In Phaedo, Plato discusses his theory on forms. He argues that forms hold the true meaning of things in themselves. For instance, Plato speaks about beauty. He says,
[I]f someone tells me that a thing is beautiful because it has a bright color or shape or any such thing, I ignore these other reasons--for all these confuse me--...that nothing else makes it beautiful other than the presence of, or the sharing in, or however you may describe its relationship to that Beautiful we mentioned, for I will not insist on the precise nature of the relationship, but that all beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful. ...[I]t is through Beauty that beautiful things are made beautiful (Plato 100d-100e).
Plato is arguing that when we apply the term beautiful to an object, we explain this by verbalizing how it exemplifies beauty in describes the characteristic of that thing. However, only the form of beauty can exemplify what beauty is in itself absent from material objects. Also, in relation to the forms, Plato uses the example of height. Plato argues that we become tall after being short in terms of the theory of opposites; however, based on the theory of forms, tallness does not derive from shortness. Tallness is a form that already exists and is separate from shortness. Plato implies that new forms cannot be made instead they are merely discovered. In The Courage to Create, Plato’s theory fits in perfectly with Rollo May’s definition of the courage to create which is “the discovering of new forms” (May 21). So, perhaps, to be creative does not mean one is creating something purely and entirely new, but one is simply discovering something new that no one else has seen. A true artist is able to tap into the realm of the forms and come back bearing gifts of new discoveries. Plato argues that only the soul is able to experience the universe of forms, and to do so, the soul has to be separated from the body. If Plato’s theory is true, then it is as if artists are capable of out of body experiences, and these experiences provide us with art.
May, Rollo. The Courage to Create. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994. Print.
This treatment of Shari's also does a great job of articulating when we discussed at yesterday's class regarding God viewed as a "builder" or "constructor." In the Timaeus, it is suggested that God didn't create the forms but instead fashioned the world out of preexisting chaos and followed an original model or plan.
ReplyDeleteSome questions that seem to emerge from all of this: Would the model or plan be one form or a set of forms? Does it contain things other than forms? Where did the forms come from if God did not create them?
I was thinking about this some more and it seems to me that according to Shari's thesis there would be an infinite number of forms. This is a problem many readers of Plato encounter, and also something that the Neo-Platonic philosophers bumped up against. If there is an infinite number of forms then it seems we live in a universe of infinite diversity, and therefore, a lack of Being. In other words, how can the world be based on a stable and unchanging reality if reality itself is composed of a countless number of individual realities (i.e. forms)?
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