July 12, 2010
How Can You Not Understand The Platonic Forms?
Philosophy is something that can benefit everyone’s life, but few people in today’s world are in a position where they can readily benefit from philosophy. This is because they languish in a misconception that philosophy is only for grad students or dusty old professors. By no means! Philosophy is for everyone.
Looking back at the first great philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, we see that the nature of philosophy was more akin to what we now think of as science. The realm of inquiry for the philosopher was vast, and would often include diverse interests like biology, politics, art, human behavior, economics, and so forth.
In keeping with the ancient interest in the scientific and reason-based application of philosophy, many theories were proposed about the nature of the universe, how the reality we experience matches up with the true reality that exists independent of our observation, and what this meant about how we know things.
The Platonic theory of Forms is one of the first ‘big ideas’ to come from politics, and it’s useful for explaining the ordered structure of being in the universe, and in particular how our minds categorize things as being of the same type, or things different from one another. What exists within the qualities of the Tiger rice cooker that we lump it together with the food processor, but not a van?
To express this idea, Plato uses the image of men chained up in a cave. There is a fire behind them, and the real world passes before that fire, so that the only view of the real world the men have is the shadows cast by the flames. In this way, Plato shows that when we look at blue jays or baby cribs, we’re not really seeing them. We’re seeing just a grim approximation that doesn’t match the true reality, the Form.
In a realm beyond the immediately physical, Plato holds to the existence of ‘Forms’, ideal representations of everything that exists in the universe. In creating a chair, we are attempting to replicate this ultimate Form, but can never totally do so, unless we pursue the philosophical path.
The philosopher’s life is not an easy one, but the benefits are well worth it. To be able to comprehend reality as it truly is, from hamsters to business deals to girls polo shirts, philosophy provides us with a means to structure a keen and powerful intellect that can take us far in the world. Excelsior!
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