Last of the Core Concept videos on the Phaedo -- and on Plato for a while. (there will be some new Plato-focused videos this month, though -- starting next week)
Professor, your explanation of the forms is the best I have come across. It is actually understandable as being part and parcel of Platos epistemology. Thanks.
Very interesting, in particular the platonic concept of the Forms. I once had what I thought at the time to have been a bizarre discussion with a mathematician. She was claiming that numbers actually exist as tangible 'objects', but that they exist outside space & time and have no causality. At the time, and speaking as a physicist, I though that this was a pretty good definition of "does not exist" but looking back it's strikingly similar to the platonic idea of the Forms. Fascinating stuff.
Cen Blackwell the problem with that is that numbers are signs that represent as a picture the nature of space in time in relation with the objects that exist within space and time. So numbers existing separately from space and time wouldn’t make sense. But... as Plato says, space is an image of infinity and time and image of eternity, so numbers are signs that pinpoint to a trascendental order of being beyond space and time. So even if numbers can only exist in space and time, the platonic notion that they represent “something” beyond can be defended.
So if you get this information from previous existence, is he referring to past-lives? I can't ask my prof, because I am afraid of him asking questions doesn't go very well.
So was Socrates recollecting the Form of the Laws in the Crito? Or was he just imagining what the laws would say to him had he chose escape rather then face death?
Ah okay, thank you. So if the forms are the objects of knowledge, then could the Forms perhaps be the same as foundationalist axioms where the foundational axioms are the "objects" of the _a priori_ knowledge which is the "knowledge itself?"
Does Plato ever go into detail about the "previous state" we existed in? I read on wikipedia that he said we existed in a perfect state that has access to the form of the good, but it doesnt really explain what this perfect state is or how it has access to the forms. Thanks!
I don't think he'd see "them", meaning the whole religions as such as "ways", no. Would he have engaged with parts of those religious traditions (and not just the parts that were already deeply neo-Platonic)? Probably. But we're so far into the realm of speculation at this point. . . .
Neither Christianity nor Islam argue for the pre-existence of souls. Also Christianity and Islam(except for some sects like the Alewis, deeply influenced by Neoplatonism) consider the material body to be divine and to be resurrected while for Socrates the body was a prison for the soul. So no!!!
There is a story in Orthodox Christian tradition, that a monk loved the writings of Plato, but thought it was unfair that a man, though pagan, who yearned to search for the truth, would have died without having the opportunity to meet Christ. This monk was not a Platonist, he was a faithful Orthodox Christian, but he had a love for Plato as a person, and his mind. His brother monks did not understand him, and treated him poorly, since they believed his infatuation with Plato would send his soul to hell. One day, when this monk was in his cell, crying over Plato, Plato came down from heaven, and told this monk that when Christ died on the cross and went down to hades, Plato recognised the eternal truth that he was searching for his whole life - and was saved by Christ. I am researching how Platonism prepared the Greeks to accept Christianity, and part of how his theory of recollection works into it I think, has to do not with the eternality of the soul (since the soul is not eternal), but with the image of God in the soul, and how the law of God is written on every man's heart[Romans 2:15]. So in a very real sense, we are already created with the knowledge of God within us, but this needs to be discovered and drawn out from within us. This is why God became Man, born of the Virgin Mary - so that he could reveal, in his incarnation, what a Man who "remembers" everything within his soul about God, and to show what it is to truly be Man, since Man is made in God's image, and eventually fully unite both God and Man after his resurrection.
Last of the Core Concept videos on the Phaedo -- and on Plato for a while.
(there will be some new Plato-focused videos this month, though -- starting next week)
thank you
Mark Trumble
You're welcome
Professor, your explanation of the forms is the best I have come across. It is actually understandable as being part and parcel of Platos epistemology. Thanks.
Glad you enjoyed the video
thank you for saving my philosophy grade
You’re welcome
Very interesting, in particular the platonic concept of the Forms. I once had what I thought at the time to have been a bizarre discussion with a mathematician. She was claiming that numbers actually exist as tangible 'objects', but that they exist outside space & time and have no causality. At the time, and speaking as a physicist, I though that this was a pretty good definition of "does not exist" but looking back it's strikingly similar to the platonic idea of the Forms. Fascinating stuff.
Yes, that's what they call "Platonism" in terms of Philosophy of Mathematics -- one of the main alternatives when it comes to the nature of number.
Cen Blackwell the problem with that is that numbers are signs that represent as a picture the nature of space in time in relation with the objects that exist within space and time. So numbers existing separately from space and time wouldn’t make sense. But... as Plato says, space is an image of infinity and time and image of eternity, so numbers are signs that pinpoint to a trascendental order of being beyond space and time. So even if numbers can only exist in space and time, the platonic notion that they represent “something” beyond can be defended.
Thank you again Professor
ebannaw You're welcome!
So if you get this information from previous existence, is he referring to past-lives? I can't ask my prof, because I am afraid of him asking questions doesn't go very well.
He is indeed. You might read the Meno, where that gets discussed
This idea of recovering lost Knowledge that is already within us, could this be a early description of the process of self - actualization?
Depends entirely on what you mean by "self-actualization".
So was Socrates recollecting the Form of the Laws in the Crito? Or was he just imagining what the laws would say to him had he chose escape rather then face death?
They're the laws of Athens, plural, so what do you think?
Are Platonic forms essentially the same thing as _a priori_ knowledge?
No. Forms would be the object of knowledge, not the knowledge itself
Ah okay, thank you. So if the forms are the objects of knowledge, then could the Forms perhaps be the same as foundationalist axioms where the foundational axioms are the "objects" of the _a priori_ knowledge which is the "knowledge itself?"
I wouldn't try to shoehorn Plato's theory into some other one.
Does Plato ever go into detail about the "previous state" we existed in? I read on wikipedia that he said we existed in a perfect state that has access to the form of the good, but it doesnt really explain what this perfect state is or how it has access to the forms. Thanks!
As much as he does is in the Meno and the Phaedrus, with a few other references in other works
@@GregoryBSadler Thanks!
The Greek word for participate is "Simmetexo" Συμμετεχω.
Your lessons are great. Thank you!
That would be the contemporary Greek term - in Plato's classical Greek, sunekhein
in your opinion, do you see any faults in socrates's argument about the theory of recollection?
Why? Sounds kinda like fishing for a homework answer
@@GregoryBSadler damn you're onto us
(2020) Thank you. "Was I even ever really here?" -Sims
thanks again.
So if Plato had lived to see Christianity and even Islam, would he see them both as ways of recollecting the pure Truth form?
I don't think he'd see "them", meaning the whole religions as such as "ways", no. Would he have engaged with parts of those religious traditions (and not just the parts that were already deeply neo-Platonic)? Probably. But we're so far into the realm of speculation at this point. . . .
Neither Christianity nor Islam argue for the pre-existence of souls. Also Christianity and Islam(except for some sects like the Alewis, deeply influenced by Neoplatonism) consider the material body to be divine and to be resurrected while for Socrates the body was a prison for the soul. So no!!!
There is a story in Orthodox Christian tradition, that a monk loved the writings of Plato, but thought it was unfair that a man, though pagan, who yearned to search for the truth, would have died without having the opportunity to meet Christ. This monk was not a Platonist, he was a faithful Orthodox Christian, but he had a love for Plato as a person, and his mind. His brother monks did not understand him, and treated him poorly, since they believed his infatuation with Plato would send his soul to hell. One day, when this monk was in his cell, crying over Plato, Plato came down from heaven, and told this monk that when Christ died on the cross and went down to hades, Plato recognised the eternal truth that he was searching for his whole life - and was saved by Christ.
I am researching how Platonism prepared the Greeks to accept Christianity, and part of how his theory of recollection works into it I think, has to do not with the eternality of the soul (since the soul is not eternal), but with the image of God in the soul, and how the law of God is written on every man's heart[Romans 2:15]. So in a very real sense, we are already created with the knowledge of God within us, but this needs to be discovered and drawn out from within us. This is why God became Man, born of the Virgin Mary - so that he could reveal, in his incarnation, what a Man who "remembers" everything within his soul about God, and to show what it is to truly be Man, since Man is made in God's image, and eventually fully unite both God and Man after his resurrection.
This one was a little hard to understand for me when I was reading it lol
It will likely make more sense the more times you read the text
Or rather as results of this recollection? With Truth in its absolute form being God?
nice!!!
+AL SAULSO Thanks
Aaah I got a masterpiece after 9
years 🤌🏻✨✨