Plato and Hume a Comparison Term Paper

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Rationalism is based on logic, or -- rather -- the proper ordering of things. That order, according to Plato, is necessarily hierarchical and his Allegory of the Cave explicitly shows it: the philosopher is one who has striven to leave behind the shadows and worked to climb the hill, until he has reached a revelation of sorts. It is then his duty to go back and instruct the ignorant who still live in the darkness of the cave by appealing to their intellect. While empiricism explains all knowledge as deriving from experience, Rationalism explains all knowledge as logical. In other words, experience is not necessary to gain philosophical wisdom, for the life of the mind allows one to logically grasp one conclusion from the next. Platonic Rationalism emphasizes the intellect over sheets of data.

In conclusion, I prefer the Platonic theory of knowledge because I find many of the modern scholarly articles which I read to be tedious and full of information that seems like it should have been understood by virtue of common sense.

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But because logical thinking is so distrusted in academia, one must "prove" by way of empirical knowledge that such-and-such claim is "true." Platonic rationalism would, I believe, put an end to the endless amount of research put in to "proving" that, for example, television influences human behavior. That conclusion seems perfectly attainable through logic. Nonetheless, time and energy must be spent interviewing, testing, and gathering data. Perhaps if we applied our energies to being logical as much as we do to being empirical, we might find better solutions to real problems than merely spending all of our time "proving" whether or not problems actually exist.

Reference List

Hume, D. (1748). An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Retrieved from http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/david_hume/human_understanding.html

Weaver, R. (1984). Ideas Have Consequences. IL: University of Chicago Press......

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