PHL 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Making Money, Cardinal Virtues
4 Dec 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Evan Reed
PHL 101
Introduction to Philosophy
Fall 2018
Professor Herman
Plato’s Theory of Forms
● Arguable the most influential text of western ideas
- Because it’s the first in depth treatment of some of the fundamental questions such as
justice, political society, beauty, nature of reality, etc.
● A conversation between Socrates and Plato’s two brothers
● Ancient Greece when people were going around and encountering the world, obvious
question was “What is This?”
- What is reality? What constitutes reality?
● Metaphysics: The answer to the question of “What is reality”; What constitutes the real
world
● Metaphysical account before Plato:
- The building bloc of reality is WATER, FIRE, AIR, and EARTH
● Socrates and Plato argued that reality could not be anything particular but must be in
what all particular things share, their essence
● Reality is thus, the Idea or Form of things that bestows reality on those instances
- Reality is the Form of a thing (ex: the Form of chairness that gives reality to a chair)
- The form of deathness that this instance takes part in and therefore becomes what it
is on it’s own
- It’s not sufficient to qualify as reality
- Reality is unchanging, eternal
● The world of experiences or appearance: temporal, particular, contingent, ever-
changing
● The real world or intelligible world: eternal, universal, necessary and ever-lasting
● Forms are hierarchically organized with the Form of a GOOD on top
- Form of the good is what gives meaning, makes sense of the rest of them
Pyramid Order:
1) Good
2) Justice
3) Chair
4) Dirt
- If form is not the desk but rather the abstraction from them it’s reference is to which
our understanding of them and the category of being
- If this is reality, How can we know the Forms and who can know them?
- Does everyone have access to the world of forms?
● The world of appearance, the world of people in the cave, the real world, the world
outside under the sun – Allegory mentioned in the reading
● Theory of form is in the background of the discussion of Socrates as they discuss things
such as Justice
Class-based City (Tripartite Soul)
Document Summary
Arguable the most influential text of western ideas. Because it"s the first in depth treatment of some of the fundamental questions such as justice, political society, beauty, nature of reality, etc. A conversation between socrates and plato"s two brothers. Ancient greece when people were going around and encountering the world, obvious question was what is this? . Metaphysics: the answer to the question of what is reality ; what constitutes the real world. The building bloc of reality is water, fire, air, and earth. Socrates and plato argued that reality could not be anything particular but must be in what all particular things share, their essence. Reality is thus, the idea or form of things that bestows reality on those instances. Reality is the form of a thing (ex: the form of chairness that gives reality to a chair) The form of deathness that this instance takes part in and therefore becomes what it is on it"s own.
