Plato, Aristotle and Descartes
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light”, Plato said. Studying knowledge is something philosophers have been doing for as long as philosophy has been around. People always see just a part of things around the world. They need an open mind to understand more deep and wise into the world. It’s one of those perennial topics that philosophy has been refining since before the time of Plato. The discipline is known as epistemology which comes from two Greek words episteme which means knowledge and logos which means a word or reason. Epistemology literally means to reason about knowledge. Epistemologists study what makes up knowledge, what kinds of things can we know, what are the limits to what we can know, and even if it’s possible to actually know anything at all. In fact, people always see just a part of things around the world. They need an open mind to understand more deep and wise into the world. Plato becomes increasingly discourage by both the “mob” and the “elite”. The mob, represented by the jury at Socrates’ trial, was irrational and dangerous; it was swayed by sophistic appeals to emotion, not by reason. Plato concluded that most people are unfit by training and ability to make the difficult and necessary decision that would result in a just society. The average person lacks wisdom and self-restraint. As Plato saw things, most people make emotional responses based on desire and sentiment, rather than on rational consideration stemming from an objective view of what is genuinely good for the individual society. Socrates’s death, the revolt of the Thirty, sophistic abuses, and other factors convinced Plato that a corrupt state produces corrupt citizens. He thus attempted to develop a theory of knowledge that could refute sophistic skepticism and moral relativism. Plato believed that if he could identify and articulate the difference between mere opinion and genuine
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