Samantha Johnson
Plato’s Concept on Ideal Forms
Plato believes we are living in the shadow of reality, if we were to face reality, it would be overwhelming and we could misunderstand or be frightened back to the shadows. He believes in order to face reality, we have to slowly introduce ourselves to what is really real, to get access to reality. Plato portrays this view using an analogy.
There is a man, he is tied to a chair in a cave and he is facing the back of the wall, he sees shadows of everything that walks past the cave, such as elephants, camels and Irish Red Setters. Throughout his existence he has known the shadows of the objects he sees to be reality. Finally, he is untied and allowed to turn around and see what reality really is, but he was scared, he did not like what he saw. He turned around and returned to the reality in which he thought was real. Living in the façade of shadows of reality did not bother the man, as this was easier for him to accept than what is really real. The objects represent Ideal Forms, Plato believed that Ideal Forms are idealised notions of whatever object, behaviour or description we are thinking of. For example, if we think of a happy shopper, we recognise the shopper to be happy because they are complying with our ideal forms of happy, which are stamped in our minds. Another example, used by Plato is a Table, when someone sees a table and says, “That’s one hot table” it is because according to Plato the table comes close to the Blueprint of the ideal table, which he already possesses in his mind. Ideal Forms represent Absolute Reality, as opposed to the many particular objects, which in small ways resemble them. The Ideal Forms precede existence; in order to fulfil our tasks as humans we must become aware of the Ideal Forms of everything.
