Colloquium 5 Why Plato Never Had a Theory of Forms Kenneth Sayre

I. Perhaps I should begin with assurances that my title is meant to be taken seriously I really do believe that Plato never had a theory of Forms, and I consider it the main task of this occasion to explain why I believe this. The title, nonetheless, requires a certain amount of clarification. For one thing, there is a matter of emphasis. What I believe, and want to argue, is that Plato never had a theory of Forms, not that he never had a theory of Forms. The latter emphasis would suggest that, although he never had a theory of Forms, Plato might have had a theory of something else that is comparably important-a theory of virtue, for example, or a theory of learning as recollection. In point of fact, I believe that Plato never had a theory of these other things either, for reasons very similar to those I shall offer for believing he never had a theory of Forms. But my present concern on this occasion is with the latter specifically. Caution may be due also with regard to the claim that it is Plato who never had a theory of Forms, as distinct from Plato's Socrates, or from the actual Socrates himself. As far as the his- torical Socrates is concerned, we have the direct testimony of Aristotle (Metaphysics 1078b30) that he did not invest his univer- sals with independent existence, as well as the indirect evidence of Xenophon's Memorabilia, to show that Socrates' philosophic interests were far more practical than theoretical. To be sure, there are certain views attributed to a youthful Socrates at the beginning of Plato's Parmenides that are easily read as a rudi- mentary theory of Forms; but this is just one of several indica- tions that the portrayal of Socrates in this particular dialogue was not intended to be historical. Be this as it may, it is not part of my present task to engage in the hazardous enterprise of extracting a Socratic philosophy from the words spoken by Socrates in the dialogues. A more likely source of confusion regarding persons is the ten- dency of many readers to equate Plato's views with the views expressed by Socrates in one or another dialogue. This tendency should be resisted, not only because the character Socrates expresses widely differing views in different dialogues, and because the views he expresses are often laced with irony, but also because Plato turns his conversations over to other protago- nists in the very dialogues where his own views seem to reach their most mature formulation. Prominent examples are the Sophist and the Statesman, which feature a mysterious Stranger from Elea, as well as the Parmenides and the Timaeus which share their names with their main protagonists. If Plato ever sought occasion to work his own views into the dialogues he authored—which seems not unlikely—he had plenty of charac- ters available to serve as spokespersons. The claim I want to advance in this discussion, however, is not merely that none of the views expressed by Plato's major characters adds up to a proper theory of Forms. What I want to argue is that Plato him- self—the author of the dialogues-did not have a theory that meets this description. One component of my argument to this effect will be that no such theory is to be found in the dialogues. But my primary goal is to support a claim in this regard about Plato himself. The auxiliary claim that there is no theory of Forms in the dia- logues, however, may strike one as sufficiently problematic to be worth discussion in itself. There are many readers of Plato, undoubtedly—students and professional scholars alike—who would be inclined to say that it is obvious that the dialogues con- tain a theory of Forms. Indeed, not a few readers have gone into