Synaptic

Writing Objective: What are Plato’s forms, and how does Plato argue for their reality? Assume that you are addressing an intelligent student who has no background in philosophy.

---

Plato’s efforts mark a new beginning in the world of systematized philosophy and critical reasoning. In addition to describing the historical person of Socrates in his dialogues (as in the Apology), Plato also uses Socrates as a character to put forth his own ideas. The most famous of the Platonic theories, and the one with which this paper will deal, is the Theory of Forms. Plato draws on the teachings of his mentor, Socrates, to generate this theory and to give shape to some of the ideas that, according to Plato, Socrates implied. Plato begins by asking himself what can be known about the physical world. What observations can one formulate and what are their logical conclusions? Plato then proceeds by trying to understand common bonds and similarities between language and reality.

Imagine, Plato would hypothesize, that a man sees the reddest rose that he has ever known. Because of its deep crimson hue, its silky texture, and its dark green leaves, the man pronounces this flower to be beautiful. Further imagine that the same man is walking along the seashore at sunset and because of the pastel-colored sky and the rolling blue waters, that man pronounces the scene also to be beautiful. For Plato, a discrepancy would seem to arise from this man’s assertions. In the first instance, beauty was understood as the redness of the rose petals and the greenness of the leaves, and yet the second instance, which contains neither of those elements, is also said to be beautiful. In fact, it might be argued that the very reason the second scene is beautiful is that the water isn’t red like the rose, but rather blue; and that the sky isn’t green like the leaves, but rather pastel-colored. The things which make the one beautiful would be a cause of ugliness in the other. So how can the man make the apparently accurate statement that both the rose and the seashore are beautiful? Is there some sliding definition of beauty which is constantly fluctuating? Is beauty simply a relative value judgement? Neither answer suffices for Plato.

In the Phaedo (99D-101 A), Plato addresses the awkward question that arises when trying to define beauty and other characteristics. It is not because of any inherent, sensed quality that the rose or seashore posses that they are beautiful—it is not the red petals or the blue water as such which constitute beauty. But rather, both are made beautiful and can be called such, because they both participate in absolute Beauty itself. According to Plato, there is nothing physical that one can point to and truthfully call Beauty, because the Form of Beauty lies completely beyond the material world. Beauty itself is Beauty because of its very nature, and it is that which makes other things beautiful. Everything on earth which one would call beautiful can only be called so in so far as i* partakes of the Form of (Absolute) Beauty. By such a theory, Plato can account for the belief that both the rose and the seashore can be rightfully called beautiful, though neither of them can be called the definition, cause, or nature of beauty.

For Plato, all things and characteristics can be said to participate in some higher order of reality: the world of Forms. Because of its manifestation in what is fundamentally an imperfect world, nothing can be said to be the Ideal of a particular character; for all of its beauty, a red rose is not Beauty itself. The above argument can be extended to include the whole of the material world, not simply characteristics, but substantial things themselves. For instance, a table with four legs and a table with three legs can both be referred to as “table” because they both partake of the absolute Form of Table. That Form contains the fundamental quality of Tableness that is shared by all those so-named physical objects on earth. Plato’s Forms can only be understood intellectually and are the only type of enduring reality.

By the logic intrinsic to his Theory, Plato is forced to assert the complete separation the world of the Forms from the material world. There is a clear division between the two and Plato gives much higher esteem to the Forms (as according to his logic, he must) than to this earthly existence. Plato’s sense of true knowledge and understanding lies entirely within the intellectual realm of the Forms. For him, true knowledge of the physical world is impossible, and belief, at best, serves only to further comprehension of the essence of Forms. Plato wants to shun the body and the sensate life in favor of reason and rational existence. But this desire to alienate Form from physical reality would seem to have its drawbacks. To illustrate this, one can turn once more to the example of the red rose.

The rose in its prime is undeniably beautiful—or, rather, to be somewhat more accurate, the flower participates in the form of Beauty. But as the growing season goes on, the rose withers away; its color fades, and it grows ugly. What, then, can be said to have happened to it? Assuming that the flower itself was never in fact Beauty, but only a participant in that Form, Plato’s theory leads to the conclusion that the plant in itself has not changed, thereby causing ugliness, but instead, only that its relationship with Beauty has shifted somehow. Correspondingly, Plato would have to reason that it is either the Forms themselves, or their instances in things, that are altering their associations with the material objects: “the Form gives way and withdraws … it cannot stand its ground . . . If it did, it would become different from what it was before.” (Phaedo, 102D.) This leads one to believe, in conjunction with the concept of complete separation of the physical world from the Forms, that all change must be the result of the Forms advancing and withdrawing themselves. But Plato goes on to deny just such a conclusion, asserting instead an eternally unchanging world of Forms. Plato had difficulty accounting for change in the material world and Platonism tends not to be a dynamic system of ordered reality. 3

Philosophy’s debt to Plato is great—his Theory of Forms, whether for good or bad, has shaped Western thought for thousands of years. And though much criticism has been levied against Platonism, it is still a system of thought that needs to be considered carefully. A comprehensive understanding of Plato is necessary to appreciate the kinds of advances (and criticisms) that have been made on his Ideas for millennia.