Skip to contentWillowOne's PositionsTagsWhat’s newMediaStatisticsSearch
WillowOne's Positions

Theory of Forms

Overview

Plato's Theory of Forms holds that the objects of the physical world are imperfect copies of eternal, unchanging, non-physical Forms (or Ideas), and that true knowledge is knowledge of the Forms rather than of their shadows. Every beautiful thing participates in the Form of Beauty; every just act in the Form of Justice; and the Form of the Good stands above all the others as the sun stands above the visible world. Plato's Cave is the theory's illustration: the prisoners see shadows, the philosopher sees the things themselves.

Notes

  • I do not accept the theory. It multiplies entities without explanatory gain (Occam's Razor - Principle of Parsimony), it gives no account of how a non-physical Form could "participate" in a physical object (the same interaction problem that sinks Mind-body dualism), and Aristotle's objection, that the Forms merely duplicate the world rather than explain it, has never been answered.
  • Its historical importance is enormous, mostly through Christianity, which borrowed the idea of a perfect unchanging reality behind the visible one and gave it a personality. Much of what is said about God in the apologetic tradition (timeless, immaterial, the ground of goodness) is Platonism with a will attached.
  • The one place the theory still earns its keep is the philosophy of mathematics, where whether numbers are discovered or invented remains open. My own view of the laws of logic (My Presuppositions) is that they are discovered, not invented, but that this requires no separate realm for them to live in.

Also see