Being And Becoming

8 Pages 2123 Words

an explanation for several other quandaries within the philosophical world. Plato sought to solve the dilemma of change, which raised issues such as the issues of the one and the many, appearance and reality, and change. Plato sought to address the question posed by Thales which asked, “What is the one out of which everything comes?” (Jones, 121)
Plato agreed with the ideologies of Heraclitus and Parmenides which layed the foreground for his theory of the forms. He believed that there are two realities that exist, that of which, as Heraclitus described, in the sensual realm that are in a constant flux, and that of which, as Parmenides described, that of which is eternally one. Parmenides world was described as being nontemporal, nonphysical, and nonspatial and a world that Plato referred to as ideai. In English this Greek term translates into idea which is why it is often referred to as Plato’s “world of ideas” or “theory of ideas” or “theory of forms. (Jones, 123) In Plato’s theory of forms he points out that the forms are actually the, “objects of thought,” (Jones,124) and whatever a person is thinking is actually a construction of forms. Plato defined forms as being the nonphysical, nonspatial, nontemporal object, not of sense, but of thought. In Plato’s, The Republic, he attempts to give a more lucid understanding and explanation of his theory of forms by means of textual illustration.
Williams 3
There are three images used in the Republic to further explain this theory which are the notion of the divided line, the myth of the sun, and the myth of the cave. Plato’s divided line structurally elucidates the forms by dividing the physical world and the world of forms by using lines in a graph-like set-up; hence th...