Table Of ContentPlato's Forms
Varieties ofI nterpretation
Edited by
William A. Welton
LEXINGTON BOOKS
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Plato's Mysterious Forms
William A. Welton
Plato's Dialectic of Forms 31
Francisco J. Gonzalez
2 Plato's Development and the Development of the Theory 85
of Forms
Lloyd P. Gerson
3 Plato's Theory of Forms: Recollecting and Recovering Ill
the Soul
Anne-Marie Bowery
4 Metaphysics and Pronouns at Phaedo 74b7-9 137
David Roochnik
5 Form and Flux in the Theaetetus and Timaeus 151
David P. Hunt
6 Do Forms Have a Role in Plato's Phi/ebus? 169
Kenneth M Sayre
7 Philebean Metaphysics 193
Allan Silverman
vi Contents
8 Fleshing Out the Form of Beauty: Socrates, Dialogue,
and the Forms 221
Joanne B. Waugh and Lisa Wilkinson
9 ls Plato a Metaphysical Thinker? Rereading the Sophist 239
after the Middle Heidegger
P. Christopher Smith
10 Against a Platonic "Theory" of Forms 257
Drew A. Hyland
11 Plato's Eidetic Intimations 273
Silvia Benso
Bibliography 289
Index 301
About the Contributors 319
Acknowledgments
The idea for this volume grew out of a series of panels orgaruzed by Gerald
Press at the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek
Philosophy ( 1999), although the bulk of the papers were contributed later. For a
number of years, Professor Press has organized panels on "nondoctrinal"
interpretations of Plato and encouraged fruitful debate and discussion between
doctrinalists and nondoctrinalists upon a variety of specific topics in Plato
studies. From these panels, previous edited collections have emerged, begiMing
with Gerald Press's collection Plato's Dialogues: New Studies and
Interpretations (1993) and Francisco J. Gonzalez's The Third Way: New
Directions in Platonic Studies (1995), followed by Press's more recent
collection Who Speaks for Plato? Studies in Platonic Anonymity (2000) (all
published by Rowman & Littlefield), and most recently by Does Socrates Have
a Method? Rethinking the Elenchus in Plato 's Dialogues and Beyond
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), edited by Gary
Alan Scott. These were the models that inspired my efforts, and each of these
men bas offered me helpful advice at various stages of this project.
At the SAGP annual meeting that year, Prof. Prcss's panels explored
innovative "nondoctrinalist" approaches to Plato's Forms and the so-called
Two-Worlds Metaphysics; this collection grew around a nucleus of three papers
presented there. I then invited the contributions of eight other scholars, with the
idea that it would be useful to have a single volume that places side by side
diamenically opposed views on this subject, a variety of interpretations
l
reflecting diverse interests, concerns, and asswnptions, enriched by influences
from across the contemporary philosophical spectrum. What better way to
trate to those uninitiated in the controversies of Plato studies the vitality
vcrsity of current thinking about the problem of the forms in Plato's
cs, and what better way to stimulate further debate among those already
d? I am pleased to see that the various connibutors have risen to that
ge admirably.
I would like to thank Xavier University for the financial support and
encouragement that enabled me to take part in the SAGP panels. I am also much
indebted to Marion Wielgosz, in the word-processing department at Loyola
College in Maryland, for her help in trouble-shooting problems that arose during
the preparation of the camera-ready manuscript. As indicated above, I would
like to acknowledge Gerald Press and Francisco J. Gonzalez for their inspiration
and advice. I would especially like to thank my friend, Gary Alan Scott, who
first encouraged me to undertake the project; without his unstintingly generous
guidance and moral support this project would not have come to fruition.
W. A. Welton
November 2002
Introduction
Plato's Mysterious Forms
William A. Welton
The "theory of Fonns" is one of the most famous, most influential, and most
controversial of all philosophical theories. It is also one of the weirdest, or at
least so it seems to countless undergraduates forced to learn about it in
introductory philosophy courses. The most famous view associated with one of
the greatest thinkers of all time is a view that seems to defy our common sense,
to challenge our deepest beliefs about the very nature of reality; for it seems to
tell us that the flesh-and-blood world of which we arc a part, the world of
change and time in which we pass our lives, is somehow "less real" than a world
we can only sec in our minds.
Nonetheless, the impact of this theory on Western culture, if often
subterranean, has been immeasurable. The fascination with the fonns inspired
the interest of the Platonic Academy in logic and mathematics, soil from which
the achievements of Aristotle and Euclid would emerge. Some would see the
theory of Fonns as the first appearance of the idea of immaterial substance in the
Western world, 1 an idea that gave tremendous impetus to the conception of a
purely immaterial soul.2 The impact of Platonism, including Platonic
metaphysical thinking and its spiritual motifs, on Biblical theology, and
Christian theology in particular, is notorious and incalculable, an influence that
can be traced to Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C.E.-50 C.E.)3 and continues through
the early Christian fathers, Clement of Alexandria (150-216 C.E.) and Origcn
(185-254 C.E.), and later figures like Augustine (354-430 C.E.) and Boethius
(480-524 c.E.). The talc of the mysterious Form of the Good that is even
"beyond Being" served to inspire the important Western traditions of mysticism
and negative theology, in a chain of influence descending from Plotinus (204/5-
270 C.E.) through Proclus (410 or 412-485 C.E.) to Psuedo-Dionysius (late-fifth
William A Welton
and early-sixth centuries) and beyond.' The belief in a transcendent realm was
the soul of Nco-Platonism. an intcllccrual movement that contributed much to
the development of Western literature and art. Even in the skeptical and
, · .,metaphysical century from which we have just emerged the influence of
what is usually regarded as "Plato's metaphysics" was kept alive, whether in the
realism of mathematicians like Geoffrey Hunter, who believe that mathematical
knowledge must have transcendent objects,' in thinkers like J. N. Findlay, who
see their own metaphysical thoughts as akin to Platonic Idealism, 6 or in those
like Simone Weil, who seek a transcendent source of value and look to Plato to
understand the human implications of this without endorsing the details of
traditional Platonism 7 And of course, the theory of forms influenced the history
of philosophy through the oppositions it provoked as well. Aristotle forged his
own contribution to the science of Being, the discipline he called "first
philosophy," and that was to become known as metaphysics, in constant
dialogue with and opposition to the theory of forms as he understood it; it is
impossible to imagine that his own work, and with it much of the subsequent
history of metaphysics, could have had the same shape were it not for this
struggle. Since that time there has been a continuous legacy of "anti-Platonic"
thinking, from Medieval nominalism to the various fonns of "postmodern"
anriessentialism prevalent today.
And yet it may not be as well known by those unacquainted with the
scholarship of ancient philosophy that these mysterious entities known as forms
still inspire vigorous controversy; desJ)ite the vast scholarly literature they have
generated, fundamental problems concerning the forms remain unresolved. 1 Not
the least of these controversies is the problem of whether it is even appropriate
to speak of a theory offorms in Plato's work at all.
This is true largely for two main, related reasons: (1) Although Plato's
dialogues introduced fonns to the world, there is no single text that gives a
really full account of them; instead, Socrates and other characters say various
things about forms in various contexts, mostly in the guise of oracular
pronouncements or mere hints, offering very tnmcatcd explanations and
argwnents at best, so that many of the claims that arc made arc ambiguous,
unclear, and made with little or no explicit support. We are forced by the way
Plato writes about fonns to read between the lines if we are to understand what
he was getring at. Indeed, perhaps it is a testament to his having struck some of
kind of philosophical nerve that with so little text on this subject Plato was able
to be so suggestive as to inspire over two millennia of profound speculation. (2)
Apart from this feature of Plato's presentations of fonns, there is the general
problem of the philosophical significance of his choice of the dialogue form for
the presentation of his philosophy. There has been increasing discussion of this
in the secondary literature, and it has led some commentators to the conclusion
that we should be very wary of ascribing views to the author of the dialogues. In
these two observations we find the explanation for the two related problems
rcga~ding the forms mentioned above: ( 1) it is very unclear, when we come to its
details, just what the famous theory of Forms really was, how and why it was
lntroductwn
created, how it may have developed in the mind of its author, how it relates to
Plato's work as a whole, and moreover, (2) it seems increasingly uncertain if we
should even speak of the theory of Forms at all; perhaps it is not intended by its
author as a theory at all, or not as his own theory. In the wake of either of the!te
issues great potential exists for an utterly new understanding of one of the
fountainheads of our philosophical tradition and of the fresh philosophical
possibilities that still await us in his works. Philosophy begms in wonder, and
there is no paucity of wonder about Plato's fonns.
I. The Forms as "Theory": Difficulties of (Re-) Construction
1. The "Theory" of Forms: Elements and Puzzles
However Plato intended the fonns to be understood, there is some
agreement about the outlines of the theory that has been ascribed to him by the
philosophical tradition: the doctrine seemed to be that there exist inc<Jrpore.al,
~CJll.i.ti~-~--'~·l!jggQ_ns_tit\\t~ ct\i~ ulfiA:,atc reality, and the ordinary things of
the changing physical world around us arc in some sense mere imitations of
these ultimate realities. 9 These Clcmal realities be.yond-space10 and time, 11 seem
~-~~e _ss,__"!"_~ltJikc the nature. of what we would call abstractions or
concepts, except that ihe ·ronns· are objective entities that do not depend at all
upon the human mind for their being; on the contrary, it is the other way around:
·the mind depends for its knowledge, and all changing things depend for their
being, on these forms, which nonetheless have a radically different mode of
existence from the kinds of things-physical individuals or "particulars"-that
we habitually take as most real. Yc t even this brief characterization, in which I
have tried to be uncontroversial, contains points that can be disputed, and even
when these attributions have been accepted, their meaning has been debated.
The word "form" is the standard English translation of Plato's Greek terms
Ellios and ilifo when they are used in their "metaphysical" sense. (Sometimes
the latter term is just transliterated, and we hear of Plato's theory of "Ideas.")
These words are derived from the verb el!iw, the primary meaning of which is
"to see"; these words were both used before Plato, with the meaning of "that
which is seen," "shape," "figure" (eIBos), or "the look or appearance of a thing,
as opposed to its reality'' (i6fo); sometimes they just mean "kind" or "species,"
and sometimes they retain this earlier meaning in Plato as well.12 Plato begins to
use these terms to denote the distinctive 'look' a thing presents to the eye of the
mind, and the kind or narure of a thing seems to become an independent reality.
Sometimes Plato will use the abstract noun to designate a form, but often he will
use the neuter adjective or participle with the definite article to designate the
forms, sometimes adding the intensive pronoun (as in avTo TO KaX6v, 13 or
