The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Does Plato Make Room for Negative Forms in His Ontology?

This article questions the place of negative Forms in Plato’s ontology. And it does so against appearances to the contrary, given that Plato himself seems to acknowledge both positive Forms and negative Forms, that is to say, both good ones and bad ones. He may not say so outright, but he invokes both and rejects neither. The apparent finality of this impression is so strong that it creates a lack of direct interest in the subject: Plato scholars do not give negative Forms much thought except where the prospect relates to something else they happen to be doing. Yet when they do give the matter any thought at all, typically for the sake of a prior concern, they try either to support the textual evidence or to contradict it, indicating that the evidence does not stand on its own. The aim of this article is to determine why they tend to affirm or deny the obvious, how they try to confirm or dispute it, and what this says about Plato’s position. The strategic vehicle is a comparative case study. The confirmation comes from Debra Nails (2013), who needs to embrace negative Forms to demonstrate that the unhypothetical first principle of everything is not identical to the Form of the Good, something she cannot do unless Plato recognizes negative Forms. The contradiction comes from Holger Thesleff (2013), who needs to reject negative (Ideal) Forms because the defining feature of his (Ideal) Forms is the possession of positive intrinsic value, which cannot be predicated of anything negative. Despite defending opposite views, or perhaps because of this, they jointly make up for any lack of interest in the scholarly community. I appreciate both yet side with Thesleff.