Plato - ToF Flashcards
Qualities of RoFs
Transcendent Eternal Perfect Intelligible Archetypal
Qualities of Real of Becoming
Changeable Sensible Spatio-temporal Copied Participatory Imperfect
Knowledge
Episteme
Opinion/belief
Doxa
Nature of the Form of Good
The first principle of everything.
Not a property other forms have but a force.
The ‘primal Form’; all forms share in the Form of Good’s intelligibility , as at very least existence is a good.
The Republic: The Form of Good gives ‘objects of knowledge’ (the Forms) their truth and the knower’s mind the power of knowing”
What is the Form of Good to Plato?
Plato in The Phaedo: “the truly good … holds everything together”
Plato: the Form of Good “is the universal author of all things beautiful and right … lord of light in the visible world … immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual”
Plato’s notable text explaining the ToF
The Republic
Lacewing’s take on the Form of Good?
- Different and superior to the other Forms
- The Form of Forms
- Perfection is the characteristic that relates all other Forms to the Form of Good; Forms are perfect in their own essence
What is the Idea of Good in relation to the other Forms?
Coherence/harmony/unit-over-difference.
It is the unity and coherence of all other Forms, and all Forms owe their being to it as they are good in existence and in being part of coherent order.
Ethical implications of the Good
Knowledge of something is knowledge of what is good, because knowledge of something is to understand its essence, and when it exemplifies its essence. A good chair is a chair exemplifying as many characteristics of the Form of a Chair but is not a moral chair.
What is learning to Plato?
Learning is recollection.
(Positive support): in Meno Socrates manages to elicit mathematical truths (mathematika episteme) from a
boy with no experience of maths by means of reason and questioning only. Seems to prove knowledge is of a timeless world beyond the sensible.
An educated person can reach out to this ideal world and grasp some of its truths.
Forms and Epistemology
Plato’s epistemology proposes the knowledge of Platonic Ideas is innate, and therefore there is no learning of the Forms, just the recollection of Ideas buried deep within the Soul, recoverable only by reason.
Order of analogies and significance
The Sun
The Line
The Cave
Significance is Plato’s audience could not understand the analogy of the Sun so he devised that of the Line, and for those who yet found it incomprehensible he devised the Cave. Ironically it was the Cave, the least true to his own philosophy but tailored most for the common man which receives the most criticism.
What is the ToF thought to be built on?
Socrates’ doctrine of absolute standards.
