Easy Mistake To Make: Rematerializing The Platonic Ideal

This semester, I am teaching two key Platonic texts - the Meno  in its entirety, and the Republic in relatively short parts - and using them both to introduce students to the notion of Platonic forms or ideas.  Or if you like, archetypes or models, after which all of the material things we encounter and take as being "real", are copied.

In the Platonic point of view, this entire "real world", the material tangible world of change and plurality we live out or lives in and take our bear...