Plato v.s. Aristotle Essay Example for Free

Plato v.s. Aristotle Essay Plato was a very intelligent philosopher and teacher. Platos most famous student was Aristotle, who regardless of his education by the great philosopher has different views and opinions that Plato. The ideas of Plato and Aristotle would battle constantly. Platos metaphysics and epistemology split the world into the everyday perception of the world and into forms. These forms are best identified as ideas that are just out in the atmosphere. For example, there are so many different designs for creating a table which exist in the real world. However, Plato states that there is somewhere out in the atmosphere, the idea of a perfect table in which all creators of a table base their crappy tables off of. Plato talks about the allegory of the cave cast his beliefs on metaphysics and epistemology. First, he describes people who are forced to sit and watch shadows on a cave wall for the entirety of their lives. The shadows represent how regular people see objects in everyday life. If one of these people, who has only watched shadows, were set free to see what was casting these shadows, and then was demanded to leave the cave they would then see the true forms of objects. To Plato these forms are reality because of their perfection. and that only enlightened philosophers are able to truly comprehend these forms. But, the philosopher with this unique knowledge of the world must preach it to all of the people who dont have the knowledge. Aristotle did have some similar ideas with Plato because he too also believed in forms. However, Aristotle does not see eye-to-eye with Plato that their are ideas floating in the atmposhphere. Aristotle has the thought that these forms exist inside of the objects themselves. So, rather than having the idea of a perfect chair floating in ones imagination the chair would be discovered inside of any chair. Aristotle expresses this idea with the thought of the sould and the body being one, but in perspective they are their own pieces of a being. Basically, the soul represents the forms and the body represents reality. These two philosophers diverge extremely in their ideas also. This can be noticed in how the two philosophers determine what is true and what is not. Aristotle believes that what he has seen and knows to be true is the only case where something can be true. But, Plato would believe anything that he could create reasons to be true. Therefore, Aristotle would rather use scientific method to prove a truth before stating them as true. But, Plato would use common knowledge and intuition to determine the truth of something. Reasoning is definitely not comparable to visually seeing, and therefore Aristotle and Plato differ in their methods of finding truth.