The Forms
- Why this account?
- how to solve the challenge of Parmenides:
SOZEIN TA PHAINOMENA
- Melissus: "If there is a many, they must be like the one."
- how can the Many be like the One?
- by participating
- the forms must exist:
- separately
- hierarchically
- the many are knowable to the degree that they participate in the forms
- this is particularly true of moral attributes: good acts are good to the degree that they participate in (hence realize) the (perfect or ideal) form of the good--not the good in this or that respect but the Good absolutely
TO AGATHON
- our guide in these matters: mathematics: judge by the intellect, not the senses
- "Being" (the Forms) is logically prior to "Becoming"
- The "theory" of Ideas (Forms)-- Phaedo
- forms are presupposed by our ability to make sense of experience at all (whether we can articulate the forms or not)
- this is particularly true of certain crucial forms
- identity (equality)
- similarity
- difference
- an example from morality: pleasure is good, but not necessarily good nor unalloyed good, since taking pleasure is not always worthy. What is thoroughly good? The Good (
TO AGATHON)
- things in this world approximate the real
- the soul & ideas are apparent in the same mode as they exist in reality (which is not true of material things)
- "real" body = idea of body
- "real" idea = idea of an idea
- "real" soul = idea of a soul (itself conceived following Pythagoreans as an idea or
HARMONIA)
- Scale of Forms
- from Evil to Good/Beauty
- hedonism--low on the scale: pleasure and delight are desired (hence good) but not necessarily desirable)
- that which is truly desirable is (generally) not desired. Philosophy is the art & practice of dying
- Criticisms of the Forms: The Parmenides
- how many? Mud???
- "participation": just a metaphor?
- Third Man argument
revised September 23, 1996
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