nowledge.In The Republic Plato has his own theories which follow more along the lines of idealism. In his views the way to gain knowledge is not based upon understanding an object, but by understanding the idea of the object. Socrates is the main character in Plato’s work and Socrates gives two images of the way to gain orderly knowledge, the image of the divided line and of the cave. Plato states that knowledge is what is certain and opinion is what is questionable. This is where we can see a connection between Plato and Descartes. They both agree that knowledge must be certain and all other ideas false. In Plato’s views knowledge can be derived from single set of principles. Knowledge rests upon Good as its foundation, unlike Descartes in which the foundation was based on one’s self. Plato compared to power of Good to the sun. He explained that the sun illuminates things and makes them visible to the eye just as good illuminates things of the mind and makes them intelligible and understandable. The idea of Good can be thought of as the idea of absolute order. The Good is the cause of essences, structures, forms and knowledge. This is similar to Descartes because in his argument God is the cause of the idea of one’s self thus the cause of everything else as well.There are four levels of knowledge in Plato’s argument. Number one is that there are two ruling powers. The good which is set over the intellectual world and the sun which is set over the visible world. We start with two lines one for knowledge and one for opinion. The first section is that of images such as shadows and reflections. The second deals with us seeing actual things, sense-perception. Unlike with Descartes theory we will not discard this but use it to build on our knowledge. Plato believes sense-perception can be used as a stepping stone towards knowledge. The third section is that where the soul has understanding t...
