Christina Chin

1/25/21

Intro to Philosophy

Lesson 2 Reflection paper

.Assess Plato’s theory of the Forms from Aristotle’s standpoint. Is Aristotle correct? Give good reasons for your answer

While Aristotle was Plato’s student, he still had a different standpoint compared to Plato.

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He had taken an empirical approach to his mentor’s ideas and couldn’t just stand to take Plato’s

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idea. Plato’s theory of the Forms had stated that “Forms are the cause of all things.” (Melchert, D

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pg. 198) He had also stated that Forms exist entirely outside time and space. He had wanted to
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the true nature of “Forms”. Even though they both do accept forms as a main component of

things to exist, however their ideas of forms to His standpoint of theory of the Forms is these
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three notions he felt Plato’s theory could not explain thoroughly. The first one being, Forms don’t
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explain knowledge of things. Two, being Forms can’t explain the extinction or changes of things.

The last, Three Forms don’t explain existences of things. And it wasn’t just the notion of forms
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itself that he rejected, and for Aristotle, forms don’t exist just by themselves, and every form is

the form of something else. Aristotle had basically rejected the whole idea of Forms being
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separate from objects, while Plato had said they were. He had even lowercased the term “form”
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to differentiate it from Plato's. Aristotle is correct, his theory just makes sense, as well as it was

supported by other philosophers for a reason. Forms have to exist with an object, or else the form
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would not exist, and from my point of view, forms have always existed in space as well as in

.time

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