Philosophy Essay

Question 1
At the most basic level, Parmenides and Heraclitus disagree on the concept of being and change. Heraclitus argues that we are constantly surrounded by change, which further translated to existence of only two aspects being. He believed that existence of a given quality presents the occurrence of the opposite. Because of life there existed death and vice versa. Contrarily, Parmenides opposed the philosophy of not being has he argues that one can never recognize what is not there hence whatever can be perceived definitely existed. The debate between Parmenides and Heraclitus transpired in Greece long before the era of Socrates. Both believed that the entire universe could be reduced to single entity but they never agreed on what constituted it. The consequence of these debate led increased focus on the subject of being as illustrated by the works of Socrates.
Question 2
Based on Plato’s argument that there could have not existed actual cats unless a platonic form of cat implied that Plato believed that ideas of form, which were based on physical objects, were consequently tied to understanding and classification of abstract beings of forms such as intricate qualities of a cat that appeared universal to all cats. Therefore if Plato was right, it suffices to argue that explicit qualities, which define forms and objects, are nothing but properties being referenced to already established knowledge on how those forms should or should not correspond to.
Question 3 The allegory of the cave demonstrates how human beings perceive and believe what they see and conceptualize as the reality of a given situation. In his analogy of the divided line, Plato defines the world into two main segments, the visible and intelligible world. Visible world is based on human senses while intelligible world can only be perceived through understanding and knowledge.
Question 4