Plato V Aquinas, [round 1!]

from;http://www.givingananswer.org/articles/platoandaquinas.html
byHarold C Felder.

The main distinction between the epistemology of Plato and Aquinas is in what and how we come to knowledge.
According to Plato, we can only come to knowledge through reason. Our senses are deceitful and unreliable. We can only gain knowledge of the unchanging, perfect, and immaterial Forms.

Aquinas, on the other hand, dismissed the notion of the existence of immaterial universals. He insisted that true knowledge comes from the objects of reality themselves. Our senses can be relied upon. We use our senses to view actual reality and recreate that reality in our mind, thus what is in our mind corresponds to what is in reality.

For Plato, we start with the universal and abstract the particular. For Aquinas, we start with the particular and abstract the universal.

For instance, according to Plato, when I see my dog spot, I know it is a dog because I am aware of the universal concept of dogness and that spot participates in the Form of dogness. So I am able to go from the universal dogness to the particular spot. But for Aquinas, I start with spot. I recognize spot as spot and I am able to abstract from spot the form dogness. Thus I know that spot is a dog. But I start with spot, not with dog.

Both Plato and Aquinas used the concept of universals in their epistemology.

They were however used differently.

When Plato talked about the universals, he is talking about a universal Form that exists as a real immaterial, immutable object. Aquinas used the concept to refer to the class of an object. For instance, when talking about John, Plato would insist that we can know nothing about John, we can only know humanness. John is changing therefore unknowable. According to Aquinas however, John is knowable. We see the particular, John, and from that we abstract the universal form humanness. But this universal is a class of objects with potentiality and actuality.

It has essence and existence.

Another area where the two philosophers disagree is on the concept of innate knowledge. Plato contended that we have knowledge that exists before our birth. Our soul was directly aware of these universal Forms but this perfect knowledge was corrupted by birth.

Aquinas rejected this notion. For Aquinas, all humans are born with a clear slate but with a capacity to abstract knowledge from the particular objects of matter around us.

Aquinas also made the point that if knowledge of truth was the end and purpose of the soul, as Plato insisted, how could this be attained in a spiritual substance?

If it is our purpose to achieve knowledge, and our bodies serve as a road block to this knowledge, why do we have bodies?

According to Plato, these bodies make true knowledge difficult. The body itself posses an obstacle to knowledge since it is the source of our senses, which are not the source of knowledge. In the words of Pegis "It is not, therefore, in the line of the essential purpose of the soul as an intellectual substance that it soul be joined to a body?"

In the view of Aquinas, the only explanation for the union of the soul and body is that through this union we have a completely intellectual substance. According to Plato, the knower is pure reason. According to Aquinas, the knower is the composite of soul and body.

Man must be partly material in order to know.

This explains why he must depend upon his bodily senses in order to come to knowledge.

According to Plato, these senses are to the detriment of knowledge; according to Aquinas, they are essential to knowledge. According to Plato, man is only a thinker. He is a man who thinks abstract thoughts in separation from existence.

In contrast, according to Aquinas, man is himself the knower.