Free Research Paper on Plato the Philosopher
As a Christian scholar it is important to take into account the ideas of both Plato and Aristotle, because one must look at the world the way that it truly is, yet strive to make it the way that it should be. Plato is an idealist; he believes in the world of forms, he believes that everything we see in this world, is a less accurate representation of what the true form should be. Aristotle on the other hand, put great faith in only what he could observe, and believed that only through questioning and careful contemplation could the truth be discovered.
This paper will examine the works and philosophies of both of these influential thinkers, and show the pertinence of each man's writings and teachings to a Christian worldview. At the conclusion of the paper, the reader will understand that to be a good Christian, one must have Aristotle's philosophy in the mind, and Plato's philosophy in the heart.
Relationship between Plato and Aristotle
As a young man, Plato became a follower of the philosopher Socrates1. Socrates continued to be an enormous influence on Plato throughout Plato's life, and this is reflected in many of Plato's works, and his logic. Socrates was put to death by the Athenian state for the crime of impiety, and this inspired Plato to renew his career in philosophy and focus on social reform, which led him to withdraw from Athens for a while. It was the foul and brutal practices of Athenian politics that helped Plato's idealism soar greatly2. Furthermore, it was Socrates' death that occurred at the hands of democracy that enraged Plato so intensely, causing him to abandon his social and political reform to devote himself entirely to theories of an ideal state.
Upon Plato's return to Athens he founded a school of philosophy called the Academy, and this is where he remained the director of its researches until his death. It was here that Aristotle and Plato first met. Aristotle joined the Academy and remained Plato's student for twenty years3. Aristotle was said to be Plato's most favorite student. It is often assumed that Plato and Aristotle were opponents, because of their differing works, and ideas, but it is undeniable that the philosophy of Plato was the dominant force in Aristotle's thought. This is demonstrated continuously throughout Aristotle's works, however drastic his later disagreements with Platonism were he always remains as it were, within the same country of thought4.
After Plato's death, Aristotle left The Academy, and tutored Alexander the Great at a time in which the Greek empire began to emerge. He eventually returned back to Athens where he founded his own school entitled, the Lyceum. It was during this time when Aristotle started to become the father of a different line of philosophers, the Peripatetic. (Kenny, 30) The style of Aristotle's school was different from that of the Academy, it functioned more as a research institution, where scholarly members lectured. Alexander the Great died in 323, and this removed the protection from Aristotle, which resulted in him being charged with “atheism.”
Fundamental Characteristics
After a careful examination of the works from both of these political philosophers, there are three fundamental characteristics, which arise that distinguish Plato and Aristotle. First, each began his query from a different point; Aristotle asserted the predominance of the particular, while Plato expelled particulars to a world of unintelligibility. Second, both Plato and Aristotle wrote for a different purpose and in a different style. Aristotle wrote more like a scientist, in the sense that he studied and mastered the existing knowledge of the world, and was trying to provide the organization and principles that were necessary to study it in a systematic fashion. Conversely, Plato tended to write short pieces on selected topics that were often similar to a propaganda piece. Furthermore, Plato's works were found to be more pleasant among the light-hearted readers than Aristotle, as his were witty and elegant. Aristotle was very serious in his works with no humor in the piece. Lastly, Plato and Aristotle held significantly different positions on the question of “being”. Plato attributed this question to the world of universal and logical forms, he relied greatly on the world of thought. Aristotle however approached this question again with a scientific manner, he described thought and matter as two aspects that made up “being”.
Although there were many differences between the two philosophers, they did have similarities. Both Aristotle and Plato are exclusively concerned in their political philosophy with the traditional Greek city-state (Armstrong, 58). That being a single, small city, the center of a compact block of territory that is generally sufficient for its economic support, that holds a small and exclusive body of citizens. All of these citizens are personally known to each other, and they devote their chief energies to the service of the state in war and politics. However, Plato did diverge from Aristotle on his doctrine of the state, because he was exclusively concerned with perfections of a state, and the maintenance of it as far possible in the most perfect conditions.
Plato and the world of the Forms
Plato's theory of forms is a central part of his philosophy and one of the great metaphysical theories in the history of philosophy. It appears that the older that Plato became the more he began to think of reality in terms of the world of the Forms. This idea can be described as the ideal, the most perfect possible image of its archetype in the world of Forms, the image of the visible heaven among men, and the view that the human soul is a microcrosm, an image in miniature, of both the heaven and the state, relating to the visible heaven. (Armstrong, 44) Further, he believed in a world of unchanging eternal immaterial Forms that corresponded to universal definitions. Plato demonstrated this idea in arguably his most popular work entitled the “Republic”. It is in this work where the reader is given an idea into Plato's hierarchy of Forms through which the mind ascends to the ultimate and universal Form, that being the good. (McGreal, 21)
Plato began to think of the Forms in different terms later in life
In the years that led up to Plato's death, he took a new approach to thinking of the world of Forms, and it became the detailed process that most are familiar with today. Plato began to conceive of the idea of Forms as being mathematical; he constituted them by number, or dependent on a set of higher realities, being the Ideal Numbers. (Armstrong, 46) These ideal numbers ranged from one to ten, and they each had principles associated with them, for example the one was likely identified with the Good.
Plato's Cave
In the Republic, Plato summed up his epistemology in an allegory that is often referred to as “Plato's Cave”. It is in this allegory where he demonstrates this Form of the Good. In this piece, there are prisoners chained in a cave who are watching on its inner wall the shadows of statues carrying along a wall behind them. These represent the majority of mankind who take their opinions, even those pertaining to worldly matters, at second hand. This process of the emerging from the darkness is depicted as very painful and initially blinding, and it has three different stages. The first stage is to see the objects of this world as they really are. The next stage is to see the forms which transcend the imperfect objects of the present world, and the final stage is to see the Form of the Good, which is the source of all truth and reason. (Kenny, 25)
For Plato, the Idea of the good is, like the sun, the source of light by which the eye of the minds sees everything. One can also understand it as, a way to recognize the good as the supreme source from which all Ideas derive their being. Plato's entire idea is grounded on the claim that there are degrees of reality discoverable by the Human mind. A Christian can relate to Plato's idea because a Christian believes that God is the truth and purpose of human life, and that answer can be reached by studying Plato's philosophy.
Plato argued that the possibility of knowledge requires the existence of forms, where the sort of knowledge is at issues is not ordinary linguistic understanding, but it is knowledge as it contrasts with belief. Furthermore Plato argued that people could explain the way the world is only if there are forms in virtue of which things are as they are. Therefore one can conclude that these arguments are connected, because Plato believes that the possibility of knowledge requires the existence of forms regarded as real properties of things.
Plato understood a universal concept to be an objective essence of things. These universals are objects of thought; horseness and triangularity are discovered, not created, by the thinking mind. Therefore, the Form of good is what makes all things good. It is in Plato's later dialogues where he begins to work out this idea fully. The process of getting to know the world of Forms and its structure and the relationship of Forms to one another is what Plato calls Dialectic. (Armstrong, 44)
The information on this phase of Plato's life has very little concrete evidence, and therefore much of what is known is due to Aristotle's criticisms of this work. Aristotle and Plato diverged on the view of the Forms. Aristotle criticized the view that the Form are separate from sense particulars, somewhere “out there” apart from things and the mind of any thinking subject. (McGreal, 25). Plato believed that humanity could be considered a “thing” that existed apart from and outside actual existing human persons, and this belief is one that Aristotle found to be spurious, and furthermore criticized Plato greatly for believing it.
One could argue that perhaps Aristotle's difficulty in understanding Plato's logic stemmed from the fact this his paradigm of knowledge was often biology, while Plato's was mathematics. In Plato's Phaedo, he emphasizes conceptual objectivity by affirming that the Forms exist in a sphere apart from the sensible world. However in Plato's later work entitled Timaues, he suggests that things are said to be “copies” of ideas. These two pieces really reinforce Aristotle's reasoning for his critique of Plato's work. It seems rather difficult to understand Plato's language of separation, because ideas cannot be in some place, rather they are intangible. Aristotle would likely argue that to be placed in space and time is a state that is reserved only for bodies.
Aristotle takes forms to be universals
One could conclude that based on Plato's theory of forms being separate, self-predicative paradigms, that they are particulars. Like Plato, Aristotle assumed the reality of the universal or the general, and he assumed that it could be known. However, he differed from Plato on his assumption of the reality of particulars, he thought that forms were not particulars but were instead universals, although he did sometimes say that forms are not only universals but also particulars. Aristotle believed that as long as Platonic Forms are conceived as abstract universals, there is no reason to separate them from the phenomenal world and install them in the supersensible world. (Seung, 70)
Aristotle wrote a short complex essay entitled, Peri ideon, and in this essay he presents and criticizes arguments for the existence of Platonic forms, and furthermore he sketches his alternative. (Fine, 1) It becomes evident after reading this piece that Aristotle's primary purpose is to defend his conception of universals, which in this work he calls 'common things', against Plato's rival conception of universals as forms. (Fine, 25)
The difference between Forms and Aristotelian Universals
Aristotle thought that forms and universals shared some features, for example he takes both Platonic forms and his own universals to be real entities, that are distinct from such things as meanings, particulars, predicates, concepts and classes. In Aristotle's Peri ideon, it is evident that he understands forms to be the basic objects of knowledge, meaning that they are unobservable and eternal. Furthermore he takes his own universals to be the basic objects of knowledge. (Fine, 25) Therefore, Aristotle's logic built on the idea that forms of things cannot be understood as realities independent of their embodiment or actuality.
Aristotle's conception of God
Aristotle conditioned people to believe that only what was written in the texts was true, and that ordinary observation and experiment alike were vain. Even without taking into account the negative effect that a statement like this can have on those who believe in God, Aristotle's conception of God should be viewed as unsatisfactory. Aristotle's thoughts are not God-centered, but instead they were Cosmo centered. (Armstrong, 90) It is unlikely that Aristotle could trust in Heaven, when he believed that the universe was the Whole, and furthermore that it was everlasting. He believed that this was the ultimately reality.
The difference in the Soul
As Plato got older, he began to stress the idea of the soul's function in the visible world. Plato came to think of the soul in a similar way as most Christians think of it today, as having a true bodily home in the heavenly world, and furthermore he believed that the soul was eternally attached to the everlasting heavenly body. Therefore, one could argue that he held similar beliefs that many Christians have in regards to the soul, and what happens after death.
Aristotle however believes the soul to be, that which makes the potential living body the actual living body. (Armstrong, 92) Aristotle believes the sole is the principle of life, and it exists in living things. Aristotle rejects Plato's conception of the soul as being something that can exist once your live body is gone, and all that remains is your heavenly body, which therefore suggests that he does believe there is a place for souls in Heaven.
Conclusion
It is undeniable that both Plato and Aristotle were great thinkers that offered countless contributions to political philosophy. Plato can be best understood as laying the foundation of all purely intellectual traditions in Western thought, and Aristotle is best recognized for the beginning of scientific inquiry. Plato believes that we can find truth by analyzing general concepts, and Aristotle believes that one can obtain knowledge only through a scientific method.
Although Plato's ideas were sometimes construed as too utopian, because of his idealistic view, as Christians, we should not lose focus of this, because this is the world we should aspire too. In the same regard, Aristotle who is too much of a realist to possibly be able to imagine God, has beneficial ideas that could help to improve our society as well. After studying these two philosophers, in order to make an effective positive change in the world in which we live, we must strive towards that ideal society, using both Plato and Aristotle's ideas.