PL 100 Philosophy and the Human Condition
Plato’s Theory of Forms
The Good: The source of all knowledge; first principle;
supreme value; the sun in the Allegory of the Cave
World of Reality Knowledge Forms:
Ideas (perfections) Justice, Outside the cave;
Being that
exist independently Goodness,
of individual minds; Equality, intelligible
standards; absolutes etc. world
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World of Appearances Opinion; Copies:
imperfect instances A just man; Inside the cave
Becoming belief of Forms A good meal; the visible world Equal lines, etc
We call Plato’s theory that true reality is beyond what we experience in the physical world The Theory of Forms. The things we experience in the physical world ( the world of becoming) get their reality from participating in or copying these perfect ideas that exist in the world of forms (the world of being). Anything in this world that we call beautiful, good, just is never perfectly Beautiful, Good or Just. Perfection exists in the Forms (which exist in the world of being, beyond space and time). We strive to reach perfection in this world (the world of becoming which exists in space and time) by trying to imitate the perfection we know exists. For Plato, Socrates is the prime example of someone who does this. The dialogue, The Phaedo , discusses the myth of recollection as proof of the soul’s pre-existence. It is then that the soul knew the forms. This explains why we can think of things like “perfect circles,” even if we cannot draw them. In the Republic, he tells a story, The Allegory of the Cave, to illustrate this important idea.
Prepared by Anne Knop, Senior
Associate Professor of Philosophy,