Help with Plato's Theory of Forms please!?

Question

Alright, well I'vebeen taking a beginner's philosophy class in my school and I need a bit of help with Plato's Theory of Forms. I would really appreciate it if you'd answer my questions

How do objects in the world participate in the various forms? In what way does a beautiful person participate in the Form of Beauty?

Answer 1

Forms. How to explain them....

Well, lets take your example of beauty. This is how Plato would describe it:

You can show me a beautiful flower.
You can show me a beautiful smile.
You can show me a beautiful sunset.

You can never show me the Form of Beauty.

The Form of Beauty (or anything else) exists in a perfect state that is both the ideal abstraction AND sole source of each thing that resembles it.

All of the beautiful items listed above are basically a dim copy of the original Form of Beauty. The entire world is a dim copy of the world of Forms. The world of Forms exists in a place that the physical body cannot grasp, but the mind has a connection to. The world of Forms never changes, even though the world we live in is changing constantly.

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

This 'participate in' idea is not so clear
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forms#Problems.

The Form, or universal, ontologically precedes all the material illusion that we experience. We share in the universal (a kind of blueprint) through imitation. So a beautiful person does not seem to be connected with the idea of Beauty, except that the Form is a necessary condition for the particular, but rather provides an index to our understanding of the Form.

The particular instantiations of the Form are not primary-- the Forms are the ground to reality, so 'participation' appears to be at odds with the purity of the Form. To postulate otherwise would remove the top-down approach Plato sets up.

You can get closer to an understanding of the Form, but it's the rational soul that apprehends (remembers) this, having united with them prenatally. That kind of participation only humans can realize. And 'participation in' the Forms didn't make Socrates any less hideous, even though he may have known Beauty better than any beauty.

Answer 3

Plato lived in the mental. In nature all things are possible. In the physical world things are more defined. The definition came from the mental. The mental is like cookie cutters. The physical is the distorted cookie from the cookie cutter. The mental mold is always the same, but the physical cookies come out different each time. The physical is thus an imperfect representation of that perfect mental mold. Like when you think of a horse you think of the ideal mental horse; no horse will exactly match that ideal but they will all fit it in some way. Plato saw these mental ideals as universal. Nature constantly changes, but the cookie cutters remain the same.
As for beauty, we all have a mental picture of ideal beauty. The closer we are to that the more beautiful we are. Just like the horse we can not match the mold, but we are all some varying degree of it.

Answer 4

I`m in 11th grade Honors English and we`re studying philosophy, too.

Plato`s belief was that the world in which we live in isn`t the "real" world, but merely a "SHADOW" of the real world. Plato believed that EVERYTHING in this materialistic world we`re living in was just a replica of these "so-called" Forms. If you read "Allegory of the Cave" by Plato, he uses the cave to demonstrate the world in which we live in [because the things inside are just shadows and distorted images] and outside of the cave to be the "real" world [because everything is "in the light"]. For every Form, there is a corresponding object in the world that we live in. For example, us humans are just "replicas" of the perfect, absolute human. God is the representation of all things good and great, the same way a beautiful person participates in the Form of Beauty. This is because God demonstrates good things, and a beautiful person demonstrates beauty.

Then of course, Mr. Friedrich Nietzsche would butt in and claim that nothing is absolute, and that beauty and good things aren`t absolute, as well. It`s like that saying: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." What may be beautiful to one, may be horrifying to another. Beauty, in my opinion, isn`t absolute because there is no true definition to what a beautiful person is and has. But don`t think that I`m a postmodernist, because I am most definitely not. Lol.

Hope this answers your questions, and hopefully it got you thinking about the definition of all things beautiful, good, bad, etc.

Good luck in your philosophy class ! It`s sure to give you a big, fat headache, like the one I got. Lol. Happy Thanksgiving !

Answer 5

The 'all roses are a shadow of the true rose' part is rubbish, but in general, all that we perceive is filtered through our senses. We know the limitations of those senses, f.i. our eyes see only in a very limited spectrum and so on. Therefore, we must conclude that our perception does not equal reality, merely a filtered subset of. edit: pangel, with all due respect, I was talking about visible light, not an unproven hypothesis with no evidence going for it :)