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Compare And Contrast Plato And Aristotle

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Plato and Aristotle are two influential natural philosophers in ancient Greek. Although Plato was the mentor of Aristotle, their thoughts in some aspects are diverged. This reflective journal aimed to compare the similarities and differences of their ideas toward worldview, metaphysics and epistemology with examples from the thought of Newton and Darwin.

Plato and Aristotle shared different ideas in defining what is real. In Plato’s philosophy, there are two realms and the first one is material realm, where all matters inside are imperfect, transitory and less real (Lindberg 13). The second one is realm of form (intelligible realm), which contains perfect ideas and forms that are incorporeal, intangible and insensible (Lindberg 13). They are pre-existed to corporeal objects in material world to act as primary existence (Lindberg 13). In Plato’s view, only forms and perfect ideas in intelligible realm are truly real, while all corporeal objects in the material realm are imperfectly copied from the forms as secondary existence (Lindberg 13). However, in Aristotle’s philosophy, he proposed that there is no perfect form in the world. All matters are corporeal objects which can be changed (Lindberg 19, 21). To him, material world is primary reality that what people can sense by sight or touch form the real world (Lindberg 19). To conclude, there is a huge difference on their views about what is real. While Plato assumed that true reality should be imperceptible and absolutely

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