Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

an experience of real apples, not by reference to some transcendent perfect apple. So perhaps it could be said that the truth about the objective world, if it can be known at all, is known through the particular objects and events that make up reality. (It is worth noting here that ‘Platonism’ has come to be defined as the belief in ‘abstract objects’ — although not necessarily of the same type as Plato’s forms. Platonism therefore takes up the same theme as the ‘splits’ I’ve been describing here — all splits are suggesting, in a way, that some aspect of knowledge is ‘abstract’ in the broadest sense.)

It’s also worth noting that for Plotinus, most things are a mixture of different forms. For instance, a white horse is both ‘horseness’ and ‘whiteness’. He also applied this to people. He believed that if we could see ourselves as just one thing, we could see ourselves truly (hence very much in line with our theme of essence). This stripping back of all complexity within ourselves Plotinus saw as a move towards intuitive intelligence.

Both Schopenhauer and Kant took up Plato’s idea of the forms and ran with it. For them, the phenomenal world is, more or less, the empirical world of observation — meaning common-sense perception, embodied experience and consciousness. Schopenhauer and Kant suggested that, as well as this every day familiar world, there is some kind of underlying reality of which, at best, we are only partially aware — the ‘noumenal’ world. Schopenhauer’s ideas were derived mainly from those of Kant (hence he’s known as a post-Kantian).

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