Platos theory of Forms tells us nothing of importance. Discuss.

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Plato’s theory of Forms tells us nothing of importance. Discuss.

In this essay I will debate and state my opinion on whether Plato’s theory of forms tells us anything of importance.  I will start by describing Plato’s theory of forms, it is the theory that the world we live in is a world of illusion and that another world exists outside of space and time, called the World of Forms which can only be accessed intellectually. Plato suggests that the objects of this world are copies of the Form. This not only applies to objects, it applies to things like beauty and justice. What is beautiful to one is ugly to another and Plato thought there must be something that is definitely beautiful, which is why he proposed the idea of a Form of Beauty. The Form of Beauty is always completely beautiful; there are many beautiful things in this world but only one Form of Beauty for those things.

In my opinion Plato’s theory of Forms does not tell us anything of importance ad there are many reasons to why I think this. The main reason is because there is no evidence for his theory, the only way to access the World of Forms is intellectually and so you can only gain evidence if you access it yourself. Even if Plato says he has been to the World of Forms there is no way he can prove that he has. David Hume says that “a wise man proportions his belief to the evidence”, this means that the stronger the evidence, the more justified the belief and since there is no evidence for it people have no reason to believe it and therefore it is not important.

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Some people may disagree with me and argue that it is important. This could be because earlier philosophers’ theories fit with Plato’s theory, for example, Heraclitus’ river theory. Heraclitus’ theory suggests that the world of sense experience is subject to constant change. Heraclitus said “It is not possible to step into the same river twice” – according to Heraclitus, everything in the world is in a constant state of flux, he said that things come into the world, they change all the time, that they are here and then they go away again. This goes hand in hand with Plato’s ...

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