Plato, in order to define a philosopher as well as his
‘philosopher king’, expresses the ‘theory of ideas or forms’. He differentiates
between a man and a philosopher. What a man knows is ‘opinion’, but what a
philosopher knows is ‘knowledge’, which is inward: “Opinion is of the world
presented to senses, whereas knowledge is of a super sensible eternal world:
for instance opinion is concerned with particular beautiful things, but
knowledge is concerned with beauty in itself.”
He
distinguishes the appearance and reality with ‘the cat’ and’ and ‘particular
cats’. ‘The cat’ is created by God and unique. But particular cats partake the
nature of ‘the cat’ but more or less imperfectly. “The cat is real; particular
cats are only apparent.” Thus, Particular
cats are only the ideas of ‘the cat’.
Plato
compares men, destitute of philosophy, to prisoners in a cave, who see
confusedly in twilight or not at all in pick-darkness. While the philosophers
are compared to those, illuminated by sun, who see the things as real. Thus, the
cave prisoners have just the ideas of the real. But the man illuminated by sun
has the real knowledge. Hence, “the philosopher who is to be a guardian must,
according to Plato, return into the cave, and live among those who have never
seen the sun of truth.”
According
to Plato, “there is only God, or the Good to whom the ideas are adjectival.”
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