Plato Theory of Forms

We are born with the concepts of these Ideal Forms in our minds. The real world is the world of Ideas, which contains the Ideal Forms of everything. The illusory world in which we live– the world of the senses– contains imperfect copies of the Ideal Forms. We are born with the concepts of these Ideal Forms in our minds. We recognize things in the world, such as dogs, because we recognize they are imperfect copies of the concepts in our minds. Everything in this world is a “shadow” of its Ideal Form in the world of Ideas.

Illustration Can you explain the concept of the “NUMBER 2” without using ANY concrete objects? Try it…

Quit trying… you can’t!

Plato would say… Man is inferior to the Ideal Form (god/gods/Universal being) because man CANNOT express concepts without attaching them to concrete objects. Man is LIMITED in his capacity in this way. Only the Universal Being is capable of explaining the idea of IDEAL FORM of “TWO-NESS” without using two of anything. By claiming this, Plato is implying that he thinks some kind of ideal form of things in the world we inhabit– whether those things are moral concepts or physical objects– must actually exist, of which we are in some way aware.

The Shadow The object itself is just a shadow…. Even though you can touch it, see it, smell it, taste it, hear it, it is JUST A SHADOW, a representation of an idea. Think in terms of The Matrix… Neo thinks his world is the “real world” because he can “see” it. BUT, Morpheus introduces him to the “real world” beyond the Matrix. And it turns out, the world that Neo thought he “knew,” was just a shadow of another “reality” beyond it. The same goes for a pencil, a dog, a bed, the number two… The object is simply a shadow/ an image/ a representation of a concept that exists in the mind or in the higher, universal realm of “God.”

Plato would say… Plato talks about objects around us, such as beds. When we see a bed, he states, we know it is a bed and we can recognize all beds, even though they may differ in numerous ways. Dogs in their many species are even more varied, yet all dogs share the characteristic of “dogginess,” which is something we can recognize, and that allows us to say we know what a dog is. Plato argues that it is not just that a shared “dogginess” or “bedness” exists, but that we have in our minds a concept of a bed or dog, which we use to recognize any particular instance.

Try it: Describe what a bed looks like. Even defining something as simple as a bed is difficult to do based on what our eyes perceive, but the IDEA of bed is something we all intuitively know, understand, and can recognize.

Plato & Reason Taking a mathematical example to further his argument, Plato shows that “true knowledge” is reached by reasoning, rather than through our senses. He states that we can work out in logical steps that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, or that the sum of the three interior angles of any triangle is always 180 degrees. We KNOW the TRUTH in our MINDS of these statements, even though a perfect triangle does NOT EXIST anywhere in the NATURAL WORLD– it’s not something we can “SEE.” Yet, we are able to perceive the perfect triangle—or the perfect straight line or circle– in our minds, using our REASON. Plato, therefore, asks whether such perfect forms can exist anywhere.

Put it another way… Our senses can deceive us! In the case of a mirage, our EYES (SENSES) deceive us, BUT we can use our MINDS TO REASON through the cause of the mirage, which has to do with physics.

Thus… Plato’s summation is that true knowledge is only reached by reasoning. We cannot know we exist because we can see. We cannot know we exist because we can hear. We cannot know we exist because we can taste. We cannot know we exist because we can feel. We cannot know we exist because we can smell. Is the room cold or hot right now? Everyone’s skin is different, and everyone feels something different. So, what’s the truth? We can take the temperature and compare it freezing/boiling points to assess an answer, but that involves reasoning, not the senses.

World of Ideas Reasoning brings Plato to only one conclusion– that there must be a world if IDEAS, or FORMS, which is totally separate from the material world. It is there that the Idea of the perfect “triangle,” along with the Idea of the perfect “bed” and “dog” exists. He concludes that human senses cannot perceive this place directly– it is only perceptible to us through reason. He calls this realm of Ideas– “REALITY.”

The human world of the senses The “heavenly” World of IDEAS/ FORMS Or “REALITY” The human world of the senses

“Allegory of the Cave” Plato believes that everything that our senses perceive in the material world is like the images on the cave wall, merely shadows of reality. This belief is the basis of his theory of Forms, which is that for every earthly thing that we have the power to perceive with our senses, there is a corresponding “Form” (or “Idea”)– an eternal and perfect reality of that thing– in the world of Ideas. Because what we perceive via our senses is based on an experience of imperfect or incomplete “shadows” of reality, we can have NO REAL KNOWLEDGE of those things. At best, we may have opinions, but genuine knowledge can only come from study of the Ideas, and that can only ever be achieved through reason, rather than through our deceptive senses. Plato applies this theory not just to concrete things, but also to abstract concepts. In Plato’s world of Ideas, there is an Idea of Justice, which is true justice, and all the instances of true justice in the material world around us are models, or lesser variants, of it. The same is true of the concept of “goodness” or “beauty” or “love” etc. etc. etc…..

Innate Knowledge The problem remains of how we can come to know these Ideas, so that we have the ability to recognize them in the world we inhabit (notice I do NOT say the “real” world b/c that has different meaning for Plato). Plato argues that our conception of Ideal Forms must be INNATE, even if we are not aware of this. He believes that our bodies are divided into two parts: the body and the soul. Our bodies posses the senses, through which we are able to perceive the material world, while the soul possesses the reason with which we can perceive the realm of Ideas. Plato concludes that our soul, which is immortal and eternal, must have inhabited the world of Ideas before our birth, and still yearns to return to that realm after our death.

“The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.” --Plato

“What we call learning is only a process of recollection.” --Plato

Legacy He was a profound influence on his pupil Aristotle– even if they fundamentally disagreed about the Theory of Forms. Plato’s ideas later found their way into the philosophy of medieval Islamic and Christian thinkers, including St. Augustine of Hippo, who combined Plato’s ideas with those of the Church. British logician Alfred North says Western philosophy “consists of a set of footnotes to Plato.”

HW- Journal 1-8: Regents Style Paragraph #3 Write a well-developed paragraph in which you use ideas from Grendel chapter two to establish a controlling idea about Plato’s Theory of Forms (or appearance and reality). Develop your controlling idea using specific examples and details from chapter two.