Реферат: Platos Theory Of Knowledge Essay Research Paper

Plato`s Theory Of Knowledge Essay, Research Paper

Plato’s Theory of Knowledge is very interesting. He expresses this theory with

three approaches: his allegory of The Cave, his metaphor of the Divided Line and

his doctrine The Forms. Each theory is interconnected; one could not be without

the other. Here we will explore how one relates to the other. In The Cave, Plato

describes a vision of shackled prisoners seated in a dark cave facing the wall.

Chained also by their necks, the prisoners can only look forward and see only

shadows, These shadows are produced by men, with shapes of objects or men,

walking in front of a fire behind the prisoners. Plato states that for the

prisoners, reality is only the mere shadows thrown onto the wall. Another vision

is releasing a prisoner from his chains, how his movements are difficult, his

eye adjustment painful and suggestions of the effects of returning to the cave.

The Cave suggests to us that Plato saw most of humanity living in "the

cave", in the dark, and that the vision of knowledge and the

"conversion" to that knowledge was salvation from darkness. He put it

this way, "the conversion of the soul is not to put the power of sight in

the soul’s eye, which already has it, but to insure that, insisted of looking in

the wrong direction it is turned the way it ought to be." Plato’s two

worlds: the dark, the cave, and the bright were his way of rejecting the

Sophists, who found "true knowledge" impossible because of constant

change. Plato believed there was a " true Idea of Justice". The Cave

showed us this quite dramatically. The Divided Line visualizes the levels of

knowledge in a more systematic way. Plato states there are four stages of

knowledge development: Imagining, Belief, Thinking, and Perfect Intelligence.

Imagining is at the lowest level of this developmental ladder. Imagining, here

in Plato’s world, is not taken at its conventional level but of appearances seen

as "true reality". Plato considered shadows, art and poetry,

especially rhetoric, deceptive illusions, what you see is not necessarily what

you get. With poetry and rhetoric you may be able to read the words but you may

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