Plato

Plato is one of the well-known philosophers. He is a student of Socrates and the founder of the first college, the Academy. He is known for his writings such as the Statesman, the Laws and a number of dialogues including the most famous the Republic.

            The Republic is a book about politics and deals with the central problem of how to live a good life. It answered the questions such as what is justice in the State, what is an ideal State and what is a just individual.

            The “Allegory of the Cave” represents the human condition. It gives the view that most human beings are ignorant of the truth or reality, but still, people will have the ability to discover this universal truth through proper teaching. A State needs good men, and what makes up a good and proper life is the learning of the truth of reality. A person that is covered with darkness and fallacious teachings of reality is a prisoner of the world, a person living in unhappy life. But when this person interacts with the truth and understand what the good is, he or she will become good as well. It is very evident that people of today can be influenced so easily with the extravagance of life in the same way that Plato believed how easy a man can be good. And this I find not so true, because, if things are as easy as that, then the world today shouldn’t be how it is. But at some point, he believed that most people remain in darkness, or in the state of ignorance. Then maybe, people of today are still in that state. And all we have to do is wake up and try to take off that darkness that surrounds us.

            It is said that the one to rule the state must be the best. Then, Plato’s ideal State is an aristocracy. He believed that the best and brightest people are very few and rarefied group. At some point, this must be true, for the best and the brightest really know what to do, but at some extent, the word brightest might not include the sense of wisdom. These best and brightest might not know what is right from wrong, and so, we still can’t achive that Just State. He believed that an individual is courageous if his or her spirit is courageous and an individual is wise if his or her intellect is wise. In this I know, most people would agree.

            Theory of Forms identifies the levels of reality and metaphysical functions that Plato believed must exist. And these notion of levels of reality and human faculties is actually considered as a strength of the theory. He was able to explain the difference between the mind’s eye and the body’s eye in such a way that readers will understand how world of forms is so much different from the world of appearances which is merely just an artificial view of the world. However, in this theory, Plato gives the notion “the reason”, that the reason is a higher faculty than intellect. But the Theory of Forms itself is just a hypothesis which is conceptualize through his intellect. This notion was considered crucial in understanding Plato, for he showed contradicting ideas.

            Plato was accountable for a number of philosophies, with own strengths and own weaknesses, however it remains to the people what and what not to believe, for each of us have our own set of principles and beliefs.