Plato: The Experience of Truth

Abstract

Several Platonic dialogues provide an account of the event that comes with a particular regard of reality in itself, as an experience resulting from an intentional process of noetic representations. In general, the dialectic method enables “noús” (an intelligence or understanding, a faculty to apprehend intelligible realities) to realize what could be termed “experience of truth”—in other words, the contemplation of the “performance of truth” or how the soul of the knower accesses a clear representation of what appears as being in itself. This article intends to show that in Platonic thought, the theoretical objective by which the authentic philosopher moves is the noetic episteme; that this truth’s mode is a sudden event arising from the dispositions, practices, and procedures that condition the soul for that purpose; that such an event takes place as an experience that leaves profound consequences in the soul, such as enriching and revitalizing it, and that the affected soul combines capabilities to always access the higher knowledge, practice the highest virtues, and choose fair politics.