Evaluating Plato

Brian Davies is in support of Plato.

Argued that without the forms we would not be able to discuss, agree or disagree on general features of the real world such as beauty, truth or justice. Because we would have no foundation on which to build truth claims.

Stephen Law is critical of the 'Platonic heaven of the forms'.

Argued that if we are to believe in a perfect form of everything, there must be a perfect form of all the unpleasant things on earth too, i.e mud, faeces, and bogeys.

Mel Thompson is critical of Plato's allegory of the cave.

Claiming Plato "fails to illustrate the attractiveness of the physical world; the scene inside the gloomy cave hardly represents the delights of the senses". This means that Plato's cave is nothing like the world we live in, so we can't relate to it, or understand it the way Plato wants us to.