Distinctions and Comparisons between Aristotle and Plato Essay

Plato’s idea that there was a perfect world of ideas affected this pieces subject and the

Plato is remembered as one of the worlds best known philosophers who along with his writings are widely studied. Plato was a student of the great Greek philosopher Socrates and later went on to be the teacher of Aristotle. Plato’s writings such as “The Republic”, “Apology” and “Symposium” reveal a great amount of insight on what was central to his worldview. He was a true philosopher as he was constantly searching for wisdom and believed questioning every aspect of life would lead him to the knowledge he sought. He was disgusted with the common occurrence of Greeks not thinking for themselves but simply accepting the popular opinion also known as doxa. Plato believed that we ought to search for and meditate on the ideal versions of beauty, justice, wisdom, and other concepts which he referred to as the forms. His hostility towards doxa, theory of the forms, and perspective on reality were the central ideas that shaped Plato’s worldview and led him to be the great philosopher who is still revered today.

Plato was a philosopher who was born in Athens (470-390 BCE), and was also a student of Socrates. He felt that intelligence and one’s perception belonged to completely independent realms or realities. He believed that general concepts of knowledge were predestined, or placed in the soul before birth even occurred in living things. Plato believed that the cosmos was intelligible, and the the universe was mathematically understandable. He believes that mathematical objects could be seen as perfect forms. Forms, a doctoral of Plato, can be understood as an everyday object or idea, which does not, exists in the everyday realm, but merely is existent in the hypothetical realm or reality.

Aristotle and Plato were both great thinkers but their views on realty were different. Plato viewed realty as taking place in the mind but Aristotle viewed realty is tangible. Even though Aristotle termed reality as concrete, he stated that reality does not make sense or exist until the mind process it. Therefore truth is dependent upon a person’s mind and external factors.

In ancient Greece two great written philosophers lived. First there was Plato and then Aristotle. Aristotle was a pupil of Plato. Despite being taught by Plato they had different theories and views. Their ethics were very typical and traditional of ancient Greece but Aristotle detailed virtue ethics and the path to happiness. Plato’s political theories for a utopian society varied from Aristotle’s view of ‘best state for each society’. Their metaphysical theories are complete opposites and very contradicting. Even though Plato and Aristotle came from the same era and were closely linked they had very different philosophies.

We are introduced to the Forms in Plato’s dialogue the Phaedo. The Theory of Forms says that

Plato's theory of forms, also called his theory of ideas, states that there is another world, separate from the material world that we live in called the "eternal world of forms". This world, to Plato, is more real than the one we live in. His theory is shown in his Allegory of the Cave (from The Republic, Book VII), where the prisoners only live in what they think is a real world, but really it is a shadow of reality. According to Plato, to the prisoners in the allegory and to humanity in the material world "truth would be literally nothing but shadows" and he believes us to be as ignorant as the people in the cave. Plato followed the belief that in order for something to be real it has to be permanent, and as everything in the world we

Plato, in addition to being a philosopher, wrestled at the Olympic level, is one of the classical Greek authors, mathematicians and the founder of The Academy, the first higher learning institute in the west. In short, Plato is one of the great thinkers in history and his contributions to philosophy, ethics and politics are many and varied. One of Plato’s main philosophical ideas is based on the idea that the world

Plato, arguably one of the most famous philosophers in history is known for his dialogues and theory of Forms. The theory of Forms argues that ideas (non-physical forms) are more real than tangible objects or what our senses perceive. According to Plato, there is the visible realm and intelligible realm. Reality could be divided into three different levels; the level of appearances, the real level, and the ideal level which he explains through the analogy of the ‘Divided Line’ in The Republic.

Unlike his teacher, Plato, Aristotle believed that the world could be explained by physical observation. This approach of using the five senses, cataloguing and categorising, is the foundation of scientific study. The approach is known as empiricism. Plato believed that we needed to look beyond the physical for an explanation of the universe in the guise of the World of Forms. Aristotle disagreed with this.

“Everything which exist in this world and all things that we see around us are not as they appear to us” this is the core idea behind plato’s theory of forms.From this idea only he moves towards explaining his world of forms or ideas.

Plato recognizes that knowledge and understanding of the Forms is of momentous value, because they are pre-eminent and transcendent goods. Possession of the Forms, in a sense that does not imply ownership, is the product of reason — visualised as the most worthwhile attribute of the human soul — and it is this possession which leads to human happiness. A happiness shared by all of those who arrive at a true realisation of the Forms, through the supremacy and superiority of human reason [12]. For Plato, an action is approved of not simply because it is preferred by reason, but because reason will prefer it when reason has succeeded in apprehending the Good, and applying that apprehension to the task of choosing actions [13].

Plato was interested in how we can apply a single word or concept to many words or things. For example how can the word house be used for all the individual dwellings that are houses? Plato answered that various things can be called by the same name because they have something in common. He called this common factor the thing’s form or idea. Plato insisted that the forms differ greatly from the ordinary things that we see around us. Ordinary things change but their forms do not. A particular triangle may be altered in size or shape but the form of a triangle can never change. Plato concluded that forms exist neither in space or time. They can be known not only by the intellect but also by the senses. Because of their stability and perfection, the forms have greater reality than ordinary objects observed by the senses. Thus true knowledge is knowledge of the forms.

Both Aristotle and Plato believed in these shared principles: harmony, organic approach (society functions as an organism), natural approach, politics and morals, they believed that humans are social creatures, and they believed in the functioning of the state and its citizens.

It is also important to say that he also believes the soul is the form of the body in part, because the soul is the organization of the parts the body, the body is matter and it or soul is the form-the actual living body. To reiterate this point Aristotle offers us the example of a corpse and a bronze or wooden hand and states that these are not forms as they “lack the potentiality to perform the function of a hand”.7this would also suggest that once we are dead we undergo a material change which stops function and makes us akin to a statue. Aristotle then goes on to discuss matter which he says is “the matter that is the subject necessarily has a certain sort of nature....fire has a hot and light nature”8. He states that matter is what earlier philosophers focused on and it was how they explained the order of the world. Aristotle however does not believe that this is the way in which we should study nature, he believes we should ask what gives each natural substance its characteristic and we should look at “how each thing has naturally come to be, rather than how it is...then state their causes”9. Therefore he concludes that a prior observational investigation is best and that we should study the form.