Plato Essay, Research Paper

There are many ways in which the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle have reached that of that of Saint Thomas Aquinas, due to the fact that Aristotle thought the world that we live in today is the ultimate reality. While Plato thought the world that we see every day is real but is not the ultimate reality. Thus Aristotle s views were closer to that of Aquinas s and had the greater impact.

Aristotle s philosophy is more scientific and shows that the universe is like one gigantic organism that keeps on growing and seeking knowledge. The forms of things and that thing are both the same thing with out different identities. He goes on to state that even though we live in this universe we do not understand the little part of it that we do exist in.

Plato was much more complex than his student in his philosophical views. He thought the world we live in and the ultimate reality were two separate ones. They are the World of Becoming and the World of Being. To come to this point Plato combined many views from many of the other previous philosophers and came up with the idea of two different worlds.

Thomas Aquinas used both of these philosophical views to create his own by saying that every thing comes from something previously until it comes from the very first thing, which Aristotle calls the prime mover.