h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was told the other day of a remarkable thing that Plato wrote...he said " There is somewhere in the universe, one perfect example of all things that exist, and everything else is just a shadow of that one"

in other words there is one perfect door, one perfect cup, one perfect piece of harded chewing gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe.

this made me think....where are all these perfect things? eg. where is the perfect man, or woman, or indeed the perfect cup? Are they all being held captive in a big vault marked "perfect things" or do they roam around making everthing else look imperfect?

If you have never seen perfection, how can you recognise imperfection?

ok...assuming that plato is right, the perfect man could be dead...the perfect woman...also dead...the perfect cup-broken....perfect door...not invented yet...u get the idea...if these perfect things exist...it is not where are they, but when are they?

Well , that's not really what Plato is supposed to have said. He only postulated that behind everything there is what he called the idea of it . This idea is perfect . More or less like the concept of archetype of C. G. Jung . Like an abstract perfect idea from which all the things , take shape and life .(Animals , cristals , humans , etc)

At this point I must come clean and admit that Philosophy is not a strong point.
But how can humans, who by their very nature are imperfect, conceive of what perfection truly is. For example, I can try to imagine a perfect door. If you tried the same thing which, if either, of our doors would be perfect? Or would they both be perfect because perfection can only exist in the mind of the person thinking about it?

the perfect door is a window. perfect people....sure like that is going to happen.....no i take back the window thing...the perfect door never needs to be opened or shut....doors are not nessicary....no...i shall keep to the original theory that the perfect door has yet to be invented

But can the perfect door be invented, or for it to remain perfect, does it have to remain no more than a concept?

well after much thought, well some anyway. I think that there is every chance that objects, maybe not people, can be perfect, however I'm not sure how we would recognise it so perhaps its is amute piont after all.

I think what Plato was trying to say was that we do not neccessarily have to be able to locate or identify perfection, merely acknowledge the possibility that perfection could exist. By doing this we have to own up to our own shortcomings and fallibility

"to err is human"

Many religions before and after Plato teach that there is a perfect place for humans to aspire to. They call it, for want of a better word, heaven.

So if you can conclusively prove , or disprove, that perfection exists, are you also applying the same rules to the existence of god or gods?

Didn't I read a similar argument in another familiar book? Oolan Caloophid (excuse spelling) eat your heart out...

I've had to survive a semester of Plato last year at University. If it is helpful, we learnt that the perfect existences of things that you have been discussing are the Forms of those things.

Hijacking a convieniant example from the book "Sophie's World", Think of a horse. Though all horses are different they all share the same basic shape, even if they might vary in colour for instance, what it is that is common to all particular examples of what is a horse, Plato thought was the Form of the Horse.

This is true of things like Beauty and Justice (Piety was another of Plato's examples)

" There is somewhere in the universe, one perfect example of all things that exist, and everything else is just a shadow of that one"

I would imagine that the above quote is an attempt to describe that relationship between, for example, the flower that I find beautiful, as a painting is for someone else, or a lover is to someone else again. They all partake of beauty, are beautiful, but non are as beautiful as The Form of Beauty itself. In the same way as my kind act or another's just decision are shadows to The Form of Justice.

I hope I'm making this clear enough, one final note to say that the perfect form of X does not make the particular examples of X imperfect, just lesser, reflections of what is perfect.

Plato used the metaphor of a Cave to demonstrate what he meant. In the cave are people staring at the wall behind them is a path and behind that is a fire. The people stare at the wall transfixed by the shadows of people and animals passing along the path behind them, the shadows are flickering and indistinct in the light of the fire, so the philosopher of the group turns his back on the shadows and ascends out of the cave (noting as he turns around that all he had hitherto experienced was shadow play - supposedly a metaphior for 'doing' philosophy.) When he leaves the cave he is at first blinded by the light of the Sun but eventually his eye grow accustomed and he sees his shadow in the daylight, crisp and defined by the light of the Sun until finally he can see the world around him and how much more perfect it is than the hazy shadows he had only known before.

It has to be remembered that in Plato's day there were no such things as mirrors and light bulbs (obvious, I know, but) we have grown accustomed to seeing ourselves perfectly reflected and everywhere well lit. Much of what Plato talks about is metaphorical, their reflections would have been seen in pools of water, their light would have been cast by fires when the Sun set and all the light went out of the world. The Sun of the cave example is analogous to knowing the Form of The Good, it illuminates all the other Forms; Beauty Justice and so on. To read the meatphor of the Cave literally: 'Philosophy takes us out of the darkness of the cave and into the light of The Good, where we can know the Form of things ourselves.' Knowing this can help us to understand the distinctions between the different levels of The Cave and what a difference hazy, distorted, 'shadowy' reflection of things compared to their 'Perfect' idealised Forms.

Tieing up what I mean, imagine what the person coming out of the cave might have thought if they saw a Horse in real life, having never seen one before, only gazed at it's shadow - how much more 'real' and magnificent the actual animal must have seemed.

Sorry if I've gone on a bit, Brevity was never one of my strong suites, but that my two cents worth done. Still hasn't answered "What is perfection?" Though...

Clive

P.S Rockhopper's right Platonic Thought (alongside Aristotle: The worlds first biologist) has been influential in many major religions, especially Christianity, although that has more to do with his ideas about the immortality of the soul rather than the Theopry of Forms, however nothing ever being that simple, they are still connected.

Using Plato's metaphor of the shadows on the cave, it appears that human beings could NOT imagine perfection. If, like one of the prisoners in the cave, you had only seen flickering shadows all your life, you could not imagine what the world looks like, just as we cannot imagine perfection.

The cave metaphor was also meant to represent Socrates, Plato's teacher. Socrates was sentenced to drink hemlock (a poison) because of his philosophical teachings. He was the man to go out of the "cave" and come back to tell everyone else about the light outside. The "cave-dwellers" killed him in the end (Socrates and the man who escaped the cave).

Yes, "Sophie's World" is brilliant!

I'd have been up all night if I hadn't stopped at some point, yes and Socrates was the cave dweller - nearly everything in there is a metaphor of some sort: The man, having seen the true forms of the world then decends back into the cave to convince the others of the deception they are bound into and is killed for his apparently blasphemy. Socrates was executed for 'The corruption of Athenian Youth', I think.

I see your point that no-one in the cave could have imagined perfection having only known shadows, it was the analogy of 'doing' philosophy that caused Socrates to leave the cave, it was not imagination that let him see the Forms but Clear and reasoned thought. (*caveat* We only have Plato's word for all of this, Socrates never wrote anything down.) What about a process of negation. I can conceive of something that is immortal because I am mortal. I am not a perfect being, but I can conceive of a being without my flaws. Am I imagining perfection?

Until I actually got a copy, I thought Sophie's World was a story about someone's dog. (Don't ask.)

Clive

humm is this a book worth reading then??

Decartes thought that if we could imagine perfection, then God must exist. Because we are imperfect, and we imagine something is perfect, the "perfect idea" must come from somewhere other than ourselves, and that other place must be perfect. And the most important attribute of the perfect thing is that it exists, so it must be perfect, and it must exist.
But maybe he wasn't thinking of negation.

I got the idea about Negation from Descartes, I just thought I'd chuck it in, see what responces it got.

Kinfee, Sophie's World is definately a first class read for the aspiring philosopher (and anyone else for that matter) It is a story in it's own right but it makes a nice general introduction to many philosophical ideas and trends. The book follows Sophie and her education with the mysterious Albert Knox plus there's quite a big twist at the end, all of which relies upon the themes that have been discussed throughout the book.

My copy was quite cheap, only £6.99. It is written by Jostein Gaarder and the ISBN is 1 85799 291 1. Published by Phoenix.

Buy this before you get "Being and Nothingness." (!)

Clive

What is "Being and Nothingness?"

The Magnum Opus (Life's work) of the French Existentialist Jean Paul Sartre. It is about as thick as your arm and impossible to read. - you know that sensation where you recognise (most) of the words on the page but strung topgether in THAT particular order in front of you, when you read them just leaves a blank space in your mind and you have to read it several times over before the meaning of the passage finally settles in? Well it's like that only all the way through. I took Sartre in my first semester and have Being and Nothingness, here's a random page quotation:

*flicks pages * " My negative upsurge into being is parceled out into independant negotiations which have no connection other than that they are negations which have to be; that is, they derive their inner unity from me and not from my being."

It's all to do (in case you want to know) about the absolute freedom we posses as conscious beings that exist. By conscious choice (we can never choose not to choose, that is still a choice) we sculpt the world around us and who we are and how we perceive and are perceived by others. It's a branch of philosophy called existentialism - who's main tenet is "existence preceeeds essence" meaning we exist before our natures are created by the choices we make.

I don't want to steer the conversation away from Plato but there you have it, This is a book with teeth and no messin'.

Clive

Well, I disagree with any notion of absolute perfection, in much the same way I beg to differ when historians refer to absolute Truth with a capital T. What may be perfect to you will almost certainly fail to be perfect to me. And if there is a form of perfection above what any of us can imagine, it becomes rather a moot point as it isn't likely to impact us in any manner. I shall stubbornly cling to my right to define perfection differently than everyone around me.

To understand what Plato is talking about read Plato's "The Republic". It is a good book, tough read though. Sit down with it when you have about 5 or 6 hours to devolt to it.

well, here's the catch... these perfect items aren't actually anywhere. plato's conception of perfection is entirely metaphysical (meaning you can't really "find" perfection anywhere, because it doesn't exist physically). however,plato's forms do begin to exist in your mind if you ponder 'em long enough. basically, there is only one form, one perfection, and that is BEING. nothing can exist without being (after all, nothing is nothing). the other forms, therefore, are composites of other forms, all of which stem from being. for example, "sharpness" is a form. you cannot call something sharp unless there is an idea of what sharp is. this idea is what plato called a form, and forms exist only in idos (plato's third and ultimate tier of reality). idos is a world of ideas, which don't exist physically, but do doubtlessly EXIST. something cannot be sharp without partaking in the form of sharpness. this post will be finished a little later on when my head is less foggy and i'm not at work...