a cosmological and epistemological rereading of the ideal theory

the ideal theory is plato’s most important philosophical view involving his allegory of the cave. he tried much to explain this theory and present arguments in order to prove it. however, his views on the proof arguments and the concrete materials with ideals suffer from shortcomings. the present paper argues that the critiques of aristotle, avicenna, and allamah tabatabaee against this theory had been untrue, and that the views of augustine, anselm, and kant about the theory had been incomplete and open to criticism. suhrawardi and mulla sadra believed in the non-principality of intellects and thought that any kind of material has the ideal. the ideal theory is provable through the rules of transcendental philosophy and not that of the illumination. this theory is closely related to art, aesthetics, politics, law, ethics, education, architecture, and computer sciences.