Chapter 5: The Greater Hippias: why Plato posits Forms and what is a Form
Random number: 71
In the Greater Hippias, Socrates and Hippias attempt to investigate the question of "What is the Fine?" Socrates states that at a conference he attended, he stated that some speeches were fair and others foul. However, someone accosted Socrates, asking Socrates whether he knew what the Fine even was, to which Socrates had no reply, for he did not know. Hence, Socrates asks Hippias whether he knew the fine or not, and Hippias agreed to teach Socrates.
Hippias proposes that the fine is a fine girl. However, the fine girl is not that by which other fine things, e.g. lyres, pots and horses, are fine. Hippias responds that a fine girl is finer than lyres and pots however. Socrates responds a fine girl is foul compared to goddess, hence what he says is no more fine than foul. The question is specifically: What is the fine itself, that which, when added, makes any other thing fine. Hippias answers that the fine is gold. However, gold makes some things foul when not appropriate, for instance the eyes in the statue of Athena, or for use as a spoon (a wooden spoon is better than a golden spoon), hence gold is no more fine than foul.
What is the fine itself? The problems finds no answer. It is for this reason that Plato posits a form, to answer this specific question: What is it in its essence that makes an object X (where X is the fine, or the beautiful, or the good, etc..).
In the Phaedo, Plato goes into further depth into his ideas about the forms. In it, Socrates discusses the nature of the soul and the forms on the day he is due to be executed by poison. Socrates states that there is a thing known as the Just, the Beautiful, and the Good, though these things are metaphysical; they cannot be seen with eyes nor can they be grasped by any bodily senses, so it seems they must be approached by pure thought. We must have come into contact with these forms in a previous life; and Socrates once again uses the recollection argument to justify this, by considering the case of the two equal sticks. We have never in our life seen any two objects that are perfectly equal to each other, yet we intuitively call two things equal; so we must have some notion of what equality is that comes from before we were born; when our souls interacted with the forms.