A History of Greek Philosophy / PLATO

Page 17

One can easily see that this is an attempt by Plato to carry out the reverse process in thought to that which first comes to thinking man. Man has sensations, that is, he comes first upon that which is conceivably last in creation, on the immediate and temporary things or momentary occurrences of earth. In these sensations, as they accumulate into a kind of habitual or unreasoned knowledge or opinion, he discovers elements which have been active to correlate the sensations, which have from the first exercised a governing influence upon the sensations, without which, indeed, no two sensations could be brought together to form anything one could name. These regulative, underlying, permanent elements are Ideas, i.e. General Forms or Notions, which, although they may come second as regards time into consciousness, are by reason known to have been there before, because through them alone can the sensations become intelligibly possible, or thinkable, or namable.[8] Thus Plato is led to the conception of an order the reverse of our individual experience, the order of creation, the order of God’s thought, which is equivalent to the order of God’s working; for God’s thought and God’s working are inseparable.

Of course Plato, in working out his dream of creation absolutely without any scientific knowledge, the further he travels the more obviously falls into confusion and absurdity; where he touches on some ideas having a certain resemblance to modern scientific discoveries, as the law of gravitation, the circulation of the blood, the quantitative basis of differences of quality, etc., these happy guesses are apt to lead more frequently wrong than right, because they are not kept in check by any experimental tests. But taken as a ‘myth,’ which is perhaps all that Plato intended, the work offers much that is profoundly interesting.

Elpenor's note : [8] Wrong. Ideas are qualities, properties, virtues, realities, approachable by (cleaned and refined, spiritualised) senses rather than by reasoning. They are divine properties, realities in which God himself lives above time, while reasoning is temporal.

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Cf.  Plato Complete Works, Plato Home Page & Anthology, Guthrie : Life of Plato and philosophical influences, Research a KeyWord in Plato's Works

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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/history-of-philosophy/plato.asp?pg=17