Plato: Knowledge

We all continue to learn new things in life day in by day out; incessantly increasing our knowledge is essential to sustain man’s life path on this earth. Knowledge can be sought in different ways but to truly seek knowledge, one has to read, understand through experience and believe what the word of God says about faith. Acquiring knowledge through our five senses and faith, both give us insight on competing ways of getting at the truth. A person who reads, write and believes in the word of God will become rich with knowledge but the latter will not. Moreover, in order to achieve knowledge, one has to be taught it or teach him or herself (because humans are not born with the ability of knowing; they must acquire it) through observation and reasoning through faith. Different views exhibit on how knowledge is achieved. One may say through common sense and observation, while another may say through teachers and peers. According to the philosopher Plato in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, “Certain professors of education must be wrong when they say that they can put knowledge into the soul which was not there before, like sight into blindness. The power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being.” In making this comment, this Greek philosopher argues that, everyone has the capacity to learn because knowledge is present in the soul thus we all can acquire knowledge and wisdom by recollecting and putting together what in fact the soul already knows. Plato is right that humans have the aptitude to gain knowledge, but he seems on more dubious ground when he claims that knowledge is already present in one’s soul. I find this to be unconvincing because humans seek education to learn something which they didn’t already know. For example an