One way in which Plato portrayed his concept of the Forms was with the analogy of Plato’s cave. Plato drew up an analogy of a cave. In the cave, four prisoners are chained completely still, only able to see a screen that is in front of them. From above, visitors to the cave have made a fire, and are projecting shadows onto the screen in front of the prisoners. To the prisoners, the shadows on the screen are reality, and the noise of the visitors entering and leaving the cave are the only noises they can hear, as well as each other’s voices. One time, one of the prisoners is released. He climbs the steps out of the cave, and into the outside world. At first his vision is blurred, and he can see nothing but blurred images, but after a while he begins to see the colours, and then the textures, and finally the sun itself. He then returns to the cave to tell the others about what they are missing, but when he returns, his eyes cannot adapt to the dark and damp conditions of the cave. Identifying the images on the screen becomes difficult for him after being outside, and the rest of the prisoners mock him for it. They assume that going outside is a terrible thing, because it has damaged his ability to see the shadows. This analogy is key to our understanding of Plato’s concept of the Forms. In the cave there are two settings, the cave and the outside of the cave. The cave can be seen as the world of appearances, and the outside world can be the world the forms.
The prisoners themselves can be seen as the majority of the population of the world; people who take what they see and assume that that is all there is to life, and don’t desire to look into it any further. All of the shadows seen on the screen in the cave by the prisoners are particulars, as they are the fake reality that the prisoners are seeing, and the objects (tree’s, bushes, flowers) outside the cave can be seen as forms. The prisoner who escapes from the cave can be seen as a philosopher. He is the one who wants to go out and find out more about what there is to life, rather than assuming that everything is just set in stone, so he goes out of his way to find out more.
Finally, the sun can be seen as the form of the good. Plato believed that there was a certain hierarchy of forms, and that every form had a form. Images are at the bottom of the hierarchy, followed by material objects, then emotions and feelings and then finally the form of the good. Up until the Form of the Good, everything has had its own form, however this chain will finally end when it reaches the form of the good. This is the highest of all Forms, and it basically gives everything what is good and moral about itself. For example in Plato’s cave we could say the Sun is an analogy of the form of the good, because the sun gives life and growing potential to all living things on earth.
All in all, Plato’s ‘Forms’ are a very complicated concept, however they can bring and give people very different views on the way and the world in which we live.
b) Plato writes very passionately about his concept of the Forms, and how his thinking and concepts can benefit and make human life more adventurous and efficient, however how much does his concept actually teach us about the physical world? The answer: not a lot.
Throughout the whole of Plato’s writings, he talks about and describes the ‘real’ world, or the world of the forms. He tells us how everything in the world of the forms is perfect, and that nothing in the physical world can touch it. He suggests that the physical world is just a distraction, or scapegoat from the ‘real’ world which is hidden to us. Does this teach us anything about the physical world, or does it just question our beliefs as to the world we live in? Unfortunately, it is the latter.
Plato never writes about how we can see the physical world differently, or how we can understand or gain more knowledge of the physical world, he only writes about how we can try to acknowledge a different world, or realm in which all perfect things exist. In a way, he’s trying to convince us that we should live truthfully in our world by accepting that it is just being judges by the perfections of another. This does not in any way, shape or form develop our understanding of the physical world itself.
Even thought Plato’s theory of the forms is very interesting and thought provoking, it is however of very little use when it comes to gaining more knowledge and understanding about the physical world in which we live in.
