How to Understand Plato's Forms
Plato was an Athenian philosopher who lived from approximately 429 to 437 B.C.E. His philosophical works are still read today, and he is considered by modern philosophers as one of the most influential philosophers in known history. One of the central tenets of Plato's philosophy is his "theory of the forms," a metaphysical concept that Plato uses to explain the nature of reality. Although touched upon in almost all his works, the idea of the forms is specifically addressed in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, found in his book, "The Republic."
- Difficulty:
- Moderate
Instructions
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1
Read Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" to understand what Plato means when he discusses his theory of the forms. In the Allegory of the Cave, a man enters a cave and sees a group of men chained to a wall and forced to look at shadows. However, the men, who represent the majority of the human population, don't realize they're seeing shadows of reality, they think the shadows are reality. The shadows are analogous to the physical world we see through our senses, while the objects that cast the shadows are forms.
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Examine a physical object, such as a table. Thousands of tables exist in the physical world and they're not all identical; yet, there is something that allows us to classify them all as tables. This concept of the table, according to Plato, must exist somewhere, in a perfect form.
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Picture a table in your head. The table you see in your mind is closer to the form of a table because it exists in the realm of ideas, outside the physical world. However, it's not a form, because it's your visual representation of a physical object, and a friend will almost certainly visualize a different table when asked to picture a table.
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Imagine that a universal idea of a table exists outside any one individual's visual representation of a table. This is the form of the table. It exists solely as a concept and is perceivable by the mind and not by the senses.
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Recognize that Plato conceived of the world of forms as existing in a separate realm, outside of time, space and human error or opinion. The physical, corporeal world inhabited by humans is misleading because it's flawed. Only through studying the forms can universal concepts and reality be understood, according to Plato.
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Use the idea of the forms to investigate abstract concepts, not just physical objects. Consider the terms beauty, justice and goodness. According to Plato, when we observe something that we label beautiful, good or just, what we're viewing is merely a representation, the true form of beauty, goodness or justice exists in the realm of the forms.
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Consider how to apply Plato's concept of the forms to all aspects of life and human behavior. According to Plato, people should strive to develop ethics and behavior based on an investigation of the forms, rather than on observations of the flawed physical world.
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