Plato: The Cowardly Quack

 

H01 Group 2 “Applez 2 Applez”

(Summary by Emily Ball)

            To begin my summary of today’s discussion, I want to bring your attention to our title. Often times, wisdom is measured by the amount of information one knows. To me, wisdom is not simply knowing information, but putting it into use. We discussed the many ideas that Plato had and acted upon. We came to the conclusion that he was a bit strange. He tried to make sure everyone was aware of his brilliance. I’m not saying he wasn’t a smart man, but his ideas don’t exactly add up in my head. He liked to go beyond what other people were thinking, and he never really agreed with many people, like the way the government was run. As Chloe stated while floating, “He was the original Hipster.” To begin this summary, I want to start off with Plato’s Theory of Forms.

            Plato once stated, “If you want to understand what goodness is, then you need to concentrate on the Form of goodness, not on particular examples of it that you witness.” To me this seems way off from my way of thinking. I will say that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I do believe this phrase deserves quite a bit of thought. We discussed the use of examples in determining the form of something. For example, we discussed the form of the perfect “table”. We all apparently create one perfect form of something in our minds. This item is perfect until you actually place it into reality. Nothing in life can be completely perfect, so Plato decided to use the “perfect Forms” of things in your own mind. He discussed the “perfect circle.” No one can draw or create a perfect circle, but when one mentions a perfect circle, we can all picture it in our minds. Our group believed that is what Plato meant by his Theory of Forms. By nature, we are all social creatures. We depend on seeing and doing to create an idea of something in our minds. Say a person grew up completely alone in a forest, how would that person have an idea of goodness or evil? This is where Plato’s Theory of Forms becomes foggy. He talked about the Form of goodness. The person that grew up alone would have never experienced anything good, so how could he even begin to create the “Form of goodness” in his mind? He would know simple things like being tired or hungry, but he would not know much of anything else because he was not given any examples or taught of what it means. How can we create a perfect form of anything without having examples to base this “perfectness” off of? One question that arose was, “Is Plato’s form of goodness actually just the version of someone masking the reality that they are actually evil? That is a bit of food for thought.

            We also discussed Plato’s allegory of the cave. He said that once the person broke the chains and turned around to experience the vast new world, that person was the Philosopher. This seeing the whole world was an act of enlightenment. Plato said that Philosophers know more than other people because they allow themselves to think deeply and become enlightened. Who truly determines when one is enlightened? How can Plato himself know everything there is to know if he didn’t know if there could be more than what he was accustomed to. We discussed the idea of a series of caves. This was all a hypothetical way of thinking, but what determines the final stage of enlightenment? What if it were a series of enlightenments? Each time you broke free from the cave and became enlightened you were simply going into a less dim cave. Can anyone truly reach the outermost point to which there is no more to learn?

D.Q.: Are you enlightened simply because you are able to ask questions that no one knows the answer to?