Plato Essay
10/19/13
Plato: Certainty and Human Nature
Plato was born in 427 BCE in Athens, Greece. He devoted his life to philosophy after the death of his mentor, Socrates at the hands of the Athenian court. He, most notably, was the first philosopher to develop ideas of human nature, knowledge, and metaphysics, and argued for the existence of the soul. Furthermore, he believed that there was distinction between changing physical objects and the unchanging, perfect ideals of the mind, and that the mortal human body and the immortal, invisible soul, were associated with each respective realm. This idea of attainable, constant perfection shows that Plato viewed humans as conflicted and yet rational creatures who can achieve goodness when exercising reason.
To understand Plato’s views of human nature, we must first examine the concept of these perfect ideals, known as forms. Forms, according to Plato, were characteristics that define something, and inspire the imperfect replicas of objects and ideas that we can observe with our senses in the physical realm. For example, for things that are animal, there is the form of animal-ness. For things that are square, there is the form of square-ness. What we observe in our day to day lives are merely replicas of these perfect ideals, which exist in a realm separate and inaccessible from the real world.
Plato’s reasoning for how we acquired knowledge of these unchanging forms is his evidence for the existence of the soul. He speaks through Socrates in one of his dialogues: “We must have acquired our knowledge of perfect equality before we were born.” Plato believed that, when we observe with our senses, we are merely recovering the knowledge of the forms attained from an earlier existence. Because of this fact, Plato believed “the soul existed previously, before it was in a
Plato: Certainty and Human Nature
Plato was born in 427 BCE in Athens, Greece. He devoted his life to philosophy after the death of his mentor, Socrates at the hands of the Athenian court. He, most notably, was the first philosopher to develop ideas of human nature, knowledge, and metaphysics, and argued for the existence of the soul. Furthermore, he believed that there was distinction between changing physical objects and the unchanging, perfect ideals of the mind, and that the mortal human body and the immortal, invisible soul, were associated with each respective realm. This idea of attainable, constant perfection shows that Plato viewed humans as conflicted and yet rational creatures who can achieve goodness when exercising reason.
To understand Plato’s views of human nature, we must first examine the concept of these perfect ideals, known as forms. Forms, according to Plato, were characteristics that define something, and inspire the imperfect replicas of objects and ideas that we can observe with our senses in the physical realm. For example, for things that are animal, there is the form of animal-ness. For things that are square, there is the form of square-ness. What we observe in our day to day lives are merely replicas of these perfect ideals, which exist in a realm separate and inaccessible from the real world.
Plato’s reasoning for how we acquired knowledge of these unchanging forms is his evidence for the existence of the soul. He speaks through Socrates in one of his dialogues: “We must have acquired our knowledge of perfect equality before we were born.” Plato believed that, when we observe with our senses, we are merely recovering the knowledge of the forms attained from an earlier existence. Because of this fact, Plato believed “the soul existed previously, before it was in a