5. Early Philosophical Life
● Studied with Socrates
● When Socrates died, Plato
traveled to Egypt and Italy,
studied with students of
Pythagoras, and spent
several years advising the
ruling family of Syracuse
● In 386 BCE, he returned to
Athens and founded his
own school of philosophy,
the Academy
7. His Philosophy
● Concerned with justice, virtue, character, and the human
soul.
● Wanted students to become independent thinkers (think for
themselves).
● The only good life or life worth living is a life reasoned by
your own mind, not other’s ideas and opinions; change your
life and mind!
● Examine your life, history, and ideas, once you self
examine, then you are ready for knowledge.
● All knowledge begins in not knowing. To state “I don’t know”
is the first step – open to learning.
8. His Philosophy
● Everything has a truth or an “essence,” your job is to seek
this truth. Life is an adventure and journey, not destination.
● The good teacher will spark you, lead you to the truth with
integrity, reason, imagination.
● Virtue is excellence, or doing your best – reaching your
highest potential for good. All human’s have potential for
virtue, goodness, and to shape good character.
● The potential rests in the human soul (or psyche/mind),
everyone born with a soul.
● Character is what is developed from this soul, and is molded
and tested and shaped—a dynamic process.
9. Plato’s Theory of
● Plato describeKdn
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knowledge, and indicated what knowledge
consisted of, by means of:
● 1) his allegory of the Cave
● 2) his metaphor of the divided line
● 3) his doctrine of the Forms
10. The Cave – General
● Allegory from
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liction
● Socrates is talking to Glaucon, one of his
followers
● Story to explain knowledge/wisdom
● Contends that we are ignorant and we are
comfortable with the ignorance because it is all
we know
● Seeking the truth is a difficult process
● Once you have had a taste of the truth, you never
want to go back to being ignorant
11. The Scenario
● Prisoners: Men living in a large cave; chained by
the leg and neck since childhood so they cannot
turn their heads and can only see what is in front
of them
● Elevation: Behind them is an elevation that rises
abruptly from the level where the prisoners are.
There are other people walking across this
elevation carrying artificial objects (figures of
animals, humans, etc.)
● Fire: Behind the people carrying the objects is a
fire
12. The Prisoners
● Can look only forward against the wall at the end of the
cave; cannot see each other, the moving persons, nor the
fire
● Can only see the shadows on the wall in front of them which
are projected as the persons walk in front of the fire; they
are not aware that the shadows are shadows of other things
● When they see a shadow and hear a person’s voice echo
from the wall, they assume that the sound is coming from
the shadow because they are not aware of the existence of
anything else
● The only reality recognized by the prisoners are the
shadows on the wall
15. ● All of his movements
would be exceedingly
painful
● Would the objects being
carried be less meaningful
than the shadows seen
before?
● Would his eyes ache from
looking at the light of the
fire?
● He undoubtedly would
return to the things he
could see with clarity and
without pain, convinced
that the shadows were
clearer than the objects he
was forced to look at in the
Proposition
1:
What would happen if one of
the prisoners was unchained,
forced to stand up, turn
around, and walk with eyes
lifted up toward the light of
the fire?
16. ● The sunlight would be so
painful on his eyes that he
would be unable to see any of
things he was now told were
real
● It would take time for his eyes
to become accustomed to the
world outside the cave
● Would at first recognize some
shadows
● Would next see reflections of
things in water
● In time, he would see things
themselves
● Next, he would see heavenly
bodies at night
● Finally, the sun
Proposition
2:
What if the prisoner could not
turn back and was dragged
forcibly to the mouth of the
cave and released only after
he had been brought out into
the sunlight?
17. Prisoner’s Conclusion
● the sun is what makes
things visible
● it is the sun too that
accounts for the seasons
and is the cause of life in
the spring
● would understand what he
saw on the wall in the
cave; that shadows and
reflections differ from
things as they are in the
visible world
● without the sun there
would be no visible world
18. ● He would recall what he
and his fellow prisoners
took to be wisdom, how
they had a practice of
honoring and commending
each other (i.e. prizes for
the sharpest eye, best
memory, etc.)
● Would the released
prisoner still think that
such prizes were worth
having?
● Would he envy those who
received honors in the
cave?
● Instead of envy, would he
have only sorrow and pity
Proposition
3:
How would such a person
feel about his previous life in
the cave?
19. ● He would have great difficulty
seeing for going suddenly
from daylight into the cave
would fill his eyes with
darkness
● He would have trouble
distinguishing the shadows
on the wall
● Those who had their
permanent residence in the
cave would win every round
of competition with him
● Those in the cave would find
this very amusing and would
taunt him saying that his sight
was perfectly fine before and
was now ruined
● They would argue that it was
not worth going out of the
Proposition
4:
What if the released prisoner
went back to his former seat
in the cave?
20. The Allegory
● The cave and the blurred world of the shadows =
ignorance
● The bright world of light = knowledge
21. Education
● It is the function of education to lead people out of the cave
into the world of light
● Education is not simply a matter of putting knowledge into a
person’s soul that does not possess it, any more than vision
is putting sight into blind eyes. Knowledge, like vision,
requires an organ capable of receiving it
● It is necessary for the entire soul to turn away from the
deceptive world of change and appetite that causes
blindness of the soul
22. The Divided Line
● In the process of discovering true knowledge, the
mind moves through four stages of development
● At each stage, there is a parallel between the kind
of object presented to the mind and the kind of
thought this object makes possible
23. Theory of Forms
● The linchpin of Platonism is the theory of forms, a doctrine which
receives surprisingly scant treatment in the dialogues but which
nevertheless undergirds Plato's approach to ethics and
metaphysics, aesthetics and epistemology. The theory is taken up
in Book X of The Republic, is discussed in the Phaedo, taken apart
in the Parmenides, and revisited in two later dialogues, the
Timaeus and Laws.
● ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, VOLUME 6:
● "What was this Theory of Forms?
● It originated out of several different and partly independent
features of the general ideas or notions that constituted the
recurrent themes of dialectical disputations.
24. Standards of Measurement
and Appraisal
● Standards of measurement and appraisal. Some general
notions, including many moral notions and geometrical notions, are
ideal limits or standards. A penciled line is, perhaps, as straight as
the draftsman can make it; it deviates relatively slightly, sometimes
imperceptibly, from the Euclidean straight line. The notion of
absolute straightness is the standard against which we assess
penciled lines as crooked or even as nearly quite straight. Rather
similarly, to describe a person as improving in honesty or loyalty is
to describe him getting nearer to perfect honesty or loyalty.
25. Immutable Things
● Immutable things. Ordinary things and creatures in the everyday
world are mutable. A leaf which was green yesterday may be
brown today, and a boy may be five feet tall now who was two
inches shorter some months ago. But the color brown itself cannot
become the color green, and the height of four feet, ten inches,
cannot become the height of five feet. It is always five feet minus
two inches. A change is always a change from something A to
something else B, and A and B cannot themselves be things that
change.
26. Intellectual Knowledge
● Intellectual knowledge. For our knowledge of, and our beliefs and
opinions about the things, creatures and happenings of the
everyday world, we depend upon our eyes, ears, noses and so on,
and what our senses tell us is sometimes wrong and is never
perfectly precise. There is nobody whose vision or hearing might
not be even slightly better than it is. On the other hand, our
apprehension of general notions is intellectual and not sensitive.
27. Conceptual Certainties
● Conceptual certainties. Last, but not least in importance,
dialectical debates are concerned only with general ideas, like
those of fearlessness, goodness, danger and awareness. The
answerer's thesis is a general proposition, such as "Virtue is (or is
not) teachable" or "Justice is (or is not) what is to the advantage of
the powerful." When such a thesis has been conclusively
demolished, something, if only something negative, has been
conclusively established about virtue or justice. In the domain of
general ideas or concepts certainties, if seemingly negative
certainties, are attainable by argument. About things or happenings
in the everyday world no such purely ratiocinative knowledge is
possible.
28. The Forms - Summary
● Separated the world of thought from the world of
flux and things
● Ascribed true reality to the Ideas and Forms,
which, he thought had an existence separate from
the things in nature
● Example: All trees are reflections of a tree whose
form is ideal, but which does not exist in nature
29. Governance
● The State as Man Writ Large – Plato argued that
the state grows out of the nature of the individual
● State reflects the structure of human nature
● The origin of the state is a reflection of people’s
needs (esp. economic)
● Three classes – craftsmen/guardians of the
community, guardians of the state, highly trained
guardians
● Classes represent 3 part of the soul: appetites,
spirited element, rational element
