Erudite Relics of Loc Huu Ho

Definitions

• Meno: is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato. Written in the Socratic dialectic style, it attempts to determine the definition of virtue, or arete, meaning in this case virtue in general, rather than particular virtues (e.g. justice, temperance, etc.). The goal is a common definition that applies equally to all particular virtues. Socrates moves the discussion past the philosophical confusion, or aporia, created by Meno’s paradox with the introduction of new Platonic ideas: the theory of knowledge as recollection, anamnesis, and in the final lines a movement towards Platonic idealism.
• ontology: a branch of philosophy focusing upon the origins, essence and meaning of being

Notes

• Plato was motivated by a gap between the ideas we can conceive and the physical world around us. Eg. perfect justice, beauty, pious, virtuous, etc…everything in the material word has flaws.
• We have some understanding of the perfect ideals, and yet we never find them. Why is this?
• Plato’s answer is that there is a realm of Forms, which contains perfect items like Beauty, Justice, and Piety. The Forms are eternal and unchanging.
• Plato calls the physical realm the world of Becoming, because physical objects are subject to change (for better or for worse) and corruption.
• We understand the physical world or also known as the realm of ‘sights and sounds’ through the senses, but we grasp the Forms only through mental reflection (thinking) because the Forms are objects of thought and invisible.
• Plato uses the experiment (where Socrates lead a slave to the theorem that the square on the diagonal of a given square is double the area of the original square) to support a doctrine that when it comes to geometry-or the world of Being generally-what is called ‘learning’ is actually remembering from a past life, presumably a time when the soul had direct access to the world of Being.
• Plato did hold that the soul is in a third ontological category, with the ability to apprehend both the world of Being and the world of Becoming.
• For Plato, mathematics is a key step in this process. It elevates the soul, reaching beyond the material world to the eternal world of Being.