Prometheus Trust: The Theory of Forms

For many who have read something of Plato, there is a schema known as the “theory of forms” which consists of two distinct orders of things–there is a powerful and active order of forms (or ideas), and then there is an order of material instantiations, or material things stamped with impressions of those forms. The first is active, the second passive; the first is the object of intellect and reason, the second is the object of sense and opinion. This is a useful but limited starting point, an understanding which presents the thinker with a number of difficult problems–all of which gather as one major question: how do the two very different orders interact?

We need a much more refined understanding of how the manifested and material world proceeds from, and returns to, the unmanifested and immaterial order. According to Proclus, both these processes–procession and return–work through the law and power of similarity: and since there seems to be a very great dissimilarity between the two orders, we must postulate a series of intermediaries. In this series, each intermediary must have a degree of likeness both to that which is immediately above itself, and to that which is immediately below.

Proclus, in his Commentary on the Parmenides of Plato, offers the serious student of ideas a scheme in which a series of intermediaries carry out just such a function, and thus allow a fruitful communication between the otherwise separated orders of reality. We will look at this passage and consider whether it holds together as a viable scheme, and how it informs our understanding of reality at its various levels.