Plato's Theory of Stuffs

Abstract

Those who examine Plato's theory of forms have from Aristotle onwards tended to interpret it as a theory of universals. Enough in the dialogues appears to support such an interpretation for it not to be entirely wrongheaded. Nevertheless, the conception of forms as universals or as the meanings of general terms produces a baffled incredulity when we consider some of the things that Plato has to say about them. It would be outlandish enough anyway to be told that a universal is an object; it becomes positively outrageous when we are informed furthermore that the object which is the universal being a so-and-so is itself a very superior so-and-so, existing separate from and independent of the particulars it characterizes and causing them to have the nature that they do. Could Plato have seriously thought and meant things so foolish? I doubt it, for there is a more charitable, less Aristotelian, way to interpret what Plato says about forms. This is the way suggested by Eudoxus and those others who apparently drew on Anaxagoras’ theoryof the homoiomeries in the exposition of Plato: a Platonic form is like an Anaxagorean stuff and accounts for the character of a particular ‘as white does, by being mixed with the white thing’ (Aristotle, Metaphysics 991314–19, 1079–8–23). In this paper I wish to build on Eudoxus’ suggestion and show how all the most troubling contentions that Plato makes about forms turn out to be either true or at least quite plausible if we suppose that forms are meant, not as universals, but as chemical elements instead. Plato's theory of forms is not a grotesque misunderstanding of universals; it is a sober, intelligent, and largely true account of the elemental stuffs from which the world is made.