compare and contrast plato's dualism with that of descarte's.
...ies, however, are not seen as laudable ones by historians. ‘One of Plato's uncles (Charmides) was a member of the notorious "Thirty Tyrants," who overthrew the Athenian democracy in 404 B.C. Charmides' own uncle, Critias, was the leader of the Thirty. Plato's relatives were not exclusively associated with the oligarchic faction in Athens, however. His stepfather Pyrilampes was said to have been a close associate of Pericles, when he was the leader of the democratic faction.’ After Socrates’ death. Plato left Athens. He spent time in Italy and Sicily before he returned to Athens to found the school, the ‘Academy’. Other than two more trips to Sicily, Plato remained at the Academy for the rest of his life. René Descartes (1596-1650) can be seen as one of the most important Western philosophers of the past few centuries. During his lifetime, Descartes was just as famous as an original physicist, physiologist and mathematician. However, it is as a highly original philosopher that he is most frequently read today. He attempted to restart philosophy in a fresh direction. ‘For example, his philosophy refused to accept the Aristotelian and Scholastic traditions that had dominated philosophical thought throughout the Medieval period; it attempted to fully integrate philosophy with the 'new' sciences; and Descartes changed the relationship between philosophy and theology.’ Such new directions for philosophy made Descartes into a revolutionary figure. Plato's dualism involves his theory of the forms, or ideas. The basic premise is that there are two orders of reality. One, the physical world of material particulars, which are all imperfect, fluctuating and finite, and two, the ideal forms, which are eternal, perfect and non-changing. The theory of the forms is easily explained in terms of epistemology, using the Platonic view that there are two types of knowledge; knowledge of material particulars and knowledge of universal ideas or forms. On the one hand, says Plato, we can have knowledge (or opinion, as it becomes), of physical events in the physical world; for example, I can have knowledge of a cat, which lives next door. On the other hand, I can have universal knowledge of cats, i.e., I can know what a cat IS, what kind of properties constitute a creature given the name “cat”. The knowledge of what a cat is provides more insight into the nature of things, as opposed to details about a specific instance of the thing. This view of knowledge leads Plato to assert a more controversial ontological theory, when he suggests that the objects of these two types of knowledge are different, and that one is more real than the other is. The object of the universal, general type of knowledge (episteme) is, according to Plato, more real than the object of the particular, specific type of knowledge (doxa). Thus, from an epistemological standpoint, Plato distinguishes between two levels of reality: The forms, which are universal, unchanging, eternal ideas, and which constitute the essential nature of all things, and the material particulars, which are physical, changing, imperfect non-eternal entities which share in the forms to various degrees. ’In the Republic, Plato seems fond of using beds as examples. The form of a bed, he tells us, is the idea or essence of a bed, a flat place to sleep, in which all physical beds share a common identity, though to differing degrees, and with different accidental properties.’ Because the idea of what a bed is eternal and unchanging, it is more real than a physical bed, which has many imperfections, which is constantly changed by use, and which will one-day fall apart, or otherwise change into something else, firewood, for example. Therefore, according to Plato, The forms are the only truly real things, and the material particulars which share in their aspects are only partially real, and can therefore only be the object of opinion, not of knowledge. Descartes' mind/matter d...