there is a sense in which the objects we see/touch are real. Even appearances are real appearances. But Plato's position is that the objects we see/touch have a lesser reality. They have a lesser reality because they can only approximate their Form and thus are always to some extent flawed. Any particular beautiful thing will always be deficient in beauty as compared with the Form beauty. And, as any particular beautiful thing owes whatever degree of beauty it has to the Form beauty, the Form is the source of what limited reality as a beautiful thing the thing has. Plato introduced into western thought a two-realm concept. On the one hand, there is the realm of changing, sense-perceptible or "sensible" things. This is the cave: the realm of flawed and lesser entries (consequently, it is also, for those who concern themselves with sensible things, a source of error, illusion and ignorance). On the other hand there is the realm of Forms - eternal, fixed, and perfect - the source of all reality and of all true knowledge. Plato also believed that some Forms (truth, beauty, goodness) are of a higher order than other Forms. For example, you can say of the Form roundness that of is beautiful, but you cannot say of the Form beauty that it is round. So the Form beauty is higher than the Form roundness. When we examine the sense world in terms of what we perceive, we find it possesses no permanence, stability, or coherence. Such a world is not real, only an illusion (the cave). The world of things is understood by the senses; Form by reason. Example: beautiful things vs. beauty. What is real is the totality of Forms and these Forms account for whatever stability and intelligibility the world of illusory sense experience may possess. Plato was inside out.1.He believed in 2 level reality (transcendent).The being was fixed and certain.The becoming was changing.2.form - exists in the world of being.Copies exist in the world of becoming and are imp...
