soul leaves for ever because it is immortal. When a person passes always it is his body that dies but his soul will live on and it come in another person who will be born after the death. Plato also strongly suggested that learning is Recollection. He narrated that Heraclitus maintained that all things are in a form or state of flux where everything is constantly changing and he is remembered for saying that an individual cannot step twice in the same river. Plato supported the Heracliteans who said that every occurrence in the world of time and space was in a continuous flowing motion. Change occurred throughout and nothing could resist change and as a result, nothing was appeared the same in two instants together (Plato 92). This suggests that there would be no knowledge about the world because one cannot prove to possess knowledge of something that changes constantly from one moment to the other. Plato argued that there is a stable reality that which may only be discovered through the activity of the mind working together away from the senses. According to him the object which contains Knowledge must be eternal and immutable exempt from change and time. He said that knowledge is a stable systematic and gradual grasp of things and it cannot come from the things one senses because things are ever changing (Reeves 12). Plato maintains and accepts that the materials things are always in a state that is constant of becoming but at the same time he says there is knowledge and grasp of unchanging facts and realities. This is most common in mathematics where for example two plus two is four and it will never change with time. Plato say that recollection is a process where one sees one thing and thinks of another thing which he or she knew before. With this reasoning he believes that learning is recollection. He believes experience is the best teacher as this explains why older children have more knowledge than younger ones (Sloterdijk 56). This is because the older ones are able to recollect more ideas and things that they have seen or experienced than the young who recollect less. He argued that the difference between a bright student and one that performs poorly is that the bright one was able to recollect more knowledge than the other one. He says that knowledge entails grasping things themselves and having the ability to recollect feature and characteristics about the things in the future. Plato argued that without recollection learning cannot happen as it for one to progress in learning he or she must be able to recollect what they leant and add to what he is learning at the moment (Plato 112). Learning involves memorizing and being able to remember what one learnt or experienced previously. In Plato’s allegory of the cave, he explained that allegory is show and bring out peoples actual terrestrial occurrence and existence. People depicted in this context get referred to as prisoners because they are held back and constrained by cultural chains that hinder them from seeing true reality or prohibit them from communicating with their fellow prisoners (Reeves 96). These people are unable to expand their vision and perception of reality simply because their cultural and mental chains hinder them from looking more than the already set limits. The mistake hey do is that they look at the shadows cast on the walls of the caves as a reality yet it’s only an illusion. Their reality is contrived by manipulators and propagandists who show them shadows and make them believe it’s a reality. Because the prisoners are not aware of the manipulators they allow the mind manipulators to control them (Plato 138). They don’t communicate effectively with each other but if they do they will believe the shadows are reality. When the prisoner brighter aspect of reality he thinks the shadows are more real than the reality itself. The allegorical explanation shows why people exist in a world of illusion and are more comfortable in the fantasy realm. People find it unpleasant to find out the truth and they prefer their delusions. Such people are unable to communicate with each other because they live in pretense. To overcome this Plato suggests that people must come out of the cave world and find out the reality and identify with our higher self. In the divided line disposition, Plato describes the world to have been divided in geometrical proportions. There are lines which separate the original and the images. This refers to the realities and the illusions (Sloterdijk 96). He says proposes that in life there should be a line separating realities and fantasies and people should deal with the reality as it comes and forget about imagination. According to him people should consider authentic concepts and restore real elements to the rightful place in life. Works Cited Plato. Phaedo. Athens: Oxford University Press, 1999. Plato. Meno. Athens: Cambridge University Press,, 2011. Reeves, Francis. Platonic Engagements: A Contemporary Dialogue on Morality, Justice and the Business World. New York: University Press of America, 2004. Sloterdijk, Peter. The Art of Philosophy: Wisdom as a Practice. Berlin: Columbia University Press, 2012. Read More