Becoming and Being

Plato

Reality is different for everyone, in the sense that to some degree we all perceive things differently. [Page 76]Perceptions can also change for an individual from day to day: Either the perceived entity has taken on a different form, or the person perceiving the entity has changed in some way—in terms of experience, knowledge, values, and ideas. Plato (c. 427-c. 347 BCE) held a dualistic view of reality: the perceived world of dynamic, unfixed, and fluctuating perceptual reality, or becoming; and the unchanging, fixed, absolute reality, or being. Plato claims that because humans perceive their reality through the senses, the reality they know is skewed. This is because the senses are inaccurate, making the knowledge of this reality erroneous. By Plato's logic, true reality can be perceived only by the soul, or conceptual thought, and not the bodily functions that often alter a fixed reality. Plato refers to this fixed reality, which is perceived only by the soul, as the Idea or the Universal. The true reality of an object exists outside of the perceptions we gather from it through our senses. To Plato, the things that the senses perceive come out of a movement between the senses and the things perceived. Both are in a state of change, and where these changes meet, there is perception.

Becoming is subject to space and time. Our perceptions are rooted in time, as we see things change throughout time and perceive them differently throughout different periods within time. What we perceive are only particulars of an Idea; they can only represent an Idea, but are not the Idea itself. For example, when you see a horse you are seeing a perception of the Idea of a horse, and the “horse-ness” or Idea is separate from the particular horse that we have a sensory perception of. Being is not bound by time. It is fixed and unchanging for all eternity, thus making it absolute reality. According to Plato, this absolute and true reality is unchangeable and eternal. Time exists only as a moving representation of the eternal. Plato believes that when the heavens were created, so was this moving representation of them that we are able to perceive. Time has been around since the beginning, but it exists only in the perceptual world, as the eternal unchanging world is not subject to time. The past and the future are parts within the perceived time, that we understand the eternal to be within, but which it is not. The eternal simply “is” and never “was” or never will “be” as we understand our temporal space. The eternal is fixed and unchanging, not subject to the motion and change of time.

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