Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 75
GREEK PHILOSOPHY even strange sometimes result in fascinating or consequences. The outcome of this process may result in leaps of knowledge rather than step by step advancement. . New ideas may be created but they are always related to the thought processes of man. Their value, according to Plato, depends on the quality and level of rationality of the perceiving mind. . For Plato, rationality demands an intensive search being carried out to penetrate into the deepest recesses of all categories of natural phenomena. By arranging the data thus gained into an intellectual orderly form, man is able to attain truth. According to him: 'Because of the presence in him of something like a divine spark, he can, after suitable preparation, fix his intellectual gaze on the realities of the unseen world and, in the light of them, know both what is true and how to behave. He will not attain this result easily - to get to it will involve not only immense intellectual effort, including the repeated challenging of assumptions, but also turning his back on everything in life that is merely sensual or animal. . Yet, despite this, the end is attainable in principle, and the man who arrives at it will exercise the most important part of himself in the best way that is open to him. "1. Thus for Plato, knowledge can be attained merely through the faculties of observation and rationality, aided sometimes by the faculty of inspiration and intuition. Truth is the knowledge gained as a result of this exercise. In short, Plato held that the apparent world is only a façade while the truth, which lies hidden behind, could be quite different from what is observed. This means that however hard we may try, we cannot completely comprehend the nature of any external fact, because all external facts or 75