Plato's theory of ideas

Socrates is often said to have been the father of Western philosophy as we understand it today, but these merits did not serve to overshadow the contributions of his disciple Plato.

This Athenian, born in the 5th century BC. C., he began to be interested in continuing to develop the moral philosophy that had characterized his teacher, but he ended up creating something very different, focused on the nature of what exists rather than what should and shouldn't be done. This contribution is known as Plato's theory of ideas.

The world of the ideal, according to Plato

Plato returned to the fundamental questions from which the pre-Socratic philosophers started: 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 context, the world around us is always changing, dependent on 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.

What's more. 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. An ox can be relatively large seen from afar, but if we get closer we can see that the The tree next to him is practically a bush, and that the animal is therefore 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 through which we move: when we see an olive tree we know that it is a tree, and when we see a pine tree, 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 constant confusion, since, if they are 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 just recognize the common physical properties of these objects, but rather we evoke an idea of ​​"chair" that exists beyond them.

The material is made up 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, which appears in our mind more or less. less imperfect but that definitely does not emerge from the realm of the material, because it belongs to the world of ideas, a place of perfect, universal and immutable. This concept is central to Plato's theory of ideas.

A) Yes, the reality that we perceive through the senses is for Plato fundamentally a deception, a set of bad copies of the elements that make up the world of ideas, each with imperfections that take it away from its true essence. For example, geometric figures only exist in ideas, since there is no element of nature that reproduce faithfully: not even more or less spherical bodies, such as bubbles or drops of water, form a sphere real.

The truth is in the ideas

Plato did not limit himself to pointing out that there is an insurmountable gap between the world of ideas and that of material things; also he defended the idea that the true belonged to the first kingdom and not the second. To demonstrate this he turned to mathematics, just 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 has to be a realm of ideas in which all of them can be found.

A place where there is the perfect idea of ​​a chair, a flower, a 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 that living in the physical world entails.

Innate ideas according to Plato

But Plato's theory of ideas raised a question that could not be ignored: how can it be that being the world of ideas and that of the material two separate kingdoms, we are in contact with both of them? 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 provisionally locked up in a material prison (our body).

The body, for its part, has the senses to know what happens in the physical world, but it is imperfect, easy to damage and is also subject to the deception of the appearances, while the soul has reason and, as it 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 in our consciousness that we had been with us since 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 cave.

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 strong segregation by social class.

The theory of ideas is, therefore, a proposal about what exists, but also about how reliable knowledge can be obtained and how this should be managed knowledge. In other words, he addresses both the branch of ontology philosophy and that of epistemology and politics.

What remains of the theory of ideas?

Today, although Platonic philosophy is rarely advocated in academic circles, it continues to exert a notable influence on our way of thinking.

Every time we imagine the truth as something independent of the events that occurs in the world we will be reproducing a part of Plato's theory of ideas without realizing it.