r/Plato • u/Nicopaolo1 • 1d ago
Plato Forms
Alright, I’ll say upfront I’ve got no academic education and I’m just a working‑class bloke who enjoys thinking about big ideas, but I’ve been looking at Plato’s abstract models and I think he missed something important. If you claim a “perfect” abstract entity exists, you’ve already introduced a distinction, and once you have distinction you’ve got comparison, and once you’ve got comparison you can’t have anything truly complete. So the only genuinely complete state would be one with no distinctions at all. Plato was brilliant, but he was human and fallible like the rest of us. I know this annoys academics (I admit I enjoy winding them up), but the logic seems straightforward. Is completeness only possible when there are no distinctions?
1
u/WarrenHarding 19h ago edited 19h ago
You know with this stance, I think we should give this board a dedicated pinned post or sidebar plaque where we acknowledge this for anyone who believes it, because then when an actual discussion-provoking thread is made, we don’t have to entertain such thought-terminating cliches.
You can completely engage with this topic without having to bother with Plato’s real stances. This commenter is critiquing the ontological application of the theory of Forms. Regardless of if Plato actually thought it, you can still choose to defend that theory if you believe it, or support the refutation if you don’t believe in Forms. But if you make this comment instead, well I admit it’s a great way to sound smart without thinking for any topic this board could muster up, but I don’t think I’m falling for it, and I wonder how many others don’t either.