Plato's Philosophy

Plato

Plato's theory of forms was the cornerstone of most of his reasoning, an essential part in his entire philosophy and we can see its influence in all of his philosophy, no matter if his thought is concerned with metaphysics, epistemology or aesthetics.

His the existence of forms was obvious for him. He gives various evidence to support his theory in his dialogs. Plato did provide reasoning to support the existence of the forms. For instance, in one of his dialogues he claims that when he view the world we recognize imperfection in objects. When we look at circular objects, for example, we notice that they fall short of a standard. How do we know that they fall short? Because we have a standard (a form) in our mind of the concept of circularity which is perfect and unchanging.

Plato also uses a slave boy's (seeming) knowledge of math (without being taught) to provide reasoning for the existence of the forms. He believed in mind-body dualism and claimed the soul existed before insertion into the body, where it comes to know the forms and "forget" them once housed in the body.

The fact that we are able to perceive perfection in certain objects, that we have understanding of how perfect is supposed to look also seemed as a proof of the theory of forms to Plato. There is no such thing as a perfectly straight line or a perfect circle in the real world, but we have concepts of how they are supposed to look. This means that those concepts, though they are nonspatial, nonphysical and nonmaterial, do exist.

He transferred the idea of existence of ideal form to absolutely every object, created the "realm of forms", a place where the ideal form of every type of objects( or even phenomenon) is stored.

Plato's theory of forms is an elaborate synthesis of Parmenidian and Heraclitean ideas, creating a concept of universe. On the bottom material level we have a Heraclitean world that is constantly changing, but at the same time, on the upper level we have Parmenidean eternal and unchanging "realm of forms". Every object has an ideal form that can be grasped by dialectic thinking. To explain his metaphysics, Plato used an analogy of a divided line. The line logically connects 4 models of the world. First two points of the line(shadows and reflections of physical things and things themselves) represent the physical world and correspond with two kinds of knowledge( illusion and belief), while the next two(mathematical objects and forms of ideas, like wisdom, courage, moderation and justice) represent the intelligible world and correspond with understanding and dialectic, the highest form of thinking, accordingly. On the top of the divided line is the form of Good, the ultimate knowledge and understanding. The line ascends form the physical to the intelligible world.

II.As with every possible phenomena in the world, man also has his