History of Tamga

Characteristics of Forms 

A general metaphysical and epistemological theory. Central to all of Plato’s thought, but nowhere systematically argued for. A theory of postulated abstract objects, deriving from the Socratic “What is X?” question, which presupposes that there is a single correct answer to the “What is X?” question. 

1. The correct answer is not a matter of convention, of what we all (or most of us) think. 

2. What makes such an answer correct: it is an accurate description of an independent entity, a Form. 

3. Forms are thus mind-independent entities: their existence and nature is independent of our beliefs and judgments about them. 

The Phaedo contains an extended description of the characteristics and functions of the forms: 

• Unchangeable 
• Eternal 
• Intelligible, not perceptible 
• Divine 
• Incorporeal (passim) 
• Causes of being (“The one over the many”) 
• Are unqualifiedly what their instances are only with qualification 

Other dialogues fill out the picture: non-temporal; non-spatial; they do not become, they simply are. 

Phaedo provides a good summary, listing all the attributes of Forms that souls also have: “divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself.