Concepts of Metaphysics

Philosophers from the first have been interested in determining the nature of reality and how human beings come to know that reality, assuming that they can. Metaphysics is the attempt to present a coherent and comprehensive explanation of reality, and epistemology is the theory of knowledge, of how human beings learn what they learn and how they can know that what they learn is true. Different philosophers have had different explanations for these concepts, as can be seen by an analysis of the concepts offered by the Greeks Leucippus, Protagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, to take them in chronological order.

Leucippus, along with Democritus, was a leader of a group of philosophers who became known as "the atomists" and whose ideas are remarkably modern, in keeping with contemporary scientific thought. They saw the world as composed of material bodies themselves composed of groups of "atoms," meaning something indivisible, something that cannot be divided into a smaller component (Palmer 34). Leucippus explained how the indivisible atoms could come together to form the world we see around us--the atoms move in the void, collide, and interlock to form larger aggregates which we can then see with our senses (Luce 74).

The theory developed by Leucippus and Democritus was not itself formed from nothing but built on what had gone before, notably the works of Empedocles and Anaxagoras. Where these earlier philosophers had determined that there was some force which created and i

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no other kind of ideas, and therefore no other knowledge than perception, there is for human knowledge nothing whatever that is universally valid (Wildeband 93). Plato took quite a different approach and found that ideas, as he used the term, are not only something in human consciousness but something outside it as well. Platonic Ideas are subjective and do not depend on human thought but exist entirely in their own right. They are perfect patterns that exist in the very nature of things. Such an idea is not just a human idea but the idea of the universe itself, an ideal entity that can express itself externally in concrete tangible form or internally as a concept in the human mind. It is a primordial image or formal essence that can manifest in various ways and on various levels, and is the foundation of reality itself (Tarnas 10). Plato is an idealist in his philosophy, basing his view of the world on the idea that there are forms embodying this world in a state of perfection and that what we perceive in this world are only shadows of the ideal. Central to Plato's thought is the power of reason to reveal the intelligibility and order governing the changing world of appearance, with the purpose of creating, at both the

Category: Philosophy - C