Plato’s ideal state was a republic with three categories of citizens: artisans, auxiliaries, and philosopher-kings, each of whom possessed distinct natures and capacities Those proclivities, moreover, reflected a particular combination of elements within one’s tripartite soul, composed of appetite, spirit, and reason

Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is a concept devised by the philosopher to ruminate on the nature of belief versus knowledge The allegory states that there exists prisoners chained together in a cave Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners are people carrying puppets or other objects

The Significance of Plato’s Theory of Forms For example, when it comes to ethics, Plato argues that we have a moral duty to use reason to pursue the knowledge of the Forms Furthermore, the Realm of Forms contains not only truth but also the most important moral ideals like the Good

Plato says such Forms exist in an abstract state but independent of minds in their own realm Considering this Idea of a perfect triangle, we might also be tempted to take pencil and paper and draw it Our attempts will of course fall short

For Plato, the Forms are perfect exemplars, or ideal types, of the properties and kinds that are found in the world Aristotle rejected Plato’s theory of Forms but not the notion of form itself For Aristotle, forms do not exist independently of things—every form is the form of some thing

Thus according to Aristotle, the matter of a thing will consist of those elements of it which, when the thing has come into being, may be said to have become it; and the form is the arrangement or organization of those elements, as the result of which they have become the thing which they have

The term monism was introduced in the 18th century by Christian von Wolff in his work Logic (1728), to designate types of philosophical thought in which the attempt was made to eliminate the dichotomy of body and mind and explain all phenomena by one unifying principle, or as manifestations of a single substance

Matter and form are parts of substances, but they are not parts that you can divide with any technology Instead matter is formed into a substance by the form it has According to Aristotle, matter and form are not material parts of substances The matter is formed into the substance it is by the form it is

Plato’s Socrates held that the world of Forms is transcendent to our own world (the world of substances) and also is the essential basis of reality Super-ordinate to matter, Forms are the most pure of all things A Form is aspatial (transcendent to space) and atemporal (transcendent to time)

Plato and Aristotle argue that artist (Demiurge) and poet imitate nature, thus, a work of art is a relection of nature However, they have different views on the functions of imitation in art and literature He argues that a work of art does not imitate nature as it is, but as it should be

Plato had two theories of art One may be found in his dialogue The Republic, and seems to be the theory that Plato himself believed According to this theory, since art imitates physical things, which in turn imitate the Forms, art is always a copy of a copy, and leads us even further from truth and toward illusion

In the view of Plato (BCE), beauty resides in his domain of the Forms Beauty is objective, it is not about the experience of the observer Beauty resides in what is being observed and is defined by characteristics of the art object, such as symmetry, order, balance, and proportion

According to Plato, Beauty was an idea or Form of which beautiful things were consequence Beauty by comparison begins in the domain of intelligible objects, since there is a Form of beauty

A doctrine of the transcendentality of the good was formulated by Albert the Great His pupil, Saint Thomas Aquinas, posited five transcendentals: res, unum, aliquid, bonum, verum; or “thing”, “one”, “something”, “good”, and “true”

Aristotle: beauty is symmetry For the Ancient Greeks, beauty was no woolly matter of personal taste According to Aristotle, beauty could be measured Literally “The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree,” he says in Metaphysics

1 : the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit : loveliness a woman of great physical beauty exploring the natural beauty of the island A thing of beauty is a joy forever …— John Keats

the basic nature of a thing

Your spiritual essence is the peace that resides in your mental space Finding your spiritual essence means taking authority over your life But finding how to connect the spirit and received the gifts it has to offer, will help you regulate every area of your life The spirit is the breath of life