Plato's conception of reality

Plato's conception of reality as a reflection of the ideal is embodied in the allegory of the cave in The Republic, and Plato emphasizes that the philosopher must return to the cave to understand the relationship between the ideal and its projection in this world. Plato's conception of the existence of Forms as the ideals of the imperfect objects and ideas of this world derived in part from the ongoing discussion in Greek philosophy over change versus permanence. The allegory also relates to issues of epistemology as to what we can know and how we can know it. The cave becomes the touchstone, the example that serves to demonstrate the relationship between the idea and the reality, between perception and reality, between the perfection of the idea and the imperfection of the reality.

Plato addressed the issue of change by making a distinction between the imperfect material world and the changeless world of forms. This world, the world of the senses, is subject to change, but it is only the shadow of the changeless world of forms. Plato presented this idea graphically in the allegory of the cave in The Republic, where the shadows on the walls represented the imperfect likeness of the perfection of the real objects, much as the real world in which we live is only a reflection of the world of forms:

Imagine the condition of men living in a sort of cavernous chamber underground with an entrance open to the light and a long passage all down the cave.

Related Essays

Socrates The Apology .... might seem to be consistent with Plato's idea that .... because the very experience of conception occurs in .... of the successful exercise of reason: "[S]omething than .... (4497 18 )

Concept of the Soul & the Afterlife .... Christian thought), as well as this reader=s views, and .... meaning that it is based on what Plato and/or .... question of when the soul enters the body--at conception? .... (2670 11 )

The Mind-body Dualism Split .... philosophically you are a realist [after Plato]; if you .... Somatic site(s) of action (Carlson 87) for the .... We cannot form more than a schematic conception of what .... (4515 18 )

Consciousness in Sartre and Heidegger .... of the general and universal conception of Man .... the Question of Being, taken for granted since Plato. .... Anxiety (comparable to Sartre' s nausea) brings Dasein face .... (2841 11 )

Ideas & Ways of Taoism & Neo-Confucianism .... conflicts between an all-embracing mystical conception of the .... compare this graphical configuration to S-matrix theory .... to the reality assumed by Plato (Runes 668 .... (3517 14 )

Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory .... the whole of Western philosophy can be described as a series of footnotes to Plato, it seems .... Freud, S. (2000). .... Ethics and the materialist conception of history .... (2389 10 )

tions. All that they actually see are shadows, but they believe those shadows are reality. The prisoners could only recognize the shadows as reality. However, steps could be taken to reach toward reality, such as standing and looking about the cave. The Republic itself can be read as a the search for an ideal and for the meaning of reality, in this case Plato's ideal of a society without strife, and there is no guarantee that he will attain this ideal. To understand this idea of the ideal versus what can be attained, the philosopher must return to the cave. There is danger in this enterprise, however, for the philosopher who has ascended to the surface to see more than the average would return to tell others of what he had seen and would find that he was not believed. The philosopher serves as one who can force others to see: And suppose someone were to drag him away forcibly up the steep and rugged ascent and not let him go until he had hauled him out into the sunlight. . . He would, then, need to grow accustomed before he could see things in that upper world. This is a danger to the philosopher because of what happens to those who return to tell others: They would laugh at him and say that he had gone up only to co

Category: Philosophy - P