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Plato's illogical philosophy
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     I did this postion paper for my philosophy class. It was only worth extra credit and I thought it was worth a grade. I also did it in one night. Turned out like crap haha.

               Plato’s Illogical philosophy

     Plato’s metaphysics make for great mythical foundation for an afterlife. This theory of a duel realms concept sounds good but lacks logic. The idea that everything comes from the forms and remembering the forms will give us knowledge is illogical. Plato’s epistemology along with all A Priori thinking is flawed itself, senses must come before knowledge. Since reason and logic are the foundation for philosophy, metaphysics and epistemology a person should find it hard to agree with any of Plato’s theories.

     Plato uses a vivid allegory to explain his two-realms concept (Burder 43). In Plato’s allegory of a duel realm concept there is a perfect realm in which he describes as outside the cave and everything is filtered into the cave or our imperfect realm. This perfect realm is the highest truest form of reality. The concept is idealistic for world religions but when talking about metaphysics we are talking about the fundamental concepts of reality. Plato as an A Priori thinker uses only reason and logic when attempting to explain his metaphysics, but there is no logic in a perfect realm that filters into an imperfect realm. If we applied logic to the realm of perfect and permanent forms we could only filter other perfect and permanent qualities into our realm. This is not the case in Plato’s metaphysics. He attempts to get something that is not perfect from something that is perfect. This is illogical.

     Another of Plato’s misleading metaphysical concepts about reality is the Forms and his theory of remembering them. We are told that we cannot fully experience the concept of the forms because we are only barley a part of reality. These Forms are the perfect concepts or the truest form of reality that filter down into our distorted perceptions. Because our souls come from the realm of the forms if a person looks inside their soul they could find true knowledge of the forms. The more knowledge a person remembers from the soul the closer to the forms a person becomes. If this is the case and people only experience a degree of reality then that would indicate a hierarchy in reality. Since this implies different levels of truth coming from the perfect realm of the Forms this implies different levels of permanence and perfections. Whatever reality is its perfect and permanent (Wolf Unit I Notes), so there cannot be levels of reality.

     Plato is an A Priori thinker, and because of this he uses reason and logic exclusively. Saying that a person can not trust their perceptions because they will find only false knowledge is unreasonable, when all A Priori thinkers learned of the concepts they understand from using Post A Priori learning growing up. Lets take a person born with A Priori thinking exclusively. This person would be void of all the senses we use to perceive hearing, sight, smell, touch, and taste because they are false paths to truth. This person would be completely unable to communicate with our world. With this inability to communicate with our world a person would gain no knowledge of anything. This person could gain no knowledge of Plato’s virtues or A priori thinking because there is no way for them to learn these values or concepts. This person couldn’t learn the fundamental understanding of anything. The values or concepts are gathered or witnessed from human perceptions and then explained. The concept of courageousness came from witnessing someone doing this act. Just because no one can agree with what a concept truly is doesn’t mean that we didn’t come to a better understand of these concepts though experiencing our perceptions.

     Plato like Socrates was desperately searching for the true knowledge of these virtues and couldn’t find the answers simply because no one could pin point the exact concept. Even though the Platonic philosophy will be widely accepted even into the current era it is illogical. All Plato’s metaphysics did was try to explain why he couldn’t find the pure truth, but failed to remain logical. Since reason and logic are the avenues we use to acquire knowledge, Plato’s metaphysics, which are illogical, cannot be true.

Bruder, Kenneth, and Brooke N. Moore. Philosophy: The Power of Ideas. 5th ed.
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., 2002.

Wolf, F. Andrew. Lecture Notes: Unit I Metaphysics/Epistemology.