Plato vs Aristotle

Plato was a wrestler. The name by which we know him was his ring name, meaning ‘Broad Shoulders’. At some point he fell in with a scruffy and talkative old fellow called Socrates. Socrates and his friends used to gather in the Agora – the marketplace in Athens – to discuss philosophy. Socrates himself claimed to know nothing, but made a habit of questioning prominent citizens about their opinions, dialogues which often ended with his victims hopelessly contradicting themselves or otherwise looking like idiots. This made him about as popular as you would expect. 

When Socrates was put to death, Plato was disappointed with Athenian life and travelled throughout Italy, Egypt and Greece for 12 years. Plato led a lively and adventurous life, which included being appointed advisor to the tyrant of Sicily, being captured by pirates and being sold as a slave. (Fortunately a benefactor spotted him in the slave auction, bought him and set him free.)

Socrates’ enraged followers reacted with one of the most successful literary protests in history: several of them wrote dialogues in which Socrates was the main protagonist. It was as if they wanted to show that Socrates’ detractors had failed to silence his voice or his persistent, irritating questioning. 

Plato moved back to Athens and started a school he called, “The Academy”. This is where we get the modern word. Plato discusses many of the central questions of philosophy – What can we know? How should we live? How should society be organised? What is love? What is courage? Is God good? Plato’s dialogues are studded with brilliant thought experiments.

Theory of Forms

When you were a child you had a bear. This was what you understood a bear to be, but one day you went to the zoo and came to understand your bear only to be an imitation of a real bear

If there existed a perfect cookie, what features would it have?

Now, does that cookie exsist?

Why did you decide they were the perfect attributes of a cookie?

Good news, Plato believes that cookie exsist. However, it exsists in a realm parallel to ours. This realm contains the perfect form of everything.

"If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals."

Plato believed that our understanding of how good something was came from our innate knowledge or memory of the perfect form. The perfect form exsist in a perfect realm. For example: there exsists a perfect horse, extremely friendly, strong as a bull, as fast as a gazelle, with a gleaming golden coat, a beautiful flowing mane, rock strong joints and it never tires. The horse has everything you could want.

Plato believed our soul had known this horse and we compare the goodness of a horse by comparing it to this perfect one.

This idea feels right to our instincts. What makes us aware of how good something is?

Aristotle, student of Plato, believed it was based on utility.

Platonism vs Aristotelian

Aristotle was 17 when he arrived in Athens. His father was a doctor and therefore had more of a hands on background than Plato. Plato was a mathematician, Aristotle was a biologist. Plato worked with hypotheticals and ideas. Aristotle worked with the physical and overserved.

Aristotle learned a lot at Plato’s Academy but he often respectfully disagreed with Plato. "Entertain a thought without accepting it" was one of his mottos. He believed that everyone should explore unusual ideas without having to accept it completely. We can think about the possibility of Aliens, Loch Ness and Bigfoot without having to believe in them.

So Aristotle entertained Plato’s theory of forms. He decided that what made a cookie a perfect cookie depended on the parts of that cookie. Did a chocolate chip also have a perfect form? What makes a chocolate chip so good? Are there then perfect forms of those things? This would follow with infinite regression. Why couldn’t there be a realm of bad things? Universal worst cookie

Plato pointed at circles which don't appear in nature. How did we have an understanding of a perfect circle if it doesn’t appear in nature?

Aristotle believed that our conception of the value of something comes from its observable use. A friendly horse is only better than a unfriendly horse because it follows orders better and won’t bite us. A cookie is good because it looks

From here Psychologists have formed a theory of why bright colors are appealing and dark colors aren’t. They believe it to be an evolutionary byproduct of Humanities ability to judge the health of fruit and vegetables. If you saw bright orange juice and brown orange juice, you’d instinctively know that the bright one was healthier. If a human has rosy cheeks and pink skin, we associate youth. If a human has grey, faded skin we associate sickness. Rightfully so, these things display the condition of those people. Our ancestors evolved color vision which became an advantage in judging the suitability of the organic material around them.

Who do you agree with and why?

When Plato died, his nephew was chosen as head of the Academy over Aristotle. People believe this was a biased decision based on the fact that Plato’s nephew agreed with Plato’s ideas and Aristotle didn’t.