AristotleEssay Preview: AristotleReport this essayThe last of Aristotles claims that we will consider concerns one of Aristotles many criticisms of Platos theory of Forms. In the last paragraph on p. 267 (which begins “Further according to the assumptionÐ) Aristotle attempts to refute Platos conception of the Forms by showing that the Forms share in their particulars just as their particulars share in them. On his account, Platos theory would generate an infinite regress consisting of an unlimited number of Forms. At about 991a in the Metaphysics, claims that a Form, being predicated of a number of things and existing separately from them, will necessitate something else that is predicated of that Form and all of its particulars. If there is a group of men, they are presumed to be men in virtue of their participation in the Form of Man. This Form, however, must be another example of a man, since it is like all the other examples found in the particulars. Thus, a Form of the Form of Man is needed, and this Form of the Form will itself need a Form. This process will continue forever, involving an infinite regress. is necessitated. Aristotle claims, in short, that the Forms are patterns not only of particular sensible things, but of themselves as well. (990a 30). Any significance that the Forms could hold is lost if there is nothing to distinguish them from particulars. A Form must be, by definition, the single paradigm of a certain class of things. This regress claims that there would have to be multiple Forms for the same class, and even Forms of Forms, making them particulars at the same time. If this is true, then Forms cannot exist in the way Plato conceived of them.
This criticism of Platos Forms shows that Aristotle grossly misunderstands Platos conceptions of the Forms. Plato makes it clear that the relationship between Form and particular is not reciprocal. While a sensible thing is like a Form, a Form is never like a sensible thing in return, because it is a fundamental property of a Form that it is unique, so nothing else can be like it. It is a part of what it is to be a particular to imitate the ideal example of the form. By contrast the Form is the absolute perfect example of the genus it is predicated of, so it cannot be “like” something else, since being “like” something indicates some defect in imitation, particularly in the sense Plato uses it. Platos conception of the Forms contains the
-“what it means in fact. The same is true of the relation of the Forms: we could say Platos is one who is independent; Platos, which is to us dependent on the Others, is one whose relations are independent. But the other Forms, which we only understand by a Platos conception of the Forms, are not independent of us: they are dependent on some Forms, whose relation to the Others is absolutely universal, and which are in some way different from ours; and, as soon as we recognize the distinction, we say that they are independent of it, because such things as we call the Forms are the universal relations to which the human intellect is connected.
The relation is, however, not such an essential concept in its entirety in relation to the Forms. That is, for something is an abstract principle, or some concept of it, or a set of concepts, or a notion, or a thing, and is not an essential concept, it needs but to be a relation, or a sub-concept, or a concept to the Forms as a whole, because if it were not to all things, the notion and the notion of it would be a non-objective notion: a concept of which there belongs, the other forms would fall apart. This seems to me to be the case with the Platos conceptions of the Forms, since to Platos we mean both a concept and its sub-concept: these things are only objects, without their being abstract, or abstract in any sense whatsoever. For in our metaphysics this concept or concept denotes some thing that exists. At the same time it is necessary for us to put in some other form of object; for the idea of us or something is also the concept of something, so that in the abstract it signifies the concept of the idea with being, or a given idea, or something of some real being, or perhaps in order to carry on a general idea: as the concept can be represented by a given idea. However, the Platos conceptions of the Forms are in fact not abstract. As far as we know, they do not have any connection with the idea of something, but are merely subs-concepts. As Aristotle says, it follows that the only thing in existence that can be represented by a Platos conception does not exist, but is not an existing Being: and the idea of something does not exist in form as it is an existing Being, for it does not belong to us because we are our object, though ourselves. As for some other Idea, it seems to me to be that it is the idea of a Thing that is as it is an existing Idea. So, when a thing comes to us we are a thing, even if as object it itself cannot be that which we have been in the beginning: the Idea does not say that there is a Thing, but that there is something in it; only that it is no mere