Plato’s theory: Strength and weaknesses
Strengths
- Mathesis is Anamnesis
- Empirical knowledge from our immortal souls and our past lives in the world of the forms
- The noumena is non- physical so we would have no physical proof of its existence
- Beauty is all about symmetry so the most symmetrical face equals beauty
- We have an intuitive knowledge of what goodness is from the world of the forms
- We have a set characteristic of what an object, that they will all have in common so we
recognise them e.g flower has petals on a stem
Weaknesses
- Pushed to logical extremes (Aristotle)
- Just because we have an idea it doesn't mean it's true independent from human mind
- If there is a perfect form of everything does that include evil, and wouldn't that corrupt the
world of the forms?
- We all have different ideas of what beauty is so how can there be a perfect form?
- Physical world has a clear reality as we can walk into a chair, which clearly shows it's there
- There are so many different forms of one thing e.g a flower. How do we have just one
perfect form of it?
- We are born tabula rasa and learn everything through a posteriori knowledge not empirical
knowledge
Strengths
- Mathesis is Anamnesis
- Empirical knowledge from our immortal souls and our past lives in the world of the forms
- The noumena is non- physical so we would have no physical proof of its existence
- Beauty is all about symmetry so the most symmetrical face equals beauty
- We have an intuitive knowledge of what goodness is from the world of the forms
- We have a set characteristic of what an object, that they will all have in common so we
recognise them e.g flower has petals on a stem
Weaknesses
- Pushed to logical extremes (Aristotle)
- Just because we have an idea it doesn't mean it's true independent from human mind
- If there is a perfect form of everything does that include evil, and wouldn't that corrupt the
world of the forms?
- We all have different ideas of what beauty is so how can there be a perfect form?
- Physical world has a clear reality as we can walk into a chair, which clearly shows it's there
- There are so many different forms of one thing e.g a flower. How do we have just one
perfect form of it?
- We are born tabula rasa and learn everything through a posteriori knowledge not empirical
knowledge
