24-2-4
According to Plato, we understand The shoe in every kind of foot-wear and The chair in every seat because we are born with eternal Ideas of The shoe, The chair, The flower, The bird et cetera already in our mind. According to Plato there exists a world of Ideas, next or above the world of material things.
You then should think of very simple drawings of a shoe, a chair, a flower, a bird et cetera. And these Ideas are eternal for Plato, while the real things only are transitory, temporary, relative.
And a human then is special because his mind is tuned to these eternal Ideas. Our mind is like a computer constantly (and wireless of course) connected to the internet of platonic Ideas. When you understand a thing, you recognize the eternal Idea in it again, Plato says.
Though Plato died 2500 years ago, many Western philosophers still believe in a supernatural world of ideas, a supernatural spirit. Everybody who thinks there is a sharp distinction between senses and mind, feeling and ratio, believes in supernatural ideas, in a ratio elevated above our bodily senses.
And those philosophers who do not want to accept a supernatural world, then are faced with the problem where to situate ideas and spirit then. And if they can not situate spirit somewhere in nature, well then they have to deny the existence of spirit.
Last opinion (there is no spirit) is the prevailing one, since it is scientific (only facts count!). But spirit also is a fact, and that is where this whole relational philosophy is about.
I do not believe in Plato. There is no supernature but only nature, only body.
According to me, we just see our foot in every shoe and our sitting body in every chair, like we see a satellite dish in every flower and an airplane in every bird.
We do not need inborn ideas; our mind can be empty when we are born. This supernatural world of Ideas is not needed. Ideas play right in the middle of nature, between the forms, in the fitting of forms, in the workings. Understanding is just a seeing, that forms fit to other forms. The idea of the shoe, that is the fitting around the foot. This idea even can be felt.
So understanding is very natural, not supernatural at all. Our mind is not playing above, but in our senses. Minding already is a feeling.
When a thing called shoe does not fit well to any human foot, then it is not a truthful shoe, not even a shoe actually. And the other way around, do shoes fit perfectly to human feet, and to the road and other circumstances, then we call it truthful shoes. The better the fitting, the more truly it is.
These truthful shoes then also are experienced by us as comfortable, nice, good and often also beautiful. Truth is nice! Beauty suggests truth.
What then is the difference between feeling and understanding, senses and mind? Understanding already is a feeling, a sensing, of fitting forms.
Our mind is a sense-organ, with which we see fitting of forms. Do we see harmony in that fitting, then we also enjoy. So our mind also is our pleasure organ, adds an extra dimension to joy, makes it joy.
Jan Helderman
24-2-4
