Theory of Forms

Around the early 4th century BCE in Athens, Plato proposed his Theory of Forms (or Ideas): beyond the changing, imperfect things our senses report, there exists a separate realm of unchanging, perfect archetypes — the Form of Beauty, of Equality, of the Good. Particular things 'participate in' these Forms and resemble them, like flawed copies of an ideal. For Plato, real knowledge means grasping the Forms with the intellect rather than trusting the senses. The idea became the fountainhead of philosophical idealism, and as it passed through Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism it deeply shaped Christian, Islamic, and Jewish thinking about a transcendent, intelligible order.