Plato's Theory of Forms

¶ … Plato's concept of the forms, one must first understand the myth of the cave, as delineated in Book VII (515-518) of The Republic. The myth of the cave states that human beings dwell in insightful darkness, like imprisoned individuals chained from the neck up trying to stay alive in a cold cave illuminated only by a fire. The 'truths' of our existence are found in the fire, and in the actual human essences of the individuals.

However humans mistake the shadows on the wall for what is real, rather than looking at reality fully in the face. In the myth, neck braces prevent the cave dwellers from seeing one another, and behind the captives is a place where the captors of the people parade statues of men, animals, and artifacts of all kinds carved from stone or wood, copies of real things.

The dwellers discuss what they see, the shadows of these copies without accessing the true or original reference of the thing itself, were they "able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them," states Socrates to Glaucon, even though they were seeing copies, as the dweller's world of conscious experience was of the shadows of things rather than of the true things.

Yet, because the dwellers, that is, all of us, know nothing better, we claim that they know best what daily appears before their eyes. Platonic forms are thus abstract entities that exist independently of the sensible world. Ordinary objects are imperfect and changeable, but they faintly copy the perfect and immutable Forms.

Thus, all of the information we acquire about sensible objects (like knowing what the high and low temperatures were yesterday) is temporary, insignificant, and unreliable, while genuine knowledge of the Forms themselves (like the geometric proof Socrates leads a slave boy through in the dialogue entitled "Meno") are perfectly certain forever. For example, a young girl might receive a "My Little Pony" doll, and decide she loves horses.

Gradually, she grows dissatisfied with the artifact, and desires 'the real thing' -- she recieves a more realistic model, but that proves unsatisfactory, then moves on to riding lessons where she engages with the real thing that seems closer to the Platonic form of 'the horse.' However, this engagement through horse shows strikes her as a false and artifical way of apprehending horses too, until she experiences a horse in its wild, natural environment, unadorned with the trappings of civilization, and in her eyes, therefore more perfect and closer to the original essence of what she judges a horse should be.

The question though, would be, what is a perfect state of horse-ness, for Socrates also states in the "Meno," in response to the idea advanced by Meno that virtue and the ideal of virtue is different for every person "Would you say that whiteness is color or a color? You would reply, A color, because there are other colors as well," just as women and men, warriors and philosophers, horses and cattle, may be better suited to different functions in life, so long as they perfectly embody those functions and formulaic ideals all are virtuous.

It is, suggests Socrates, like knowing different ways to the same place, or different methods of mathematical calculation, all of which achieve the correct solution. Virtue and the embodiment of the ideal of one's perfect form are attained through recollection of one's ideal, and breaking through the illusions of the shadows of the wall as the slave of Meno recalls the proof.

However, the question remains -- what if one's recollection of virtue is different from another person's? Socrates lived in a place with fairly cohesive ideals of who men should be, who women should be, and what men and women should know. The Platonic ideal of a farmer for a horse may look different than a young, enthusiastic adolescent environmentalist girl's view of.