Made in likeness
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| Plato is pointing up to indicate that reality lies in the 'heaven' of forms. |
One philosopher that has been consistently argued against in
postmodern critique is Plato. He
believed that there was a transcendental realm of forms and that all of the
objects on the earth were merely copies of those forms. He thought that the realm of forms was guided
by mathematical and logical principles and that the world was just an imitation,
mere appearance with no substance.
Nietzsche overthrows this theory by positing that what appears to us
composes reality and that there are no abstract principles (that we can know)
that guide the order of things in the world.
What makes Plato’s theory of forms interesting is that it
uncovers a cultural predisposition of the Greeks at the time, namely, the
reverence of likeness. Objects in the world are like the realm of forms, but they are merely an imitation. They nevertheless resemble that
transcendental realm as copies. Truth is,
on the basis of a one to one correspondence, like the theory of forms, abstract, logical, and mathematical. Plato’s
philosophy has permeated the worldview of the West and many of our institutions
are founded on the basis of an ultimate reality that is distinct from
appearance.
When I first read Plato, I kept misreading his name. In Spanish, Plato is pronounced Plah-toe and it means plate, as in a plate you eat on. I kept thinking, "Who is this plate guy?" Although I was born in the US, Spanish was my first language and I often messed up English idioms and misread or misunderstood certain things because my bilingual brain was operating on two distinct planes. In elementary school, for example, I used to think the song Jingo Bells was actually saying, "Chingo Bells!" Chingo is a bad word in Spanish and similar to the F word in its endless potential uses. I couldn't understand why the teacher wanted me to sing "Chingo bells, chingo bells, chingo all the way," or "F the bells, F the bells, F them all the way!" Being a good student, though, I sang it loud and proud. :)
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