Plato Vs. Aristotle: What Is Most Real

Aristotle was one of Plato's most famous pupils and though they shared a teacher and student relationship, Aristotle had quite different philosophies and theories than his educator. Plato, a former student himself of Socrates, had a firm interest in the type of philosophy that examined the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value. Plato believed strongly in his theory of forms, that basically being that the material world as it seems to us is not the real world, but only a shadow of the real world. Aristotle believed in forms as well, just not in the same way Plato did.

Universals are that of which don't exist in the way that ordinary physical objects exist. Universals are the idea or thought of an object that physically exists. If a person were to think of a truck in their minds, they could not imagine or picture what truck looks like, because truck is just the idea of a real existing physical object. The only thing people can do when they try to picture Ð''truck' in their minds, is remember what a truck looks like that they've already physically seen. The properties of the truck people picture in their head are referred to as Ð''forms'. There is a form for every type of object in reality. There are forms of dogs, forms of mountains, human beings, there are forms of colors, and the list could go on. It's possible to picture what the color red looks like in one's head, however it is not possible to imagine what the word color itself looks like in our heads. That is because color is a universal, and red is a form. To be even more specific, there are different shades of the color red, there is dark red, light red, and others shades of red. These are referred to as particulars. Particulars are the characteristics of a form. To put these three important terms together, it would be that particulars make up the forms of universals.

Plato believed that universals are more real than particulars even though we are able to touch, see, and taste particulars and yet we can only think of universals. Aristotle did not believe this theory of Plato's was true. Aristotle then created his own theory relating to forms. Aristotle titled this idea Ð''immanent forms'. Immanent forms according to Aristotle, are forms that exist within the particulars. This idea means that forms can be causes of things only if they are in those things. Aristotle uses the question of how can forms be the cause of something, if the form itself don't exist within the object. Another point Aristotle questions is how does Plato's theory of forms account for the things around us that change and that have motion change seeing that Plato believes forms are transcendent and unchanging. Plato believed that everything that exists has a timeless mold or Ð''form' that is unchangeable. He believed they exist in a reality behind the material world, a place called the Ð''reality of ideas'. Aristotle stated that "the Ð''idea' horse, was simply a concept that humans had formed after seeing a certain number of horses in their life. Therefore, the Ð''idea' of horse, really has no existence of its own. Having the theory that forms existed in a world beyond ours seemed to be nonsense to Aristotle. He thought that forms existed within these things because, they were the particular characteristics of these things. In other words, Plato believed the forms exist to us already in a world of ideas while Aristotle believed forms come after we see objects a couple of times.

Aristotle thought that "nothing exists in our minds that has not yet been either seen, touched, or tasted by us already. He thought that the highest degree of reality is that we learn everything with our senses. Plato believed we can only simply have opinions about what we experience with our senses. Aristotle believed and trusted what he experiences with his senses while Plato on the other hand only trusted his reason. Plato felt that only with reason can we understand and obtain true knowledge. Plato only trusted his reason and did not believe what he experienced with his senses while Aristotle felt that experiencing things with our sense is the highest