Forms, Forms, Forms

The big disagreement between Plato and Aristotle had to do with the reality of “forms.” As Plato saw things, if we have actual trees growing all around us—and we do—there must be an immaterial and eternal pattern of the “tree” somewhere in a higher realm. The “idea” had to be there somewhere before trees could form—and its existence must be at least as real as that of the keyboard on which my fingers dance. Aristotle shook his head. He had major difficulty picturing this Warehouse of Eternal Forms hidden somewhere in eternity.

I side with Plato because I have no problem with eternal forms—nor, for that matter, with forms that originate in time. The keyboard is an example. So is the fork, the knife, or shoelaces. These latter day forms were surely not always present in that Warehouse of Eternity where Eternal Forms reside. Nonetheless, we all know what these objects are.

In philosophy this clash has produced the Realist and Nominalist schools. The first asserts that eternal forms are real; the second holds that forms are merely names (nomina in Latin). In the philosophical context forms can also be rendered as essences, meaning exactly what Plato meant by forms.

I side with Plato because, in struggling with this subject myself, in trying to understand it viscerally, really, from the gut, I hit upon the notion that the problem goes away if we think of these forms, ideas, essences, or archetypes not as things but as intentions. Eternal ideas don’t need a warehouse. They need a mind. This line of thought brings the products of nature and the products of humanity under a single roof. Both are the consequence of intentions. The tree embodies God’s intention, the shoelace a human’s. Seeing forms, eternal or otherwise, under the rubric of intention also nicely explains why the form is immaterial and invisible and yet may be manifested in matter. Thus the weird status of form in the Aristotelian conception, form independent of matter, namely as a potential and therefore suffering a kind of not-quite-real status, is put on more solid footing. Essences are created by minds. Until they manifest as substances, thus taking on materiality, they remain ideas. But ideas are real. They are invisible because the mental order is invisible.

Now those who’re reading this entry having comes from the last (“Bodies, Bodies, Bodies”) might wonder: Is this discussion at all related to bodies? Yes. Thinking of essences and their manifestation may be the explanation of bodies, be they flesh-and-blood or subtle.

If we suppose that Reality itself must be God’s creation—and without that assumption all meaning disappears, hence that’s a good start—the Platonic view suggests the process of creation. It is the same on high as it is in our own humble circle. The new arises from intentions and then develops (or evolves, if you like) into a visible actuality in which the intention takes on a body. What this means is that matter itself is necessary in order to separate, to manifest, ideas—whether they originate in human or in higher minds. God’s creation generates the very matter in which divine ideas manifest. Lesser beings, like ourselves, cannot create matter but may form it.

This general idea underlies theosophical, Neoplatonic, and related conceptions of the subtle body. The idea expresses the feeling that actuality must always involve some kind of embodiment, gross or subtle. Without such embodiment, the essence remains still entirely absorbed in God. Actuality may thus be understood as separation from (but not independence of) God. The creation must then be pictured as a kind of separation in which matter plays a crucial role. The creation is not identical with God. Why God creates is the ultimately mystery. The emanationist theory suggests an overflow of benevolence—but that is, surely, just a human conceptualization. How can the Absolute be said to overflow?

This general view of the matter has certain merits. It suggests that transcending orders above us (and possibly below us) are structured like this one, but the match between our powers and the matter in those worlds is better—so that our minds can form our bodies. It suggests that angels also have a dual character. Here I side with St. Bonaventure (who believed that all creatures, not least angels, were made of form and matter) rather than with his contemporary, St. Thomas Aquinas (who held that angels had no bodies). I like the structure because it permits me to imagine that the vast physical cosmos that we see may indeed be entirely alive—that suns may be the bodies of very high beings. This notion, I hasten to add, is not original with me at all—but pleasing because, looking out at the vastness of the visible cosmos, I’m choked by the meaningless incommensurability of that vastness unless I think that so much glory may actually have meaning.

Later: Having read this she who completes me had this comment: “For me, after having re-read this ‘unpacking,’ a very satisfying (pleasingly simple?) thought is that ‘this creation strives toward completion!’ The entire universe is EVOLVING towards the completion of God’s idea of his creation.”