Plato Key Points

Question 1

Context:

Answer 1

Lived in Athens when it was a city state democracy, 430-350 BCE

Question 2

Socrates:

Answer 2

Taught Plato, wrote down nothing, but Plato wrote dialogues as Socrates, was killed for corrupting the youth

Question 3

Plato’s work overall:

Answer 3

Early books are Socratic, later are Platonic in nature, wrote about a lot of stuff like politics, the soul, and concepts like beauty, founded the Academia to continue philosophical teaching

Question 4

Plato’s understanding of reality:

Answer 4

Was a rationalist, and believed only in a priori knowledge, believed we possessed that knowledge from birth and remembered it through reason, proved by having a slave prove some maths in Meno, believed the senses were fallible and shouldn’t be trusted, liked maths because it’s pure knowledge, disliked art cause it’s a copy of a copy

Question 5

Opinions on idea and reality:

Answer 5

You recognise something by comparing it to the image of it in your head / characteristics you know it has, that knowledge comes before actually seeing one, a beautiful person is nothing compared to the beauty of a God, so the God is closer to the idea of beauty, but pure knowledge must be constant, so the only true beautiful thing must be in another world, the world of the forms, and it is that that we know a priori that allows us to recognise stuff, concepts are the important ones not objects like a cat

Question 6

Comparing ideas and reality:

Answer 6

Everything in our world is a poor reflection of the corresponding forms, our souls were in the world of the forms which is how we recognise stuff here, and philosophers are people who use reason to try and escape our world to get to the world of the forms, and also philosophers should rule society

Question 7

Hierarchy of the forms

Answer 7

There is a hierarchy of sorts, the form of the good is better than the others and the others depend on it, it is the source of the others, it’s the form of moral goodness

Question 8

Analogy of the sun:

Answer 8

We need light from the sun to see, so it’s the form of the good that allows us to have knowledge, it’s vital to survival, we need it to see clearly

Question 9

Analogy of the cave:

Answer 9

There’s some people chained up in a cave, facing a wall, with a fire behind them, and people carry objects past the fire and talk, the person best at guessing what the next object will be is the leader. A prisoner is set free, and they slowly adjust to the firelight and sees the people carrying stuff, and understands that what they once saw was but shadows. They are then dragged up the rough path out of the cave, but won’t be able to see and will try and flee back. Eventually they adjust and he sees the sun and how it’s useful. Out of duty they return to tell the others, but are laughed at and threatened.

Question 10

Criticisms:

Answer 10

Forms could just be ideas (Dawkins), the form of the good is very absolutist, if everything has a form it starts to get stupid and where do the specifications stop? (Russell), how could the forms affect our lives, what about forms of bad stuff, stuff doesn’t have to be eternal to be true, no evidence, you can get an infinite regress of forms of relationships between forms and objects (third man argument, Aristotle)

Question 11

Defences:

Answer 11

Genetics and the idea of DNA supports it, Descartes was also a rationalist but thought the concepts lived in the mind not the world of the forms, Kant has similar ideas about the real world and the one we see