Plato would claim that if an artist painted a picture of, say, a mountain, that the mountain is twice removed from true reality. What does this mean?

Answer 1

For Plato, true reality lies in what he calls the "Forms." Things like bees are all bees because they all have the same form--the Form BEE. This is true of all other kinds of objects too, such as mountains: mountains are mountains because they all have the same form--the Form MOUNTAIN. Same thing with beautiful objects, red objects, and so on: beautiful things are beautiful because they all have the Form BEAUTY, while red objects are all red because they have the Form RED. Plato draws a distinction between particular objects in our world and their Forms that exist independently in a higher, divine realm, where these Forms make the objects what they are. For any class of object--bees, mountains, whatever--there are the particular objects that we encounter here on earth, on the one hand, and their corresponding, unchanging Forms on the other that exist independently in a higher, divine realm and that make the particular objects that we encounter here on earth what they are.

Plato thinks that particular objects, such as mountains, are imperfect copies of their Forms. The relationship here is analogous to the relationship between objects and the shadows they cast: these shadows are imperfect copies of the objects, which are real. Plato thinks that the Forms are the real objects, and the particular things that we encounter in the world that participate in these Forms are imperfect copies of these Forms just like shadows are imperfect copies of real objects. So every particular mountain that you experience is an imperfect copy of the Form MOUNTAIN, where the Form here is the true, unchanging, enduring reality.

When an artist paints a mountain, then, they are creating a copy of the particular mountains that they've experienced. However, those particular mountains are, for Plato, themselves imperfect copies of the Form MOUNTAIN, which is the real object here (or at least "the most real"--I think particular mountains are real in some sense, but they aren't as real as their Form because, unlike mountains, the Form is an indivisible, unchanging, immortal, perfect thing). So, when an artist paints a mountain, for Plato, what they paint is twice removed from reality because it's a copy of the mountains that they've seen, which in turn are copies of the fundamental reality--the Form MOUNTAIN.