Plato lived in a very exciting time in history. The post-Socratic era had merits for exploration totally new to him. The idea that science and reason could be applied to more than static issues such as logistics and geometry, allowing the thinking men of the time the opportunity to examine the world around them with structured thought. He, like his mentor, was not happy with what science gave as answers to life. Though it gave a structure the world, It denoted a typically atheist view on the world. Plato had strong ideas about right and wrong, and other abstract ideas in general, but could not relinquish such a powerful tool as “scientific” reason or Grecian theories on the atomic nature of the world, so used them in his work.One of Plato’s core philosophies was what he called “The Forms”. He postulated a duality that spanned the planes of human existence. The world around him was made entirely of crude matter that could only represent the purity of the next life, in the plane of the forms. If we examine any object (for argument’s sake a glass) we should be able to identify what it is without having to think to hard. It is our ability to connect objects that aren’t atomically identical to the same ilk that Plato found fascinating. How does a common understanding of what is glass arise? We could scorn any deeper meaning of this by saying that we can tell a glass is a glass by examining its function, but then consider common ideas such as justice. Even in cross-cultural examination common human concepts can be found. To Plato they were proof of a common human existence before this one, where these notions were first given to us. Thus was born the plane of the forms. Plato concluded that the corporeal world was illusionary on this principle. He thought that the world (his “world of shadows”) was merely a corruption of the reality of forms that exists for us before and after. All the w...
