1/31/12

One of Plato's main concepts in his teachings was the idea of "forms". When I first read about this idea, I had no idea what he was talking about, but in class we talked how forms are worldly ideas (ex. heaven) that doesn't make any logical sense but exist in your mind. These ideas are the closest to perfect as we can make them because they aren't based on any facts, just ideas. This might seam a little confusing because we have embedded the idea of forms into our everyday thinking but if you think about it, half the things we believe because other people have told us about it, not any proof that we have ever seen. For example what makes a tree a tree? Most of us know what a tree is because we were told during adolescence that the big thing sticking out of the ground was a tree and that was that. Now whenever we see a tree we know what it looks like. Realist believe that a tree because a tree is a tree and all trees have commonalities and that's what makes them tress and that is that. But if we put this concept into everything in our existence than the world of forms would get pretty crowded, so Plato made it that only natural things could fall under the concept of forms. Things in the natural world can exist in the world of forms, but what makes the idea of forms so strong is that these ideas of the things that are in our lives become more real than real things because our beliefs and idea usually never change. Now that's an idea that can really blow your mind.