Leaving the Cave of Shadows: Plato and the World of Ideas

• Genuine knowledge was not something that could simply be received from another secondhand like a purchased commodity, as with the Sophists, but was rather a personal achievement, won only at the cost of constant intellectual struggle and self-critical reflection. “The life not tested by criticism,” Socrates declared, “is not worth living.”

• It was his presence that so marked those who followed him. They believed that his process of questioning led him to a profound self-knowledge that gave what he taught such authority and forcefulness.

• Thought, the power to think, was seen by Socrates as a vital force for seeking and finding the truth.

Plato

• Socrates often referred to himself as an intellectual midwife bringing to birth the latent truth in another’s mind. Perhaps Platonic philosophy itself was the fruit of that labor.” Tarnas, p 40

• “Socrates’s impact on the young Plato was potent enough that the Platonic dialogues seem to bear the Socratic imprint on almost every page.” Tarnas, p. 39

Platonic Philosophy

• It is important to realize that for Plato the Ideas are so essential to the universe and to humanity that they are the most real things that exist.

Plato’s Cave

• The ideas are to the spiritual world what the sun is to the physical world.

• So the primary goal of the philosopher is to train his mind and feelings the way an athlete trains their body. The goal is that the highly disciplined mind can penetrate into the spiritual world to attain knowledge of what is real.

• A culture worth living in needed to be based on eternal and absolute ideas of what was good and true.

• This is a world of Logos, or Divine reason. It is evident to Plato in the order of the heavens and in the wonders of nature.

• Humans are able to realize that their own intelligence gives evidence that it is the same as the intelligence in the universe, that it is related and part of the universal intelligence or Logos.

• To truly know oneself was to know the nature of reality as well.

Summary: Four ways to approach the world of Ideas

• First, the Ideas could be best known through a direct experience of them.

Summary: Four ways to approach the world of Ideas

• First, the Ideas could be best known through a direct experience of them.

Second, the logical need for the transcendent Ideas could be discovered through Socrates’ dialectic.

Summary: Four ways to approach the world of Ideas

• First, the Ideas could be best known through a direct experience of them.

Second, the logical need for the transcendent Ideas could be discovered through Socrates’ dialectic.

Third, the underlying order of the heavens is an entrance into the unity that was in fact a manifestation of the Ideas, the ideal mathematical Forms.

Summary: Four ways to approach the world of Ideas

• First, the Ideas could be best known through a direct experience of them.

Second, the logical need for the transcendent Ideas could be discovered through Socrates’ dialectic.

Third, the underlying order of the heavens is an entrance into the unity that was in fact a manifestation of the Ideas, the ideal mathematical Forms.

Fourth, through the apprehension of beauty.

• It was left to Plato’s most outstanding student, Aristotle, to take up Plato’s philosophy.