Abstract

The author attempts to show that Plato continued to hold his theory of Forms in his later period by arguing that analysis of the late dialogues reveals their assumed existence. The objects of knowledge considered in the later dialogues have the basic traits attributed to the Forms in the middle and early dialogues. The Forms are not known by "intuition" or "acquaintance," but as that which is required for λόγος. The result of this approach is a kind of Kantian interpretation of Plato—that the Forms are definitive of our experience of things, not of the things themselves.—R. J. W.