Plato For Beginners by Robert Cavalier

Author:Robert Cavalier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: For Beginners
Published: 2013-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

Socrates draws a picture of the legions of the gods, led by Zeus, moving upward toward the outer vault of the heavens. Here they gaze beyond the cosmos and upon the eternal Forms:

“When they go to a feast or banquet, they proceed to the top of the vault of heaven...and when they reach the top they pass outside and take their place on the outer surface of the heavens and when they have taken their stand, the revolution carries them round and they behold the things beyond the heavens.”

“It is there that true Being dwells, without color or shape, that cannot be touched; reason alone, the soul’s pilot can behold it, and all true knowledge is knowledge thereof... In the revolution the soul beholds universal Justice, Virtue, Knowledge, not such knowledge that has a beginning and varies...but that which abides in the real, eternal absolute.” (Phaedrus 247c-e)

The Forms are described as being

beyond the physical (i.e., not accessible

to sense perception) and hence as colorless,

figureless, and intangible.

YET IT IS ONLY WITH A KNOWLEDGE OF THE

FORMS THAT WE HAVE TRUE KNOWLEDGE. AND

THIS KIND OF KNOWLEDGE CAN BE GAINED ONLY

THROUGH THE USE OF REASON OR MIND.

A final mark of the Forms is that they are eternal and absolute. Like the true number “2,” which always remains after all physical pairs of twos (two apples, two sand dunes) come and go, so too the Forms of Beauty and Justice remain permanent and unchanging throughout all time.

HENCE, TRUE KNOWLEDGE IS NOT RELATIVE.

IT HOLDS FOR ALL PEOPLES AT ALL TIMES

— IT IS ABSOLUTE.

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