1. PLATO ( BCE)
A student of Socrates, and one of the most influential rationalist philosophers
Rationalism?
The belief that reasoning is the best way to get knowledge, it’s better than experience & SP
The word “academy” comes from the name of the school Plato ran
What did he say about knowledge & WOKs?

2. Our sense perception does not give us access to the “real” reality… REASON & INTUITION do that.
“We are twice armed if we have faith.”
Plato’s key idea is that there are TWO WORLDS:
* one is our ordinary material world (which we know through our senses) – ever-changing and imperfect, the world of our body/mind self
* the other one is the world of “Ideal Forms” - the “real reality” - unchanging & perfect, where our soul exists already, but which our body& mind strive to access & understand…through intuition, faith & reason
Our souls belong to the world of ideal forms and that’s why humans crave to understand that “real reality.” But relying too much on sense perception & experience is unreliable & distracting.

3. Examples of Plato’s two-worlds view:
The excitement of LOVE is aimed not at the person we love, but the real goal of love is to get to know eternal real LOVE & BEAUTY… hence platonic love is the true love.
The best illustration of Plato’s two-worlds view is his Allegory of the Cave, in which he compares people to prisoners in a cave, whose only “reality” is seeing the shadows of the real world:

4. ARISTOTLE ( BCE)
A student of Plato & one of the most influential thinkers of all times, supporter of empiricism
– experience is the basis of knowledge!
“Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is the truth”
Invented many disciplines and terms still used today - ethics, physics, psychology, zoology, logic, etc.
“All men by nature desire to know”
Tutor to Alexander the Great
We should keep our feet on the ground…trust our senses.

5. The true essence of a thing is its form and function; the real point of everything is what it does, what it is for…
In ethics, Aristotle developed the doctrine of the “golden mean” – moderation in all things – similar to the “Middle Way” in Buddhism – the way to achieve happiness & balance
He was so influential for the next 2000 years, that all modern scientists & thinkers had to start by challenging his authority.
For example – his geocentric theory was challenged by Galileo in 1600s, his idea that everything consisted of 4 elements (earth, water, air, fire) was challenged by 17th century chemistry (Boyle).