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Plato: The Cave, The Divided Line, The Ladder and Love
The Conflict Between Logos and Eros
The theory of forms or ideas claims that there exists above and beyond
the world of sensible objects a world of supra-sensible objects which are the
ideal forms of sensible objects. Another way of explicating the theory is to
say that sensible objects are the mirror images of the ideal forms.
Platos complaint against the world of sense may be stated in this way.
Animals and plants, stars, rocks, tables, nature and all of our artifacts are
subject to change. The world of sense is a world of growth and decay,
multiplication and disintegration, time and passage. The world of sense is a
world of impermanence. Since it is always subject to change, no knowledge
of this world can be certain. Platos concern was that society through the
dissemination of images would divorce itself from the real and from truth.
Plato is thought to have made use of the Theory of Ideas as a means of
escaping Heraclitus conclusion that everything is in flux. There are some
things that are not in flux- IDEAS. So the claim that knowledge is impossible,
since all there is to know is the unknowable sensible world is refuted. Platos
account of the Forms of Ideas can be summarized as follows:
For Plato, there is a world of eternal intelligible realities which the soul
has known directly when in a disembodied state before its incarnation. The
world we come to know by sense experience in our present embodied life
contains sensuous images of the eternal realities which can prompt us to
return in recollection to the Ideas which are their eternal intelligible
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archetypes. The true philosopher strives continually to purify himself from
the perception-distorting influence of the physical pleasures and pains to
which sensuous experience gives rise and to develop his capacity for pure
intellectual thought, which alone can attain to knowledge of the FORMS.
KNOWLEDGE: NOESIS
a) pure, abstract, dialectical FORMS
reasoning
b) insight into, intuition of first THE FORM OF THE GOOD
principles TRUTH, JUSTICE
The CAVE
The CAVE
VISIBLE THINGS
OPINION: PISTIS Animals, plants, artefacts, etc
a) belief
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Socrates distinguishes four states of mind each of which correspond to
one of the four divisions of the line. The four terms Socrates uses are
noesis, dianoia, pistis and eikasia.
Noesis: is pure, abstract dialectical reasoning, reasoning which moves
from hypothesis to first principles, from knowledge of scientific truth to
the ultimate principles in which all knowledge is grounded.
Pistis: is belief about the visible world which may be true of false but
are not genuine knowledge.
Mans original body having been thus cut in two, each half
yearned for the half from which it had been severed.
Whence they met they threw their arms around one
another and embraced in the longing to grow together
again.
For let me tell you the right way to approach the things of
love....beginning from these beautiful things to mount for
that beautys sake ever upward, as by a flight of steps,
from one to two from two to all beautiful bodies and from
beautiful bodies to beautiful pursuits and practices and
from practices to beautiful learnings so that from learnings
he may come at last to the perfect learning which is the
learning solely of that beauty itself; and may know at last
that which is the perfection of beauty.
But it is not every soul that finds it easy to use its present
experience as a means of recollecting the world of reality.
Some had but a brief glimpse of truth in their former
existence; others have been os unfortunate as to be
corrupted by evil associations since they fell to earth, with
the result they have forgotten the sacred vision they once
saw...But Beauty was once ours to see in all its brightness,
when in the company of the blessed we followed Zeus as
other followed some other of the Olympians, to enjoy the
beatific vision and to be initiated into that mystery which
brings supreme felicity. Whole were we who celebrated
that festival unspotted by all the evils which awaited us in
the time to come and whole and unspotted and changeless
and serene were the objects revealed to us in the light of
that mystic vision. Pure was the light and pure were we
from the pollution of the walking sepulchre which we call
the body, to which we are bound like and oyster to its shell.
What strikes us in this passage is Platos attitude toward the Body. The
soul is imprisoned in the body waiting to be set free. The Soul must be
freed from the body so that it can attain pure knowledge. The more the
soul detaches itself from bodily elements the closer it comes to the
Forms. The two fundamental theses of Platonism are that the souls
union with the body is accidental to the soul and that the Soul is the
Person. The person is a soul that used the body. The body is an
inhibiting factor which must be overcome and transcended. In the
Symposium however, the body or the sensuous realm becomes the
springboard into the Forms. In this dialouge, the pleasure of the body is
not despised, it is needed, although it plays a secondary role. Needless
to say, Platos thought is full of inconsistencies. He mixes ascetic
thoughts with erotic formulations. The body should be despised yet at
the same time, the love of the body leads one to the love of the soul.
One wonders who is speaking. Is it Plato, is it Platos Socrates or
Socrates himself? It appears that Plato would prefer the logos without
Eros and that Socrates favored a mixture of Eros and Logos.