Plato's Middle Dialogues Research Articles

Paradigms, Characteristics, and Forms in Plato's Middle Dialogues

Paradigms, Characteristics, and Forms in Plato's Middle Dialogues

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The 4th Tetralogy: Exploring Plato's Middle Dialogues. The purpose of this site is to take advantage of the growing body of literature on the Internet and new possibilities allowed by hypertext to create an interactive environment for exploring Plato's middle dialogues in their historical and philosophical contexts.‘ Sections include: the life of Plato; the dialogues; The Republic; The Phaedrus; The Symposium; The Phaedo; Paideia; Scholarship; Bibliography and Search Tools.

The Recurring Problem of the Third Man

intensional objects; that is, objects like properties, relations, and numbers 2 This is not all he believes them to be, of course, but at least part. The translation I have worked from is Cornford's. 1 Some of the especially pertinent literature includes Gregory Vlastos, 'The Third Man Argument in the Parmenides, The Philosophical Review, voLLXUl, no.3 (1954); Wilfrid Sellars, Vlastos and the Third Man, Philosophical Review, voLLXIV, no.3 (1955); P.T. 'The Third Man Again, Philosophical Review, vol.LXV (1956); and Colin Strang, and the Third Man, reprinted in Plato I: Metaphysics and Epistemology, (ed. G. Vlastos, Notre Dame, 1971). 2 R.E. Allen says that this is the generally accepted view, although he himself disagrees with it. See his Participation and Predication in Plato's Middle Dialogues, reprinted in Plato I, ibid, p.177. Also compare Vlastos, Postscript to the Third Man: A Reply to Mr. Geach, Philosophical Review, vol.LXV (1956), p.90, and Lynne Spellman, Patterns and Copies: The Auslegung, Vol. 17, No. 1

Self-Predication in Plato's Middle Dialogues

In this paper I will argue that Plato is committed to self-predication in dialogues generally agreed to be earlier than the Parmenides. By this I mean not merely that Plato is committed to statements of the form (1) F-ness is F (S-statements) where F-ness is a Form. That Plato was committed to such statements is beyond dispute.' Rather I am claiming that (1) must be interpreted to mean (2) F-ness is characterized by F, or possesses F. While my thesis may well be accepted by a majority of scholars, there are a number of holdouts who have proposed alternative interpretations of (1). The main contenders are the following: (3) F-ness is identical with F2 (4) F-ness makes whatever participates in it F3 (5) N [ (x)(Fx-. Fx) ]4 (6) F-ness is what it is to be F' (7) F-ness is what is F (or F itself or the nature of F).6 I believe there is clear evidence in the dialogues which supports (2) as the correct interpretation of (1), but the present paper will be limited to trying

Belief, Knowledge, and Learning in Plato's Middle Dialogues

There is a problem about belief and knowledge in Plato's epistemology that has exercised serious students of Plato only to settle into a recent orthodoxy. Guthrie characterizes the problem and its current resolution this way: ‘In the Meno doxa appeared to be a dim apprehension of the same objects (Forms and the necessary truths of mathematics) of which knowledge is a clear and complete understanding … in the Republic each is directed to different objects, knowledge to the Forms and doxa to the sensible world alone … at least the opinion seems now to prevail that on the relationship between doxa and knowledge Meno and Republic are irreconcilable, and exhibit a complete change of mind on Plato's part.'

Plato (review)

460 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY To the second question I am inclined to answer with a qualified no. Although the precision of modern thinking can sometimes genuinely contribute to the understanding of ancient thought, I do not think that in this case the truly puzzling features of Plato's account of the Receptacle and the Demiurge's transformations of its contents are really illuminated by contemporary paradigms. Why, for example, Plato thinks that the apparently mechanical distribution of the four kinds of body to four separate regions would take place even in chaos (Timaeus 53a) and does not represent a work of reason, is just one of the several questions complicated rather than clarified by Scheffers interpretation. Wrl.LlXMPOHLE Lehman College, CUNY J. B. Skemp. Plato. Greece & Rome: New Surveys in the Classics, no. 10. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. Pp. 63. This is a flawed but useful bibliographical essay by a distinguished Plato scholar. Primarily a discussion of recent work (generally work in English) on Plato, the booklet is also Skemp's attempt to describe the current status of some important issues in Plato exegesis. There is an introduction (which discusses general works on Plato, bibliographies, editions, translations, and language studies), followed by chapters on the authenticity and order of the works; the Socratic question; Plato's political philosophy (emphasizing the debate initiated by Popper); the Theory of Forms; epistemology; psychology, aesthetics, and ethics; physics; theology; and the unwritten doctrines. The book suffers from being neither fish nor fowl. Skemp presents his own beliefs too often for the work to be taken as an objective survey of the issues. On the other hand, he seldom defends his opinions, which are often controversial and occasionally idiosyncratic; he offers them mostly as obiter dicta. Skemp denies at the outset Co. 3) that the book is a bibliography. Indeed, it would probably be impossible even to list in sixty-three pages the scholarly works on Plato of the last twenty years. Thus, he has been highly selective in discussing works. Still, it is chiefly as a "reader's report" from a learned scholar that this pamphlet will be valued. Regrettably, the volume is less reliable than it could have been, even given its wide scope and brief length. Works are often given incomplete and sometimes erroneous citations. Some of these are merely annoying: volume 50 of the Monist is cited as volume 1Co. 23); John Brentlinger is referred to as "J. A. Brenthinger" (p. 37) and "T. Brentlinger" (p. 48); John McDowell is "J. Macdowell" (p. 46); Vlastos's Platonic Studies is "Platonic Essays" (p. 49). Others could completely mislead the researcher: on the Third Man argument, the author cites an article by R. E. Allen, giving no title and a reference to "PhR 78 (1969), 74-8." The reference , however, is to an article by Vlastos; Allen's piece (presumably "Participation and Predication in Plato's Middle Dialogues") appeared in PhtTosophical Review 69 (1960) :147--64[ The exegesis of Plato is often questionable too. Skemp writes of the five Very Important Kinds of the Sophist: "note that they are called ~n~x,q,not 81~8t1"(p. 40). Yet they are called both: ~tStl at 254c2, and "t~vrl at 254d4. The discussion of issues varies greatly in quality; that concerning the Third Man is perhaps the worst in the book, that on the Timaeus the best. Despite its faults, this essay will prove useful to scholars, just because it fills (though imperfectly ) a need for bibliographical work on current Plato scholarship. It must be regarded as incomplete, sometimes erroneous, and certainly not definitive; but even experienced researchers will find information here that could not otherwise be obtained. WILLIAMJ. PRIOR University of Wisconsin ...

The Context of the Third Man Argument in Plato's Parmenides

The Context of the Third Man Argument in Plato's Parmenides ROBERT BARFORD IN 1957 HAROLD CHERNISS SPOKE OF a "still-rising flood of literature" on the Third Man argument (henceforth TMA) in Plato's Parmenides. 1 The waters went on to rather great heights, abating somewhat in recent years, although the argument continues to attract attention. To stay with the flood analogy for a moment, the flow of interest has clearly been in the direction of the logical analysis of the argument . 2 What has received less attention and remains unclear is Plato's own evaluation of the TMA. This is the question of the context in which the TMA appears in the Parmenides. The relation of logic and context can be seen in the following. Those who believe that the TMA is unsound (e.g., Cherniss, R. E. Allen) have argued that the theory of Forms has the necessary resources to prevent the regress from starting. 3 Specifically, they have denied that the Forms are self-predicational, an assumption thought to be necessary to the TMA. The question can be raised, however, whether Plato was aware of these resources, and if so, why he did not utilize them to expose the TMA as unsound. In terms of context it is at this point that the "puzzlement" theory makes its entry. 4 Vlastos (followed by Booth, Nerlich, Moravcsik, and Geach, among others) has argued that Plato did not expose the TMA as unsound because he himself was probably not aware of all of its necessary premises, for which reason Plato could not determine whether or not the TMA is sound. According to Vlastos, Plato was never really able to discover the exact source "The Relation of the Timaeus to Plato's Later Dialogues," in R. E. Allen, ed., Studies in Plato's Metaphysics (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), p. 369. 2 In our century the logical tradition on the TMA begins with the excellent contribution of A. E. Taylor, "Parmenides, Zeno, and Socrates," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 16 (1916):234-289. But it undoubtedly received its most provocative presentation in the article by G. Vlastos, "The Third Man Argument in the Parmenides," Philosophical Review 63 (1954): 319-349; reprinted with addenda, 1963, in Allen, Studies, pp. 231-263. Since then numerous articles have appeared (too numerous to mention here) dealing with the logic of the TMA in the Parmenides. 3 Cherniss, "Relation," and Allen, "Participation and Predication in Plato's Middle Dialogues," Philosophical Review 69 (1960):147-164; reprinted in Allen, Studies, pp. 43-60. 4 In his 1916 article Taylor points out that the "solution" to the TMA is the necessity of denying the "tacit premise" of Parmenides, namely, "that a universal can be predicated of itself as it is predicated of its 'instances'" (p. 253). Taylor explains this by pointing out that a white thing has whiteness or white color, but whiteness does not have the color white; it is the color white. Logically speaking, this is to distinguish an 'is' of identity and an 'is' of predication. Taylor says, "The solution of Parmenides' puzzle, then, is simply that identity and the relation of predicate to subject are different and disparate ..." (p. 254). But was Plato aware of the ambiguity? Taylor writes: "It is perhaps important to note that the source of the apparent fallacy, the ambiguity of 'is', is also, as Plato was to show in the Sophistes, the source of all the old 'eristic' difficulties about negative propositions. Since as everyone admits, Plato saw and explained the ambiguity so far as it affects the possibility of significant denial, it is only reasonable to suppose he was aware of the presence of the same ambiguity in the argument we have just analyzed [the TMA]" (p. 255). However, by 1934 Taylor had come to have second thoughts on this latter point. In The "'Parmenides" of Plato (Oxford, 1934), Taylor repeats his 1916 analysis of the TMA, but he now claims that "it is more than we can say" whether Plato was alive to the ambiguity upon which he believes the TMA rests (p. 21). [1] 2 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY of the difficulties raised by the...

Plato's Middle Dialogues and the Independence of Particulars

Plato's Middle Dialogues and the Independence of Particulars

Parmenides and Plato's Parmenides 131a-132c

Parmenides and Plato's Parmenides 131a-132c* HENRY TELOH RECENT DISCUSSIONS about the arguments of Parmenides 13 la-132c suffer, I believe, from a lack of historical perspective. While commentators have seen that Plato casts the middle period Forms in Eleatic language) they have not connected this legacy with the Parmenides arguments. There is, however, a connection, and the persistent failure to see it has led to an inadequate appreciation of the arguments. I will argue that Plato inherits from the Eleatics the predicate "one," and applies it to each of the Forms-- "Each Form is one." Then I will show that the thrust of "Parmenides' ''~ attacks at Parmenides 131a-132c is that "Socrates" is unable to state how Forms are related to phenomena while at the same time preserving the Eleatic legacy, the oneness of each Form. Finally I will suggest the importance of this interpretation to Plato's later philosophy. First let us turn to the historical Parmenides' use of "one." In the Way ot Truth he gives the indications of, or "signposts" to, Being (DK 28 B8.4-6); it is ungenerated, imperishable, whole, unique, 8 immovable, complete, one and continuous. We see that the predicate "one" (Ev) takes its place among the other signposts, and that it occurs in the phrase "since it [Being] is now altogether, one, and continuous" (8.5-6). There is an obvious connection between "one," "altogether," and "continuous" or "cohesive" in 8.6 and "whole" in 8.4, and these predicates appear to indicate that Being is indivisible . This suspicion is verified at 8.22-25, where the homogeneity, fullness, and continuity of Being are given as the reasons why it is indivisible (o~ ~mttQs~6~ ~axtv). Therefore Parmenides uses gv explicitly to indicate indivisibility. * This is a revised version of a paper read at The Southern Society/or Philosophy and Psychology (Knoxville, 1973), and the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association (St. Louis, 1974). I would like to thank James Duerlinger, W. H. Hay, Friedrich Solmsen, and an unnamed referee for The 1ournal of the History of Philosophy for their helpful comments. x See F. Solmsen, "Parmenides and the Description of Perfect Beauty in Plato's 'Symposium'," American Journal of Philology, XCII (1971), 62-70; R. Hackforth, Plato's Phaedo (Cambridge, 1955), p. 84; P. Friedliinder, Plato, An Introduction, trans. H. Meyerhoff (New York, 1958), pp. 23-26; and my "The Isolation and Connection of the Forms in Plato's Middle Dialogues," forthcoming in Apeiron. Also see F. M. Cornford, Plato and Parmenides (London, 1939), pp. 80-81, for interesting, but as I will show, inadequate comments on "Parmenides'" objections to the theory of Forms. At times I distinguish the dramatic characters "Parmenides," "Zeno," and "Socrates" from their historical counterparts by the use of quotation marks. We cannot assume that Plato is an accurate source of information about the Eleatics; in particular, Plato's "Parmenides" maintains the thesis that "all is one," whereas Parmenides argued for a theory of Being. There is, however, as I will show, a close connection between "Parmenides" and Parmenides. 3 There are a number of alternative texts for o~kov Imtrvo'tEv6g,but "whole, unique" is a commonly accepted reading. [125] 126 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY There is, however, another meaning for "one" in Parmenides' poem. Being is unique (~tovvo),ev~;, 8.4), not because it is the only member of a class, but because "there neither is nor will be anything else besides (outside of) Being" (8.36--37). Being is not unique in that it is different from anything else, rather it is all there is. The uniqueness of Being is contrasted with the two forms (Ixooq~t; 9 . . ~-6o), light and dark, which mortals mistakenly name, failing to realize that there is only Being (8.38-39, 53). So the predicate ~towo,/ev~; means unique, and it functions as another use of "one" in Parmenides ' poem. ~ In Melissus, "one" becomes the principal predicate of Being, and there is even a tendency on his part to assimilate it to Being when he talks about "the one" (~6 g,~, DK 30 B8.2, 6). ~ Simplicius has preserved two fragments which unambiguously state Melissus' uses...

The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (review)

250 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY between 8 ~oxtx~.[vBand x~.[v-quvd (597 C), the latter of which Cherniss argues is intended explicitly to reject self-predication ("The Relation of the Timaeus to Plato's Later Dialogues ," Am. J. Philol., LXXVIII [1957], 225-266). Surely such evidence does not rule out the possibility that Plato is criticizing, not his own views, as Weingartner assumes, but rather misconstruals of his assertions (cf. Crombie, An Examination o/Plato's Doctrines, II [London, 1963], 54, 334). The subsequent interpretation of Parmenides' critique relies heavily upon Vlastos' much-discussed analysis (Phil. Rev., LXIII [1954], 319-349). What Weingartner adds is the claim that the Third Man is a reductio ad absurdum of the self-predication premise and consequently a rejection of the "metaphysical conception" of the forms (164-170). Unfortunately, this presupposes an unsympathetic interpretation of the forms, misses some dramatic cues in the dialogue, and is false. The weakness of the empirical evidence for Plato's having believed in super-particulars has been noted. That the forms cannot be non-self-predicational ideal standards is argued largely via a critique of Allen's "Participation and Predication in Plato's Middle Dialogues" (Phil. Rev., LXIX [1969], 147-164). The criticism seems obtuse to the idea that the forms' ontological difference could determine the mode of their relation to their embodiments. The Cratylus thought experiment of perfectly duplicating an individual (432B-D) is cited as counterevidence. Its point, that perfect imitation is an absurdity (imitating is not duplicating), is incorrectly taken to be that perfect imitation requires sharing identical, and hence indistinguishable, characteristics . Such sharing is unwarrantably taken as paradigmatic for the relation of forms to things. Surely it is dramatically relevant that Parmenides both acknowledges the indispensability of the forms and characterizes his arguments, which disperse the unity of a form into multiplicity, as answerable by cultivating the argumentative style whereby Zeno shows the impossibility of multiple existences (135B-E, 127E). Plato seems to have thought the task was to defend the uniqueness of each form, not to reject their paradigmaticality (cf. Laws 966,4,). Finally, Plato simply does not cease to use forms as paradigms after the Parmenides. Even Professor Weingartner recognizes them in the Timaeus, which he wishes to redate, or, failing that, to see as a symptom of "a relapse" (200) in Plato's old age. He also suggests "the more attractive tale" (!) that Plato postulated two different kinds of forms, one for dialectic and one for cosmology--a suggestion which surely would have transformed Parmenides' solicitude into ire. In any event, there are other unacknowledged, and unquestionably late, uses of forms as paradigms, such as Laws 668, 965C ft., Pol. 285E-286A, Soph., 265, and Ep., VII 342B-D. Remarkably, the post-Parmenides forms are said to be "criteria" and "form-standards," which are not "subject to the problems of self-predication" (197). Although this concept is not explicated sufficiently to be sure, could it be fairly close to what Plato had in mind all along? The book ends abruptly, without summary or conclusion and without bibliography or an Index Locorum. While it falls short of establishing a general thesis about unity in these dialogues, Weingartner's commentary is quite readable and within the capacity of the interested undergraduate student. Northern Illinois University JAMES KINGand J^M~s WAYNEDYE The Formative Period o/Islamic Thought. By W. Montgomery Watt. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973. Pp. xxii + 424. s Professor Watt's impressive book offers a detailed picture of the development of Islamic thought up to about 950 ^.D. Some of the material covered in this book appeared in 1949 as Free Will and Predestination in Early Islam. BOOK REVIEWS 251 The emphasis during the period under discussion is not, according to Professor Watt, confined to theology--as the term "Islamic Thought" might lead someone into believing-but rather to the significance of religious doctrines in the Islamic community, as well as the development and the intellectual lines of thought which led to the maturation of Islam in all its facets. In his attempt to achieve such a difficult objective, Professor Watt offered a radical "critique of the main heresiographical tradition" (p...

The Good and the True

My target in this paper is a certain dogma about the rationality of wants. The dogma is that the formal conditions for the consistency of wants mirror the formal conditions for the consistency of beliefs. In so far as the relation of wanting to the good is analogous to the relation of believing to the true, this amounts to the doctrine that the 'structure of the good' is analogous to the 'structure of the true'. The good, like the true, can never conflict with itself: hence it is as irrational to want contraries as to believe them. I shall refer to this doctrine as 'the Unity of the Good'. A few impressionistic historical reminders should suffice to show that it has behind it much of our philosophical tradition. In Plato's middle Dialogues, all good things have a single cause and exemplar in the Form of the Good. The connection of the Unity of the good with the unity of the true is attested by Plato's penchant for the doctrine that the virtues are all one, and that the one which they all are, is knowledge. In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, some doubts are expressed about the unity of the Form of the Good, on the ground that 'good' can be predicated in all the categories. One might try to infer from this that Aristotle thought two goods might conflict, where they belong to different categories: but I do not see how to work this out. In any case, Aristotle appears to settle for an architectonic view of the organization of ends, which is another version of the Unity of the Good. Conflicts are seen to be merely apparent as soon as one takes account of the subordination of all ends to the comprehensive political good [NE Io94b.]. Perhaps as a consequence, Aristotle has bequeathed us a smooth way of getting around the most striking class of counterexamples to the unity of the good: I refer to his explanation of Tragedy as springing from the hero's 'tragic flaw'. (A more plausible view of Tragedy is Hegel's, who sees it as a 'collision' of right with right.) In Aristotle, however, there is no logical link between the Unity of the Good and epistemology: though it happens that the Political Good has something to do with securing the peaceful pursuit of

Participation and Predication in Plato's Middle Dialogues

Participation and Predication in Plato's Middle Dialogues