Why do many beautiful things share in “beauty”? Because they participate in the Form of Beauty. The Forms are known by reason, not by the senses. The highest is the Form of the Good, which, like the sun in the The Allegory of the Cave, makes all else visible and real.
Objections: the Third Man Argument (in Plato’s own Parmenides); Aristotle‘s insistence that form exists only in things; nominalism (only particulars exist).
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related by shared connectionsThe Republic
Plato’s great dialogue on justice — in the soul and in the city — containing the philosopher-kings, the Allegory of the Cave, and the banishment of the poets.
Being vs. Becoming
The first great quarrel in Western philosophy — is reality one and changeless (Parmenides) or everlasting flux (Heraclitus)?
Platonism
The tradition descending from Plato — eternal Forms, an immortal soul, and a reality higher than the senses — from the Academy through Neoplatonism to Christian theology.
Nothing from Nothing
The ancient principle that nothing comes from nothing — the foundation of Greek physics and the target of the Christian doctrine of creation from nothing.
The Pre-Socratics
The first Greek philosophers — from Thales to Democritus — who asked what everything is made of and replaced myth with argument.
What Can We Know?
The relay race of epistemology — from Plato’s Cave to Kant’s categories, via Descartes’ demon and Hume’s billiard balls.