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Chapter 6 PLATO Knowing The Real and The Good Edit 1

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Chapter 6: PLATO

Knowing the Real and the Good

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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.

From Plato’s Meno Doubling the square


 Soc. And at present these notions have just been
stirred up in him, as in a dream; but if he were
frequently asked the same questions, in different
forms, he would know as well as any one at last?

Men. I dare say.

Soc. Without any one teaching him he will recover


his knowledge for himself, if he is only asked
questions?

Men. Yes.

Soc. And this spontaneous recovery of knowledge


in him is recollection?

Men. True.

Soc. And this knowledge which he now has must


he not either have acquired or always possessed?

Men. Yes.

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Knowledge and Opinion
Knowledge (which endures) must be about objects that endure.

Recap The Square and Euthyphro

 Knowledge is enduring,  “Here we are reminded of what


true, rational belief based Socrates is looking for. Remember
that when Socrates questions
on instruction. Euthyphro, he isn’t satisfied when
 We do have knowledge. presented with an example of piety.
What he wants is something common
 This knowledge cannot be to all pious actions, present in no
about the world revealed impious actions, and which accounts
for the fact that pious actions are
through the senses. pious.
 It must be about another
 “. . . Because the Square Itself does
world, one that endures. not fluctuate like visible and tangible
 This is the world of the squares, it can qualify as an object of
knowledge.”
Forms. (Melchert 123)

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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

Forms are realities


that are eternal and
unchanging.
Metaphysical being Huey
Rumble
The similarity among
“things” indicates that
they have something in
common.

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

 Consult Melchert’s visual on page 131.


 Explain Plato’s thought in your own words.
 The visible
 The invisible (intelligible)
 Imagination
 Opinion
 Sciences
 Dialectic

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The Myth of the Cave

Read Melchert pp. 134 – 135 “Imagine people living in a cavernous


cell. . .” )
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The ladder of love and its goal:  Beauty Itself

Beauty itself

The beauty of
knowledge

The beautiful of laws and


institutions

Beautiful souls

All beautiful bodies

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.

 You had a ring and it made you invisible?


 What would you do?

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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.”

The Soul The State

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

Melchert, N. (2014). The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction


to Philosophy, 7th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

PHOTO CREDITS

• Plato and Aristotle www.flickr.com (Cover)


• Eagles logo kti2009.wikispaces.com (S. 3)

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