Plato's thoughts on reality were "heavily influenced by Heraclitus, Parmendes, and Socrates " (Silverman). Plato's metaphysical view, for example, has us divided into two worlds: the becoming and the reality. The becoming is the physical world that we are in, and the world of reality is a population of forms. These forms are best described as "ideal archetypes (Chaffee 199). For example, there are a thousand different designs for chairs which exist in the real world. However, according to Plato there is, somewhere, the idea of a perfect chair in which all woodworkers base their flawed chairs off of (Cox). Plato illustrated his concept of reality with his divided line analogy. Below the line is the realm of becoming, which includes images and sensible objects. An image pertaining to a chair would be an idea about the chair based on one's experience. It is a product of the imagination, and information that is not thought of critically. A sensible object would be the chair itself, in its physicality. Above the line are the Forms, which include the lower Forms and the higher Forms. A lower Form would be a chair, which is an object that can be reasoned to exist, whereas a higher Form would be something like appreciation, which is a concept that needs to be understood and cannot be accurately described. Lower Forms are physical things, whereas higher Forms are abstract ideas (Chaffee 202). One can observe and easily describe a chair, but his or her appreciation for the car is not as simple to observe and describe. Plato was a rationalist, which means his ideas did not come from observation but from the rational ideas that were occurring within his mind.
By contrast, Aristotle was a empiricist, meaning his ideas came from the senses and experience. "He believed reality was the physical and observable world that we live in (Anonymous). He found fault with Plato's concepts because they did not explain the fact that objects change and, ultimately, disappear; as well as how people came across knowledge.
