Thread by @VeraCausa9

I'd like to imagine this is how Plato's soul remembered the equine head's timeless, unchangeable Form.

A Greek terracotta horse head from Taras (Taranto) Magna Graecia-ca. 4th c. BC

Plato's Theory of Forms/Reminiscence:

A Form is both aspatial (transcendent to space) and atemporal (transcendent to time)

Immortality of the soul grants us
anamnesis i.e re-membrance by the soul of knowledge of the perfect forms [horseness] attained in a previous existence[1]

The Form is an essence (Horseness) i.e distinct singular ideal that causes plural representations of itself (horses) in the physical world.

Forms are unchanging, physical things are in constant change. The Forms can be grasped through rational intellect not fallible senses [2]

Two ancient Greek vase fragments depicting horses:

1- a horseman riding his spirited steed

2-A laureled charioteer with his two horses after a chariot's race victory.

Plato's "Chariot Allegory":

The charioteer drives his soul-chariot pulled by black & white winged horses. Charioteer is reason trying to stir the rational/moral [white] & irrational/lustful [black] soul impulses into a harmonious, truthful end so the soul can behold the Forms.

The "Chariot Allegory" appears in Plato's dialogue Phaedrus (sections 246a–254e) where he writes about the human soul in regards to Love Eros as divine madness (1)

Human soul loses its wings & falls into the sensible world. Yet those soul-wings can be re-grown through Eros' divine madness.

Only if we gaze at physical beauty contemplatively not lustfully can we then behold the true Form of Love.

I made a Phaedrus diagram 251A-252C sections

The above black-figure amphora depicts a charioteer readying for a synoris or two-horse chariot race ca. 500 BC at the British Museum [1]