Compare And Contrast Philo And Plato - 1615 Words

Plato vs. Aristotle - Opposite Philosophies The Greek philosopher Aristotle once said, â€Å"Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.† Plato, who was also a philosopher, was Aristotle’s teacher. Aristotle thought highly of Plato and respected him. However, as Aristotle’s wisdom grew, he started to question and even disagree with the concepts Plato taught him. This is why Aristotle wrote that he admires and respects Plato, but admires and respects the truth more. Aristotle started to develop his own philosophies, views, and ideas. Aristotle’s philosophy is the opposite of Plato’s, because his methods of inquiry, his realist philosophy, and ideas about mimesis, or imitation, directly countered Plato’s methods, idealism, and ideas about†¦show more content†¦Thus, Plato’s and Aristotle’s methods of inquiry differ immensely in many different ways. If the two philosophers’ methods of inquiry are opposites, naturally the philosophy that came from those met hods are going to be opposites, and this is the case with Plato, an idealist, and Aristotle, a realist. According to Omonia Vinieris (as quoted in Introduction to Philosophy by Philip A. Pecorino), â€Å"Plato believed that the physical world around us is not real; it is constantly changing and thus you can never say what it really is.† Plato developed the theory of eternal forms, which he defined as the intelligible structures which give physical objects, also called sensible objects, their distinct characteristics. These eternal forms are separate from sensible objects, are unchanging, and are of a higher reality than physical objects. Also, according to Omonia Vinieris, Plato theorized â€Å"a world of ideas or ideal world which is a world of unchanging and absolute truth. This is reality for Plato.† Plato believed that there is a world of ideas separate from the world humans see around them. The philosophy was that â€Å"whenever we grasp an idea, or see something with our minds eye, we are using our mind to conceive of something in the ideal world.† There are two key examples of proof of the ideal world. The first is the geometric concept of a circle, which is defined as a set of points all equidistant to a fixed point. Perfect circles are not found in the in