Explain the Platonic Concept of the ‘Forms’
One of the key questions ancient Greek Philosophers sought to answer is what is described as ‘the problem of the universals’. The problem of the universals is the metaphysical quandary over whether universals exist, and if so, where? Universals are defined as the characteristics or qualities that particular or individual objects have in common, an essence or form which they share recurrently with other particulars. For example, if we were to suppose that a room contained two blue tables, both of these tables share the characteristics assigned to a table as well as sharing the quality “blueness”; these shared characteristics are referred to as universals.
One of the key questions raised when one considers universals and their nature is whether our knowledge and ability to recognise them is innate or whether it is based upon acquired experience. For example, suppose we come across a farmyard, stood in the farmyard are two sheep and a dog. Somehow we know that the two sheep have the same ‘essence’ they are clearly of a separate type or category of animal than the dog. Is this categorization instinctive or based on our prior experience of sheep and dogs, (if so then what would the result be if we placed someone who had never had any previous experience with dogs or sheep – would he/she still not reach the same conclusion?). If we were to assume that this is an innate ability, then where does that instinctive knowledge come from?
Plato attempts to answer the problem of the universals with his concept of “the Forms”. Plato was a dualist, and he believed that the body and ‘soul’ are of two different “realities”, for the body – a material world of substance; perceptible to the senses, and for the soul – a ‘higher’ incorporeal reality. Plato theorized that the empirical world (that which we can identify using our senses – the world of the body) is merely an illusion, a shadow mimicking a “pure” reality; the world of the Forms (the immaterial world in which the soul belongs). According to Plato, the world of the Forms transcends our own “world of substance”, being removed from matter, removed from both time (atemporal)and space (aspatial), and that the Forms are the most pure of all things. They never began, and will never end; being either mortal or immortal. The forms are the ‘essence’ of all things, as all things in our empirical world mimic the pure Forms, they reflect them, but no matter how much they change, will never reach the same level of ultimate perfection. Because the soul dictates much of our thinking, its own transcendence renders us capable of recognizing common entities through the Forms.
Plato asserts that everything in the universe is changing or moving, objects in our universe are imperfect. The Forms themselves are most perfect, because they are unchanging. A circle, for example, can never be drawn perfectly as it is made up of an infinite number of points around its circumference, ergo, there can be no ‘perfect’ circle in our “illusional” empirical world. Any circle drawn, however, is almost instantly recognized and categorized by our minds into the category ‘circle’. This, Plato argues is evidence of a common ‘Form’ of which all circles share, and we are innately aware of.
The sum of Plato’s theory of the Forms is that they are the ‘ideal essence’, a perfect transcendent identity, immutable and indivisible. The objects of our empirical world are imperfect fabrications of the Forms, though plural and particular, the Forms are one.
Plato postulated