Plato and Aristotle 57concept, it is necessary to know that to Plato the term “idea” and
the term “form” are interchangeable, one and the same.
Take for example, horses. Horses come in many different
sizes and colors. Some can run fast, others can pull heavy loads.
They are, while all alike, different. Yet there are certain charac
teristics which are central to, and constant in, horses. All horses
have hooved feet, particular facial features, particular type of
hair, generally similar legs and torsos. All have four legs, tails,
and can easily bear the weight of a man. We can, in fact, describe
a horse generally, and compare the similarities and differences
of a horse with a mule and a zebra. There is, says Plato, the ideal
horse, the pattern of which, though immaterial, is the real horse.
The reality of the ideal (form) is eternal, immutable, and perfect.
The actual horse is material, sensual, and transient. The essential
nature of a horse does not exist in the person of Man o’ War, but
rather in the form which Man o’ War approximates.
Since reality exists as an idea, immaterial and eternal, one
cannot expect to obtain knowledge through sense experience.
Surely, the physical world is a reflection of reality, but not reality
itself. Logically, it follows that the mind is the means to under
standing and truth. And the method, learned from Socrates, is the
dialectic. The dialectic is simply the critical examination of
ideas, pushing each to its logical conclusion, to find the truth. Or
pushing an idea to its logical conclusion, to show the error.
An example of how Plato sought to teach an understanding of
his doctrine of ideas is the “Allegory of the Cave.” This is a story,
in parable form, about a group of prisoners in a cave, chained in
such a way that they can only look at the wall in front of them.
The light from the cave’s entrance casts shadows of the people,
cattle, and wagons that pass by the entrance, onto the wall of the
cave. Thus, the prisoners see only shadows, and those shadows
are their only reality.
One of the prisoners frees himself from the chains, and
escapes from the cave. As he enters into the sunlight, he is
blinded by the brightness of the sun. Slowly, his eyes adjust to
the light, and he begins to see the people, cattle, and wagons as
they really are. Eventually, he is able to see the sun itself.
Thrilled by the discovery, not only of the “light,” but the source
of the light, he returns to the cave to tell his former prison mates
of his new-found knowledge.