New
Materialism

Symbols, found in every culture and every aspect of life, represent the beginning of the world. Every symbol has its meaning and manifestation. What is important is to recognize the idea in it. Plato spoke about the world of ideas and their representations, that can in fact be understood as symbols – there is an idea and a symbol as its embodiment. Symbols can undergo alterations and manifest themselves in a plethora of ways, while the idea, which is universal and perfect, is always the same and unaltered. The recognition of the idea is a key point – the Greek word “symballein” from which “symbol” originates means “to recognize“. In Platonic sense, it also means that nothing can be learned, but recollected and recognized from within. Every (re)cognition stems from recollection, according to Plato’s philosophy, and people remember ideas when they recognize their manifestations, that is, symbols.

Most commonly, symbols appear in dreams, but freely combined so that a clear image cannot be easily grasped. In that sense, they are elusive and bring confusion to our reason. Since they are free and not determined by any conditions, it is difficult to control and interpret them in a methodological way. In other words, if one considers symbols in a Cartesian sense, and in the rational way of Descartes, conclusions are obscure, illusory and misleading. Understanding symbols implies going away from objectivity and recognizing them as a part of oneself, not as something external and thus unrelated to us, and that is a challenge, especially in the world following the legacy of Cartesian thought.

keywords: Plato, recognition, idea
synonym: recognition, entanglement, integrity, unity, freedom
antonym: difference, disintegrity, objectivity
hypernym: idea
hyponym: natural, artificial

References
Platon. Drzava [Plato. Republic]. (1933). Beograd: BIGZ.