Plato in a nutshell

The following is a brief summary of the main points of Plato's philosophy we've covered in our discussions. Obviously, the important thing is not that you memorize these points, but that you understand their significance, their implications, and the intricate considerations that lead to them and branch out of them.

1. There is a priori knowledge
2. A priori knowledge requires only pure understanding
3. Pure understanding requires simple, universal concepts
4. Universal concepts have universal objects
5. Universal objects are not given in any experience
6. So, universal concepts are given in the soul without experience (the role of experience being only the "reactivation" of these concepts by serving as reminders of the objects of these concepts)
7. The universal objects, the ideas, are the perfect archetypes of the sensible particulars which imitate them in an imperfect, limited manner
8. So the ideas are more real, for whatever they are, they are necessarily, always and absolutely
9. The soul, having the same sort of nature, by nature belongs to that reality
10. So life in the body should be directed towards purifying the soul, restoring it in its pure, spiritual state in the afterlife, exercising itself for that higher form of being already in this life