A metaphor from Plato's Republic helps define this idea of the good. Imagine there is a ship with several people living on it. The ship's owner has little knowledge of sailing, so he allows his other crew members to sail it for him. Though nearly everyone else on board has zero experience in sailing, they all try to persuade him that they will be able to guide the ship best, in order to gain control. The only person who actually has any understanding of sailing is ridiculed, the stargazer, because from their stance, he seems to be a madman who wastes his time daydreaming and looking up at the sky rather than paying attention to where they actually are: the boat. However, the stargazer is the only one who is fit to guide the boat, as the tides ever change, the only constant things are the heavens. …show more content…
Plato suggests that we spend so much time focusing on the wrong things in life, that we miss the bigger picture. When all we set our minds upon are the physical things, we lack the insight needed to guide ourselves. Just as the boat with no destination will wander aimlessly, a person without a true grasp on these overarching truths will not understand where to go with their lives. Plato proposes this other realm, beyond the physical one, that we need to attain in order to fully grasp the physical things. Though Plato never directly states it, he alludes to this other realm as the one regarding that of spiritual things, the Greek word “Ouranos” (ουρανός) means both “sky” and “heaven”; Plato was intentionally relating the sky in his analogy of the stargazer to represent a metaphysical world pertaining to spiritual things. This transcendent world is a realm existing outside our own limited understanding, and unlike the physical realm, it is unchanging, perfect, and all