The theory of ideas of Plato
It is often said that Socrates was the father of Western philosophy as we understand it today, but these merits did not serve to eclipse the contributions of his disciple Plato.
This Athenian, born in the fifth century BC. C., began interested in continuing to develop the moral philosophy that had characterized his teacher, but He ended up creating something very different, centered on the nature of what exists rather than what should be done and what should not be done. . This contribution is known as Plato's theory of ideas.
The world of the ideal
Plato returned to the fundamental questions from which the pre-Socratic philosophers departed: What is there? How does the cosmos work? The Athenian noted that, while the great ideals that guide the acts of men, such as good and justice, are perfect and valid everywhere regardless of the context, the world around us is always changing, dependent of everything that happens in time and space: trees grow and dry, people age and disappear, mountains are modified by storms, the sea changes shape depending on the wind, etc.
Further. nothing we can know about our environment is universal , since it depends on the point of view of each person or, even, on the information we have available. An ox can be relatively large seen from afar, but if we approach it we can see that the tree that has to its side is practically a bush and that the animal, therefore, is rather small.
And, despite this, behind the things we see there seem to be ideas thanks to which we understand that chaos of changing matter that makes up the landscapes we move through: when we see an olive tree we know that it is a tree, and when we see it a pine, which is very different, we also know that it is a tree. The ideas serve to allow us to think correctly and not get lost in the constant confusion, because, if well-founded, they are valid everywhere.
But, according to Plato, ideas were not part of the same plane of existence as what surrounds us in the physical world. For him, when we see different types of chairs and recognize them as such, we do not limit ourselves to recognizing the common physical properties of these objects, but rather we evoked a "chair" idea that exists beyond them .
The material is composed of shadows
According to the philosophy of this thinker, behind each element of the physical world there is an ideal, the perfect idea of each thing, that appears in our mind in a more or less imperfect way but that definitely does not emerge from the realm of the material, because belongs to the world of ideas, a place of perfect, universal and immutable elements. This concept is central to Plato's theory of ideas.
A) Yes, the reality that we perceive through the senses is fundamentally a deception for Plato , a set of bad copies of the elements that make up the world of ideas, each one with imperfections that distance it from its true essence. For example, geometric figures only exist in ideas, since there is no element of nature that reproduces them faithfully: not even more or less spherical bodies, such as bubbles or water droplets, form a real sphere.
The truth is in the ideas
Plato did not simply point out that there is an insurmountable gap between the world of ideas and that of material things; as well He defended the idea that the true belonged to the first kingdom and not to the second . To demonstrate this he turned to mathematics, as the Pythagorean sects had been doing: geometric and numerical relationships are always true in themselves, regardless of what happens in the world of matter.
In the same way, Plato came to believe that truth exists beyond what our senses can perceive . If mathematics and geometry are true regardless of what we can find around us, there must be a realm of ideas in which all of them can be found.
A place where there is the perfect idea of chair, flower, river and everything that exists. He embodied this idea in one of his most remembered allegories, known as the myth of the cave: the truth exists although no one has been able to access it because of the limitations of living in the world of the physical.
The innate ideas according to Plato
But Plato's theory of ideas posed a question that could not be ignored: how can it be that being the world of ideas and that of the material two separate realms, we are in contact with both? To answer this, the Athenian philosopher started from the idea that what we identify with our person is, in reality, the combination of two elements: body and soul .
Our mind, related to the consciousness of ourselves and our ability to think, is actually an entity belonging to the world of ideas that, despite being eternal, has been temporarily locked in a material prison (our body).
The body, on the other hand, has senses to know what happens in the world of the physical, but it is imperfect, easy to damage and also subject to the deception of appearances, while the soul has reason and, as belongs to the world of ideals, has the innate ability to evoke the elements of the world of ideas. For Plato, therefore, To know is to remember through the use of reason, to make images and concepts appear again in our consciousness that we already carried with us from our birth and that correspond to an eternal and universal kingdom.
The role of the philosopher
According to Plato, the task of the philosopher is to avoid the analysis of the appearances of the physical world, populated with deceptive forms , and focus on accessing the perfect ideas through the use of reason. This function is also expressed in his allegory of the Platonic cavern.
But this is not as romantic as it sounds: this philosopher defended a model of political organization in which the government was basically exercised by an oligarchy of thinkers, and proposed a strong segregation by social classes .
The theory of ideas is, therefore, a proposal about what exists, but also about how reliable knowledge can be obtained and how this knowledge should be administered. That is, it addresses both the branch of philosophy of ontology and that of epistemology and politics.
What remains of the theory of ideas?
Currently, although the Platonic philosophy is rarely defended in academic circles, it still exerts a remarkable influence on our way of thinking.
Every time we imagine the truth as something independent of the events that occur in the world we will be reproducing a part of Plato's theory of ideas without realizing it.
