00023-- Plato's THEORY OF IDEAS (this is necessary to understand why he said ART IS TWICE REMOVED FROM REALITY. see 00001 post.)

Plato's Theory of Ideas is his most original philosophical achievement.  We can summarize it in a few definite statements.  They are:

1) Forms or Ideas are real entities. There is a world of ideas which is real.  The world we live in is the copy of that world of ideas.  When an artist does copy the nature or anything in it, his art becomes something that is twice removed from reality. 

   

2) There is a great variety of forms, including the forms of classes of things(house, dog, man etc.); of qualities(whiteness, roundness etc.) ; of relations(equality, resemblances etc.) ; of values(goodness, beauty etc.).

3) The Forms belong to a realm of abstract entities, a "heaven of ideas," separable from concrete particulars in space and time.  The separation of the forms and their exemplifications is commonly referred to as the Platonic dualism.

4) The forms are superior to particulars in degree of reality and value; the forms are the realities of which particulars are mere appearances. The form is a model or archetype of which the particular is a copy.

 5) The forms are non-mental and subsist independently of any knowing mind.

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