Knowing And Knowledge In Plato's Republic

Philosophy is the study of questions. It asks us to question everything around us no matter what we may see as average or uninteresting. Philosophy takes those average things and makes them the subjects of great questions. What is existence? What is the self? What is morality? These questions are only a fraction of what is studied in philosophy. Two units we have explored in class thus far have focused on the nature of knowledge and the existence of god. In unit two we discussed the nature of knowing and knowledge. Questions we pondered included, what can we know? How do we know? and what is knowledge? In class we discussed a number of different theories regarding ideas of knowing and knowledge. We compared idealism and materialism. Idealism …show more content…
These allegories told in Plato’s Republic are used to describe his opinions on the matters of knowledge and knowing. In the allegory of the cave Plato describes a group of people who live in a cave. They are chained to a wall and can only look in one direction. Behind them is a fire and people move objects across a path in front of the fire creating shadows that the chained people can see projected on the cave wall in front of them. One of these people eventually frees himself from his chains and goes up into the real world above the cave. He experiences things as they really are not just shadow. In Plato’s mind people only see the shadows of what things really are and one must free themselves from the cave to see reality. This allegory is made a bit clearer with the help of the divided line allegory. Plato’s divided line is how he defines truth and reality. Plato describes a line divided into four parts. The lower two sections are meant to represent the visual while the upper two …show more content…
His most famous writings focuses around the ideas of right and wrong especially in relation to religion. He often argued about the problem with evil. Mackie stated that for a god to exist in the way that many believed they did, three things would have to be true simultaneously; god is omnipotent, god is all good, and evil exists. Mackie believed that it was impossible for these things to all exist together at once. God he believed could no be all good or all powerful if evil existed. He rejected counter argument such as god needing evil as he stated that this contradicted the argument that god was omnipotent. He also rejected the idea that human free will was an explanation for evil because this would also make god no longer all powerful or all good in his