Saturday, August 12, 2006

Where can we start to search for the truth?

One of the world's giant philosophers is Plato. He made a sharp distincion between what is real and what is unreal; the physical and the spiritual; the seen and the unseen; the future and the present; the idea and the reality Plato developed a very rigid dualistic view on reality. For Plato, the search for truth can be found only in the unseen spiritual transendent future reality. The picture shows Plato pointing his finger to the heaven (known as Platonic heaven) as the real venue of eternal and absolute truth. Eternal truth is understood as idea or knowledge (known as the Forms). What is seen and physically perceivable is not real. What is seen is only a shadow (or explanation) of what is unseen (the reality, the eternal and absolute truth). Aristotle found himself comfortable with a view contradict to his teacher. In the picture, Aristotle faces his arm to the earth, a symbolic of pointing to a place where the search for truth should begin. Aristotle stressed the materialistic and the presentness nature of truth and reality. Truth is something that we can see, touch, feel, smell and perceive - now and here in our earthly life. Though the above explanation is far from comprehensive, one will soon recognize that Plato tended to be more deductive, while Aristotle tended to be more inductive in searching for the eternal reality and truth. What do you think about Christian theology and life? Where should we start our search for truth and where can we find the real reality and the real truth?

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