Knowledge and Opinion
The four criteria distinguishing knowledge from opinion
-How mathematical examples (like doubling the square) show that we do have some knowledge of the truth
-Why knowledge (which endures) must be about objects that endure
-The three avenues of approach
The World and the Forms
-That Forms both make intelligible (explain) and produce (bring into being) things in the visible world
-The divided line
-Why dialectic leads to ever more fundamental Forms
-The Form of the Good and the analogy of the sun
-How skepticism and relativism a
The Love of wisdom
-The myth of the cave
-Correlation the cave and the divided line
-The ladder of love and its goal; Beauty itself
The Soul
Why the soul is immortal
-The three-part structure of the soul; the proper functions of each part
Morality
-The argument that morality is good by nature
-The story of Gyges
-Happiness as a natural good
-Happiness as harmony in the soul
-Morality and internal harmony
-The moral of the monster-lion-man image
The State
-Philosophers as Kings
-The analogy of the ship
Knowing
Belief that satisfies four criteria; staying put, being true, being backed up by reason and being the result of instruction, not persuasion
Forms
Those ideal realities Plato takes to be both the objects of knowledge and the source of the derived reality of the sensible world: The square itself for instance and the Forms of Justice and the Good
Divided Line
The image Plato uses to illustrate the relationship between the intelligible world of Forms and the visible world
Dialectic
For Plato, the sort of reasoning that provides explanations within the intelligible, explaining Forms by more basic Forms and ultimately by the Form of the Good
Form of the Good
The ultimate explanation of everything, the Form in which everything else, both intelligible and visible, participates.
Education
For Plato, the process of turning the soul of the student toward what is more and more real, until the student sees for herself that True, the Beautiful and the Good.
Love of Wisdom
The motivational drive that propels us towards more and more satisfying objects for our eros, moving us out of the cave and up the divided line to the ultimately real thing
Diotima
The woman from whom Socrates claims to have learned about love (eros)
Happiness
Not a feeling, but a state of being, Eudaemonia, when the parts of the soul (desire, spirit, and reason) act harmoniously in bringing about action
Thrasymachus
In Plato's Republic, the Sophist who presents the view that justice is the advantage of the stronger and that immorality will bring happiness
Philosopher Kings
The only foundation for a just and happy society, according to Plato's Republic, is for philosophers (lovers of wisdom) to become kings or for kings to become philosophers
Third Man Argument
The argument that show there is something wrong with Plato's theory of Forms-that positing a Form to explain a visible fact commits you to an infinite series of Forms, all of which are required to account for that fact.
knowing something, according to Plato
Puts you in touch with reality
The objects of knowledge, Plato says, are
Forms (intelligible realities)
If Plato is right, then if "Gertrude" names an individual elephant, the term "elephant" names
The eternally existing Form of the Elephant
In Plato's Divided Line
The intelligible world is related to the visible world as visible things are related to likeness of them
The Form of Good
Is the ultimate ex-plainer
In the Myth of the Cave
The prisoners represent all of us before we begin to search for wisdom
According to Plato, education is
Turing the soul of the student toward the real
The soul, Plato tells us, has distinct parts, each of which has a function, for instance:
Reason, which guides
The Ring of Gyges story poses the problem of
Whether we should value moral goodness only for its consequences
The moral person
Will be a happy person