Platos Response to Aristotles Criticism and the Discovery of Oneness as an Inherent Forms Feature - Essay Example

Plato’s Response to Aristotle’s Criticism and the Discovery of Oneness as an Inherent Feature of “Forms” How Plato would respond to Aristotle’s criticisms necessarily depends on two things; first, he would need to respond to the limitations of Aristotle’s objective knowledge about physical realities and secondly, he could explain how effectively his theory of knowledge provides solutions to those limitations. Even there is another option which Plato might adopt to answer Aristotle’s questions. That is, he could add some subsidiary traits to the ‘form’ and its cognitive conception process in man. In order to understand how Plato’s theory of knowledge explains the limitations of Aristotle’s concept of knowledge and reality, it is necessary to have a clear idea of the conflicts between Plato’s and Aristotle’s views of realities and knowledge. An in-depth analysis of Aristotle’s criticism of Plato will necessarily reveal that, in some cases, Aristotle has failed to perceive the heart of Platonic concept of ‘form’. In other cases, it seems that Plato himself failed to predict oppositions such Aristotle’s criticisms and, therefore, to add some reasonable tenets to the concept of ‘form’. For example, he could say that Forms are the replications of the One and Oneness, and as the terms, ‘one’ and ‘many’, are meaningless without one another, ‘form’ and ‘particulars’ are meaningless without each other. For human cognitive process, both are simultaneously necessary, though ‘form’ precedes physical reality, as one precedes many. Indeed, these tenets are inherent to the idea of ‘form’ and they need not be invented; rather they need to be discovered. Aristotle’s criticisms themselves have limitations; therefore, referring to those limitations and proving the effectiveness of the concept of ‘form’ to explain those limitations, Plato could make his theory of ‘form’ more self-sufficient. Plato claims that different ‘forms’ of different physical realities exist prior to the existence of physical realities. For him, the physical realities are the replicas or facsimiles of the ‘form’. He sees it as the ideal essence of the physical existence of things in this world. It is perfect, indivisible, transcendent and immutable. He believes that because of an innate idea of these forms, man can know things as they are. On the other hand, Aristotle complains that though ‘form’, as Plato assumes, exists prior to things’ physical existence, “Forms arises even of things of which we think there are no Forms” (Socrates 27). He further complains that Plato’s ‘form’ is applicable to static images of things (which he often names ‘substance’); therefore, it is not applicable to dynamic process of things such dissolution, decay, birth, etc. In Aristotle’s own words, “what on earth the Forms contribute to sensible things, either to those that are eternal or to those that come into being and cease to be. For they cause neither movement nor any changes in them” (Socrates 28). He makes his third criticism on the ground that the ‘substance’, which is concrete also, cannot evolve from the abstract, as he says, “All other things cannot come from the Forms in any of the usual senses of 'from'” (Socrates 34). Aristotle’s most severe criticism of Aristotle comes in a form of question: “why should '2' be one and the same in the perishable 2's or in those which are many but eternal, and not the same in the '2 itself' as in the particular 2?” (Socrates 39) Here, he asks that if two different particulars have something in common, will there be three forms (two for the two particulars and one for the common feature)? Plato could star his refutation of Aristotle’s criticisms by excavating the inherent limitations of Aristotle’s theory of ‘substance’. According to Plato, “‘Forms’ are as it were patterns fixed in the nature of things. The other things are copied from the Forms and are similarities.” (Plato 45) Here, Plato has failed to refer to an inherent feature of ‘form’. It is that forms are the replications of the one. In other words, ‘form’ is the process of being one; and for man, it is the process of finding ones. This inherent feature of ‘form’, that is being One or achieving oneness, necessarily explains the ‘problem of more accurate forms’ which Plato himself was aware of. Plato refers to this ‘problem of more accurate forms’ as following: And if that other Form is similar to the first, still another will appear. And a new Form will never stop appearing, again and again, so long as the Form is similar to what shares in it…(Plato 23) Here, if the ‘form’ is assumed as the replication of One or as the process of being one, a form, which is shared by a number of forms, is essentially endowed with the quality of more oneness. Therefore, the ultimate (or the most initial) form, from which other forms evolve, is the singular One in a singular Universe, where there is no plurality. In this singular Universe, the idea of plurality or particulars collapse; therefore, the most initial form, which is indeed the One in a singular universe, losses its meaning to man’s cognitive process, since, for man, one is meaningless without the two or the second. In the same manner, to human being, a plural universe, which is fraught with particulars replicas of forms (of more oneness), is meaningless without man’s innate knowledge about the one. Even though man cannot imagine the most initial form or the One in a singular universe because of the previously cognitive limitation, the most initial form or the One exists. Man inherits this idea of One or being one by realizing his singular physical existence among Many. Therefore, he attempts to find a form, which is endowed with the more oneness, among many. Probably, Aristotle is that man who has failed to perceive how he inherits the idea of oneness. Subsequently, he could not perceive the existence of the most initial form (or the one). Since he cannot perceive the quality of the forms’ oneness, he cannot perceive the existence of the most initial One Form. So, he wrongly believed that “all other things cannot come from the Forms in any of the usual senses of 'from'” (Socrates 34). Here Aristotle’s tragedy lies in the fact that he is too much obsessed with the plurality of the universe. If he perceived the existence of the Most Initial Form or the One, he would understand ‘forms’ as entities with different degrees of oneness. For example, a black cat is a black cat, because it is not white or red and because it is different from others. Because of its form of a type of oneness, which is induced by its differences from others, we can perceive it as an individual cat. In the same manner, we perceive a leopard as an individual leopard because of its form of another type oneness, which is different from the oneness of our aforementioned cat. Since ‘forms of different types of oneness’ are ‘imperfect copies’ of the forms of more oneness, man can identify both cat and leopard as animal. Now, we can suppose that a man has never seen a leopard or any types of animal. Therefore, after seeing a leopard, he will identify it as a form of one type of oneness, since this form of oneness exists before he sees the leopard and it emanates from his perception of his own form. Again since he inherits the knowledge about another form (that is of an animal) from which his form and the leopard’s form have been copied, he will identify himself and the leopard as animal. Therefore, it is evident that different forms are copies of forms of more oneness and they exist prior the existences of things. Necessarily, Aristotle’s claim that “Forms arises even of things of which we think there are no Forms” is invalid. It is because if Aristotle does not inherit the knowledge of form as oneness of things, he could never identify the leopard, which, in his words, is a substance as a separate entity. Moreover, his claim that ‘forms’ are static is also invalid because ‘form as a process of being one’ inherits dynamic aspects such as being, moving, perishing, etc. Suppose, Aristotle is convinced enough to believe that ‘form’ exists in human knowledge prior to the existence of things. This knowledge of ‘form’ of his own existence tells him that he is different from the form of a pumpkin because he can talk. Again, he will know that his own ‘form’ is somewhat similar to the form of the pumpkin, because both of them will decay and lose their oneness one day. Here, it is unnecessary to tell that ‘perishing’ or ‘decaying’ evolves from another form. The forms of ‘man’, ‘perishing’, and pumpkins can be considered as the copies of a form of more oneness, that is, of a living thing. It can be assumed that these forms reside in human knowledge innately and man needs to be familiar with them with the help of objective example. So, it seems that Aristotle’s question about the form of ‘perishable 2’ is also invalid. In this regard, Plato could ask Aristotle a general rhetoric question in order to point out his limitation. It is: if you do not have knowledge of thyself (or your form), how will you exist in a plural world? Works Cited Aristotle. Metaphysics. Trans. Joe Sachs. 2nd ed. Santa Fe, N.M.: Green Lion, 2002 Plato. “Parmenides”, The Collected Dialogues, ed. by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Princeton University Press, 1989. Read More