Platonic and Aristotelian forms

7/29/2019 Platonic and Aristotelian forms

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Platonic and Aristotelian forms

The Platonic and Aristotelian (F/f)orms share many similarities, and seem to be

attempts to understand or make sense of the relationship between ideas and abstract notions

and the world around us. In this essay I will begin by explaining Platos conception of the

Forms followed by Aristotles. I shall then elucidate what I perceive to be the key

differences.

In the Republic Plato makes a number of references to the forms. In Book V he

states (p144 The Republic, Translated by Benjamin Jowlett):

The lovers of sounds and sights are fond of fine tones and colors and forms

and all the artificial products that are made out of them, but their mind is incapable

of seeing or loving absolute beauty

In this Book Plato is making a distinction between ignorance and knowledge and

establishing a middle ground of opinion. In this framework knowledge is only of absolutes,

or the Forms. He reiterates but if there be anything which is of such a nature as to be and

not to be, that will have a place intermediate between pure being and the absolute negation

of being. (p 144) What we gain from this is that forms, to Plato, are absolute and pure

whereas our world, the world of opinion and often ignorance can only approximate it.

The idea of our world being a reflection or an obscure approximation of the forms is

further reinforced with Platos metaphor of the cave. Loosely paraphrased, the cave is a

situation in which there are people chained to face a wall whereupon there are images cast

from the shadows and light of a fire. To these miserable people, this would be their

reality.(p 177) Plato then supposes that the man is set free and is made to see the objects

used to cast shadows and explain their relationship to the shadow objects of his former

reality. Finally, the man is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast


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until he is forced into the presence of the sun itself. (p178) This extended metaphor

suggests that everything we perceive now, and accept as reality is a reflection or

representation of the world of the forms, the absolutes. What this relationship is, exactly, is

vague, but it provides a stunning visual and intuitive understanding. That is, the shadows

upon the cave wall are imitations of the sculptures and various puppets used to create them.

Similarly these puppets and sculptures are imitations of objects that exist outside of the

cave. In Platos worldview there is a form of dualism, there is our dynamic world,

attempting to imitate the Forms and there is the absolute world of the Forms.

Another important aspect of Platos Forms is what absolutes occupy this other

world. At the end of Book V he provides a few examples those who see the many

beautiful, and who yet neither see absolute beauty, nor can follow any guide who points the

way thither; who see many just, and not absolute justice. (148) This passage suggests that

the Forms are of abstract notions like justice beauty and good. Further light is shed on the

subject in Book X when Plato discusses the illusory creation through poetry. He states

there are beds and tables in the worldplenty of themBut there are only two ideas or

forms of themone the idea of a bed, and the other of a table. And the maker of either of

them makes a bed or he makes a table for our use, in accordance with the idea. (p253)

This adds the forms of many objects into his world of Forms. That is, along with the forms

of justice, and good there are also chairs, tables and other like objects.

Aristotle, in contrast, provides us with a different conception of form. His

understanding is dynamic and grows upon itself throughout the Physics, Metaphysics and

De Anima. Aristotle first mentions form in the physics. He claims another account of

nature is the shape or form which is specified in the definition of the thing He continues,

stating that material that has the potential to be a bed is not a bed because it has not


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received the form of bed yet. (p118) On the next page he says The form indeed is nature

rather than the matter; for a thing is more properly said to be what it is when it has attained

to fulfillment than when it exists potentially.and later The shape then is nature (p119)

What he has established early on is a correlation between form and shape; using the two

interchangeably. At this point it may be fair of us to say that the form of the bed lies in its

shape. That is, material having such a shape/form is a bed.

Later, Aristotle modifies the understanding of form in De Anima. Toward the

beginning of Book II he suggests in the sense of form or essence, which is that precisely

in virtue of which a thing is called a this (p 171) In this instance form is equated with

essence rather than shape. Form in this new definition is the essence by which something is

deemed something. We might say an object is a knife by virtue of its being sharp, being

used for cutting and smaller than a sword. It has the essence of being a knife. Aristotle

builds upon this notion, aiding our understanding of an objects essence in terms of its

contrast to privation. He asserts that one might say that there are three principles the

form, the privation, and the matter. But each of these is different for each case; e.g. in color

they are white, black, and surface, and in day and night they are light, darkness, and air (p

278) In this framework we can then attribute degrees of form and degrees of privation. That

is I may have the form of health but also slight degrees of privation, in that I am not

perfectly healthy and may have lingering unknown health problems. Or that a saw may

generally be said to have the form of a saw in so far that it is sharp and made of durable

substances, but it would also have privation in that it is not an optimally sharp and durable

object.

The idea of white (form,) black (privation,) and surface (matter) is reiterated earlier

by Aristotle when describing the senses. In book II of De Anima he puts forward a theory


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of the senses stating By a sense is meant what has the power of receiving into itself the

sensible forms of things without the matter.(p 204)That is objects have the potential to be

sense, and we actualize this potential when we perceive them, we take in their form through

our senses but we do not take in the object itself. This is comparable to the earlier sense, in

that the form lies in the white of the color that we take in, rather than in the surface of the

object itself.

Aristotle shakes up this very physical notion of the form when discussing the soul.

He alleges that the soul must be a substance in the sense of the form of a natural body

having life potentially within it. But substance (meaning form here) is actuality, and thus

soul is the actuality of a body as above characterized. (p 172) This means that the soul is

the form of a living creature. This is a large deviation from the initial understanding of

form as merely an objects shape or our ability to perceive it. Though, it fits loosely with the

notion of essence.

If we put all of his ideas together, Aristotles notion of forms we get something that

is roughly equitable to our internal understanding of an external object. That is, we see a

bed and we have an idea of it, we perceive the form of the bed in its shape, essence and

from the senses we receive. Form is also when these notions are actualized, that is when

something moves from potentiality to actuality. For example, we have the materials for a

bed, it has the potential to be a bed. But we impart the form of the bed upon it, that is we

give it the essence of what it is to be a bed, in terms of us understanding it to be a bed, and

through the act of shaping it.

In the metaphysics Aristotle clearly outlines the essential difference between his

conception of form and Platos forms. He expresses these differences :


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Now in some cases the this does not exist apart from the composite substance,

e.g. the form of house does not so exist, unless the art of building exists apart; but of

the this exists apart from the concrete thing, it is only in the case of natural

objects. And so Plato was not far wrong when he said that there are as many Forms

as there are kinds of natural object (if there are Forms distinct from the things of

this earth) For when a man is healthy, then health also exists evidently then

there no necessity, on this ground at least, for the existence of ideas, (p 277)

The essence of what Aristotle is saying is that while an object may embody a certain form,

that does not mean that the Form continues to exist regardless of the objects continued

existence. That is, from a Platonic point of view, the Form of bed exists regardless of the

existence of beds that carpenters may or may not construct. Platonic Forms exist in a much

more abstract sense than Aristotles forms.Objects in Platos worldview only participate in

or imitate the Forms. A bed that a craftsman makes is only an approximation to the Form of

the bed. Aristotles forms are very much connected to the mat ter which they substantiate

and actualize. Additionally, Plato includes the Forms of good, beauty, justice and other

abstract notions within his category of Forms. Aristotle never considers abstract notions

when discussing forms. For Aristotle a builder cannot put the form of good into a house.

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Platonic and Aristotelian forms