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Neo-Platonism This is the name given to a disparate body of religious thinkers and philosophers. They have taken the metaphysical ideas of Plato and developed them in various ways. Plato thought that only the Ideal is real and that everything else is, as it were, a reflection or expression of it. So the "real" or ideal Chair exists in "heaven". All the chairs we sit on derive their nature or their "chairness" from the one Chair. This real and perfect existence Plato called the "form" of the objects we experience in life. Those who don't have the power of abstract thought tend, says Plato, to regard the appearances of real things as themselves real. They are like people who see shadows cast by real things, and think that the shadows are the reality. In truth, these shadows, while they reflect the ideal, do so imperfectly. The chair is real; but particular chairs are...

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