Plato's Theory of Forms Term Paper

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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.

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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,….....

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