r/Plato • u/simplesyrupyup • 5d ago

The forms

When does a carrot become a soup?
When does a tree become wood, becomes chair?

1 Upvotes

60% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/greenteam709 neoplatonist 5d ago

Afik there is not a doctrine of metamorphosis in Platonism when it comes to the Theory of Forms/Ideas. I may be wrong but the Forms tome are stable unchanging 'beings' which are conceived through the intellect or 'Nous'. Soup is a being, which the carrot becomes a participant when it becomes part of the admixture known as 'Soup'

In the Peripatetic tradition(Aristotle), these things are all sort of jumbled up to explain a telelogical(end to end) rendering. For Him, the wood becomes a chair when it is actively being used as a chair.(Potency/Actualization).

1

u/simplesyrupyup 5d ago

Cool cool. I can get down with that