The World of Forms

- According to Plato, the world we live in is a pale imitation of the real world. Our world is constantly changing and we rely on our senses to understand what is going on.

- Plato was sure the real world is outside the one we live in. This real world is unchanging and eternal. It is the world of ideas not of sense, where there are perfect forms of the things we know on earth.

- Plato's world of forms contains fixed truths which are absolutely true for all time, people and place.

- Plato said we recognise the Forms because we are born with a dim recollection of them from our prior existence in the realm of the Forms. There is an inner part of us, you might call it the soul, that does not change. It is eternal and, before it became tied down by a body, it was connected with the real world of Forms.

- It is because we have all seen the Forms before, that we can recognise them now.

- Plato believed most things conform to a Form, but things like number and evil do not.

- He also thought that some Forms are greater than others