Notes
AS Religious Studies Philosophy of Religion; Revision
Unit 1: Greek Philosophy - Plato and Aristotle
Plato: the Cave, the Forms and the Form of the Good
Plato’s Cave: Understand what Plato means in his analogy of the cave and be able to explain his symbolism: ➢ A.N. Whitehead said: All European philosophy is a “series of footnotes to Plato” [i.e. Plato is quite a major philosopher to our thinking.]
➢ Plato – a pupil of Socrates who was executed for ‘corrupting the youth’, after Socrates was executed Plato travelled around and eventually created his university in Athens.
➢ For Plato, knowledge gained through senses (a-posteriori or Empirical knowledge) = merely opinions. But that gained through reasoning (a-priori) = certain.
➢ The Allegory/Analogy of the Cave makes a contrast be tween people who see appearances and mistake them for truth, and those who actually see truth.
➢ The Allegory (i.e. a story that has a symbolic meaning) of the Cave =
Imagine prisoners in a cave. They are chained to the floor so that they can only see the wall in front of them and the shadows of things passing the mouth of the cave. One man escapes out of the cave. It is a hard journey out of the cave. At first he is dazzled by the ‘real’ objects which were more real than the shadows he saw in the cave. He then returns to the cave to tell his fellows, but they reject him.
➢ This suggests people are ‘philosophical ignorant’ and are like prisoners. They can only see the shadows playing on the back of the cave. They think the shadows are real.
➢ The world outside represents ‘Real’ stuff i.e. the world of Forms. The prisoner who escapes = is philosophically enlightened i.e. Philosopher-King.
➢ The Symbolism:
← The Cave = world of sight/appearances.
← Prisoners = us, trapped in this world of appearances who believe this all as true. We are like prisoners who are being stopped from realising the Real i.e.
Unit 1: Greek Philosophy - Plato and Aristotle
Plato: the Cave, the Forms and the Form of the Good
Plato’s Cave: Understand what Plato means in his analogy of the cave and be able to explain his symbolism: ➢ A.N. Whitehead said: All European philosophy is a “series of footnotes to Plato” [i.e. Plato is quite a major philosopher to our thinking.]
➢ Plato – a pupil of Socrates who was executed for ‘corrupting the youth’, after Socrates was executed Plato travelled around and eventually created his university in Athens.
➢ For Plato, knowledge gained through senses (a-posteriori or Empirical knowledge) = merely opinions. But that gained through reasoning (a-priori) = certain.
➢ The Allegory/Analogy of the Cave makes a contrast be tween people who see appearances and mistake them for truth, and those who actually see truth.
➢ The Allegory (i.e. a story that has a symbolic meaning) of the Cave =
Imagine prisoners in a cave. They are chained to the floor so that they can only see the wall in front of them and the shadows of things passing the mouth of the cave. One man escapes out of the cave. It is a hard journey out of the cave. At first he is dazzled by the ‘real’ objects which were more real than the shadows he saw in the cave. He then returns to the cave to tell his fellows, but they reject him.
➢ This suggests people are ‘philosophical ignorant’ and are like prisoners. They can only see the shadows playing on the back of the cave. They think the shadows are real.
➢ The world outside represents ‘Real’ stuff i.e. the world of Forms. The prisoner who escapes = is philosophically enlightened i.e. Philosopher-King.
➢ The Symbolism:
← The Cave = world of sight/appearances.
← Prisoners = us, trapped in this world of appearances who believe this all as true. We are like prisoners who are being stopped from realising the Real i.e.