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Plato believed that only ideas exist in reality, and that what we see, the observed world, only copies these ideas, while being itself a lie, an illusion, something like a set of holograms reproducing the originals located somewhere else. Aristotle, on the other hand, believed that the observed exists, and forms are only a way of knowing it, and considered them an intellectual abstraction. In general, Aristotle was not particularly interested in the juxtaposition of the ideal and the sensuous; he was fond of the potential and the actual.
The answer is misleading because both “form” and” ideo/EIDOS/logemes ” have now acquired the HIGHEST relevance, precisely as graceless and MENTALLY emanating from the Ancient Cosmos. They are interwoven today AS “INFORMATION” and “TECHNOLOGY IDEAS” in VirtualThe entire worlds of Cyber-Space, and from here they flow into the www Network of networks. Disastrous!
Plato and Aristotle were not, in fact, absolute antagonists (as it may seem to those who contemplate Raphael Santi's fresco “The School of Athens”).�
(Plato on the left, Aristotle on the right)
Aristotle, by right, can be considered the most capable and brilliant student of Plato. Let's look at exactly how the concept of the teacher changed in the hands of the student.
Plato believed that ideas are types that make up the unconditional unity of many definitions of things. For example, the idea of a horse is the unity of the definition of all individual horses.
The knowledge of ideas (eidos), according to Plato, is innate to the human soul, but after birth the soul forgets about this knowledge. (Before birth, the soul drinks from the river of oblivion.)
Education, on the other hand, encourages the immortal soul to remember what it has forgotten.
It's important to remember!
Plato is convinced that ideas do not depend on the perception of individual things by a person (it is not a person who formed the idea of a horse as an abstraction), but, on the contrary, ideas are the cause and condition of the existence of individual things. In addition, ideas are unchangeable and eternal.
Hence arises the famous image of the cave in the dialogue “The State”, the exit from this cave, carried out by the philosopher, is the awakening in the soul of the ability to think ideas, the cave is a finding within the limits of only sensory experience, among individual things.
In each individual horse there is a greater or lesser participation in the unconditional unity (in the idea of the horse), thanks to this participation only the existence of a separate, concrete horse is possible. Without the idea, there would be no individual horses. It's not just about horses, of course, it's also true about the idea of beauty, the idea of justice, bravery. However, it is more difficult to judge beauty or justice, since these ideas do not have a clear material embodiment among things.
Individual things, then, exist because they belong to ideas, but ideas cannot be grasped by us through mere observation of individual things.�
Ideas are accessible only to human knowledge, which is free from sense perception and which is recollection.
An opinion that is formed on the basis of sense perception cannot reach or contain knowledge of ideas.
The one who knows the idea (the truth of a thing) it is also able to distinguish it in opinion (in specific life situations).
There is in Plato's concept and, the highest in the hierarchy of ideas, going Good (universal truth, universal unity).�
It becomes the condition for man to know all other ideas. Since the idea of Good (such an idea of ideas) is a condition for the existence of all ideas, and because of ideas there are individual things, it means that all ideas and individual things are involved in this higher idea and, in one way or another, strive for it as universal unity and truth.
The teaching outlined above leads to contradictions related to the gap between the world of ideas and the world of things. This contradiction was noted in the dialogues by Plato himself.
Aristotle, being a disciple of Plato, offered his solution to the complexity of Plato's teaching that we have outlined.
Unlike Plato, Aristotle was convinced that man's desire for the world of things perceived by the senses is proof of man's natural inclination to know.
Aristotle outlines a scheme for the development of knowledge:
In the dimension of Plato's philosophical thought, it is not possible to speak about the knowledge of the individual. What Aristotle calls the knowledge of the individual for Plato was only an opinion.
Experience appears due to human memory of the content of sensory perception.
Let me remind you that for Plato, “to know the general” meant to know ideas, and the knowledge of ideas is impossible on the basis of experience and knowledge of the individual.
For Aristotle, individual things (first essences) exist in a genuine way before general concepts (second essences), and it is they that lead to the formation of general ideas.
If there were no first entities (concrete things, animals, and people), then there would be no second entities (types: man, horse, cat, etc.)
When a person knows the second essences well, but has no idea about the first ones,then, with a high probability, he will make mistakes in business.
However, this predominance of experience over theory is true, according to Aristotle, only in the practical field. In the first philosophy (the science of first causes), everything is different, and here Aristotle is much closer to his teacher in his views.
Art is a kind of human knowledge associated with the knowledge of causes. Knowing the causes implies going beyond experience (based only on human memory). The further we move away from our own experience in understanding the causes, the higher the status of knowledge that reveals these causes.
Therefore, Aristotle considers philosophy to be the highest form of knowledge(higher than physics and mathematics), because philosophy deals with the immobile and existing independently.
And now, finally, we have reached the forms)))
What does the first philosophy do? Its subject is the first causes and beginnings.
Aristotle identifies 4 causes of existence:
Form makes matter definite. (As, for example, the shape of ice makes the matter of water a certain ice)
According to Aristotle, matter always wants to find a form, strives for this finding. In this striving, matter appears as a possibility of form. Matter as a pure possibility of qualitative definiteness does not arise and is not destroyed.
Form, being the reality of concrete individual things, their qualitative definiteness, also cannot arise or be annihilated.
Matter and form are simple beginnings of all things, yet concrete things are combinations of them, so (because of their composite nature) they are subject to arising and dying.
Matter tends to take shape
Taking shape, matter passes from possibility into reality, takes on a visible image.
In perception, we are always dealing with already formed matter, with a combination of matter and form, with a concrete object. But the multiplicity of forms of existing things always reminds us that the first matter is a possibility, the possibility of acquiring many forms.
Movement arises as a constant transition of the possible into the real, and the real into the possible.�
I'll give you an example on the tables)
Wood is the material from which furniture is made. Since matter always tends to form, the matter of the tree becomes the wooden table (the possibility of the table's existence contained in the tree has become the actual existence of the table).�
But the reality of a wooden table is also the possibility, for example, of the existence of wooden sawdust for filling a toy bear.�
The difference between the matter of the tree and the first matter of Aristotle is that the tree as matter is the possibility of the reality of a limited number of forms, and the first matter as the possibility of all real forms does not have such a restriction.
In addition, a particular tree itself is also a decorated matter (oak, aspen, log, etc.), and not just a matter.
And the last difference is that wood, in order to take the shape of a table or the shape of sawdust, needs a woodworker who keeps the image of the table in his head)
The first matter of Aristotle itself tends to be formed, thanks to its combination with form, everything in the world (animals, plants, people, and so on) is obtained, and the possibility of change is inherent in matter.
Matter does not just seek to be framed and become reality. It also strives for a perfect form. The combination of form and matter, which gives rise to a single thing, is only the beginning of this path to perfection.
A ready-made concrete item, such as a book, reaches its goal when it is used for this very purpose (when it is read), and not at the moment of appearance. It works harder with nature and humans:)
It is the goal that precedes all other reasons.�
These causes are necessary conditions for the existence of things in the world, but in their pure form they cannot be found anywhere.
Let's summarize:
Ideas are the absolute conditions for the existence of individual things, and because of their involvement in ideas, real things exist and are endowed with a certain amount of perfection. You can only know ideas, but things are changeable, you can only think about them.�
The doctrine of Plato's ideas does not allow us to build systems of knowledge about the world of things (after all, only ideas can be known).
Forms-allow you to build knowledge both in the field of the individual and the changing, since in each thing the form is individual.
Like the knowledge of идей ideas in Plato's system, the knowledge of form (as one of the four causes of all things) can only be speculative, but a person can arrive at this higher knowledge not on the basis of renouncing the sensory world of individual things, but by studying and observing it.
Literature:
1. History of ancient philosophy (under total. edited by R. V. Svetlov)�
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