platonic forms
Idealized abstract concepts
In philosophy, platonic forms are the ideal, abstract essences that Plato argued underlie all particular instances of things in the physical world.
A beautiful object participates in the form of Beauty; a just action reflects the form of Justice.
These eternal, unchanging forms exist in a realm accessible only through reason, not the senses: The platonic forms represent perfect templates of which earthly things are imperfect copies. (Capitalized Platonic Forms is the more common styling.)
- idealismBelief in noble principles
- supersensibleBeyond sensory apprehension
- universalsProperties holding across all
- essenceFundamental nature of something
- extramundaneBeyond the physical world
beauty · demiurge · ontology · reality · metaphysics · archetypes · anamnesis · participation · justice · existence · virtue · perfect circle · goodness · abstraction · timelessness · immutability · permanence · allegory of the cave
- idealsideal, utopia, archetypes, models, paradise
- Greek conceptslogos, ethos, pathos, hubris, arete
- Platoacademy, Academy, allegory, the Republic, Republic
- ontologyontology, being, existence, becoming, universals
- philosophyethics, logic, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology
- Greek ethicsarete, Nicomachean Ethics, practical wisdom, golden mean, telos
platonic formsparticulars
Individual facts or details
phenomena · appearances · shadows · sensory experience · becoming
platonic formsnominalism
Universals exist as labels only
materialism · physicalism · conceptualism · empiricism · tropes
platonic formsempiricism
Knowledge through observation
sensory experience · empirical observation · inductive reasoning