Ontology
One of the most controversial debates in philosophy has been over the nature of being. In the Pre-Socratic era the dispute focused on whether change was constant while our human perceptions made static separations so that we could make sense of our environment, or if being exists omnipresently and that our perceptions of diversity in matter are false. Plato tries to solve this dilemma with his theory of an objective reality in a realm different from that which we experience. Aristotle agrees with Socrates except that he believes an object's true essence cannot exist separated from the object itself. I presume that we can exist with our own identity and inhere to a greater whole simultaneously, however my rationalism does not extend beyond people. Nonetheless, these philosophers all had valid conclusions and their theories compliment each other. "War is king"1 said Heraclitus. He believes that reality is not composed of a number of things, but is a process of continual creation and destruction. An accurate metaphor for his rationale is a river. It's location remains basically the same. One can walk away from it, and return with the confidence that it will still be there. However, the exact water that flows t
I would agree with Plato's argument in his book Phaedo, that the "existence of the soul before birth cannot be separated from the existence of the essence [of humans]"7. In other words, the form of myself is my soul and my actions and intentions are rooted in it. I believe that we all have souls and that while my ego may be entirely unique from anyone else's, there is something very much the same in my soul as in others'. Our souls are like drops of water, easily identifiable when separated, but when united, none is different from the other. Consistent with Parmenides' deduction, I do not need to go to someone else to know who they are. I can look within myself because we are the same (at least in some spiritual respects). I believe that my soul takes on many forms, and so, like Heraclitus' view, the body of my soul is constantly changing, never the same as before, never the same as it will be. Perhaps it is an operating cause like Aristotle's potentiality and actuality. The truth is, at least virtually, there is a difference between my soul and my body, and so Plato is right too. But that is the extent to which their philosophies make sense to me. Plato tried to solve this dilemma of ontology with his theory of the forms. "You have before your mind these two orders of things, the visible and the intelligible,"3 he says, which can be compared to opinion and knowledge respectively. In The Republic he uses a line analogy to explain the connection between what we perceive and what really exists. Dividing a line in four unequal parts gives us the four stages of understanding with a state of being on one side of the line corresponding to a state of understanding on the other side of the line. The lowest state of understanding is that of "conjecture" with its obje
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1204
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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