Platonic Forms
“Can’t you see the
game is crooked? Yeah, but it’s the only game in town.” -Canada Bill Jones
There is an odd pattern that seems to emerge in every introduction to the philosophy presented in Plato’s Republic. It goes something like this:
1) A description of how Plato’s perfect society would be overseen by an elite caste of Guardians, who are selected only after being subjected to exhaustive trials of character and judgement.
2) An explanation that, above the Guardians, is the Philosopher King, who endures even more grueling trials, and who rules not by his own whims, but by an intimate knowledge of the Forms, particularly the form of good.
3) An explanation of the Forms, the idea that a perfect version of a given object exists on a removed plane, and of which dense matter can only imitate. Usually, something like an animal is given as an example. Out there, on the plane of the forms, is the perfect and eternal form of the horse, of which Secretariat, Mister Ed, Shadowfax, and the My Littl…
There is an odd pattern that seems to emerge in every introduction to the philosophy presented in Plato’s Republic. It goes something like this:
1) A description of how Plato’s perfect society would be overseen by an elite caste of Guardians, who are selected only after being subjected to exhaustive trials of character and judgement.
2) An explanation that, above the Guardians, is the Philosopher King, who endures even more grueling trials, and who rules not by his own whims, but by an intimate knowledge of the Forms, particularly the form of good.
3) An explanation of the Forms, the idea that a perfect version of a given object exists on a removed plane, and of which dense matter can only imitate. Usually, something like an animal is given as an example. Out there, on the plane of the forms, is the perfect and eternal form of the horse, of which Secretariat, Mister Ed, Shadowfax, and the My Littl…
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