Aristotle 's Views On The Forms And Their Roles That They Play Within Our World

     Plato’s notion of the Forms vs. the physical realm is quite and interesting topic. I believe something very similar to what Plato thinks about the Forms and our physical reality. Plato says that there is nothing that is perfect in this reality that we live in. And the Forms are the perfect ideals or thoughts that we are striving to achieve throughout our lives. Plato says it is impossible to reach the Forms in our current reality and that it is only possible to achieve perfect knowledge and truth after our soul leaves our body and goes to the next realm where we can become or attain the Forms.

We are introduced to the Forms in Plato’s dialogue the Phaedo. The Theory of Forms says that

Aristotle’s ‘function argument’ produced in the Nicomachean Ethics, is subject to harsh criticize that seemingly attacks Aristotle as a philosopher whom does not think his works thoroughly enough. The lack of blunt argument-statehood is substantial enough to and unfortunately interferes in proceeding to understanding what Aristotle has set out to demonstrate in the Nicomachean Ethics. Book 1 is merely an introduction to Eudaimonia and the Human Function. It is but a sketch, or rather an outline to what the book informs throughout. Where many believe to be the start of the Function Argument (NE1.7, 1097b30-34), Aristotle produces imagery of human-related objectives to their appropriate functions;craftsman to man and body parts to whole. This is meant to provoke the reader to critically think about their own function--as a human and Eudaimonia (note that we learn about Eudaimonia before the function argument is presented). I will defend the function argument and it’s plausibility in this essay by explaining the method utilized to build up this strong structured argument. This essay will converse with excerpts directly from Aristotle’s work, as well as

This question defines the nature of Aristotle’s inquiries, at least for a large part of the Metaphysics, and it thus offers a fourth account of the study or science of metaphysics.“The science of first principles, the study of being qua being, theology, the investigation into substance – four compatible descriptions of the same discipline? Perhaps there is no one discipline which can be identified as Aristotelian Metaphysics? And perhaps this thought should not disturb us: we need only recall that the metaphysics was composed by Andronicus rather than by Aristotle. But the four descriptions do have at least one thing in common: they are dark and obscure” (Ross, 1996, p174).

Aristotle and Plato are two of the most influential philosophers in history. Plato was Socrates’ greatest student and in turn taught Aristotle. In time, Aristotle became Plato’s greatest student. Together Aristotle and Plato, along with Socrates, laid the groundwork for what we now know as Western philosophy and science.

According to Plato, reality consists of two realms: the physical world, which we experience with our five senses, and the world made up of forms and ideas. Plato explained that forms are the perfect templates that exist somewhere in another dimension, yet he does not specify where, and these templates are the ultimate reference point for all objects that we observe in the physical world. Plato implied that our lives, which we perceive as solid reality, are in fact just a shadow. Plato explained this further through his allegory of the cave.

Plato, arguably one of the most famous philosophers in history is known for his dialogues and theory of Forms. The theory of Forms argues that ideas (non-physical forms) are more real than tangible objects or what our senses perceive. According to Plato, there is the visible realm and intelligible realm. Reality could be divided into three different levels; the level of appearances, the real level, and the ideal level which he explains through the analogy of the ‘Divided Line’ in The Republic.

Plato believes that there were two worlds. The inferior is the world of appearances which we can experience with our five senses. The other is the word of Forms which we cannot experience with our senses. He believes that as the physical world is always changing it cannot be perfect as nothing is eternal, however in the world of appearances every Form is immutable therefore is perfect. Our soul was once in the world of Forms and longs to go back there.

"Nothing is more remarkable than Aristotle 's efforts to exhibit the relationships of living things as a scala naturae.” Charles Singer, a modern British historian, and zoologist quotes referring to Aristotle’s “History of Animals” which classified organisms in relation to a hierarchical "ladder of life" (scala naturae).

In Book VI of the Republic, Socrates builds upon the view of the forms, drawing from the themes discussed in the preceding text. He reminds Adeimantus and Glaucon that many particulars are visibly beautiful, but that there also exists a “beautiful itself” - likewise with good things and “the good itself” (507b). He claims that “the former are seen but not thought, while the ‘looks’ in turn are thought but not seen” (507c). Here, Socrates is alluding to the distinction between the intelligible and the visible. The realm of the intelligible is not manifested in the visible and is in fact an ontological category above the visible. Here, the forms reside and are not able to be seen, only thought of. For one to truly know the forms one needs to

Aristotle always acknowledged a great debt to Plato; he took a large part of his philosophical agenda from Plato, and his teaching is more often a modification than a rejection of Plato’s doctrines. At this point, however, Aristotle was beginning to distance himself from Plato’s theory of Forms, or Ideas. Plato had held that, in addition to particular things, there exists a supersensible realm of Forms, which are established and everlasting. This realm, he maintained, makes particular things intelligible by accounting for their common natures: a thing is a horse, for example, by virtue of the fact that it shares in, or imitates, the Form of “Horse.” In a lost work, On Ideas, Aristotle maintains that the arguments of Plato’s central statements establish only that there are, in addition to particulars, certain common objects of the sciences. In his surviving works as well, Aristotle often takes issue with the theory of Forms, sometimes politely and sometimes contemptuously. In his Metaphysics he argues that the theory fails to solve the problems it was meant to address. It does not confer intelligibility on particulars, because established and everlasting Forms cannot explain how particulars come into existence and undergo change. All the theory does, according to Aristotle, is introduce new entities equal in number to the entities to be explained—as if one could solve a problem

“Everything which exist in this world and all things that we see around us are not as they appear to us” this is the core idea behind plato’s theory of forms.From this idea only he moves towards explaining his world of forms or ideas.

The world of sense is at a constant change, so how can the truth be

I will now focus on each claim and discuss their respective argument in support. First, if all of the associations prior to the coming to be of the city-state exist by nature, and when a thing’s linear development of coming to be is completed and such is regarded as an end, it must necessarily be admitted that the city-state as the completed result of an uninterrupted process is a natural end itself; so, the city-state exists by nature. Aristotle affirms that each association is a natural development in so far as it emerges from the natural impulse for self-sufficiency, so in achieving its development, it is clear that such is said to arrive at its nature because of its nature. With regard to Aristotle’s ‘whole-part’ claim, the following can be made explicit: the city-state as a whole is prior to its parts - namely, human’s being human - if and only if it can continue to exist even when any of its parts are removed; but the human’s being human cannot exist in that sense without it. Just as it is essential to a hands being a hand that it be part of a living human body, for instance, it is similarly essential to a human’s being a human that she or he be part of a city-state; hence, hands are essentially corporeal in the same sense that human beings are essentially political. In any case, whereas the city-state continues to exist, the human’s being human cannot. So, the whole is prior to its

It is also important to say that he also believes the soul is the form of the body in part, because the soul is the organization of the parts the body, the body is matter and it or soul is the form-the actual living body. To reiterate this point Aristotle offers us the example of a corpse and a bronze or wooden hand and states that these are not forms as they “lack the potentiality to perform the function of a hand”.7this would also suggest that once we are dead we undergo a material change which stops function and makes us akin to a statue. Aristotle then goes on to discuss matter which he says is “the matter that is the subject necessarily has a certain sort of nature....fire has a hot and light nature”8. He states that matter is what earlier philosophers focused on and it was how they explained the order of the world. Aristotle however does not believe that this is the way in which we should study nature, he believes we should ask what gives each natural substance its characteristic and we should look at “how each thing has naturally come to be, rather than how it is...then state their causes”9. Therefore he concludes that a prior observational investigation is best and that we should study the form.