Plato Flashcards
Context
Rationalist - mind and reason
Taught by Socrates and teaches Aristotle
Wrote Dialogues (Socrates’ death) and The Republic - Forms
His Beliefs
Senses deceive us
humans have control over reason, animals don’t
have innate knowledge - certain truths about universe knowable by mind/reason alone
If intellectually know the right thing to do, we will always do the right thing.
Wrong doing - ignorance/ incomplete knowledge
Hierarchy of Forms
Material world - imperfect world/ everything subject to change and decay/ deceived by senses/ trapped in bodies and forgotten about WOF/ recollecting our knowledge
World of Forms - perfect world/ where soul resides/ permanent and spiritual/ perfect version of everything in material world/ no destruction/
Form of Good - sun/true beauty/ unreachable to humanity
Doctrine of recollection
Soul pre-exists body in WoF, has all knowledge, birth is traumatic, soul forgets all knowledge and it remembers the knowledge it lost, not learnt for first time
opinion and knowledge in greek
doxa - opinion
epistem - knowledge
