Theory of the Ideas

By theory of the Idea , one understands the thesis Plato ician according to which ontologiquement there would exist an autonomous field where would exist the ethical concepts , Mathématiques as well as general concepts. This famous theory is with the ethical , the political Philosophie and the Cosmologie one of the most important elements of Platonic philosophy.

Evolution of the Theory of the Ideas

The Theory of the ideas at Plato knew a clear evolution which one can schematize in general thus.
  1. In the writings presocratic, there really does not exist of theory of the Ideas. The term “ eidos ” or “ idea ” appears certainly in certain dialogs but it still keeps its nontechnical direction of “form” or aspect.
  2. Starting from the Phédon , one notes an evolution. Plato starts to outline an analysis of the concept of “ eidos ”. In much of dialogs of the intermediate period of Plato ( the Republic , the Banquet ), the concept of ideas is done increasingly important for same leading to an any theory exposed in the Allégorie of the cave.
  3. It is current to affirm that, in his late dialogs, Plato started a criticism of the theory of the Ideas and particularly in the Parménide .

Exposed general of the theory of the Ideas

Plato developed a whole philosophy of the Ideas. According to him, the Ideas are true reality, that of which derives the being from the things in the world; they are thus permanent. Our thought implies a level which does not come from the experiment, but which will influence our perception of the experiment. The experiment indeed does not enable us to reach the absolute of the Ideas. Our knowledge of the Ideas comes from what Plato calls the Réminiscence. According to Plato, our heart loses with its birth the clear memory of the Ideas. “I know that I do not know anything” Socrate is thus one “I know that I forgot” at Plato where true knowledge exists only on the level of the Ideas. The man, as for him, is held in the interval, since even empirical realities belong to the field of the approximation.

What an understandable Form?
The idea, or forms it (translation of the Greek eidos ) is:
  • an invisible reality (it is perceived by an intuition of the spirit);
  • an immaterial and eternal gasoline;
  • a prototype of reality.

“It should be been appropriate that there exists firstly what remains identical to oneself as an idea, which is born neither dies, neither receives anything come besides, neither either does not go nowhere, which is accessible neither to the sight nor with another direction and which thus the intellection has as a role to examine; that it there has secondly what has even name and which is similar, but which is sensitive, which is born, which is always moving, which emerges in some place to disappear from it then and which is accessible to the opinion accompanied by feeling. ” ( Timée , 5152)

Plato is a realistic (or an objective idealist): this metaphysical realism consists in supporting the thesis of the existence of forms or prototypes external and independent of us, prototypes who are used as models with the things of the sensitive world, to becoming. These are the Forms which constitute the reality of all things, their gasoline by what we can think them, thus making it possible science to have an immutable base. The things of the sensitive world, into perpetual becoming, take part in these prototypes, of which they receive the name. But the intelligibility even of the Forms is received of a reality that Plato locates beyond the being, and who is the Good, comparable with the sun. It is this metaphysical world to which the philosopher aspires, and it must endeavor to contemplate it and to know it, as much as its mixed nature (spirit and body) there can arrive, while waiting to remain there, after death ( Phédon ).

The Theory of the Ideas in question

It should be noted that, in spite of the multiplicity of the works published on the subject, the presence of a theory of the ideas at Plato is often blamed. At the same time Erik Voegelin, Leo Strauss, Mathieu de Ménonville, Harald Hutter and Michel Hellman or Wolfgang Wieland tried to refute, by a detailed interpretation of the Platonic dialogs, which one can find a “theory of the ideas” at Plato, who it is in the Parménide , in the mythical images of the Phèdre or in the Republic .

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