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Plato's belief on how people acquire knowledge
Plato's view on the soul
Plato concept of knowledge
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Plato's belief on how people acquire knowledge
Plato's view on the soul
Plato concept of knowledge
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Plato's belief on how people acquire knowledge
In response to the long-standing philosophical question of immorality, many philosophers have posited the soul criterion, which asserts the soul constitutes personal identity and survives physical death. In The Myth of the Soul, Clarence Darrow rejects the existence of the soul in his case against the notion of immortality and an afterlife. His primary argument against the soul criterion is that no good explanation exists for how a soul enters a body, or when its beginning might occur. (Darrow 43) After first explicating Darrow 's view, I will present what I believe is its greatest shortcoming, an inconsistent use of the term soul, and argue that this weakness impacts the overall strength of his argument.
Specifically, this notion derives from Plato and his conception
In Meno, Meno and Socrates are discussing Virtue and attempting to develop a definition of what Virtue is. At one point in the dialogue Meno states that Virtue is “desiring fine things and being able to acquire them” Baird and Kaufmann, 156). In their attempts to analyze this definition they discuss evil, what it is and whether or not it is ever desired by people. I will use this discussion to answer the beginning question from Plato’s perspective and show that, through Socrates and Meno, Plato demonstrates that evil is a form of ignorance, and as we know from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, ignorance is one of the most damaging states a human can exist in. In On Free Will, Augustine comes to a very similar conclusion.
“Realizing that the same applies to the soul when someone sees a soul disturbed and unable to see something, he won’t laugh mindlessly, but he’ll take into consideration whether it has come from a brighter life and is dimmed through not yet having become accustomed to the dark or whether it has come from greater ignorance into greater light and is dazzled by the increased brilliance. ”(Plato5) This quote shows how the intellect is related to the human soul. How they don’t anticipate exploring and extending their knowledge. As they decide to stay in their comfort zone or just fear a reality.
Plato writes, “And suppose someone tells him that what he’s been seeing all this time has no substance, and that he’s now closer to reality and is seeing more accurately, because of the greater reality of the things in front of his eyes -- what do you imagine his
For example, given Plato’s logic a painting isn’t beautiful because of brush strokes and the meticulous placement of them, yet it is because the painting holds the essence of beauty and participates in the form of beauty. However, given difference of opinion not everyone will find the painting beautiful, and so how are innate forms classified and when? Another question being as to when the soul leaves the body. For example, if a heart is still beating while the brain is dead does the body still carry the essence of immortality and thus the soul? While we may never know, I still find Plato’s explanations vacuously platitudinous, hardly truly giving an explanation at all and instead to be grasping at straws to ease Socrates own fears of death before execution within the
The world we live in is filled with crime, evil, and injustice, but do people have the desire to do bad things knowing that they are bad, or do they do them thinking that they are good? In this essay, I examine Socrates argument, found in Plato’s Meno, that no one knowingly desires bad things. If Socrates were right, it would mean that it is impossible for someone to perform a bad action based on their desire for that bad thing. Instead, all bad desires result from the ignorance of the person performing the action in falsely believing that the action is good. Though Socrates presents a compelling argument, I argue that it is possible for someone to act badly, all the while knowing that what they desire is bad.
Plato breaks the justification of knowledge down into two types of realms that show what can be known by reason and what can be known by the five senses. These realms, then divided into two other unequal parts based on their clarity and truthfulness, make up what is known as The Divided Line. By understanding The Divided Line we can fully grasp the differences between the perceptual, also known as becoming, realm and the conceptual, also known as being, realm. The perceptual realm is the opinions and beliefs of people or it can be known as the visible realm.
Socrates in the dialogue Alcibiades written by Plato provides an argument as to why the self is the soul rather than the body. In this dialogue Alcibiades and Socrates get into a discussion on how to cultivate the self which they both mutually agree is the soul, and how to make the soul better by properly taking care of it. One way Socrates describes the relationship between the soul and the body is by analogy of user and instrument, the former being the entity which has the power to affect the latter. In this paper I will explain Socrates’ arguments on why the self is the soul and I will comment on what it means to cultivate it.
Both Meno and Socrates evidently seemed to have contrasting attitudes in regards to the concept of virtue, as seen in the opening section of the Meno dialogue. Meno initiates the dialogue with Socrates by questioning whether or not Socrates knows what virtue is, specifically the way it is acquired by humans (Meno, 70a). However, Socrates does not give him a concrete answer, but rather a history of Thessaly (a blessed area), comparing it to Athens (a non-blessed area), in regards to wisdom (70a-71a). In Athens, nobody knows what virtue is or how it is obtained, including Socrates himself, when he says “I share the poverty of my fellow citizens in this matter.”
In Plato’s, Phaedo, one of the arguments that Socrates makes for justifying his theory about the soul being immortal is the argument of opposites. The argument of opposites is found from 70c to 72c in the Phaedo. The argument is not logically valid as there are a few fallacies that occur with the definition of opposites with which Socrates defines his argument. This argument ultimately fails at being logically valid as contrary to premise 1, all things that have an opposite do not come from only their opposites. Socrates also does not specify in this argument whether he is referring to the soul dying or the body dying in the final premises.
In the Republic, Plato gives an argument saying the soul is immortal. In this paper I will present his argument and show that his argument is invalid. I will show why the conclusion is not true and restate the argument to make it valid to help with Socrates’ claim. Plato’s argument on why the soul is immortal: 1. Something can only be destroyed by the thing that is bad for it.
Plato’s view on death According to Plato, Socrates didn’t fear death. He stopped fearing death when God ordered him to live the life of a philosopher. “No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of all evils.” He says that this is just as bad as thinking that you’re wise, when you’re actually not.
Plato’s short story the Allegory of the Cave, Plato portrays a scene in a cave to the reader that analyzes human actions. The story is about a group of men that are chained for their entire life. The only thing they are exposed to are shadows on the wall of a fire burning by people behind them. The people exposing these men are hiding the truth of the outside world. Plato reveals that humans are easily fooled into believing what they see.
“Plato’s philosophy is an attempt to justify Socrates’ belief in the objectivity of moral virtues.” As one of Socrates’ most loyal disciples, Plato’s own philosophy was heavily influenced by Socrates’ own thoughts and teachings. Much of Plato’s philosophy is a direct extension of some of the questions Socrates posed, i.e., Socrates asked what justice is, and Plato explored this question in his own writings. It is Socrates’ code of ethics, however, that most closely corresponds with Plato’s ethics.