Page 14 - GALIET FORMS AND UNFORMS: Aristotle´s Refutation to Plato IV

inert matter-potential. Consequently, form for Aristotle can also be understood as the formal cause: that which defines what the thing is. This suggests that matter is the thing that genuinely changes, and that Galatea is mere matter with a different form. One can argue that one does not become something else by changing one’s form, as when women are pregnant for example; therefore, one can assume that the lump of ivory does not become something else. One can also argue that by Aristotle viewing the form as a separate entity, he contradicts himself. For example, ivory being matter, to build Galatea can also be its form in relationship to its extension. This extension, which is matter for Galatea, can also be its form in relationship to its possibility of becoming. If we continue to do this, we find ourselves regressing into infinity, the very concept of Platonism: the eternal.
In addition to its ontological significance, Plato’s Theory of Forms has epistemological and ethical repercussions. Epistemologically, it accounts for the Philosopher-King’s complex: absolute and infallible (papal) knowledge where truth cannot be shaken by (legal or political) sophistry while ethically it demands absolute (rather than relative) moral standards. Hence, the highest form is the form of the Good. This is particularly relevant since Aristotle’s Nichomachean refutations of the Platonic forms begin with an ethical inquiry into the “Universal Good” of things. After rejecting Plato’s notion that the form of good could be the sole existing predicate, Aristotle argues that one “goodness” can’t explain the “goodness” in every
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