Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2015 number 4

In the article the authors present a philosophical-psychological interpretation of the ideas of the ancient philosopher Plato. It was Plato who opened the structure in the form of «ideas», «forms», «eidos». He distinguished the real world, where people live, and the world of shadows. He laid the new content into the basis of all things, the numbers. Plato interpreted human behavior as the behavior of a doll, which is controlled via the external and internal threads (the mind). In his dialogues he proved the existence of innate knowledge. The person must make a choice of a thread which, by its control, makes the person good, active and high-spirited. A. F. Losev, a specialist in Plato, expressed Platonism in two or three sentences. On the basis of the conducted analysis, the philosopher argues that the center of Plato's philosophy is the concept of Eidos, and that this Eidos, as we said above, is justified, so to speak, from above and from below. It is justified from above as a product of the over-existent One; from below, as a womb, which generates from itself, by moving into formation, the Soul, which re-draws the face of Eidos, turning it into a Sophian symbol, and thus into a model, a Paradigm, in Demiurge, further generating the Cosmos. Hence, in its essence, Platonism is a doctrine about three or four guises, dialectically deploying existence in its entirety: the One, Mind (Eidos, Idea), Soul and Cosmos. Though Plato did not use this terminology, but the formula of the «entire Plato», proposed by Losev, is an analysis using the generalizing terms of the core of this philosophy. In the teachings of Plato about the basic ontological substances, according to Losev, the «One» is nothingness. It is the basis of the entire existence and entire reality. There are hidden there not only ideas of things, but the things themselves, as well as their formation. «Mind» is one of the faculties of the Soul. Its subject is the essence of things but not their formation. «Mind» in the Platonic sense is life in the extreme generalization. «Mind» is embodied in the «Cosmos». «Soul» combines the mind with the ideas, which constitute it, and the corporeal world. «Soul» is distinguished by eternal mobility. It is in everything and in the entire «Cosmos» at the same time. «Cosmos» is an eternal prototype or sample, is a kind of an organism of an idea, rather, idea as an organism, which is in the cosmic proportions. Further development of the prototype leads to the triad: the body of «Cosmos», soul of «Cosmos», and the mind of «Cosmos». In his dialogues, Plato proves the existence of innate knowledge.