Ideas - said Plato - represent the absolute and universal objects of sense knowledge, the particular and the contingent. Between particular and universal there are two relationships: of mimesis, as the particular mimics the idea and takes it as his model; of methexis, as the particular participates to the essence of ideas. For the leap from the particular to the universal it needs to travel the four degrees of knowledge: the feeling, based on pure images of the senses; the opinion, which gives the knowledge of particular things, judgments which varies from individual to individual; the reason, offering a vision of objects in their mathematical relationships; the intellect, which is placed in direct relationship with the ideas, through the dialectic, defined by Plato, "the true philosophical science" because it can grasp objects in their reality.
The ideas located in the ‘hyperuranium’ are indispensable for the existence of things. According to the Platonic conception, in fact, the relationship between the ideas of ‘hyperuranium’ and the earthly entities may be of four types:
• relation of mimesis: on this view worldly objects are mere copies of perfect and immutable ideas;
• relation of methexis: in this case things take part to the existence of ideas;
• relation of parusia: the ideas are in things and represent their essence;
• relation of aitia: ideas are causes of things
In any case, we see that the ideas of hyperuranium are necessary to the existence of things. Consequently, it comes to creating a sort of superiority between the hyperuranium and the real world: in addition to the greater degree of perfection within hyperuranium, there is a primacy of the latter on the real world. The hyperuranium, and then the ideas contained in it, represent the model according to which the Demiurge formed the world of things, matter.
Since there are two realities, there are also two forms of knowledge: the sensitive and the supersensible. Of the sensitive Knowledge form part the imagination or eikasia, first form of knowledge that shows how the shadow of sensible things and the belief or pistis, which is about sensible things. Of science, knowledge of the ideal world, are part mathematical knowledge or dianoia and scientific knowledge or noesis. Dianoetic knowledge is at the middle way between sense knowledge and the ideal one; without it, it is impossible to know the ultrasensitive world; it has sensitive features, since it can be represented and therefore is perceived by the senses and has ideal characteristics, because immutable.
Noesis consists in the intellection of ideas, it is the ability to grasp the ideas and the supersensible world with the pure intellect. The cognitive process to take is the ‘ascensive’ one, that is we start from an opinion to get to the science, because only retracing the path from 'top to bottom, you can learn more about the ideal world. As for Parmenides there exist the way of 'absolute truth, reached with reason, the way of likelihood of falsehood attested by the senses; for Plato there are, then, the doxa, debatable knowledge, subjective, subject to change because perceived by the senses and 'episteme', objective knowledge, certain and absolute, because reached with knowledge and reasoning.
When a person observes an object, it takes an idea of it, which has one correspondent in the hyperuranium and true knowledge is not that sensitive, but that acquired when it captures the cause of idea, looking at the perceived object. For example, looking at a flower, senses are solicited and you can have the 'idea of beauty'; only when the soul remembers having contemplated the idea of beauty in hyperuranium, you acquire true knowledge, because it reminds the world of ideas; flower therefore shares and embodies the idea of beauty present in hyperuranium.
The sensible world is, therefore, the possibility that has been offered to the soul to remember the supersensible world: in fact, when the body dies, the soul disembodies and goes to hyperuranium to contemplate ideas. Thus, there is a link between eschatology, the science that studies the life of the soul after death and the theory of knowledge: the soul knows the ideas when disembodied. You may also notice the Pythagorean vision, according to which there is the process of transmigration, or the reincarnation of soul.
Relations between the ideas, and then the internal structure of hyperuranium, are determined by the law of the dialectic: this term has a dual meaning: to distinguish or divide and collect.
You may realize that the change in the allocation of the value of ideas is caused by their 'degree of universality': mathematics is not unknown to man, or rather he uses it every day of his life, is applied in every field, it is the regulator of nature and of his own world; beauty, instead, is rare and unique, very few have the privilege of mastering it really: it is on Earth as a reflection of the weak and twisted of its essence, existing in the hyperuranium: it is, therefore, less 'universal'.
An immediate consideration comes to mind in consulting the Encyclopedia of Sapere.it and it is that for which the Platonic philosophy is the great moment of synthesis of the deepest views expressed in antecedence by the Greek thought; It is a summary, but - Plato himself warns us – it is not systematic, because it lacks a theoretical framework organized in clear conditions and in strict deductions. The same "theory of ideas" is just a moment of platonic speculation; it does not conclude, but holds open the issue to new developments. However, it is a pivotal moment, and from it we begin to better understand the further development of his thought.
Also from the reference to the Encyclopedia Sapere.it, it follows the process of the genesis of the theory of ideas that should be sought after the influence exerted on Plato by the preceding philosophers.
In the field of sensitive knowledge Plato accepts Protagoras’ relativism together with the theory of Panta Rei (everything flows) of Heraclitus and still the phenomenalism of ionics.
From these premises, Plato argues that the sensitive knowledge leads only to provisional results, valid solely for the particular circumstances in which they were obtained. With them it is impossible to achieve a unique knowledge, because on every object you can make several speeches equally acceptable. Protagoras claimed to be able to make a proper speech despite the multiplicity of discourses; Socrates exhorted young people to deepen the investigation of moral values to arrive at a more precise discourse; Plato wants to remove any temporary feature to knowledge and to this end comes down into the deepest inner man asserting that absolute certainty is the result only of rational knowledge and, where Socrates had discovered the universality of moral values as common and valid to all, he extends such a validity also to the field of knowledge.
It returns here, reproduced by Plato, the Parmenides opposition between rationality and sensibility, between sensory perceptions different from individual to individual, and different in the same individual and the ideas, real and immutable forms of things. However, unlike Parmenides, Plato does not conceive the real being as unique, because consisting of several ideas. The concept is illustrated by the myth of the cave: man is like a prisoner chained in a cave, with his back to the opening and face to the wall. Outside shines a great light, in which real beings pass.
The light filtering through the opening casts the shadows on the wall and the man believes to see the real world, while in fact he sees only the shadow. To get to the actual truth, a man must break his chains and exit the cave into the light. Out of the metaphor - says Plato - man is sentient, that binds him to the world of appearances, and of reason, that makes him achieving the true reality, to arrive to science, which is absolute and universal knowledge.
But how to break the chains that bind us to the world of sense? Plato refers at this point to the Socratic method, but where the teacher had used it to awaken the voice of conscience of his partner and let him discover the truth of the moral life, Plato seeks to make the disciple discover the rational truths.
To explain, he introduces a new example: a geometry problem is given to be solved by a slave fasting of all knowledge in that matter: given a square, he must find another one of double area. The young man first tries the most simplistic solution: doubles the sides of the square, but he realizes his mistake immediately and after several other attempts he tracks the diagonal of the square and, taking it as a side, builds the square twice the first (Meno)
The Socratic system - then Plato concludes - works also outside the framework that Socrates had assigned. In fact just this example shows that Plato now moves on the ground of mathematical truths of the Pythagoreans. To direct him to the Pythagorean doctrine was Archita of Taranto, a distinguished thinker and mathematician, and on this road Plato will come to a new "mens religiosa".
Plato quotes
In the hyperuranium dwell the mathematical and philosophical truths.
still, is number not metaphor? It as a system, has interior structural peculiarities that divide it from natural systems. A synthesis occurs presumably in geometry. Geometry then is first tile on the road (rung on the ladder) to accessing the forms (Socrates). In the larger context, a slave child is removed from the course of his life and posed a question. His immediate response is to impose number on a problem posed numerically, to double area of a two dimensional square. It is clear that the child has a moment of recognition as the proof is offered, not initially, when the answer is offered.
This suggests that the truth to which the philosopher is subject upon exit of the cave is not a primordial truth but the truth of objective grasp of a system of thought which as you suggest Maestro, may be primordial (A Klein bottle ensues). It is the proof of a postulate that is continuous with a pre-existing system of understanding that warrants the moment of recognition. This is a kind of truth that Plato calls "True belief" in the Meno. True belief differs from but has equal weight with truth and can only be true when all share a system of understanding, according to Plato in his Meno.
I imagine the means of understanding to be like navigating the branches of a tree. One may navigate a tree either intuitively or consciously. This difference is explained in Heidegger's lecture about what draws us into thinking (hermitmusic.tripod.com/heidegger_thinking.pdf).
One may, alternatively, fall out of the tree and wander the garden looking at trees and their points of emergence from earth (the ground upon which one walks). From this perspective, one has the situational opportunity to philosophize but may still not be doing it.
It's never in a brute to love ideals and the Platonic, much less truth. Interestingly it was Plato who came up with the ideal of philosopher kings. Which I believe if they ever exist will most likely be lovers of the expedient rather than truth. Hence closer to "noble brutes".
- Badges
- Science topic