Forms and Participants in Plato's Phaedo

Abstract

It is quite clear that in Plato's theory of forms, the bearers of properties like beauty, shortness, etc., are participants in the forms corresponding to these properties.' For example, a beautiful thing, Praxiteles' Aphrodite, say, is a bearer of beauty and according to Plato this is explained by its participation in the form of beauty. It is also fairly well-established that, in addition to the bearers of properties and forms, Plato admitted into his ontology a third sort of thing, characters. For example, Plato recognized that in addition to the Aphrodite and the form of beauty, there is the beauty in the Aphrodite, a character immanent in the statue. An interesting question concerning these characters is what their relation is to the forms. In particular we should want to know whether they, too, in addition to the bearers of properties, are participants in the forms. Certainly, there is room in Plato's theory for a relationship between characters and forms strongly analogous to that between bearer and form. Thus consider the central claim of the theory: that bearers have their properties because they participate in a form-for example, that the Aphrodite is beautiful because it participates in beauty. An analogous claim would be that the relevant character in the Aphrodite (that is, the beauty in the Aphrodite) is a beauty because it participates in beauty. Admittedly, this might be regarded as an unnecessary wrinkle in the theory-why should Plato not have said that the characteristic in question is a beauty because the thing in which it is participates in beauty? But this is a misguided proposal. There are many characters in the Aphrodite aside from beauty-its whiteness, heaviness, etc.-and none of these are its beauty. Thus it would be false to say that a character is a beauty if the thing in which it is participates in beauty. There seems therefore to be no choice