Chapter Nine: Plato

Plato had a lot of huge ideas and some of them are a little hard to process, but here goes.

Plato believed that everything we see is really just an imperfect shadow of something perfect.  Each and every bird comes from a perfect form of a bird.  They may all look different but they come from the same mold.  That means that everything we see is imperfect, which to me makes sense.  It’s like looking at a picture of something.  No matter how close you get, you can never capture the image fully, because the picture is an imperfect copy of the scene.  You just can’t capture the exact lighting, or replicate exactly what you’ve seen.  It just doesn’t work. 

The part that I find myself struggling with though, is the idea that the only things we truly understand come from our reason and not our senses.  Of course, things that have to do with senses are usually marked by opinion.  That I agree with.  But after reading everything Socrates said about “she who is wisest knows she does not know”, Plato’s idea doesn’t quite fit.  How can we not be sure of things, and yet have our knowledge come from reason?  This is the first time I’ve been thoroughly confused in this process.  I’ve just come to the terms with the idea that everything I see is just a reflection of something else, and that nothing I see or “know” is completely for certain.  So how can I then believe that I can gain knowledge from reason? 

Then again, maybe Plato and Socrates were on the same page, and their theories go hand in hand.  Maybe what Socrates meant by not knowing wasn’t not knowing ANYTHING, but just not being sure of the things we’ve seen or been taught. I realize now that I cannot mistake my senses for reality or knowledge, but where does that put my reason?  Plato says that everyone shares the same reason, and maybe that’s true.  But I feel like if it is, we don’t all use it the same way.  Eventually we can come to the same answers through reason, but are those answers knowledge?  Plato says that knowledge can only be obtained by reason, but then Socrates says that the only knowledge is to know we know nothing…What? How can I know nothing and yet learn through my reason? How can the two concepts be connected?  Is there any way that they are both correct?  Here’s the problem… I DON’T KNOW.   Which makes sense as far as Socrates’ ideas.  But using reason, could I come to understand both concepts?  Maybe that’s it! Maybe Plato doesn’t mean knowledge as in being absolutely sure of something but instead UNDERSTANDING.  Maybe we don’t know anything for completely certain, but we can come to UNDERSTAND ideas and problems through REASON. You can be reasonable enough to understand that 2+2=4 but wise enough to know that you aren’t entirely sure of that fact because those numbers were once made up and told to you.  And in another world, maybe 2+2=6 because the value of the symbol 2 is actually 3.  It sounds crazy, but maybe that’s what Socrates meant by not knowing for sure.

Okay, mild frustration averted.  I think that’s how you could connect Plato and Socrates and their ideas.  They weren’t necessarily contradicting each other as I originally thought. Their ideas just fit together in a way that’s hard to understand.   It took some REASON, but I think I get it ;) And of course, the goal of philosophy isn’t to make your ideas mesh with someone else’s but I feel like sometimes it should.  Maybe it’s just me, but I was severely bothered reading that and thinking that Plato’s idea went against Socrates.  Then again, maybe that’s because I had begun to accept Socrates’ idea of not knowing and I couldn’t handle a new idea.  Maybe I need to keep my mind more open.  I don’t know.  But that’s about all the thinking I can do for this chapter!