Plato's concept of Forms is of little use in the understanding of the physical world. Discuss.

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Thebe Ringner

B. Plato’s concept of Forms is of little use in the understanding of the physical world. Discuss.

I agree that Plato’s world of Forms has little use to the physical and materialistic world that we ourselves live in. Especially as society becomes more materially dependant, those of us who do not seek philosophical ‘truth’ have little use for the ‘perfect world’ that Plato seems to have such a grasp on.

Plato’s concept of the perfect world, in short is the world that we physically live in but perfected. Shouldn’t someone with so much intellectual and intelligent thought to the world focus of the world of the senses instead of that which only our unconscious dips in and out of?

To understand the physical world, the ideas of Plato have little relevance, as his theory of Forms focuses on how the physical world is only a mere approximation of what the real world is, Perfection. To say that the real world, and world of knowledge is that of perfection begs the question, can the World of Forms contain the perfect Form of Reality when reality can be bad and good? However ‘real’ and the concept of the word is contrasted between what we think and what Plato believes. When we say, ‘get real’, we mean ‘get out of dream land and face your problems’, get out of our dream for perfection and ‘get real’. However, Plato says real is perfection. His belief of ‘real’ cannot help us understand reality in the material world as real to us is the ‘lesser’ world, containing the illusory and far from perfect Forms.

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Moreover, as the philosophical thought of ‘how do we know what we know?’ dips in and out of our thoughts, Plato’s theory is perfect for winding our inquisitive questions around. He lays out an explanation for ‘how we know the perfect circle’ and most of the world’s population do not beg to argue but agree the theory or go with the materialistic view that we know from generations of humans.

The physical world is full of the ‘good, bad and the ugly’. Plato’s theory, flaws in understanding the physical world as he fails to tell us what would be ...

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