Essay On Plato's Theory Of Forms

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Throughout the development of philosophy, Plato, famous student of Socrates, has always been widely considered one of the most influential philosophical figures of all time. One of his most prominent contributions to the philosophical world is his establishment of the “Theory of Forms”. Plato’s Theory of Forms is primarily based on what is real and what is not. What is real is thought to be perfect, however, something can not be real or perfect as it is always changing. He explained that the forms are very different to their appearances and "The World of Forms" can only be understood by those who seek knowledge, not by the ignorant. Plato ideas present the belief that there are other realities of which we have some knowledge about, and that …show more content…

We don’t ever sense anything “theoretical”, but as some individual thing or other. The theory of forms makes a difference between those objects that are real and those that are only real in our minds. Plato's dialogue represents knowledge as the process of leaving the cave and going into the sunlight. The people in the cave find their reality in the shadows cast in the cave and suppose there can never be anything beyond these shadows. These shadows are used to explain that the world that we see is just a shadow or reflection of what is real. For Plato, the real world is not what we see around us, it is only the “World of Forms” that is real and …show more content…

This has become one of the arguments and reasons why some have refused his theory. For example, again , like the Sun in the Allegory of the Cave, the Good cancels out the other Forms. We can see that Justice, for example, is a detail of Goodness. We know that we have never seen, with our senses, examples of perfect goodness, but we have seen many examples which resemble goodness. Therefore we recognize them as ‘good’ when we see them because of the way in which they correspond to our idea of the Form of the Good. Plato also says because we have concepts of the Ideal Forms, without having lived them, our souls must have known the Forms before we were even

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