As described by Plato, Forms are the entities that are signified by overall concepts that are always controversially equated with universals. He does make a great distinction between the visible and intelligible (Comfort, 1957). The Forms or essences are therefore understood to be real intelligible objects, that are known by the intellect and are perfect, complete, whole, unchanging and prior to ever changing, imperfect, specific sensible objects apprehended through touch, sight, and so on (Ross, 1951). Plato argued that the Forms are not isolated but linked by virtue of their common origin in the Form of the one. According to Plato, the good life is realizable only in a polis or city-state society. The Ideal state, as Plato said is indeed the genuinely just state.
According Plato, epistemology is the account of what knowledge is. However, some readers may as well think that epistemology must address the question if there is any knowledge. Plato does not consider the global skeptical difficulties. He assumes that the presents of knowledge, or at least that it is quite possible, and he investigates into the conditions that enables its possibility. These particular conditions, widely conceived, concern on the one only hand, the major rational capacities of humans, or more correct souls, and besides that, the knowledge objects (Ross, 1951). With respect to objects, Forms certainly are true objects of knowledge. There are also several disputes as to whether something in the material world is a suitable object or not. The physical world is just but an image and an imperfect world of change (Comfort, 1957). Several texts in the Phaedo and, most wonderful, the Republic's big metaphors of Sun, Cave and line, indicates that Plato is a quite skeptic about knowledge of the physical and the sensible world. Humans can just have beliefs about it. But several recoil at the prospect that Plato is well known as a skeptic. Citing and referring to the thrust of other discussions, these readers claim that while all knowledge for Plato must be primarily based, on Forms, in some sense, one who knows Forms can also get knowledge of the physical world.
A form is an abstract quality or property. If you separate the roundness of a basketball from its weight, its color, etc. and just consider roundness by itself, you are thinking of the Form of roundness. Plato stated that this property was there apart from the basketball, in a different form of existence than the basketball (Ross, 1951). The form is not only the idea of roundness that one have in his mind. It exists autonomously of the basketball and autonomously of whether someone thinks of it. All objects are round, not only this basketball, copy or participate this same form of roundness. In order to know exactly what a Form is and how it is different from a material object, we, therefore need to look at the two of the properties that have the characteristics of the Forms.
The Forms are often transcendent. This, therefore, means that they do not exist in space and time. A material object such as a basketball exists at a specific place at a particular time. A roundness Form do not exist at any place or time (Ross, 1951). The Forms subsist or exist, in a different mode. This is very important because it explains why the forms are rigid to change. A Form such as roundness can never change neither does not even exist in time. It is the same at all places or time in which it might be instantiated (Comfort, 1957). A form can never exist in space in that it can be instantiated in various places at once and require not be instantiated anywhere in order for the Form to exist. The Form of roundness can exist in various particular spatial locations, and even if all round objects were destructed, the property of roundness would still retain its existence.
The forms are:
Transcendent: the forms do not exist in space and time. There is no particular time or space at which redness exists.
Pure: the forms only exemplify a single property. Material objects are often impure; they combine several properties such as, circularity, blackness and hardness into single object. A Form, for example circularity, exemplifies one property only.
Archetypes: The Forms are purely archetypes; that is, they are good examples of the property that they exemplify. The forms are the excellent models which all material objects are based. For example, the form of redness is red. All red objects are simply depreciates the quality, impure copies of this good form of redness.
Ultimately Real: The forms are the purely real entities and not material objects. All material objects are images or copies of some collection of Forms; their reality originates only from the forms.
Causes: The forms are always the major causes of all things. They avail the explanation as to why any thing looks the way it is, and they are the origin of the being of all things.
Systematically Interconnected: The forms consist of a system leading down from the form of the perfect moving from more general to more particular, from more subjective to more objective. This particular systematic structure is seen in the structure of the dialectic process by which we come to the knowledge of the forms.
If particulars and universal for example man or greatness - all are the same and exist then the Form is not one but is multiple. If they are just like each other than they have a form that is equal and others that differs (Ross, 1951). Therefore, if the Form and a particular are the same then there can be another, or third, greatness or man by possession of which they are the same (Comfort, 1957). An infinite regression must impact (consequently the mathematicians always call the argument the Third Man Regression); whereby, an endless forms of third men. The real, greatness, participant rendering the whole series great, is lucking. Also, every Form is not unitary but is consist of infinite parts, none of which is the right Form.
Plato’s political theory does not originate from an analogy which creates the state a monster individual that have interests superior to and independent of those of common citizens (Ross, 1951). It derives rather from doctrine of major interests discernible by those which have special ability and training, interest which final thinkers have taken to be the object of a real will which unner even where a person’s mere empirical needs are shortsightedly misdirected. Plato identifies the needs of the ideal state that have the objective interests of its citizens (Comfort, 1957). That the entire theory should not be clarified by examining the arguments that provide grounds for not confounding Plato’s theory with several others which may reach the same conclusions about political organizations and obligations.
Plato in his state attempts to show through the discourse and behavior of Socrates that justice is much better than justice is the perfect which men must struggle for, regardless of whether they could still be awarded (Ross, 1951). The method that he uses aims at using dialectic, the answering and questioning which led the listener from different points supposedly with irrefutable logic by acquiring agreement to every important point before proceeding on to the passage, and so construct an argument. However, his two young listeners formulated the question of whether justice is important than injustice, what all do to a man, and what brings about the first perfect and the next bad. In answering this particular question, Socrates directly deals directly with the philosophy of the virtue of the individual and goodness (Comfort, 1957). Also, ties the concept of the good state, which is a state of three key classes of people with a strong social structure and little in the amusement form. Although Socrates returns every time to the concept of justice in his discourse on the good city-state, much of it is not the original subject. However, one of his key points is that goodness is does what is perfect for the common, more good rather than for personal happiness. There is a true that philosophy turns on the virtue, and his strong belief that real virtue is its own reward.
Plato was preparing for a political career when the trial and final execution of Socrates changed the ways of his life. Plato’s writings are like dialogues, with Socrates as the principal speaker (Ross, 1951). In his Allegory of the Cave, Plato explains symbolically the predicament in which mankind gets itself and suggests a way of salvation (Comfort, 1957). The Allegory explains in short form most of Plato's key philosophical assumptions: his belief that the world disclose by our senses is not the real world but only a bad copy of it, and that the real world can only be understood intellectually. Plato’s idea that knowledge can never be moved from teacher to student, but rather that academic have in directing student's attentions toward what is real and important and allowed them to understand it for themselves.
References
Cornford, Francis MacDonald. Plato and Parmenides. New York: The Liberal Arts Press, (1957).
Ross. Sir David Plato's Theory of Ideas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, (1951).
