Реферат: Platos Theory Of Knowledge Essay Research Paper

patterns of which the actual visible objects we see are only poor copies".

Plato uses a person discovering the quality of beauty to explain this, "he

will abate his violent love of the one, which he will?deem a small thing and

will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage he will consider

that there beauty of the mind is more honorable that there beauty of outward

form. Drawing towards and contemplating the vast see of beauty, he will create

many fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom; until on

that shore he grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him

of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere". There are

many Forms but not everything has a Form, if this were so then there would be a

parallel world. Forms are not something we can touch but something we hold in

our minds, Plato described them as "real existence, colorless, formless,

and intangible, visible only to the intelligence". Forms do not exist per

se; they just are but can’t be touched. Plato said, "the Forms are the

cause of the essence of all other things, and the One is the cause of the

Forms". Therefor they cannot simply exist. Plato said Forms are related to

things in three ways: cause, participation and imitation. But in relation to

Forms and it-self Plato stated, "we can have discourse only through the

weaving together of Forms". Plato doesn’t mean to say that all Forms are

related to each other only that significant things use some Forms and that just

knowing that includes understanding the relationship between Forms. Plato says

there are three ways to discover Forms: recollection, dialectic and desire.

Recollection is when our souls remember the Forms from prior existence.

Dialectic is when people discuss and explore the Forms together. And third is

the desire for knowledge. Plato’s Theory of Knowledge leads us down many roads

but we see the same theme through out: light to dark; ignorant to educated;

reality to really real. In The Cave we move from the dark of the cave to the

light of outdoors, we even see a glimps of how knowledge can effect us. The

Divine Line took us from the ignorance of Imagining to the educated Perfect