Butler agrees that a person has to find his or her own state of goodness (32). To go along with what society agrees with or counts as good doesn't mean anything to Plato; majority has opinion but not knowledge. To begin, Goodness itself is related to the Form of the Good. The Form, in a Socratic sense, is what we rely on to categorize the variety of examples of Goodness. This can be understood in terms of judging a recipe contest. If someone were to win a prize for a green bean casserole, another wins a prize for a chocolate cake, and another wins a prize for their barbecue chicken, what do these things have in common? They all won prizes at the same recipe contest, and they were all categorized as good. but, what is good? How do we judge good? The fact that they are all categorized as good is really their only connection. Plato would argue that since there isn't anything in the visual appearance of all these items that connect each other, it is the mind that recognizes these things as all Good. Plato argues that is it impossible to see Goodness. We cannot see it at all. We may see things that are Good, but we cannot see Goodness.
Although Plato's concept is hard to grasp, what he is really saying is that, in fact, the way we see things is more real than the actual objects. This means that, considering the recipe contest again, the green bean casserole, cake, and chicken are less real than the way in which we categorize them (Forms). Plato claims that the forms are actual things -- objects; the form of Goodness (or "cakeness" or "green bean casseroleness") is more real than the actual object.
When thinking about the Republic, Plato definitely gives the real objects in our lives less importance or value in relation to the Forms. Forms exist but they cannot be seen or smelled or touched. Plato argues that Forms are perfect, unchanging models; while actual objects that we can see have many different characteristics to them, Forms are simple: they cannot be misunderstood by the people who grasp them. A Form can...
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