"Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself" - Plato

Where to start?

All three of these animals look almost completely different yet we still know that they are all dogs. But what makes us link one dog from another? Most people would say, "well their ears, legs, fur, paws and tails" and I would reply "haven't you just described a cat?" 

There has to be something that makes us associate one dog from another, maybe it is just the way their features are put together or because that is what we have always been told. But maybe not, what if it's more than that, something bigger that we cannot see in itself but helps us link what we see.

Plato:

This is where Plato comes in. Plato is a Greek philosopher student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle. He is best known for his book 'The Republic' one of his key theories in this is about The Forms. Plato disregarded posteriori's (knowledge through experience) as he believed that our senses in this world trick us and our bodies demand too much that they distract us from questioning and finding truth

The Worlds:

Plato is a soul duelist, he believed there are two world: 

1. The World of Appearances - this is the world we are in, the world where I have written this blog post and you are (possibly, maybe, if your not bored yet) reading it. This is not the real world, nothing we see or experience here is real. We don't learn in this world but remember what we learnt in The World of the Forms. This is why everyone seems to have an understanding of things such as beauty before they have learnt it, this is called a priori (knowledge before/without experience)
2. The World of the Forms - this is a spiritual and real world, everything there is perfect, unchanging and eternal. In this world exists pure forms. We learn here but not through senses, we are at one with knowledge and understand everything. 

Plato believed we cycle from world to world, but only philosophers can break the chain and live forever in The World of the Forms because they question the world around them instead of accepting what they are told by their senses and by other people. Through separating our mind form our body and questioning Plato believed you could come to see the Forms for what they really are.

Forms:

I mentioned that in The World of the Forms there are pure forms by this I mean there is true and perfect version of everything (we can all imagine a perfect bed or a perfect dinner.) In The World of Experiences what we see are imitations and shadows of true form, they are not perfect like the pure forms. We happily except that what we see is true because it has some truth in it however little it may be, because it is easier for people to believe things that have some truth in them (if your mind has gone to Moriarty trying to get people to believe Sherlock is a fake, in The Reichenbach Fall, by using mostly truth congrats, me and you will get along nicely) 

A pure form is perfect as it fulfill its purpose (in the same way a perfect bed would fulfill its purpose of sending us to sleep)

I just want to sleep here forever!

Referring back to the example of the dogs, we associate all of those breeds of dogs as dogs because they are imitations of the pure form of a perfect dog that fulfills the purpose of a dog. Because all of these breeds have part of the pure forms within them, this is why we can link them together.

However Plato did not often concern himself with material things when he talked about forms. The main forms that Plato emphasized were: truth, beauty and justice, in The World of the Forms the pure forms of these exist and it is because of this that we see them here, but as we know these features are often manipulated and twisted, this is because they are only imitations, not the pure thing (a copy of something is never a good and perfect as the real thing)

Finally Plato also talks about The Form of the Good, this is the greatest and superior form that causes all of the other forms, The Form of the Good has many God like qualities and in many ways was Plato's God.

Coming up...

My next blog post will be on The Allegory/Analogy of The Cave, this is the example Plato used to explain his theory of The Forms.

My Opinion:

I like Plato's theory as it explains how me link things together, how we have awareness of certain things before we are taught/experience them and because it does makes sense that philosophers know more as they ask more questions. However I dislike how far-fetched the idea of another world is, but then what do I know!

Over to you:

I want to know what you think of Plato's theory so far, please let me know in the comments what you like/dislike about the parts of the theory we have discussed in this post.

You have made it to the end, well done.

If there are any parts that you are unclear on or wish to know more about please feel free to ask :)

Thank you so much, see you soon x