October 9, 2021:
Alcinous wrote:
Form is defined as an eternal model of things that are in accordance with nature. For most Platonists do not accept that there are forms of artificial objects, such as a shield or a lyre, nor of things that are contrary to nature, like fever or cholera, nor of individuals such as Socrates or Plato, not yet of any trivial thing, such as dirt or chaff, nor of relations, such as the greater or the superior.
Professor Falstaff on the other hand specifically used the forms of tables and chairs as his examples.
Why is unclear. The most likely guess is that he simply didn't know the material. Less likely is that he chose the homely but incorrect example because it simplified his pedagogy, this being an undergraduate audience after all. Or it could be that at that moment his habitual ironic pose simply got in the way of his brain.
This is the inevitable dialectic of any retrospective analysis of the experience. If Professor Falstaff is credited with competence he was therefore an asshole. Credit him with decency and he's therefore incompetent. The options are binary.