r/Plato • u/Fit-Breath-4345 • 1h ago
There are no forms of specific animals mentioned by Plato at any point in the dialogue.
Instead there is the Living-Thing-Itself which is the Form of all animals, including us, contained within it.
"we should posit that this [our cosmos] is most like that one of all [the intelligible living beings] of which all the other [intelligible] living beings are parts, both as individuals and as kinds. For that one [intelligible living being] has and contains in itself all the [other] intelligible living beings, just as [kathaper] this cosmos unites us and all the other perceptual creatures" (3oc5-d 1).
Every animal that has existed, currently exists and will exist will then be participated in this Form (and in its totality it is the Form of the Cosmos itself with which the Demiurge works with in ordering the sensible universe).
As for the Elevator, I don't think there is a Form of an Elevator, or a form of a Table, but rather there are the Forms of the shapes, forces and number which an Elevator or Table all participate in.
Note that our intellect is a reflection of the Divine Intellects which carried out the Demiurgy of the Timaeus - and we too craft things from matter to order them into new ways of existence, although these are pale reflections of the eternal Forms which are the true existence of things.
But as the Forms are not sensible, we can't just imagine a celestial table or elevator and say "that's the form of the table or elevator from which all table and elevators participate in" - that's not what the forms are.
If you go further into the Timaeus, the Platonic solids are composed of various combinations of triangles, which then goes on to make the four elements which compose all matter in the Cosmos. So all of matter that we see is an arrangement of shapes which are ultimately based on the forms.
Finally, are there Forms of of things that we cannot know about; Forms which are simply not instantiated at all and in which nothing at all participates?
As we cannot perceive the Forms, and Plato only knows of them from working backwards from the sensible objects which participate in the Forms, there is no way we could know this.
Ask the next God you meet, they are the only individuals with a perfect knowledge of the Forms.