Plato: the Forms and the analogy of the cave

Overview

Recall questions on why Plato distrusts the senses, the Forms and their hierarchy, the Form of the Good and the sun, each stage of the analogy of the cave and what it represents, criticisms of the theory of Forms, and Plato's rationalism set against Aristotle's empiricism.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Why did Plato hold that the senses are an unreliable route to knowledge?

   Model answer

   The senses only ever report the changing, particular world, and Plato argued that what is always coming to be and passing away cannot be an object of genuine knowledge. Sense reports also conflict with one another, and the same thing looks different to different observers. Real knowledge, he held, must be of what is stable and unchanging, and only reason working through disciplined argument can reach that. The senses at best yield opinion; reason yields understanding.

2. 2

   Explain what Plato means by a Form.

   Model answer

   A Form is a perfect, unchanging, immaterial and eternal archetype which exists independently of the physical world. There is one Form of Beauty, one of Justice, one of Circularity, and every beautiful, just or circular thing we encounter is an imperfect copy of it. The Form is what makes a thing the kind of thing it is, and it is grasped by the intellect rather than by sight or touch.

3. 3

   How does Plato explain the link between an ordinary object and its Form?

   Model answer

   He speaks of particulars participating in, or imitating, the Form. A particular horse is a horse because it shares imperfectly in the single Form of Horse, and it is that Form which lets us recognise very different animals as horses at all. The Form is also the standard against which the copy falls short, which is why we can judge a drawn circle to be imperfect without ever having met a perfect one.

4. 4

   What is the hierarchy of the Forms, and what stands at its summit?

   Model answer

   Plato arranges the Forms in an ascending order, with the Forms of everyday objects and artefacts at the bottom, mathematical Forms above them, then the great moral and aesthetic Forms such as Justice, Beauty and Truth. At the summit is the Form of the Good, which gives all the other Forms both their reality and their intelligibility. It is the hardest to grasp and the last thing reached by the philosopher's ascent.

5. 5

   Why does Plato compare the Form of the Good to the sun?

   Model answer

   The sun makes physical things visible and also makes them grow, so it is both the source of sight and the source of life. In the same way the Form of the Good makes the other Forms knowable and gives them their being. And just as the eye cannot stare directly at the sun without pain, the mind can only approach the Good at the very end of a long training.

6. 6

   Describe the prisoners' situation at the opening of Plato's cave analogy.

   Model answer

   Prisoners have been chained since childhood facing the back wall of an underground cave, unable to turn their heads. Behind them burns a fire, and between fire and prisoners runs a walkway along which figures carry statues and objects. All the prisoners ever see are shadows thrown on the wall in front of them, and all they hear are echoes. They take those shadows for reality and award prizes to whoever is quickest at predicting which will appear next.

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