Adiao, Angelo Von N.

February 10, 2015

Hum14/A26
Christine Ramos

Dr.

What is true knowledge according to Plato? Share your insight.

Plato compared true knowledge to a cave and this can be found on his allegory of
the cave. Knowledge as most famously captured and illustrated in Plato's Allegory of
the Cave, from his best-known work, "The Republic". He represented man's
condition as being chained in the darkness of a cave, with only the false light of
a fire behind him. He can perceive the outside world solely by watching
the shadows on the wall in front of him, not realizing that this view of existence is
limited, wrong or in any way lacking (after all, it is all he knows). Plato imagined
what would occur if some of the chained men were suddenly released from this
bondage and let out into the world, to encounter the divine light of the sun and
perceive true reality. He described how some people would immediately
be frightened and want to return to the familiar dark existence of the cave, while
the more enlightened would look at the sun and finally see the world as it truly is. If
they were then to return to the cave and try to explain what they had seen, they
would be mocked mercilessly and called fanciful, even mad. In the allegory, Plato
saw the outside world, which the cave's inhabitants glimpsed only in a second-hand
way, as the timeless realm of Forms, where genuine reality resides. The shadows on
the wall represent the world we see around us, which we assume to be real, but
which in fact is a mere imitation of the real thing. In this sense, I agree with him
because for us to know real knowledge we must step out of the dark and be open,
just as the man in the allegory opened his eyes outside the cave with the sun
shining upon everything. Also to gain knowledge we must be open-minded unlike
the ones who were left inside the cave and when the one carrying true knowledge
tried to say his point they laughed at him.
What is Platos concept of justice? Share your insights about it.

Plato's Republic and was known even earlier, the Republic's conception of individual justice
is distinctively virtue ethical. To be sure, Plato understands individual justice on analogy with
justice writ large in the state, but he views the state, or republic, as a kind of organism or
beehive, and the justice of individuals is not thought of as primarily involving conformity to
just institutions and laws. Rather, the just individual is someone whose soul is guided by a
vision of the Good, someone in whom reason governs passion and ambition through such a
vision. When, but only when, this is the case, is the soul harmonious, strong, beautiful, and
healthy, and individual justice precisely consists in such a state of the soul. Actions are then
just if they sustain or are consonant with such harmony. Such a conception of individual
justice is virtue ethical because it ties justice (acting justly) to an internal state of the person

rather than to (adherence to) social norms or to good consequences; but Plato's view is also
quite radical because it at least initially leaves it an open question whether the just individual
refrains from such socially proscribed actions as lying, killing, and stealing. Plato eventually
seeks to show that someone with a healthy, harmonious soul wouldn't lie, kill, or steal, but
most commentators consider his argument to that effect to be highly deficient. I am with
Plato on his idea of justice. First, because he described it as one with harmony and with our
internal rather being based on the external judgments. Things get complicated when we take
into account external decision that sooner or later may only lead to justification of actions
even if its lying from the real virtue of ones soul