Platos Philosophy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Platos Philosophy - Essay Example Plato’s philosophy of the world of becoming and the world of being are separate entities, but their explanation sometimes blurs the line between the two, since the philosopher made no effort to separate his ideas completely. The final form of the never-ending need to understand is a form of knowledge in the world of forms introduced by Plato. In the world of forms, the philosopher is known to have attained the highest form of knowledge available, and can therefore, be able to see the world of ideas in the world immediately. This is the ultimate and possibly, only final form of knowledge that a philosopher would seek. From Plato’s philosophy, we can be made to understand that for the faculty of reason described above, one that transcends real world boundaries, there must be a corresponding level of universal reality. These two different factors are divided into what Plato called the world of becoming and the world of being. In the world of becoming, the forms do not change eternally and have non-objective characteristics like beauty and justice. Conversely, the world of being depicts that the beautiful forms seen in everyday life are infinite copies of the forms described above. Plato considered that objects have the ability to acquire and/or lose beauty, but the essence of beauty is such that it has a distinct existence from the objects in the world. Plato insists that the physical objects seen the world are actually perfect copies of the world of forms or Triangle. ... In contrast, the physical world, the world known by the human senses, is a dynamic world, a world of becoming. Plato then states that the forms have an infinite and singular existence in the world of being, as contrasted to the world of becoming. Plato’s explanation of the forms indicates that our souls were indicated with the forms before the bodies, and the mind realizes the forms in different ways.4 The first way of recognizing the forms is through recollection, where it is understood the soul was acquainted with the forms before the body. In this case, an individual can recollect the knowledge of the soul prior to the existence of the body. In this case, the existence of physical objects is just but a reminder of the beautiful essences of the forms, and education is a way of remembering the forms that existed before the body. The second way of realizing the forms is through speech and dialect, where an individual learns to separate objects and discover how the various spli ts of knowledge are related. The third way of discovering the world of being or the forms, is through the power of love. In the symposium, Plato states that the power of love leads an individual from a beautiful object, to a beautiful thought and finally to the discovery of the essence of beauty itself. Plato’s two distinct ideas, the world of being and the world of becoming, can be explained using different parables or metaphors that he postulated.5 The first metaphor, the allegory of the cave, is an embracement of two allegories and describes both forms of becoming and being. The allegory asks us to imagine ourselves as prisoners in an underground prison, where we are chained without access to the outside. In the