Plato is one of the most important philosophers in ancient Greek philosophy. He did several extraordinary works in mostly in dialogue form. The Republic is just one of all his works. I find The Republic to be very interesting because Plato talks about the different levels of cognition. He mentioned that wisdom, courage, moderation and justice combine together to form the Republic. According to the book Great Thinkers of the Western World, in the Republic, Plato sets forth the simile of the line by which he divides all knowledge into the realm of opinion and the realm of true knowledge. For Plato opinions can be shaken by criticism or by conflicting evidence, while true knowledge cannot. Also, Plato learned that the goal of philosophy is to understand the general concept.
In the different levels of cognition, Plato refers to those levels as the different levels of knowledge. He mentions that there is a visible world and an invisible world. The first level in the invisible world is reason. Plato refers to reason as the good, the true, the beautiful, courage and justice. Plato believed that if a person had all these qualities they were in the level of reason and they were knowledgeable to be philosophers. The second level of the invisible world is understanding. In understanding, Plato refers to things that don't changed or that have a fixed meaning like numbers, geometrical figures because numbers and geometrical figures never change. Numbers always have the same value and geometrical figures have a formula and every time you do them they end up having the same shape. The third level is belief and it falls under the visible world. According to Plato, belief is what you can see like things, tools, animals, and work of arts. You can be!.
lieve in things that you can see because you are seeing them. The fourth and last level is in the visible. In this level Plato refers to imagination.
