Philosophy

Philosophy Study Guide

In the dialogue Meno written by Plato, Socrates is discussing his belief in the immortality of the soul with his friend Meno, along with his conviction that each soul begins life with essential knowledge. Such knowledge has a latent meaning and it requires experience to activate it, but it is in no way dependent on experience for its existence and truth. We need only to remember or recollect this knowledge for it to be brought to consciousness and used by us such knowledge is considered innate because it was present at birth. Plato’s theory is that each soul existed in a perfect world before birth, where such knowledge was learned. Most philosophers as well as psychologists who believe in some sort of innate knowledge do not accept these metaphysical beliefs of Plato they believe innate knowledge is simply a part of the biological/cognitive software with which humans are programmed. In another of Plato’s writing, The Path to Knowledge of Reality: The Cave Allegory , he communicates in rich and symbolic terms about the journey through various stages of knowledge which echo the metaphysical and epistemological structure of the Divided Line Analogy. For Plato, ascending to the realm of the forms to achieve genuine knowledge is a challenging and difficult process. Most people are submerged in the shadowy world of illusion and mere opinion, completely unaware of their own lack of explanation. It is possible for people to move from ignorance to rationally-based knowledge and wisdom, but it requires willingness, dedication, and wise teachers as guides. In Plato’s allegory, it discusses discarding ignorant beliefs and embracing the truth, which can be a disturbing process as we are forced to see things objectively, illuminated as they really are rather than hidden in the shadows of bias and distortion. Plato believes that the view of knowledge has profound and far-reaching implications for education, stating, “Education is the art of turning around the knowledge of how the soul can most easily and most effectively be turned around; it is not the art of putting the capacity of sight into the soul; the soul possesses that already but it is not turned the right way or looking where it should and this is what education has to deal with.” Plato attempted to resolve the conflict between an unchanging, ultimate truth and the everyday flux of our circumstantial lives by proposing two different worlds: the world of becoming (of our physical world) and the world of being (a realm of eternal and unchanging truths that is knowable through the exercises of reason). The world of being is populated by ideal forms, archetypes, or essences of everything that exists. In our everyday world of the senses, we experience only imperfect examples of, or participants in these forms, but through careful study, reflection, and reasoning, we can begin to apprehend the true and eternal nature of the forms. The Allegory of the Cave is a vivid metaphor for this quest to understand the ultimate essences or truths of things. Plato’s belief that genuine knowledge of essential forms can be achieved through innate or inborn ideas and the faculty of reason makes him a rationalist. In contrast, philosophers who believe that true knowledge is best achieved through the sense experience are regarded as empiricists. 6.4 Aristotle: Reality is the Natural World Aristotle was a student of Plato’s and a philosophical naturalist. He was convinced that reality consists of the natural world and that this natural world follows orderly principles and laws that we can use

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