What is Plato’s Philosophy?
The major foundation of Plato’s philosophy is that Earthly knowledge is nothing but a shadow knowledge.
An Overview
Plato was first involved in seeking definitions of abstract moral concepts such as Justice or Virtue — just like his predecessor and mentor Socrates. As these are something that is true for all societies and are unchanging, he became curious about the true nature of reality itself, i.e the unchanging things in the changing material world.
He observed, that no matter what species of dog is in front of us, we still recognise it to be a dog.
In the case of a triangle, he explains that a perfect triangle does not exist in nature, but we are able to fathom the idea or concept of one. In addition, we are able to logically come to the conclusion that the square of the hypotenuse of a triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the remaining two sides.
This is possible through the application of reason. And since we are able to understand certain things outside material perception, there must exist another realm of reality — The World of Ideas — through which everything in the material realm of modelled upon in the World of the Senses.
