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Plato's Theory of Knowledge is very interesting. He expresses this theory
with three approaches: his allegory of The Cave, his metaphor of the Divided
Line and his doctrine The Forms. Each theory is interconnected; one could
not be without the other. Here we will explore how one relates to the other.
In The Cave, Plato describes a vision of shackled prisoners seated in a dark
cave facing the wall. Chained also by their necks, the prisoners can only look
forward and see only shadows, These shadows are produced by men, with
shapes of objects or men, walking in front of a fire behind the prisoners. Plato
states that for the prisoners, reality is only the mere shadows thrown onto the
wall. Another vision is releasing a prisoner from his chains, how his
movements are difficult, his eye adjustment painful and suggestions of the
effects of returning to the cave. The Cave suggests to us that Plato saw most
of humanity living in the cave, in the dark, and that the vision of knowledge
and the conversion to that knowledge was salvation from darkness. He put
it this way, the conversion of the soul is not to put the power of sight in the
soul's eye, which already has it, but to insure that, insisted of looking in the
wrong direction it is turned the way it ought to be. Plato's two worlds: the
dark, the cave, and the bright were his way of rejecting the Sophists, who
found true knowledge impossible because of constant change. Plato
believed there was a true Idea of Justice. The Cave showed us this quite
dramatically. The Divided Line visualizes the levels of knowledge in a more
systematic way. Plato states there are four stages of knowledge development:
Imagining, Belief, Thinking, and Perfect Intelligence. Imagining is at the lowest
level of this developmental ladder. Imagining, here in Plato's world, is not
taken at its conventional level but of appearances seen as true reality. Plato
considered shadows, art and poetry, especially rhetoric, deceptive illusions,
what you see is not necessarily what you get. With poetry and rhetoric you
may be able to read the words but you may not understand the real
meaning. For example, take, again, the shadow. If you know a shadow is
something real then you are beyond the state of imagination which implies
that a person is unaware of observation and amounts to illusion and
ignorance. Belief is the next stage of developing knowledge. Plato goes with
the idea that seeing really is not always believing we have a strong conviction
for what we see but not with absolute certainty. This stage is more advanced
than imagining because it's based more firmly on reality. But just because we
can actually see the object and not just it's shadow doesn't mean we know
all there is to know about the object. In the next stage, Thinking, we leave the
visible world and move into the intelligible world which, Plato claims, is
seen mostly in scientists. It stands for the power of the mind to take
properties from a visible object and applying them. Thinking is the visible
object but also the hypotheses, A truth which is taken as self-evident but
which depends upon some higher truth. Plato wants us to see all things as
they really are so we can see that all is inter-connected. But thinking still
doesn't give us all the information we crave and we still ask why? For Plato
the last stage of developing knowledge, Perfect Intelligence, represents the
mind as it completely releases from sensible objects and is directly related to
his doctrine of Forms. In this stage, hypotheses is no longer present because
of its limitations. Plato summarized the Divided Line with now you may take,
a corresponding to the four sections, these four states of mind, intelligence for
the highest, thinking for the second, belief for the third and for the last
imagining. These you may arrange in terms as the terms in a proportion,
assigning to each a degree of clearness and certainty corresponding to the
measure in which their object pose a reality. When discussing the Divided
Line, The Forms are the highest levels of reality. Plato concludes here that
the real world is not what we see but what we understand or feel in a
intelligible world because it is made up of eternal Forms. The Forms take
on the explanation of existence. They are changeless, eternal, and
nonmaterial essences or patterns of which the actual visible objects we see
are only poor copies. Plato uses a person discovering the quality of beauty
to explain this, he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will…deem
a small thing and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage
he will consider that there beauty of the mind is more honorable that there
beauty of outward form. Drawing towards and contemplating the vast see of
beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless
love of wisdom; until on that shore he grows and waxes strong, and at last the
vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of beauty
everywhere. There are many Forms but not everything has a Form, if this
were so then there would be a parallel world. Forms are not something we
can touch but something we hold in our minds, Plato described them as real
existence, colorless, formless, and intangible, visible only to the intelligence.
Forms do not exist per se; they just are but can't be touched. Plato said, the
Forms are the cause of the essence of all other things, and the One is the
cause of the Forms. Therefor they cannot simply exist. Plato said Forms are
related to things in three ways: cause, participation and imitation. But in
relation to Forms and it-self Plato stated, we can have discourse only
through the weaving together of Forms. Plato doesn't mean to say that all
Forms are related to each other only that significant things use some Forms
and that just knowing that includes understanding the relationship between
Forms. Plato says there are three ways to discover Forms: recollection,
dialectic and desire. Recollection is when our souls remember the Forms
from prior existence. Dialectic is when people discuss and explore the Forms
together. And third is the desire for knowledge. Plato's Theory of
Knowledge leads us down many roads but we see the same theme through
out: light to dark; ignorant to educated; reality to really real. In The Cave we
move from the dark of the cave to the light of outdoors, we even see a glimps
of how knowledge can effect us. The Divine Line took us from the ignorance
of Imagining to the educated Perfect Intelligence. The Forms showed us that
even though we can see something does not mean we can see all of it and just
because we cannot see something does not mean it does not exist. All three
link knowledge as the key to all, if you have knowledge there is nothing you
cannot have.
Bibliography
Plato's Theory of Knowledge is very interesting. He expresses this theory
with three approaches: his allegory of The Cave, his metaphor of the Divided
Line and his doctrine The Forms. Each theory is interconnected; one could
not be without the other. Here we will explore how one relates to the other.
In The Cave, Plato describes a vision of shackled prisoners seated in a dark
cave facing the wall. Chained also by their necks, the prisoners can only look
forward and see only shadows, These shadows are produced by men, with
shapes of objects or men, walking in front of a fire behind the prisoners. Plato
states that for the prisoners, reality is only the mere shadows thrown onto the
wall. Another vision is releasing a prisoner from his chains, how his
movements are difficult, his eye adjustment painful and suggestions of the
effects of returning to the cave. The Cave suggests to us that Plato saw most
of humanity living in the cave, in the
Word Count: 1193
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