Intelligible World Vs. Sensible World

Intelligible World vs. Sensible World

Probably the most influential idea in Western Philosophy ever written is Plato's metaphor of the cave and his world of the Forms. Plato viewed that all human beings lived in a world of intelligible and sensible things. The sensible world, also called the visible world, is what we experience around us: what our five senses experience (hence "sensible" world). This sensible world is a world of change and uncertainty. The intelligible world is made of up the unchanging principles: anything that arises from human reason alone, such as abstract ideas of mathematics, composes this intelligible world, which is the world of reality. Another way to look at the two worlds is that the sensible world is a world of opinion and the intelligible world is a work of knowledge. The study of these two worlds opens an entirely new way of conceptualizing ideas and causes us to redefine what we think we know.

Before either of these two worlds can be explained, the concept of The Good must be analyzed with respect to Socrates words in the Republic. In the discussion of justice, Socrates points out that idea of justice is just one out of many ideas, which are all in within the comprehensive study of the Good. Socrates explains that all actions are directed toward the grasp of some good but no one's desires are unquestionably good. There are many good things but none of them are the good. In the discussion at the end of Book V, Socrates and the other men concluded that where the term many can be used, there must also be a one which is the cause of the particulars that compose that many. Therefore there must be an idea of the good in which the good things are associated with. The good, however, must also be the ultimate idea, the compilation of all other ideas. For example, beauty and justice are both ideas, but they are also good. Therefore these other ideas are all just participants in the idea of the good. In other words the Form of the Good is responsible for the existence of all the other Forms in the intelligible realm and for everything good and beautiful in the visible realm.

In an attempt to explain these two realms from which is derived from the Form of the Good Plato's uses three densely interrelated metaphors: the sun, the line, and the cave. In the Republic, Socrates explains the sun "as the good is in the intelligible region with respect to intelligence and what is intellected, so the sun is the visible region with respect to sight and what is seen." Basically what Socrates is saying is that as the sun is the source of light and visibility in the sensible realm, the Good is the source of intelligibility in the intelligible realm. The sun is the cause both of things being seeable and their being seen, and is also the cause of existence of living things.

On the basis of what is known of the visible world with its sun, a hypothesis can be made about the intelligible world and its idea of the good. Socrates does this by use of the metaphor of the divided line which describes the being of things and illustrates the ways of accessing the world, knowledge and opinion with each being divided into two parts. The lowest stage of cognitive thought, being the first part of opinion, is imagination or illusion. A person in this state of imagination considers reflections images, painting, to be the most real things in the world. The next stage in opinion is belief which refers to the knowledge of things that can change. A person in this state thinks particulars perceived by our senses are the most real. Belief is practical and can be a relatively reliable guide to life but does not involve thinking things out to the point of certainty. The upper region of knowledge, which seem to be easier to understand because of how Plato explicitly states them, can also be divided into two segments: the lower end being thought, or reason, and the higher part being intelligence. Although thought deals with the Forms it also is still connected to particulars in that it uses sensible particulars to aid in its reasoning, as in geometry mathematicians

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