Plato Analogy of cave:

♥Imagine a large, dark cave, with a very long, difficult passage leading to the outside world. In the cave, there are chained prisoners, with their backs to the entrance of the cave. A bright fire behind them casts shadows upon the wall they are facing and voices are echoed. For the prisoners, their reality is the dark cave with shadows and echoes A prisoner is released and is blinded by the fire. They are dragged up the long passage and wants to go back to the reality they understood. When they reach the outside world, the sun blinds them, eventually they adjust to the light and start to understand the outside world and accept it as the real reality. On returning to the cave to share with the others his discovery, he is blinded by the darkness and the prisoners are hostile towards him- showing their ignorance of knowing nothing but the shadows What things represent:

The prisoners: the rest of humanity unable to understand the enlightened, don't know real reality The shadows: reality to common humans, our perception of reality The cave itself: the visible world (phenomenal world of appearances), away from reality The outside world: true reality, world of the Forms, eternal, immutable world of ideals The sun: Highest good (Form of all forms), perfection, knowledge of true, essential goodness, allows soul to gain real understanding The journey out of the cave (struggle): philosophical enlightenment, struggle and battle for knowledge, ability to see real world and understand concepts/forms The chains: bound by preconceived ideas they have about life Return to the prisoners: attempts to show how those not enlightened are ignorant like the Rulers of Athens at the time who killed Socrates for "corrupting the young", who was also Plato's tutor, the escaped prisoner was representing Socrates, the philosopher

Concept of forms and form of good

♥‘Forms’: true reality, perfection eternal, invisible and unchangeable. They are more real than the sensory world of appearances. Imperfect replicas of the forms are seen around us; for example, we may say that a rose is "beautiful" but it isn't as beautiful as the Form of beautiful which perfection in itself. We can access the forms through intellectual reasoning.

♥Relation between concepts and phenomena; Concepts are innate ideas that our souls were exposed to in the transcendental world of pure forms. Phenomena is empirical evidence- these material objects are subject to change and are contingent whereas concepts

you cannot step in the same river twice

♥‘Ideals’; ideal universal forms which exist independently of anything else

♥Form of the Good and the other Forms: the forms are hierarchical with form of the good at the top like a sun, it illuminates to other forms

♥Theory of recollection: soul existed before birth in realm of forms and we recollect the forms during our life and we strive to return to them. We can help the soul recollect the forms by ignoring earthly matter and concentrate of philosophical reflection and become free the slaves of our senses

♥Body and soul: Each person has a directing force (SOUL) which is guided by a body involved in worldly matters. The mind (immaterial and capable of knowing eternal truths) wants to travel to the realm of ideas and gain understanding. The soul is trapped between the two opposing forces and tries to steer but is imprisoned in the body

Strengths: •It explains why we all recognize the same qualities such as beauty, goodness, and justice •It allows for imperfections in the world around us •Encourages us to question in order to learn and not accept everything at face value

Criticisms: •Is there forms of bad things such as smallpox, hatred? •Is there a form of an animal or a form of every species? •What is goodness? •No evidence Forms exist (empirically), no existence of another world •Perfect forms of things could just exist in our minds and are people probably have different ideas on the perfect form of things. Forms could be ideas preserved in peoples minds shaped from societies and cultures. (Richard Dawkins- "memes") •3rd man argument (copy of a form could turn into an infinite series making the theory meaningless) •No clear relationship was given between the 2 realms •Our sense are instinctive behavior for human survival