The Forms

The Forms

· The forms give us an ultimate standard for ethics and a foundation for knowledge.

· The forms cannot be touched, smelt, tasted or heard in any way. We use our reason to perceive them through our minds’ eye.

· Plato believed that we existed in the world of the forms before we were born into our physical bodies. Because of this, we already have knowledge of them and can recognise beauty, for example, in particulars of the visible realm. Anamnesis = recollection of the forms.