As I said in yesterday’s post, Plato used three images to explain his theory of the Forms. The first was the myth of the cave.
The chained prisoner’s tied see only the wall in front of them while in the roadway behind them various objects are carried back and forth resulting in the shadows on the wall. One day a prisoner breaks free and see the objects behind him. He knows there is something more real and he has more knowledge of his reality. Eventually, he makes his way out of the cave and sees objects in the sunlight, and then he sees the sun itself.
The allegory this refers to his leaving behind the impermanent, material world for the permanent intelligible world. It is a story about the human journey from darkness to light, from sleeping to waking, from ignorance to knowledge. For Christians like St. Augustine it represented the soul’s journey from this world to the heavenly one. Contemporary commentators often argue that has something to say to us. We look at our televisions, smartphones, and computer screens rather than contemplating eternal things.
Plato’s next device to explain forms was the divided line.
As move from top to bottom, you find more reality and more knowledge. For example suppose you only know the shadow of a horse, in that, are at the bottom (A). The shadow has very little reality—it depends on the horse casting the shadow—and it provides little knowledge. If you now see an actual horse you have moved up one level (B). You know more about horses and the actual horse has more reality than its shadow. If you move further upward to (C) you are in the realm of understanding, the realm of mathematical ideas. Finally, as you proceed upward you arrive at the world of forms (D), the highest of which is the form of the good.
Finally, Plato says that just as the sun illuminates the entire physical world so too, by analogy, does the idea of the good illuminate all of reality. Thus the material, temporal world that we live in is less real than the immaterial, non-temporal.
I don’t know if I hope Plato is right or not. But if he is, then dinner is not that important.
This is fantastic and well summarize notes, easy to accord. Continue with the same sprit of liberating people from the visible World to the intelligible World.