CHAPTER 2

PLATO, AND RATIONAL IMMORTALITY

The goal of the pre-Socratics was to gain an understanding of  a world where everything was constantly changing.  Where we could never know anything because once we knew it it would become something else.  The two polar opposites, Parmenides who said that change was not possible, and Heraclites who said that what is, is change itself.  However, the problem lies deeper than this. The problem is that reason can never lead to knowledge because reason is not concerned with truth but only with validity. Reason, therefore, must begin with knowledge. If what we find in the world around us is constantly changing we cannot have knowledge of it.  But we do, and that is the perennial problem of philosophy, how?  When I began to study philosophy the Catholic priest who was tutoring me told me that there are only two kinds of philosophers in the world.  Platonists and Aristotelians and that once you understand the difference Philosophy will make sense to you.