EDF 1005- Reflection 13

Socrates was not the type to record his lessons so unfortunately what we do know about his teachings is only what his student, Plato recorded. Plato has a pretty good collection of Socrates' teachings and dialogues. Therefore, everything Socrates has taught during his time we know because of Plato. Plato has played a great influential role in modern western civilization. Plato opened the first academy in Athens and taught young Athenians of philosophy. He brought many different ideas during his time and one of the most famous ones has been his world of Forms in which he believes that our world is only trying to mock a more perfect world. Plato brought up one of the most fundamental questions of metaphysics; Is reality truly as we perceive it? He gave people an idea of what reality was vs. human perception. He believes that in the world of forms, the forms are unchanging and are the perfect counterparts to our imperfect perceptions. He called our world the world of becoming, and the world of forms the world of being. In one of his illustrations, The Myth of the Cave, he describes a group of people chained together in a cave. There is a fire in the cave in which unchained people are walking around of. They are holding different symbols and these symbols are being shadowed on the wall in which the prisoners are facing. All they see is the shadow of these objects. It was written in the story that if one of the prisoners were to break free and voyage outside of the cave that the light will cause pain in his eyes and cause them to look away, however, their eyes can adjust to become enlightened of the real world. When once escaped and returned to tell the rest what he had seen and try to encourage them to be enlightened with him, the prisoners would fear what would happen to them and refuse. He is clearly illustrating how we can only appreciate the world and know after experiencing it. The objects being held around the fire represented the real world. The fire represents the sun which causes the shadows. The shadows represent the prisoner’s perceptions/ideas/impressions of the world. The hole leading up out of the cage is a journey into the intelligible world. And outside of the cage is the world of forms/ forms of good, which is a Platonic heaven. I believed that the escapee might have been a representation of Socrates. The chains might represent us tied down to impressions and we cannot get outside of our own minds to see how the world really is. Plato was an idealist, not a humanist. He felt that the only way to know truth is through experience and inquiry. Because he believed our souls are immortal they have been alive forever, even before birth so he also believed that we have all had contact with the perfect forms and ideas however, when we were brought into the world it was up to us to be curious and re-discover what he believed we had once encountered. Life and death are two complete opposites. Because of this, he believed that the soul is the life to our body and it can never die.