Aristotle Plato Term Paper

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Aristotle v. Plato

Compare and contrast the metaphysical position of Aristotle and Plato. Does Aristotle's work constitute a sharp break with the position laid down by his teacher? Or is the old saying true that he apple does not fall far from the tree?

Although their positions are often elided, the focus of Aristotle and Plato's metaphysical emphases is quite different. Ironically, given that one of his most famous works is called the "Metaphysics," Aristotle is far more interested in the material world than his teacher. Aristotle is much more concerned than Plato with the actual political and social world around him. An additional irony is that Plato is the author of the "Republic," a word used to refer to an actual, political society, not a metaphysical truth about the cosmos. Plato's "Republic," however, is an ideal society, whereby Aristotle attempts to study and critique the real, rather than to place a stress upon the ideal.

Plato stated in the "Republic," in his famous allegory of the cave, that the only thing that mattered in philosophy was studying the realm of ideas and perfect forms, which could be extrapolated and applied to human political organization.

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As human reality had a three-fold reality of forms, dreams, and materiality, so society was lead by guardians, who were protected by the military soldiers, and finally the bodily needs of the "Republic's" society were satisfied by workers. Aristotle also believed in the existence of forms, or preexisting, ideal and distilled essences of physical realities that human beings could only apprehend dimly in life, like shadows upon the walls of the cave. Aristotle also agreed with Plato on a metaphysical level that the cosmos was of a rational and mathematical design, the result of an orderly plan as reflected in the existence of truth in the absolute and the universality of the forms. But the existence of forms did not mean that the form's truth could or should be….....

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