Revision notes for Plato

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Understanding the World
When a person considers a particular object, the first question to ask is:
What is it??
The answer comes when all the characteristics of the object are combined and
compared with a mentally held form. From this comparison, the person arrives
at an answer to the question.
e.g. What is it? A Tomato
We can only understand it if we can We also need to compare it with some
compare a range of red things. non-red things to get an idea of its red-
ness.
To arrive at an answer, we need to have an understanding of what red is,
and also what red isn't.
But...
Can this method of inquiry apply to Ethical questions? How can we understand
terms such as beautiful, just and good?
The Form of the Good
N.B. Plato believed that ordinary things gain their nature by either:
Imitating Which would mean that the forms are independent of the
physical world - they transcend or go beyond the material.
Participating Which would mean that the forms are present in the objects of
the physical world, and much less mysterious.
Plato believed that we understand something to be good - we are born with a
dim recollection of the Form of justice, or goodness, or whatever. In Phaedo
(73-7), Plato talks of the a priori knowledge of Mathematics.
a priori knowledge that is held before sense experience is gathered
a posteriori knowledge that comes after sense experience.
2+2=4 is something that we know before we find four things to add together.
Plato thought that this knowledge was a recollection of things known in an earlier
existence.

2. Plato
He believed that we carry a paradigm (or example) of an object. The tangible
objects of this world are imperfect imitations of these paradigms. These are the
forms.
The answer to the question What is a Dog can be answered in terms of the
essential nature of a dog - its dogginess.
The Ultimate Form is the Form of the Good. An understanding of the Good
allows everything else to be valued. While we can carry out good acts in this
world, they are a pale imitation of the perfect good that exists as an ideal in the
world of ideals.
So What?
Later Philosophers took Plato's idea of the Form -
The idea that there is a Perfect Good can translate into the idea of a
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God.
Plato's idea of the Perfect Good is also relevant to the argument
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about the nature of Evil -
Some believe that evil is simply an absence of Good - Absolute
Good exists as a perfect ideal, but Absolute Evil is not the
opposite. It is not an objective force, but rather a lack of
something, rather like a vacuum.
The concept of the Form as a transcendent, distant thing to be
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imitated, or of a thing that participates in the objects in the physical
world, has implications for thinking about the nature of God. If God
is transcendent, how can He affect the world. If God participates is
the world, can He be omnipresent (everywhere), omnisient (all
knowing) c.