Platonic Realism

Classification

Position level

specific

Domains

Metaphysics

Overview

When many particular things share a feature — many equal sticks, many just acts — Plato holds that what makes each of them that way is a single Form existing on its own, independently of any of the particulars and of the minds that think about them. The stick does not make equality; equality exists prior to and apart from any equal thing, and the stick merely "participates" in it, falling short the way a copy falls short of what it copies. Forms are unchanging and perfect in a way particulars never are — no stick is ever perfectly equal, but the Form of Equality itself is.

This is the strongest realism on the map because it puts the universal outside particulars altogether. Aristotle's moderate realism keeps the universal real but denies it any existence apart from the things that have it; nominalism denies a real universal even inside them, treating the shared name as the mind's own grouping. Platonic realism is what both are reacting against: the claim that Equality, Justice, and Humanity would still be exactly what they are even if every equal thing, just act, and human being ceased to exist.

Position on

• The Problem of Universals

Held by traditions

• Platonism

  Question scope: The Problem of Universals

Broader position

• Realism About Universals

Incompatible positions

• Moderate Realism

  Question scope: The Problem of Universals

• Nominalism

  Question scope: The Problem of Universals

References

• Plato, Republic and Phaedo
• Plato, Phaedo 74a–77a and 100c–e (the Equal itself and participation); Republic V, 475e–480a