Hey guys. This is just an essay I wrote in first year of college on appearance vs reality in Plato and Kant. Go easy on it, I was 19 and was merely weeks into studying philosophy. I hope it's helpful to someone out there anyway!
Philosophers have long debated the difference between appearance and reality. One who has no prior experience in the topic philosophically may be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that what we see is, in fact, what is real. In this essay, I will discuss and compare the views of Plato and Kant on the topic of appearance and reality. This will include their own views, similarities and differences in opinion, strengths and weaknesses in argument.
“If ‘real’ is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” This quote, taken from The Matrix, gives a very minimalist explanation of what reality is. It states that reality is the immediate world around us, built upon sensual experience. It is this very view of reality which is abolished in Kant’s “Critique Of Pure Reason”.
In “Critique Of Pure Reason”, Kant holds the view that not all knowledge stems from sensory experience. Kant holds that there are two different kinds of things: Things as they appear (called “Phenomena”) which are within the confines of the empirical world around us and things in themselves (called “Noumena”) within a world which cannot be observed via the senses. It is the latter which Kant claims is reality. Even the term “Pure Reason” has come to refer to knowledge not gained by the senses but inherently from the structure of the mind.
Kant argues that knowledge cannot be gained from sensual experience in the world as these experiences are separate and unreliable. For example, if a person were to pick up a tennis ball and acknowledge that it is round, yellow and fuzzy, they cannot know that everything that is round, yellow and fuzzy is, and always will be, a tennis ball. In this particular example, the sensations of a small, round, yellow, fuzzy and bouncy ball are attributed with the name “Tennis Ball”. This is, according to Kant, the coordination of senses into objects and applying them to space and time.
Kant professes that we cannot constantly acknowledge the bombardment of the senses by each individual experience and so this is why we attribute unique groupings of sensual experiences to objects.
According to Kant, since the real world is not accessible to the senses, it is unknowable. If it were possible to observe this real world empirically, it would fail to be independently real anymore.
In Plato’s allegory of the cave, there is a similar distinction between appearance and reality. The following is taken directly from Plato’s The Republic, Book VII:
“Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.”
In the above allegory, the fire casts a shadow from the “puppets” onto the wall before the prisoners. As the prisoners have been there since childhood, the prisoners see the shadows as their reality as they know nothing more. As the allegory progresses, the situation is considered where a prisoner is allowed to escape from the cave. The prisoner in question would view the actual objects whose shadows are on the wall. The actual light from the fire and outside is enough to cause pain to this person’s eyes but they can now see what is real and what is illusion. This process of leaving the cave is interpreted as a philosopher’s ability to stop employing their senses in the search for a true reality.
This instantly strikes up a similarity with Kant’s “Critique Of Pure Reason”. Both philosophers appear to hold the view that the senses alone are not enough to obtain true knowledge of reality. In the allegory of the cave, Plato may have implied that it is possible to get an idea of reality by observing the images (or shadows) cast on the wall as they would be a two-dimensional image of their “real” counterparts. The shadows in Plato’s allegory can be equated to the things as they appear in the world mentioned in Kant’s “Critique Of Pure Reason”. This leads us to the conclusion that both philosophers certainly held the same view that empirically observing and studying the world which is immediate to us will not assist in gaining an understanding of reality.
This is where both part company on the subject. Kant, as discussed above, holds the view that the real world is “unknowable” and cannot be known or experienced with the senses. However, in the allegory of the cave, Plato maintains that it is possible to obtain knowledge of the real world by ceasing the use of our senses and by using intellect alone. If we were to obtain knowledge of the real world, according to Kant’s view, the real world would cease to be independently real.
As we have seen, both philosophers handle the topic of appearance and reality quite similarly. Both Kant and Plato hold the opinion that there is an absolute difference between the two but where Plato claims that reality can be understood through enlightenment via the use of intellect, Kant maintains that this is not possible. Not only is it not feasible, according to Kant, but it is also undesirable as an understanding of the perfect, real world, would result in it lacking perfection and in turn, empirical independence.
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