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Plato's allegory of the cave appeals to me greatly as a picture -- I mean I can see a mental image of humanity sitting in that cave, watching God's finger-puppets while we wait for the celestial slide show. That said, the allegory does not seem to me like a particularly useful tool for understanding reality. But the other day, I was reading what Russell has to say about Aristotle's version of the theory of forms:

The form of a thing, we are told, is its essence and primary substance. Forms are substantial, although universals are not. When a man makes a brazen sphere, both the matter and the form already existed, and all that he does is bring them together; the man does not make the form, any more than he makes the brass....

To understand Aristotle's doctrine of the soul, we must remember that the soul is the "form" of the body, and that spatial shape is one kind of "form". What is there in common between soul and shape? I think what is in common is the conferring of unity upon a certain amount of matter.

That last sentence really struck a chord for me; I have been troubled for a long time about what distinguishes the regions of space that we think of as objects, one from the other. (OK, well, I think that sounds a little overly dramatic, the way I phrased it; but I have given a lot of thought to this subject over the years.) The notion of a "form" as distinct from an object or a universal seems like it might be very useful. So I am going to read De Anima and find out more.

A thought while reading the above passage was that metaphysics, which I have always thought of as a tool for analyzing reality, might actually have much more value when seen as a tool for analyzing language. Where Plato's theory of forms has always fallen down for me is: he says that there has to be an ideal Table in order for us to be talking about anything when we say "a table", as distinct from "this table here". That conclusion just doesn't seem warranted to me -- it seems to me like we can narrate non-existant objects without them having to exist somewhere independant of us. But when someone says "a table", does that mean the speaker is narrating an ideal Table? This seems to me like it could be a valuable question.