PLATO ON: The Forms

Plato’s theory of the forms is at the centre of his philosophy and teaches us the virtues of thinking about the ideal version of things.

Produced in collaboration with Mad Adam

[georgedemos]

Plato referred to the world of ideas.A metaphysical world where perfection exists. (Perfect ideas, perfect shapes etc)
This perception of the supernatural was argued by Aristotle.
That's why in the famous painting where the two philosophers walk in to the academy, Plato points up to the sky and Aristotle place his hand horizontally to the ground.

[ErnieTessein]

I get so excited whenever you do anything Plato

[saskueify]

Wow, so Plato is asserting that ideas are as real as we are and that we can abandon or rebuild beliefs that we no longer feel fit the ideal. This is a powerful tool to understanding our minds and guiding us towards truth and understanding in life.

[mackdmara]

I always have seen form as the goal. This thing that you strive to be, even if it is not possible in your life time. To work for anything that is not your goal is counter productive. To use every moment to push towards your goal, regardless of your personal advantage, is ideal. Having the courage to remove the part of your old goal that does not serve your ideal end, is progress. The end is now clearer in sight, and you have further perfected the goal. With the misconception behind you, the ideal is more real. With a clearer form you more competently complete. This philosophy is stated before Plato, but I love the way he put it.

[arby]

I think this video doesn't really grasp Plato's concept. Plato thought that Forms were real things... actually residing somewhere beyond our world. And everything in this world of ours is just a faint emanation of those Forms. And there is even the Form of the Good, where all these Forms emanate from - the closest thing Plato has to a God.

Plato's Forms were almost mystical entities. I understand that this video tries to be practical, but it really removes a lot of weight from the concept.

[TheArabsolga]

A very optimistic philosopher. We need more of these in our world today!

[lloydetheredge]

Nobody has ever seen a perfect circle or a perfectly straight line in nature. And once Euclid et al. began to think about this non-physical ealm of perfect forms and their relationships, abstract thinking (& mathematics) began to take-off. Plato is applying the same, newly-discovered, strategy.
In school, one of the sillier ways to talk about Plato is to say that he "believed in the existence of ideal forms." However if students write this in their notebooks and remember that "Plato believed . . ." they add these Greek philosophers to a long list of people in history what had "beliefs." Plato was reporting an exciting "if . . .then" discovery about thinking that (powerfully) always worked. Good job, School of Life: this improves the standard sound bite history lectures.

[CharlieJAitch]

It wasn't really mentioned in this video but I feel a very important part about Plato's forms is that he thought we were born with them. And in that sense you really come to regard them less as our own mental things we are striving towards, but rather things that exist in their own right that we have some idea of.

[TjasaZ]

Have no fear of perfection, you'll never reach it. ~Dalí

[davidmonroy]

Plato's philosophy always resonates profoundly with me.

[sailbyzantium]

Wonderful! As a philosophical platonist, this was a very nice explanation of the Forms by the inventor of Western philosophy.

[IWouldLikeToRemainAnonymous]

Since I started watching your videos a couple of mounths back now, you have been leading myself to have the belief that forms/teplates/other words are needed, but until now I couldn't really name it, and now a day or two since your upload and I can't stop thinking about the 'forms'
Great work!

[TheLionrazor]

Thanks for doing this video! A great addition to the School of Life collection, and an important aspect of idealism that we forget all too often.

[bolivar]

It is a very wise advice from you to say that we all need to have as many forms in mind as we possibly can!
I think for this, the character trait we need the most is " curiosity". Because if we want to know, the forms are everywhere. Take any subject from this lesson: Friendship. You can begin searching from 2300 years ago. Aristoteles has a whole chapter about how a friendship should be in his Nicomachean Ethics. You can start from there, and then you have the entire history of world literature and philosophy, arts and music ( so many wonderful songs about friendship) that you can apply to! So every beautiful story, every great song or movie, every painting or poem on the subject can make that form "clearer" to you. You can create your own template of the "ideal friendship" as a result of this beautiful searching adventure.
We must also look around a lot, to find the admirable sides of people we come across with. There is nothing wrong with having "role models". They are like "living forms" I would say. Of course you must learn NOT to expect too much from them, since they are also only human beings. But it is a very noble thing to do, to look for the "virtues" in wiser people and to try to integrate those virtues into our lives.

For example I have this friend from Ethiopia. She used to work in an internet-cafe 12 hours a day seven days a week, but she was such an incredibly patient and kind person. I have never seen her angry despite all the stress she was having with all sorts of people on that place. People get mad if something on their computer doesn't work, or if the connection is slow or if they can't print this or that...My friend would solve any problem, but she would always keep calm and take her time, while at the same time joking with those who were complaining, but always in a very friendly and warm hearted way. So she is definitely one of my role models when it comes to imagining" a form of kindness and resilience".

So as I am saying, if we are curious enough and have our eyes open, it is not a big deal to fill our heads with forms and templates and ideals, which is a much more exciting and enthusiastic way of living. The difficulty is to keep them "always" in mind and have the perseverance in wanting to live by them. But this is the only way worth living.

By the way, for all friends who want to apply philosophy for this and don't know where to begin with, I highly recommend Alain de Botton's excellent book " The Consolations of Philosophy". ( He is the founder of this channel). You can also watch the documentaries he made about the six philosophers we encounter in that book: Socrates, Nietzsche, Montaigne, Seneca, Epicurus, Schopenhauer. They are all on youtube!
Thank you for this wonderful lesson as always!

[emmettofswedeland]

I would honestly do anything to have a week-long conversation with Plato.

[lancelotdelatorre]

Amo este canal, hace falta un canal así para hispanohablantes

[shaikhmullah-ud-din]

I love how you bring still images to life.
:)

[arthgupta]

Every time you reach "perfection", "perfection" moves a little further. Asymptotal reality huh?

[joe_zupko]

Understanding Plato's idea of forms is actually useful if you're into computer programming, you need to be able to understand things on an abstract level and break them down into their most fundamental pieces. For instance, a car has fundamental properties like wheels, an engine, seats, and so on, but your specific car may have red paint and a V8 engine with a dent on the fender. Knowing this you can program a template class Car and use that to derive any form of a car you wish.

[deceptivepanther]

Superb animation: you made Plato dance.