Plato's Theory of Form

Plato's Theory of Form
Plato is both renowned and notorious for his forms of theory. Just what the theory is, and whether it was ever viable, are matters of great controversy. To readers who approach Plato in English, the association between forms and sensible facts, called in translation “participation,” seems objectively mysterious. Furthermore, the claim that the sensible sphere is not totally real, and that it contrasts in this esteem with the “pure being” of the forms, is confusing. A satisfactory understanding of the theory must rely on both historical knowledge and philosophical imagination.
The theory essentially postulates the presence of a level of actuality or “world” inhabited by the ideal or typical forms of all things and concepts. Therefore, a form exists, for objects like tables and rocks and for concepts, such as loveliness and fairness. In the dialogue Meno, “Plato explains a form as the “common nature” possessed by a group of things or concepts” (Taylor, 1980). The forms are everlasting and eternal, but enter into a partnership with variable matter, to produce the objects and instances of concepts, we perceive in the temporal world. These are always in a state of becoming, and may contribute in a succession of forms. The ever altering temporal world can thus, only is the source of opinion. Plato likens the opinions derived from our senses, to the awareness of shadows of actual objects, cast upon the wall of a cave. True knowledge nevertheless, is the perception of the archetypal forms themselves, which are real, changeless, and unchanging.
Whilst the forms are hidden to the eye, our souls have involved in the changeless world of forms prior to being incarnate in a physical body, and retain a memory of them. Although this recollection is not willingly available to the conscious mind, its existence is adequate, to allow our limited perceptions. Plato maintains that the “theorist can achieve a state of perceiving the forms directly, with his mind’s eye, by: developing dexterity, in discerning the abstract qualities, common to groups of things and ideas, in the temporal world; by understanding these are merely theories; and by using the technique of dialectic, to classify and group the qualities in their exact associations and order; using these theories as stepping stones, to further theories” (Taylor, 1980). Therefore, reason is capable of making a hierarchy of forms, to scale to the height of first principle and get a state of real knowledge. In all learning Plato maintains is, but memory of what our soul previously knows. Plato agrees that enquiry is not possible because unless we previously knew something, we would not identify the subject about which we were inquiring. But adds that enquiry is useful, in that it can reveal our innate recollection.
The dialogue form in which Plato writes is more than a mere literary device; it is instead an expression of Plato realizes of the purpose and nature of philosophy. For Plato, “philosophy is a procedure of continuous questioning, and questioning essentially takes the form of conversation” (Dancy, 2004). Near the end of the Phaedrus, Socrates articulates his doubts about written texts, worrying that people will terminate to think for themselves when they have somebody else’s thoughts written out in front of them. Plato took it upon himself to write his feelings down anyway, but he was cautious not to write them in such a way that we could simply assimilate his thinking rather than thoughts for ourselves. Several of the dialogues reach no definite ends, and those that do commonly approach those ends by casting reservations and examining feasible counterarguments. Plato cannot be there in person to share his thinking with us, but he wants to make sure that we think through them ourselves.
In keeping with this stress on dialogue form, Plato develops a more and more difficult conception of dialectic, or logical argument, as the engine that drives philosophical examinations. In the early dialogues, dialectic consists of Socrates cross-examining and refuting his interlocutors until he brings them to a state of confusion, or aporia. Plato identifies that dialectic can lead people not only to identify their mistakes, but also to optimistic findings, as Socrates does with the slave boy in the Meno. Plato is adequately impressed with the possibilities of the dialectic that, in the Republic, he makes it the greatest success of his rigorous education program. “The Phaedrus presents a more systematic version of the dialectic, seeing it as a matter of “division and simplification,” whereby we analyze concepts so as to realize the precise associations between them” (Dancy, 2004). This procedure of division and simplification becomes more and more sophisticated during Plato’s works, and we see advanced versions of it in the Parmenides and the Sophist.
Plato believes the sophists to be one of the major adversaries of virtue, and he is pitiless in his attacks on them. “The sophists, who were comparatively new in Plato’s day, were a class of itinerant educators who educated young statesmen in the arts of oratory and debate for a fee” (Fine, 2003). They instructed that values are relative, so that the only measure of who is right is who comes out on top. Their teachings capitalized on a void left by the ancient myths and religion, which were falling out of fashion as Greek civilization moved toward a more sensible worldview. The old values were losing their relevance, and there were no new values to replace them. Plato could see the hazard this right relativism posed for the state and for the person who lived in it, and his attacks on the sophists show up their hollow bravado that so many took for wisdom. Plato’s Forms of Theory, and the whole enterprise of the Republic, can be read as a try to discover a solid foundation for ethical values in rational rules.
The Forms of Theory propose that “two different levels of actuality exist: the noticeable world of sights and sounds that we live in and the comprehensible world of Forms that stand above the noticeable world and gives it being” (Fine, 2003). For instance, Plato maintains that in addition to being capable of recognizing a lovely person or a lovely painting, we also have a general conception of Beauty itself, and we are capable to recognize the beauty in an individual or a painting only because we have this conception of Beauty in the abstract. In other terms, the lovely things we can see are beautiful only because they contribute in the more general Form of Beauty. This Form of Beauty is itself imperceptible, changeless, and unchanging, unlike the things in the noticeable world that can grow old and lose their loveliness. The Forms of Theory envisions a whole world of such Forms, a world that survives outside time and space, where Beauty, Justice, Courage, Temperance, and the like exist untarnished by the alters and errors of the noticeable world.
Plato’s knowledge of Forms actually varies from dialogue to dialogue, and in certain respects it is never fully described, so several aspects of the hypothesis are open to understanding. Forms are first presented in the Phaedo, but in that dialogue the concept is simply referred to as something the contributors are previously familiar with, and the theory itself is not developed. Likewise, in the Republic, “Plato relies on the concept of Forms as the foundation of many of his arguments, but believes no need to argue for the validity of the theory itself or to describe exactly what Forms are” (Fine, 2003). Critics have been left with the task of explaining what Forms are and how noticeable objects involve in them, and there has been no lack of disagreement. Some intellectuals advance the view that Forms are paradigms, perfect instances on which the flawed world is modeled. Others understand Forms as universals, so that the Form of Beauty, for instance, is that quality that all lovely things share. Yet, others interpret Forms as “stuffs,” the conglomeration of all examples of a quality in the noticeable world. Under this understanding, we could say there is a little beauty in an individual, a little beauty in another—all the beauty in the world places jointly is the Form of Beauty. Plato himself was aware of the ambiguities and variations in his Forms of Theory, as is obvious from the incisive criticism he makes of his own theory in the Parmenides.
In conclusion, the Theory of Forms introduces Plato try to develop our ability for abstract thinking. Philosophy was a comparatively new invention in Plato’s day, and it competed with mythology, tragedy, and epic poetry as the primary means by which person could make sense of their position in the world. Like philosophy, art and myths gives concepts that assist us to realize ourselves, but art and myths do so by appealing to our feelings and desires. Philosophy appeals to the intellect. The Forms of Theory differentiates the abstract world of thought from the world of the senses, where art and myths operate. Plato also argued that abstract thought is greater to the world of the senses. Plato expects to achieve a superior knowledge, by examining the world of Forms.

References
Taylor, C. C. W. (1980). Plato’s theory of forms, Classical Review. New York: Oxford
University Press.

Fine, Gail. (2003). Plato on Knowledge and Forms: Selected Essays. New York: Oxford
University Press.

Dancy, R. M. (2004). Plato’s Introduction of Forms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.