Plato's Theory of the Forms
Are the Platonic Forms Possible or Knowable?
Plato, the student of Socrates, was the first great writer of philosophy. His metaphysical position challenges readers to go beyond this earthly realm in search of truth.
Throughout his writing career, Plato developed a theory of the world that went beyond the here and now sensations to what he believed was the deeper reality. He believed any specific object was what it was for a very good reason, and that reason was not contained within itself. Therefore, Plato looked outside of the specific sensational reality for that higher reason of things. Plato’s metaphysics can therefore be said to culminate in things beyond the physical realm.
Plato’s Epistemology
Plato pictures the growing knowledge of this supernatural reality as a movement from darkness to light, a movement away from the illusory or incomplete version of reality given in sensation and toward a perfect and pure intellectual knowledge of true reality. The zenith of this knowledge, however, cannot be attained by one’s own effort, but ultimately only received as a gift. All we can do is to turn toward it and receive it, and the practical method of doing this is through the method of introspection, rather than that of empirical examination.
The World of the Forms
Plato believed that the world was essentially intelligible, and so it must be the intellect and not the senses that had the ultimate ‘vision’ of this true being. The intellect had to use the information of the senses to read what was behind, and beyond, sensation. As everything on earth “here below” was changing and corruptible, the opposite was suggested of the beyond, because in what other way could we consider the other realm to be other than our earthly one? Existence of things on earth was contingent, and so in the other realm they must be non-contingent, or necessary. Things here were individual and limited, and therefore there things must be universal and infinite. The forms that objects had here below were, therefore, imperfect cases of the perfect case or form that exists in the other intellectual realm. The different forms must, moreover, share a unity in diversity that comes from the principal existing form, being the form of The Good. Goodness is in control of reality, and from this centre everything flows due to the infinite nature of goodness.
The Systematic Problem of Plato’s Metaphysics
One difficulty for Plato’s doctrine is that it is hard to know how it could be known whether Plato is right. For if Plato is right and there is a divine realm and only a few ‘enlightened’ individuals have access to it, how would it be possible to know whether he was one of the enlightened ones or not, without having access to that supernatural world itself?
The Need for Empirical Truth
Plato believes that knowledge is just remembering what was known before the fall of immortal souls into mortal bodies that encage and imprison. But could a blind person ever meaningfully say that they had knowledge of what it was to see without the experience of actually seeing? Similarly, what sense does it make to claim to know reality, and then simply to discount the ultimate reality of the physical as Plato does? There is knowledge which only experience can give, the empirical, which Plato downplays. Plato’s system implies that knowing reality is the same as having a vision of the forms in their purity, but even using Plato’s own logic, this cannot be known, strictly speaking, by any being still living here below. While Plato's picture of reality is perfectly possible, and is captivating as a story, as a philosophy it is not knowable as such, and implies the need for a certain amount of imagination and faith for it to be believed.
