The Metaphysical One in Platonic and Augustinian Thoughts Essay

The legacy of Plato leftfield its distinctive brand of influence on St. Augustines beliefs and writings, of this there is no doubt. In Confessions, Augustine himself professed that it was the Platonic books that enabled him to attach himself to his God. However, it is evident that Augustine re-augmented much of the Platonic thoughts and, combining them with the primordial Christian doctrines, configured the hybrid into what became the foundation of Catholicism. The differencesas well as similaritiesthat exist between the two thought systems can be dissected from two points the nature of the metaphysical supreme One and its relationships with the Many.At the purport of Platonism is the concept of eidos, or Forms the theory of an absolute and unchangeable caprice that is manifest in all things that are made so by its essence. One of the best definitions of the concept is offered in Meno in regards to the Form of celibacy what is this very thing, in which the item-by-item virtues are all the same and do not differ from each other? Even if they are many an(prenominal) and various, all of them have one and the same Form which makes them virtues. (Meno, 72c, p61.) Plato searched for not individual aspects of a concept but the exact, complete definition of it. It is clear that he did not concern himself with the physical realities of the world but rather The Reality, the irreverent which supercedes the Material. The questions then rises about Platos attitudes towards the pagan gods and his belief about the totality of the universe. adjudicate from the absence of Greek deities from the Dialogues, one is compelled to believe that Plato thought of the conventional gods as unnecessary and sought after the very Being of the universe, which is the eterna... ...ate Good the spirit can achieve nothing. In addition, Augustine evidently was most anxious to fill out Manicheism, hence altogether rejecting that God is within human beings (a notion echoed by the Manich eans) would have been essential.In his Confessions, Augustine successfully remolded Platonism to match his Christian ideals and interpretations. gibe to Platonism, the abstract eidos is the metaphysical perfect existence and the primal Universal normal can be perceived as the Form of Being. Augustine took after Plato in his belief of an eternal, immaterial and unifying One, but his God departs from its Platonic facsimile in that He is active, personal, and ultimately the only hope of human salvation. Still, through and through Augustine and the Catholic Church, the pantheistic Platonism and its metaphysical One has survived throughout the snapper Ages into the present.