Plato’s Theory of Forms

The Theory of Forms (also known as the Theory of Ideas) was the centrepiece of Plato’s philosophy. It is essentially the belief that everything on Earth is an inferior copy of an original, supreme and heavenly master-copy. In effect, it amounts to a philosophical counterpart of the popular religious concept of the fallen paradise.

The classic example of the Theory of Forms is the concept of justice. On Earth, there is no single definition of justice, but rather a proliferation of systems which reflect differing human conceptions of what justice should be. Thus the typical Western idea of justice might differ considerably from that of the the Muslims. What then is ‘Justice’ with a capital ‘J’? Did it even exist? According to Socrates and Plato, Justice did exist, but not among the manifold copies of justice which had been invented by races of men here on Earth. Instead, true Justice was to be found in Heaven. It was literally an arche-type – a first type or original form. Hence the name given to this kind of Socratic and Platonic thinking – the Theory of Forms.

The Theory of Forms concept finds its best illustration in Socrates’ story of the Upper Earth which is told in one of Plato’s works, Phaedo. The setting is Socrates’ final hours in an Athenian jail cell, where he entertains a group of visitors which includes two prominent members of the Pythagorean community. As he faces death by drinking hemlock, Socrates shares his vision of what happens to man upon death. The soul, he says, is evidently immortal and experiences a variety of fates on the other side. Whilst the majority of souls go to dwell in the Underworld (either for a while or permanently), a privileged few are allowed to ascend to an upper realm which is called ‘the true Heaven, the true Light and the true Earth’. This Upper Earth, says Socrates, stands in stark contrast to the familiar Earth down here. Everything in it is brighter and purer. The trees are greener, the plants are more beautiful, and the stones and minerals are absolutely perfect. In contrast, the Earth down here is a spoiled and corroded world of ugliness and disease, where even our most precious stones are but crude fragments of the heavenly originals.

In this myth, the Upper Earth (Heaven) symbolises what Platonic scholars like to call ‘the world of Forms’. It literally is a world, albeit a perfect one – the prototype of the world that we know. Hence the idea that it was ‘the true Earth’ which contained the archetypes (the Forms) for everything that existed down here on our own imperfect Earth.

Elsewhere, Socrates and Plato portrayed the ‘world of Forms’ as an invisible sphere, which was the sole unchanging thing in an ever-changing Universe. They referred to it as ‘the realm of what is’ and ‘that which is’. It signified a perfect, invisible Heaven raised above an imperfect, visible Earth.

The Theory of Forms is also fundamental to the book Timaeus in which the Atlantis story is told.

Firstly, the Theory of Forms underlies Plato’s account of the creation of the Universe by the Demiourgos (literally ‘the craftsman’). As Plato put it: “It follows by unquestionable necessity that this Universe is an image of something.” That ‘something’, he said, was the Demiourgos himself, who had fashioned the visible Universe in his own likeness in order that it be perfect, eternal and ever-unchanging. The Demiourgos thus personified the ‘world of Forms’.

Secondly, the Theory of Forms provides the concept of the ideal state, which was the pretext for the telling of the story of Ancient Athens and Atlantis. The idea was that Ancient Athens should symbolise the ideal state acting nobly in war. Hence the story of the war between Athens and Atlantis, the latter symbolising a state that had fallen into decadent ways – the fate of all things that had fallen from the pure Heaven to the impure Earth. Athens, too, would fall into corrupt ways once it had been founded in the Earth.
http://www.eridu.co.uk/Author/atlantis/plato.html

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Note added at 7 hrs (2008-12-13 21:59:37 GMT)
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So eternal form, pre-existing form, even absolute form or original form might do in my view.