Essential terminology
Analogy
Archetype
Form
Form of the Good
The Cave
Key scholars
Socrates (c. 470 BCE – 399 BCE)
Plato (c. 427 BCE – c. 347 BCE)
Aristotle (384 BCE – 322 BCE)
In this chapter you will learn about some of the ideas of Plato, such as his reliance on reason rather than the senses, his theory of Forms, their nature and hierarchy, and the Analogy of the Cave. Some of the criticisms of his ideas will be discussed.
Draw sketches of some of the following animals:
When all the drawings are finished, ask other people to identify which species the animal comes from. Let people try to work out what they are. Do not tell them.
What do we mean by ‘beauty’?
The philosophical views of Plato, in relation to:
Plato, Republic 474c – 480; 506b – 509c; 509d – 511e; 514a – 517c
Plato is one of the most famous philosophers in the Western world and his ideas have had considerable influence. Plato lived in what we know as ancient Greece, which consisted of a series of self-governing city states or areas. These states were often at war with each other, but there was much more that united them than divided them, such as religion, language and ideas. Plato was an Athenian. Athens was a democracy governed by its citizens (excluding women, slaves and foreigners). Plato was taught by Socrates and devoted his life to continuing his philosophical tradition. Socrates wrote nothing down as far as we know and taught by questioning, but this and aspects of his personal life did not improve his reputation as far as the people of Athens were concerned. As a result, Socrates was put on trial, accused of mocking the gods and corrupting the young. He refused to back down and was convicted and sentenced to death by drinking hemlock. Most of Socrates’ ideas and thoughts have been preserved by his follower Plato. Most of Plato’s early books contain and develop the thinking of Socrates, but the later ones are mainly his own thinking.
Much of this work is written in the form of dialogues, often with Socrates as the speaker. Plato wrote about many subjects, from the existence of the soul and the nature of beauty to who should run a government. The idea of the Forms, which is so central to Plato’s philosophy, does not appear in the earlier books and so would seem to come from Plato’s own thinking. Plato also used the Academia or Academy to continue philosophical teaching.
Plato was a rationalist so the most important source of knowledge for him was a priori – not based on sense experience. To say that an idea is a priori is simply stating that experience is not necessary to say if it is true or not. So, for example, to know that ‘all bachelors are unmarried men’ is true and it is not necessary to examine all the bachelors to see if any are actually married, as to be a bachelor is to be unmarried. However, to discover if ‘all bachelors are called George’ it would be necessary to go and find out. Innate ideas (ones which are present from birth) are a sort of a priori knowledge. Plato was one of the first philosophers to hold the theory of innate ideas. In the Meno Plato writes about an uneducated slave boy who cannot be assumed to have knowledge of mathematics, yet, as Plato shows, the boy is able to arrive at mathematical truths. According to Plato all knowledge was simply memory, as he considered all knowledge was possessed from birth and we simply use our reason to uncover and remember it.
Plato considers that sense experience does not guarantee that what we experience is true, as any experience we get from our senses is constantly changing and can be unreliable. Plato distrusted information that came from our senses as imagination and reality can so easily be confused – so a stick, for example, can seem bent when in water, but when it is picked up it is perfectly straight. Plato praised mathematics as one of the only forms of true knowledge, and disliked art because he thought that we distort our perception even further when we attempt to copy an imperfect image.
School of Athens
Nick Fielding/Alamy
The starter exercises drew your attention to the difference between ideas and ideas expressed in reality.
Thus, it is possible to recognise a dog from having an idea of what a dog is and for Plato this is all important – we begin with knowledge of what a dog is before we actually see a dog. Now we might think that we know what a dog is because we have experienced dogs and are familiar with them, and so we recognise any dog as being a dog, but, according to Plato, knowledge of what a dog is comes first. Additionally, Plato suggests that the world we live in is a world of appearances but the real world is a world of ideas that he calls Forms.
In The Republic Book V 478a-b Socrates tries to persuade Glaucon that anything that is beautiful can also appear less than beautiful. Can a beautiful woman be completely beautiful? She may be beautiful only according to some standards, and not according to others. Compared to a goddess, for example, she would probably appear plain. So, the beautiful woman is not completely beautiful. And her beauty will not last as nothing is sweet forever; fruit eventually withers and rots. The beautiful woman is changing and so the way we see her will change as well. Since knowledge, for Plato, is limited to eternal, unchanging, absolute truths, it cannot apply to the ever-changing details of the sensible world. It can apply only to what is stable and eternally unchanging.
Plato then assumes that there must be something which is unqualifiedly beautiful and which does not change. These are the Forms – the Form of beauty is always completely beautiful. There is only one Form of beauty for many beautiful things; they are like a kind of reflection of beauty.
The world we live in is a world of appearances, but it is not the most important or real world. In the material world things that exist, like animals and plants, will all die. What makes a flower a flower, however, or a dog a dog, is the way in which it corresponds to the Form of flower or dog.
By Form Plato meant the idea of what a thing is. There are many types of dogs but they all conform to or match to some degree the idea of what a dog is. Plato argues that the true Form of dog must exist somewhere; it exists in the world of Forms. A Form is unchanging because it is a concept – it is not like physical objects that imitate or copy the Form; they die. The Form is everlasting. The Forms thus exist in a different reality.
According to Plato the world we live in is a poor imitation of the real world. Our world is constantly changing and we rely on our senses to understand what is going on. Plato was therefore sure that the real world is outside the one we live in. This real world is unchanging and eternal. It is the world of ideas and not senses, where there are perfect Forms of the things we know on earth.
Plato was not really interested in the Forms of objects, like tables or, indeed, animals, like dogs. What mattered to Plato were concepts such as beauty, truth, justice and the Good. Plato saw that concepts like beauty may be applied to many different objects. A flower and a person can both in some way reveal what beauty is, but many other things can be beautiful, such as paintings and landscapes. Therefore Plato suggested that underlying all these images and examples of beauty is the real Form of beauty, to which these things correspond to a greater or lesser extent.
If you attempted the challenge about beauty and found it difficult, this may interest you. Scientific research has shown that part of our definition of beauty relates to symmetry. Subconsciously our minds assess the symmetry of anything we see. What scientists have shown is that people who are seen as beautiful, such as fashion models, have bodies that are more symmetrical than other people.
Form
By ‘Form’ Plato meant the idea of something – for example people have some idea of what a dog is and can recognise lots of different types of dogs. All the different breeds of dogs embody the Form of a dog: some set of characteristics that show what a dog is. The Form of anything is not a physical representation but the eternal idea of what a thing is.
Forms, for Plato, are unchanging, timeless and eternal. Thus, for Plato the real world of Forms is more important than the world of appearances, which is constantly changing. In the world of appearances there are only shadows and images of the Forms. Objects in the world imitate a form – for example a beautiful person is only a shadow or image of the Form of beauty. Plato also talks of things in the world of appearance participating in the world of Forms – meaning that the Form of beauty, for example, is somehow present in a beautiful person. The Forms such as beauty capture the essence of a Form – they are pure, but what we see as particular examples of beauty are never completely pure. For example the painting of the Mona Lisa may be considered beautiful from a Western point of view, but not all cultures would consider it so, and thus the Mona Lisa is not unqualified pure beauty. So, the statement ‘The Mona Lisa is beautiful’ is both true and not true, and for Plato, this is opinion, not knowledge
Plato thinks that when we are born we have a dim recollection of what Forms are, because he says we have an immortal soul that observed the Forms before being incarnated in a body. However, in the body the memories of the soul are only dim. Plato claimed that the fact that people can have a basic understanding of something like truth, justice or beauty without being taught it shows that we have this instinctive knowledge, and so we can know something is beautiful even if we do not know about the Form of beauty. This leads Plato to claim that humans have an immortal soul.
He believes that reason itself leads us to genuine truths, and so it is the person who uses reason who will try to escape the world of appearances in order to see the Forms that lie behind – this is the philosopher. For Plato, it is the philosophers who should rule society as they have knowledge of the Forms.
All the beliefs listed ahead are unjust according to many people, yet they are examples of practices that have occurred or are occurring in different parts of the world today.
Archetype
An initial model or idea from which later ideas and models of the same thing are all derived.
The idea of a hierarchy is present in the hierarchy of knowledge in the Republic, illustrated by Plato’s Analogy of the Divided Line, in which knowledge (of the world of Forms) and opinion (about the physical world) are distinguished and ranked.
Plato also divides the Forms themselves, by claiming that there is a superior Form that the rest are dependent on; however, all the Forms are eternal and unchanging. This is the Form of the Good, which relates both to that which is the most perfect example of something and to good in a moral sense. Plato says that not only is the Form of the Good the highest Form but also it is the source of all the other Forms. In our world of appearances, we say certain things are good, but we cannot know everything about goodness.
By hierarchy Plato only seems to imply that the Form of the Good is superior to the others and from it all the others emanate. Additionally, Charles Griswold suggested that it is debatable whether Plato thought there were Forms of material objects, like beds and tables.
To explain what he means by this Plato uses three analogies: The Sun, the Divided Line and the Cave.
In order to see an object, we need not only eyes but also light as provided by the sun. Plato considers that this applies also to the mind or soul and this is the knowledge and truth which come from the Form of the Good that enables knowledge of the other Forms.
In this analogy, Plato claims that just as the sun enables us to see clearly so the Form of the Good makes everything clear and knowable, so the Form of the Good is the source of all other Forms. It is the most important and it is vital.
Just as sight need slight and eyes to see clearly, without knowledge of the Form of the Good people cannot see clearly. The Form of the Good is symbolised by light, and just as nobody can see clearly without light, neither can a person see clearly without knowledge of the Form of the Good. Additionally, the Form of the Good has an ethical dimension – the Form of the Good allows the philosopher who understands it to recognise good people, good actions and so become good himself.
This analogy continues the Analogy of the Sun and helps us to understand the Analogy of the Cave.
The divided line is used to illustrate different levels of truth and show how someone can move up the line in order to arrive at the Form of the Good. He also uses it to justify why mathematics is an important part of the education of a philosopher.
The lower end of the line A-B represents opinions and beliefs. B-C represents scientific knowledge, which is knowledge of the physical world, C-D is mathematical knowledge and finally D-E is philosophical knowledge, knowledge of the Forms and most importantly the Form of the Good.
According to Plato philosophical knowledge is the most important, as shown by the length of D-E. B-C and C-D are equal, which suggests that there is an interdependent link between the physical world and mathematics. Finally, A-B represents the view of reality held by the prisoners in the Analogy of the Cave.
The Analogy of the Cave is the third and the most important of the similes that Plato uses to explain his theory of the Forms. It encapsulates the similes of the sun and the divided line, while also representing Plato’s concerns. It aims to:
It is sometimes said to be allegorical as the different elements of the story are symbolic of the situation people find themselves in, and as a result philosophers debate as to its interpretation.
The story goes as follows:
Imagine people who have spent all their lives chained up in an underground cave. They are all facing the back wall of the cave and are chained up in such a way that they can only look ahead of them at the wall itself. There is a wall behind the prisoners, behind which there is a fire burning, giving the only light in the cave and casting shadows on the wall which the prisoners face. Behind the wall is a walkway where other people are walking up and down carrying different objects. What the prisoners chained to the chairs see is the shadows cast by the objects on the wall in front of them; all they hear is the occasional voices of the people carrying the objects. Thus, for the prisoners these shadows and voices are the only reality they know.
The prisoners believe that the shadows are reality and if they hear the people behind the wall speaking they assume that the voices come from the shadows. They even play games, trying to guess which object will appear next.
Plato then asks us to imagine that one of the prisoners is set free. At first, he will be confused and not understand what he sees but slowly the released prisoner becomes used to the firelight and is able to see the people and the objects they carry. He had formerly believed that the shadows were reality, but now he understands that they were merely an illusion.
Then if the released prisoner is dragged up a steep, long ramp at the back of the cave into the sunlight, he will not be able to see and will try to flee back into the cave. However, bit by bit he will be able to see the world around him. Finally, he will look up and realise the role of the sun, which enables sight and allows him to understand that it gives life to everything else. Once he realises this, he will not wish to return to the cave.
However, out of duty the prisoner goes back to the cave again to tell the other prisoners about reality. When he goes back underground from the light of the sun to the darkness, he once again cannot see clearly and at first sees nothing at all. When the other prisoners hear his story, and see that not only does he see little but also he no longer wishes to play their guessing games, they are convinced it is better not to go above ground, even wishing to put to death anyone who tries to free another prisoner. The prisoners would mock the returning escapee and might kill him.
Analogy
The act of comparing one thing with another that shares similar characteristics, to help a person learn about the first thing. For example if you say a person is ‘as cunning as a fox’, you are explaining something about how cunning and crafty the person is.
The Cave
A famous analogy written by Plato which he uses to explain some parts of his theory of Forms.
Before reading the commentary on the cave discuss what your image of a philosopher is.
The text of the Analogy of the Cave is in Plato’s Republic at 514a–521b. The ‘Further Reading’ section suggests some books that are good guides to Plato’s text.
The cave corresponds to the visible realm, the world of appearances and illusions, while the world outside the cave corresponds to the intelligible realm, the world of reality and the Forms. The prisoners are at the level of illusion – all they see are shadows and reflections. It is not obvious whether seeing nothing but shadows is ever a feature of everyday life. We must assume that, as the cave dwellers are at the level of opinion, the shadows and reflected noises stand for opinions picked up from others, and possibly raw sensory experience. According to Plato people do not see the Forms clearly, only the illusory physical world. Also, being prisoners means that people need to be set free. In this sense the physical world imprisons a person by stopping him or her from seeing the Forms.
The journey of the prisoner who is mysteriously released from his bonds then illustrates the results of thorough philosophical education for one who is suited to it.
Plato’s Cave is one of a set of three analogies that he used to explain some of the features of his theory of the Forms. The other two analogies, the Analogies of the Line and the Sun, can be found in Plato’s Republic at 506e–511e.
When the prisoner turns and becomes accustomed to the light he notices men making shadows with objects, which are images of the forms. However, these objects are only copies of the Forms. This is known as double deception, sometimes characterised by those who carry them who are believed to shape the views of the prisoners as they share the same views, having no more idea of the Forms than the prisoners. Plato criticised politicians and philosophers who are like the people carrying the objects – they lead others but they themselves have no knowledge of the truth: the Forms.
The passage of the prisoner from seeing the shadows are not real to the fact the objects are not real, to the fact that the men are carrying the objects is indicative of the passage from ignorance to even firmer belief.
The fire performs the same role in the cave as the sun does outside – the fire is a false Form of the Good that the prisoner’s opinions are based upon and judged upon. Robin Waterfield (ed. Plato, Republic, 1994) suggests that the prisoners being attracted to the shadows from the firelight rather than the real world above represents the way in which culture, tradition and upbringing limit people’s ability to see the world differently.
The prisoner is forcibly dragged up the steep slope – this represents the rigours of education. Presumably, those forcing him along are his teachers. Every stage in the simile is either difficult to traverse or painful on the eyes. The implication is that many will either turn back or stop before they reach the final stage; they are reluctant to see the truth.
Above ground the prisoner adjusts to the light and begins to see. This is an analogy to the philosopher gradually learning to distinguish Forms from the images and copies of them in the world. At first the Forms can be seen only in a dim manner, but as the philosopher’s training reaches completion, he is able to see them in the full light of the sun, or Good, and finally look at the sun itself. It is by looking at the objects in relation to the sun that he is able to understand the seasons and so forth, which is to say how the forms relate to, and partake of, the Form of the Good, which is the source of all the other Forms.
The released prisoner wants to stay above ground to contemplate the Forms, but is duty-bound to return to the cave to educate the other prisoners. This represents Plato’s idea that those who can see the Forms (i.e. what is true) should be the leaders of society, not the politicians who want to rule out of a desire for power and fame. For Plato, knowledge of the Forms is an essential quality of any ruler, so that a ruler governs wisely for society’s good, not to further her or his self-interests.
When the released prisoner returns to the cave he is unable to see clearly, illustrating the difficulties of seeing the Forms within the world. The other prisoners mock him and Plato remarks that they would kill him if they could. It is possible that Plato could have had two things in mind here: first, the general view of philosophers in ancient Greek society was that they were rather odd; secondly, the statement that the other prisoners would kill the released prisoner if they could is, perhaps, a reference to the death of Socrates.
Socrates was one of the first Western philosophers. Although he wrote nothing himself, many of his ideas were recorded by Plato, his student. Socrates died after drinking hemlock, a poison. He had been condemned to death by a court in Athens for impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens by teaching them philosophy. The duty of a citizen was to end his or her own life if condemned to death; Socrates put obeying the law above himself and drank the poison.
Plato records the days leading up to Socrates’ death in Crito and Phaedo. These books contain ideas from Plato as well as from Socrates.
Throughout his life Plato defended Socrates’ memory and was distrustful of all politicians because of what had happened to Socrates.
The Analogy of the Cave raises issues about who is the most suitable person to rule society and about the state in which most people exist – one of ignorance of the Forms – and also the fact that people do not want to be released from this state.
The cave analogy – in summary |
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1 The prisoners are chained in an underground cave so they cannot turn their heads. |
People who do not understand the knowledge of the Forms are trapped in the physical world, imprisoned by desires, temptations, superficiality and possessions. |
2 There is a wall behind the prisoners and behind it is a fire. |
Shadows are thrown onto the wall in front of the prisoners and voices can be heard. |
3 People walk up and down between wall and fire with objects; some of them are talking. |
Everything that is carried creates shadows on the wall in front of the prisoners. The objects are copies of things in the world above, so the shadows are copies of copies. |
4 One prisoner is released and turns around to see the wall and the fire. |
The released prisoner realises that the world of shadows is not actually the real world. |
5 The prisoner is dragged up to the surface. |
It is difficult to be forced to see the world in a different way. |
6 At first the released prisoner is overwhelmed by the brightness of the light above ground. |
The adjustment takes time. |
7 The released prisoner first sees shadows, then reflections in the water, then the moon and stars and finally plants, trees and the sun by day. |
Gradually an understanding of the true, real nature of the world is gained. The world above the cave represents the Forms; the sun is the highest Form and represents the Form of the Good. The sun gives light and symbolises the Form of the Good as the source of the other Forms of knowledge. |
8 Remembering the prisoners still in the cave the released prisoner feels sorry for them and returns to the cave. |
The released prisoner feels sorry for the prisoners who still don’t see what the true reality is. |
9 The people still imprisoned in the cave do not believe anything he says. |
People in the cave are trapped in their own lives and may not want to be freed from it. The released prisoner has a better understanding of how things really are. |
10 The people still imprisoned in the cave would, if they could, kill the released prisoner. |
The released prisoner’s ideas are threatening to the whole way of life and thinking of the prisoners. |
11 The released prisoner would prefer not to descend once again to the cave. |
Once someone has seen the reality of the Forms and how things are, it is not easy to go back to the state of ignorance of the prisoners. |
The Analogy of the Cave questions who are the best people to rule society and also raises the fact that most people live in ignorance of the Forms and do not even want to acquire knowledge of the Forms. There is no one way to interpret the Analogy of the Cave. Plato used it as an illustration of the theory of Forms, but it does not explain everything about the theory of Forms. How do you interpret the Analogy of the Cave?
Plato never directly answers this, although many ideas can be deduced from Plato’s Republic. In the Republic Plato attempts an answer to the challenge that people are good only because they have to be and if they can get away with not being good they will, and so nobody will be good simply because it is the right thing to do. According to Plato the Forms are the answer to this challenge: the Form of truth is real and so is an independent standard of truth – being truthful is good in itself. The Forms also mean that Plato can explain why concepts such as truth and beauty are unchanging in a world that is subject to constant change. The idea of the Forms allows Plato to explain why ideas known through reason are eternal and unchanging.
In the Analogy of the Cave the sun represents the Form of the Good and the sun is the source of all the other Forms. Just as the sun allows life to exist and people to see, so the Form of the Good enables the philosopher to know the other Forms and to know that objects in the physical world are images or copies of the Forms. The Form of the Good for Plato is the source of anything that is knowable and of the knowable world: ‘The good therefore may be said to be the source not only of the intelligibility of the objects of knowledge, but also of their being and reality’ (Republic, 509b). One interpretation of this is that the Form of the Good (symbolised by the sun) enables us to know what things are and also it is the source of what is knowable because without knowledge we do not know that there are objects of knowledge and we can know nothing about them. For example koi carp in a pond cannot understand the world above and outside the pond and do not have knowledge of the world; there are no objects of knowledge for koi carp, as they cannot understand or have knowledge of the world in the way humans do.
Additionally, if the Form of the Good is understood in a moral sense, morality is part of all areas of knowledge. Plato does not make a distinction between moral knowledge and other types of knowledge. So, for Plato, you could not have, for example, scientific knowledge of an automatic Kalashnikov assault rifle that is independent from moral values. Knowledge cannot be morally neutral. If you make an automatic Kalashnikov assault rifle this is not a morally neutral action in which you say it is up to people how they use it. So was Mikhail Kalashnikov right when he said, ‘I wanted my invention to serve peace. I didn’t want it to make war easier … If it was not guns, it would be knives or axes. Guns are not guilty. People are guilty’? Plato attempts to answer the challenge posed by the story of Gyges’ ring of invisibility.
For Plato, the Form of the Good cannot be separated from all other knowledge. This conflicts with modern views of morality that suggest that moral values are something imposed on the world by human beings, such as whether an action brings an individual pleasure. It is also different from the views expressed by Mikhail Kalashnikov.
However, trying to claim that the Forms are successful as a challenge to the idea that people are good only because they have to be depends on whether the theory of the Forms is successful. There are many arguments that have been put against this theory.
A famous story in the Republic concerning whether any person who had a magic ring of invisibility could resist using it and the effect such a ring might have on the user’s moral identity. If you do not know the story look Gyges’ ring up on the Internet and also think about similarities with Frodo Baggins’ ring in The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien.
If you want to watch a film playing with the idea of a shadow world and the real world with a rather different twist from Plato, watch the film The Matrix (1993).
It could be argued that the ideas of justice or beauty are not Forms but simply ideas that people have in their minds that they pass on to others, such as their friends and children. If people die without passing on the idea, the idea dies out. Richard Dawkins suggested that ideas are passed on from person to person. He called the passing on of ideas like this memes (The Selfish Gene). He has compared bad ideas (he gives the example of religion) spreading from one person’s mind to another’s to a virus.
Plato’s views of the ‘Good’ have also been criticised. Plato was a moral absolutist: he said that there is an absolute Good that is eternal and unchanging and which can be discovered through using reason (i.e. it is a priori). According to Plato, once we understand the Good people will not disagree about moral issues and there will be no differences between cultures about what is right or wrong.
Others hold a relativist approach to morality and argue that there is no such thing as an absolute good, but that ideas of right and wrong develop in the world in human relationships and situations (i.e. they are a posteriori). Society’s values and morality change over time and also differ in different parts of the world, and so there is no Form of the Good.
Are there really Forms of everything, such as tables, chairs, televisions and so on? Plato is not concerned with the question of Forms of material objects; he is concerned with the Forms of concepts, such as good, truth and justice. He rarely discusses the Forms of material objects. According to Bertrand Russell, his idea of the Forms when taken to its extreme falls into ‘a bottomless pit of nonsense’. Plato himself seemed confused on this point; sometimes he says there is a Form for everything but at other times he seems uncertain. He does mention the Form of a bed in the Republic, but Charles Griswold has suggested this was a joke.
It is possible to think of Forms of good things, but it is more difficult to imagine the ideal Form of bad things, such as disease or handicap, or even death. It is confusing to see what the world of the Forms applies to as even if we could know the true ideas of beauty, truth and justice from the world of the Forms, how could they affect our everyday lives?
Plato never really explains the link between world of the Forms and the world of appearances in which we live (e.g. what is the link between the Form of truth and instances of truth in the world?). This is not clear.
Also, Plato presents a really depressing picture of the world of appearances in which we live, presenting it as a gloomy cave. Plato sees the world as evil and changing and ignores any beauty in the physical world. However, Popper thought that Plato’s world of the Forms was simply a way of coping with the uncertainty of life in a world that is continually subject to change.
Aristotle also suggested that something does not have to be eternal to be pure. Something white does not become whiter if it is eternal – eternity and whiteness are different qualities. Thus, for something to be real does not depend on remaining unchanged, as Plato thought.
There is, in fact, no evidence for the world of the Forms and knowledge comes through sense experience (a posteriori), not only a priori through reason.
Plato’s dualist view about the nature of reality has been criticised by others who believe that abstract ideas, such as truth and beauty, are only names that have been invented to help people describe their experiences of the physical world. This approach claims that the ordinary, material world is the true reality and that ideas develop only because of our experience of physical things. From this point of view, the idea of ‘dog’ exists only because people have had experience of dogs and needed an idea or word to describe them. ‘Dog’ is not some eternal idea waiting to be discovered independently with the mind – we come up with the idea only because we have first experienced the physical object. Our knowledge is a posteriori – knowledge that comes after sense experience. Aristotle argued that the ideas or Forms are developed from our experience of physical things – they do not exist eternally or independently. They exist only in language, not in some independent world of Forms.
Plato’s argument can to some extent be supported by modern genetics. People and animals are members of a particular species because they share a common genetic code. The genetic code comes first, and the individual is able to grow and become a member of a certain species only as a result of the genetic code.
Also, rationalist philosophers, such as Descartes, support Plato’s ideas to some extent, as he argued that we have concepts that exist in the mind first and are then used to help us construct reality. However, Descartes believed that these ideas existed in the mind and not somewhere else, such as the world of the Forms.
Kant was also a rationalist and thought there were two realities: the world of sense experiences, which he called the phenomenal world, which depends on the mind; and the world of things themselves, the reality or noumenal world. He thought that our ideas of the world come from how we ourselves perceive or interpret it, whereas the noumenal world can never really be known.
If Kant’s ideas are right then he would support Plato’s ideas of the world of the Forms, as according to Kant we can never really know the world around us as it really is as we interpret it through our sense experiences.
The physical world seems to have evidence to support its existence, but quantum physics shows that no one can be sure that their experience of the physical world is accurate, so maybe there does exist some noumenal world that exists beyond experience.
Plato’s student Aristotle put forward a criticism of the theory of Forms known as the ‘third man’ argument. It is, however, quite an obscure argument and not always easy to follow.
The third man argument was first given by Plato himself in his dialogue Parmenides. The resemblance between any two material objects is explained by Plato in terms of their joint participation in a common form. A red book and a red flower, for example, resemble each other because they are copies of the form of redness. Because they are copies of this form, they also resemble the form. But this resemblance between the red object and the form of redness must also be explained in terms of another form. And this will lead to an infinite regress. Whenever someone proposes another form that two similar things copy, you can always ask them to explain the similarity between the form and the objects. This will always require another form. Therefore, to explain the similarity between a man and the form of man, one needs a third form of man, and this always requires another form. This argument is known as the third man argument, as Aristotle formulated it using the concept of a man and claimed that a copy of a Form could turn out to be an infinite series that never stopped; this would render the theory of Forms meaningless as a way of explaining the ultimate origin of concepts, such as the Good, truth and justice.
1 Forms
2 Cave analogy
Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:
Try to explain the following ideas without looking at your books and notes:
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Examination questions practice |
When writing answers to questions about Plato, make sure you avoid the mistake of only describing what Plato says.
AO1 (15 marks)
You would need to explain Plato’s theory of the Forms and the analogies he uses to explain them, particularly the Analogy of the Cave. But do not spend too much time simply telling the story of the cave. Pick out the points in the simile that apply to the question – experience of the real world and especially the Form of the Good.
AO2 (15 marks)
Annas, J. 1998. An Introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford: OUP. There are many versions of Plato’s Republic available. Two very readable editions that both contain helpful footnotes and commentaries are those translated by Desmond Leigh (2003) and Robin Waterfield (2001).
