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Platos Theory of Forms in the Phaedo:

What about these things? Do we say that justice itself is something? Of course. And the fair and the

good? Surely. Then have you ever seen any of these sorts of things with your eyes? In no way. But then

have you grasped them with any other sense through the body. I am talking about all (of them), for

instance about size, health, strength, in a word about the essence (ousia) of all of them, what each

happens to be. Is it through the body then that what is most true of these things is contemplated? Or

does it hold thus? Whoever of us should prepare himself to consider most accurately each thing itself

about which he inquires, that one would come closest to knowing each thing. he would do this must

cleanly who using his intellect itself by itself, unmixed would undertake to hunt down each of the

beings, itself by itself unmixed (65d4-66a3). Phaedo.

(This is where Plato first lays out his concept of Forms in the Phaedo.)

(100c3-7):

Well then, consider what then follows if you also accept my hypothesis. For it seems to me that

if anything else is beautiful besides Beauty Itself, it is beautiful on account of nothing else thanbecause it partakes of Beauty Itself. And I speak in the same way about everything else. Do you

accept this sort of cause or explanation?

(In the crucial Final Argument, Plato finally presents the hypothesis of Forms to explain coming into

being and destruction, in general, i.e., change. Once Cebes accepts the hypothesis, a novel implication is

announced)

Aristotles Four Causes quote

"Cause" means: (a) in one sense, that as the result of whose presence something comes into

beinge.g. the bronze of a statue and the silver of a cup, and the classes which contain these

[i.e., the material cause]; (b) in another sense, the form or pattern; that is, the essential formulaand the classes which contain ite.g. the ratio 2:1 and number in general is the cause of the

octaveand the parts of the formula [i.e., the formal cause]. (c) The source of the first

beginning of change or rest; e.g. the man who plans is a cause, and the father is the cause of thechild, and in general that which produces is the cause of that which is produced, and that whichchanges of that which is changed [i.e., the efficient cause]. (d) The same as "end"; i.e. the final

cause; e.g., as the "end" of walking is health. For why does a man walk? "To be healthy," we say,

and by saying this we consider that we have supplied the cause [the final cause]. (e) All those

means towards the end which arise at the instigation of something else, as, e.g. fat-reducing,purging, drugs and instruments are causes of health; for they all have the end as their object,

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although they differ from each other as being some instruments, others actions [i.e., necessary

conditions].

Metaphysics, Book 5, section 1013a,

(See Physics Book B, chapter 3)