Theory of Forms  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. Aristotle gestures to the earth, representing his belief in knowledge through empirical observation and experience, while holding a copy of his Nicomachean Ethics in his hand. Plato holds his Timaeus and points his index finger to the heavens, representing his belief in The Forms

Related e

Google Wikipedia Wiktionary Wiki Commons Wikisource Wordpress YouTube Shop Featured: The Trylon and Perisphere, two modernistic structures at the New York World's Fair of 1939-1940 Photo: Trylon, Perisphere and Helicline (Samuel H. Gottscho)

Plato's Theory of Forms asserts that Forms (or Ideas), and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. The Forms are the only true objects of study that can provide us with genuine knowledge. Plato spoke of forms (sometimes capitalized in translations: The Forms) in formulating his solution to the problem of universals.

Dialogues that discuss Forms

The theory is presented in the following dialogues:

• Meno
  71-81, 85-86: The discovery (or "recollection") of knowledge as latent in the soul, pointing forward to the theory of Forms
• Cratylus
  389-390: The archetype as used by craftsmen
  439-440: The problem of knowing the Forms.
• Symposium
  210-211: The archetype of Beauty.
• Phaedo
  73-80: The theory of recollection restated as knowledge of the Forms in soul before birth in the body.
  109-111: The myth of the afterlife.
• Republic
  • Book III
    402-403: Education the pursuit of the Forms.
  • Book V
    472-483: Philosophy the love of the Forms. The philosopher-king must rule.
  • Books VI-VII
    500-517: Philosopher-guardians as students of the Beautiful and Just implement archetypical order.

Metaphor of the sun: The sun is to sight as Good is to understanding.

Allegory of the cave: The struggle to understand forms like men in cave guessing at shadows in firelight.

• • Books IX-X
    589-599: The ideal state and its citizens. Extensive treatise covering citizenship, government and society with suggestions for laws imitating the Good, the True, the Just, etc.
• Phaedrus
  248-250: Reincarnation according to knowledge of the true
  265-266: The unity problem in thought and nature.
• Parmenides
  129-135: Participatory solution of unity problem. Things partake of archetypal like and unlike, one and many, etc. The nature of the participation (Third man argument). Forms not actually in the thing. The problem of their unknowability.
• Theaetetus
  184-186: Universals understood by mind and not perceived by senses.
• Sophist
  246-248: True essence a Form. Effective solution to participation problem.
  251-259: The problem with being as a Form; if it is participatory then non-being must exist and be being.
• Timaeus
  27-52: The design of the universe, including numbers and physics. Some of its patterns. Definition of matter.
• Philebus
  14-18: Unity problem: one and many, parts and whole.
• Seventh Letter
  342-345: The epistemology of Forms. The Seventh Letter is possibly spurious.

Criticism

• Third man argument

See also

• Actual infinity
• Bedness
• Dreamtime
• Dunamis
• Energeia
• Entelechy
• Hexis
• Jungian archetypes
• Nominalism
• Platonic idealism
• Plotinus
• Potential infinity
• Problem of universals