ogue, the asking of questions and the questioning of answers.
For Socrates, it is the process of inquiry that constitutes wisdom, and knowledge is what one believes, which may or may not be true. Aristotle in his Metaphysics sees the need to acquire knowledge which is worthy of the name of wisdom. He says that the desire to know is innate in the human being, and at all levels of human existence, human beings seek to understand, with varying levels of success. Wisdom for Aristotle is knowledge of the first and most universal causes, but this is also the knowledge that is most difficult to know. For Aristotle, philosophy is characterized as a craft, and a craft arises when many thoughts arising from experience result in one universal judgment about similar things. What we perceive through the senses cannot constitute wisdom, but it is experience leading to wisdom for those who can discover the craft that goes beyond the perceptions common to all. The role of the philosopher is to discover first principles, and the more experienced person appears wiser because wisdom is knowledge of certain sorts of principles and causes.
For both Plato and Aristotle, the philosopher has a social role in imparting his wisdom to others (Aristotle) or in guiding others to think for themselves and so in dragging them out of the cave (Plato).
2. Plato offers his 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 of the cave is a way of describing the relationship between the Forms and the objects of this world, and 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...