[MUSIC] >> Forms and the good. Now that we've been introduced to Plato's theory of forms in The Republic, let's consider the big picture of his view of reality. This is a picture that gets sketched in the figure of The Divided Line at the end of book six, and the image of the Cave at the beginning of book seven, two very famous images in Plato's Republic. I'm going to concentrate on The Divided Line. Now, for anything of which you can ask a what is X question, Plato distinguishes between what he calls The One and The Many. There are many beautiful things on the one hand, and then the beautiful itself, one thing on the other. Or, there are the many Just things, and justice itself, and so on. Now, the many Just things aren't just in the same way that the Just itself is just. And similarly with the many beautiful things, the many pious things, and so on. They are imperfectly just. Socrates describes them as likenesses of the Just itself, or as participating in the Just itself. In the figure of the divided line at the end of Book Six, Socrates proposes that we can understand the relationship between the world of experience, he calls this the visible world, and the world of the forms, he calls it the intelligible world, on analogy to a relation we are quite familiar with, within the visible world. This is the relation between shadows and reflections on the one hand, and the originals of which they are the images. Think of a tree growing at the water's edge which is reflected in the water, or Narcissus admiring himself in the mirror. If we compare the tree to its reflection, or Narcissus to his reflection, it makes sense to say that the reflection of the tree is less real or less really a tree than the tree itself, and that the image of Narcissus in the mirror is less really Narcissus than Narcissus himself. So far, so good. Now comes the part that's a bit of a stretch. We are to suppose that the things we think of as real in the visible world, the world of experience, are really only images or reflections of some higher reality. Now, here, the image of the cave is helpful. Suppose the things we think of as real, real trees and animals and so on, are themselves just imitations of the truly real things. Suppose the real things were outside the cave we've been holed up in all our lives. And the things we thought of as real trees, as distinct let's say, from the shadows they cast on the walls when carried before the fire, were really manufactured replicas of the real thing from some cosmic Toys R Us store, for instance. Now, to get back to the divided line. What we think of as real in comparison to their images are in fact only images or reflections of some further realities in a domain that is accessible only to our intellect or reason. Socrates calls this the intelligible realm. Now, some examples of intelligible objects that we already have some grasp of are the abstract objects we deal with in mathematics and geometry. These are not the same thing as the intelligible forms, according to Socrates. That is, the things that answer the sort of what is x questions that he asks. But getting practice working in mathematics and geometry will help us to get access to the intelligible forms to which even mathematical objects stand in their relation of images. Now, that part of the picture is pretty complicated. That is, the division within the intelligible side of the line, and we don't need to worry about the details for now. What is important for understanding the big picture is that everything that is on the intelligible side of the divided line is more real than everything in the world of our experience, the visible world side in just the same way that a tree is more really a tree than it's image is. So, Plato's view is not simply that there are such things as forms, the answers to his what is x questions. Remember, that's what the sight and sound lovers deny and the philosophers affirm at the end of Book Five. Plato's further claim is that the intelligible forms are more real than the objects of our experience. And given his views about knowledge, remember, those views from the Meno, if we are ever going to have knowledge of any of the objects of our experience we have to grasp those intelligible forms. Now, Socrates does not say he has grasped the forms. When he denies that he has knowledge of anything, that's precisely because he thinks he hasn't gotten the satisfactory answer to any of his what is X questions. Even the long account of justice that he gives in Books Two to Four of The Republic doesn't count as an adequate answer, he thinks. And he tells us in a few places. It's simply a shortcut that allows him to support his contention that justice is a good thing, contrary to Thrasymachus's contention and Glaucon and Adeimantus's worries. So, Socrates hasn't' grasped the forms. But as a philosopher, that is, a lover or seeker after knowledge, he passionately believes that there have to be forms, such things as the just itself, the beautiful itself and, presumably, also such things as the tree itself and so on. Otherwise, knowledge is impossible. So, understood from this perspective, Plato's insistence that there is a realm of intelligible forms has something in common with the Presocratic naturalist's presupposition, crystalized in Heraclitus' belief in the logos, that there is an underlying order to the world of our experience. It reflects the basic aspiration of all inquiry that the world is a knowable place. In Plato's version of this position, if we are to have knowledge of the world of our experience, there have to be intelligible forms that are not part of that world but are accessible only to our reason, to our logos. Now, let me conclude by noting one further feature of the realm of forms that will be very important going forward. Socrates proposes that there is a kind of order, structure and priority among the intelligible forms. And, once again, he explains with an analogy. Consider the role of the sun in the visible world. It plays a central role in the natural world. All living things depend on the sun. Think of what would happen to the tree and the other plants if there were no sunlight, or to animals if there were no plants to eat, and so on. The same thing occurs in the realm of forms, all of which, Plato contends, depend on the form of the good. While intelligible forms are all kinds of being, the good is the source of their being, as well, he says, as the cause of their being known. So, on this picture, goodness is not simply an objective feature of the world, something that exists independently of what we happen to believe or desire. It is also a structural principle of reality. We'll see more of how this picture gets worked out in detail in the dialogue called Timaeus.
