Chapter 6 PLATO Knowing The Real and The Good Edit 1
Chapter 6 PLATO Knowing The Real and The Good Edit 1
Chapter 6 PLATO Knowing The Real and The Good Edit 1
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PLATO (c. 428 – 348 B.C.)
30 years old when
Socrates died
Traveled
Returned to Athens and
started “The Academy”
Inquired, taught, wrote
the dialogues
Will demonstrate that
there is truth about
reality and it can be
known
Refutes skepticism and
relativism
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Knowledge and Opinion
The four criteria distinguishing knowledge from opinion.
Opinion Knowledge
Is changeable. Endures or stays put.
May be true or false. Is always true.
Is not backed up by Is backed up by
reasons. reasons.
Is the result of Is the result of
persuasion. instruction.
The Eagles
are the best “The team that wins
team!
the Super Bowl is the
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best team.”
Knowledge and Opinion
Mathematical examples (like doubling the square) show that we do have some knowledge of the truth.
Men. Yes.
Men. True.
Men. Yes.
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Knowledge and Opinion
Knowledge (which endures) must be about objects that endure.
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Knowledge and Opinion
Three avenues of approach to the Forms, and how they cohere:
Epistemological, Metaphysical, and Semantic.
Epistemological knowled
ge
Semantic
words
Whenever we give the
same name to a
plurality of things, we Gertrud
are naming a Form. e
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The World and the Forms
Forms
make intelligible (explain) and
produce (bring into being) things in the
visible world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7xjoHruQfY
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The World and the Forms
The Divided Line
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The Myth of the Cave
Beauty itself
The beauty of
knowledge
Beautiful souls
A beautiful body
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Review
https://youtu.be/B0_N4nX2G5w
Learning Activity 3
Purpose: to understand Plato’s Theory of the Forms
and the Allegory of the Cave in your own way.
Recall the Theory of the Forms and the Allegory of the Cave.
Read the excerpt from Plato’s Republic: Melchert pp. 134 –
136.
Demonstrate in some way that you understand Plato’s
Theory of the Forms and/or the Allegory of the Cave.
Due: Wednesday, March 15, 2017.
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The Ring of Gyges
What if . . . Read Melchert p. 146.
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The moral of the monster- lion-man image
S: Make a model, then, of a creature with a 1. Moral actions flow from a
single – if varied and many-headed – form,
arrayed all around with the heads of both soul in harmony.
wild and tame animals, and possessing the 2. A harmonious soul is a
ability to change over to a different set of
heads and to generate all these new bits happy soul.
from its own body. 3. Happiness is a natural good.
I: That would take some skillful modeling,
but since words are a more plastic material 4. So morality is itself a natural
than wax and so on, you may consider the good.
model constructed.
S: A lion and a man are the next two
5. So acting morally is not
models to make, then. The first of the good simply for its
models, however, is to be by far the consequences, but is
largest, and the second, the second
largest. . . .
something good in itself.
S: And for the final coat, give them the (The Form of the Moral
external appearance of a single entity. participates in the Form of
Make them look like a person, so that
the Good.)
anyone incapable of seeing what’s inside,
who can see only the external husk, will (Melchert 148)
see a single creature, a human being.
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“The state is the soul writ large.”
REASON Philosophers/ki
ngs
SPIRIT Producers
Guardia
(laborers,
ns carpenters,
merchants. . .)
DESIRES
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A Problem with the Forms
The Third Man Paradox
→→
Lg Lh (Form)
Gertrude and Huey
Lg Lh
↓
L(F2)
L(F)
L(F)
Lg Lh
Lg Lh
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References
PHOTO CREDITS
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