Kahn s3

Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57

www.brill.nl/phro

Why Is the Sophist a Sequel to the Theaetetus?Charles H. KahnDepartment of Philosophy, School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa., USA [email protected]

Abstract The Theaetetus and the Sophist both stand in the shadow of the Parmenides, to which they refer. I propose to interpret these two dialogues as Platos first move in the project of reshaping his metaphysics with the double aim of avoiding problems raised in the Parmenides and applying his general theory to the philosophy of nature. The classical doctrine of Forms is subject to revision, but Platos fundamental metaphysics is preserved in the Philebus as well as in the Timaeus. The most important change is the explicit enlargement of the notion of Being to include the nature of things that change. This reshaping of the metaphysics is prepared in the Theaetetus and Sophist by an analysis of sensory phenomena in the former and, in the latter, a new account of Forms as a network of mutual connections and exclusions. The division of labor between the two dialogues is symbolized by the role of Heraclitus in the former and that of Parmenides in the latter. Theaetetus asks for a discussion of Parmenides as well, but Socrates will not undertake it. For that we need the visitor from Elea. Hence the Theaetetus deals with becoming and flux but not with being; that topic is reserved for Eleatic treatment in the Sophist. But the problems of falsity and Not-Being, formulated in the first dialogue, cannot be resolved without the considerations of truth and Being, reserved for the later dialogue. That is why there must be a sequel to the Theaetetus. Keywords metaphysics, Being, Not-Being, truth and falsity

I take my cue from the Philebus, where Socrates claims that the combination of the one and the many is an unaging and immortal attribute of discourse. Unity and plurality, he says, belong together in all logoi, in everything that is ever said (15d). I think these two themes unity and plurality offer our best guidance for the interpretation of Plato. If as Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/156852807X177959

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C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57

readers of Plato we try to do justice to the specific individuality of each dialogue, as historians of philosophy we also try to grasp the unity of thought underlying the diversity of the texts. In an earlier study on Plato and the Socratic dialogue, I argued for this kind of philosophical unity connecting a number of Socratic dialogues with the Republic, and thus I tried to present a considerable section of the corpus as a unified literary project on Platos part.1 In stressing the theme of unity I was clearly swimming against the current. The problem was not simply that, in the age of Guthrie and Vlastos, the developmental approach was so firmly established in the halls of Platonic scholarship. There was also the pluralistic, even atomistic nature of the texts themselves. From the Crito and the Ion to the Phaedrus and Parmenides, every Platonic dialogue presents itself as an isolated whole, a complete literary unit. No one of these dialogues refers to the conversation in any other dialogue, even when the topics are the same.2 Of course the situation is quite different in the later works. Not only does the Statesman continue the Sophist (and refer to this dialogue twice by name),3 but both dialogues present themselves as sequel to the Theaetetus, and they promise to continue this discussion with an unwritten dialogue on the Philosopher. A comparable literary series is projected in the Timaeus, which begins with a partial summary of the Republic and is directly followed by the incomplete Critias. So in his later career as an author, Plato played explicitly with the notion of an extended literary project, comparable to the project that I found implicit in the earlier work. Nevertheless, even in these later series, the literary form does not reflect what I take to be the underlying unity of thought. As an author, Plato remains as devious in the late works as he was from the beginning. We are still faced with the double task of doing justice to the surface diversity of the dialogues but also to the underlying unity of philosophical thought. The new challenge is to find such unity in the later writings. I explore here the continuity between the TheaetetusPlato and the Socratic Dialogue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Thus Phaedo 72e echoes the discussion of recollection in the Meno, but does not refer to Socrates conversation with Meno in that dialogue. 3) This explicit reference to the earlier dialogue has been doubted by Rowe and others, but I cannot see that at Statesman 284b 7 can mean anything except in the dialogue Sophist. Similarly for at 286b 10.2) 1)


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and the Sophist as pointing to a larger project of reshaping Platonic metaphysics in the later dialogues. Both the Sophist and the Statesman present themselves as literary sequel to the Theaetetus. Theodorus begins the conversation in the Sophist by claiming that their meeting was agreed upon yesterday, and the Statesman also refers to the Theaetetus conversation as taking place yesterday (St. 258a 4). It is not quite so obvious that the Theaetetus was composed with the Sophist-Statesman in view. There is no definite forward reference in the earlier dialogue. Socrates last words are: Let us meet again here at dawn, but nothing is said about the future topic. The plan for the series is developed in the Sophist-Statesman, not in the Theaetetus. This asymmetry between backward and forward references probably reflects the fact that a considerable lapse of time ensued between the composition of the Theaetetus and that of the Sophist. That is suggested above all by the stylistic discrepancies between the two dialogues, discrepancies that connect the Theaetetus to the middle group of dialogues stylistically akin to the Republic (together with the Phaedrus and Parmenides), whereas the Sophist-Statesman belongs stylistically to the late group, including the Philebus, Timaeus and Laws.4 The most natural explanation of the stylistic discrepancy between these two groups is the passage of some time. Between the Theaetetus and the Sophist Plato was apparently busy with other things, possibly with a voyage to Syracuse. But when he returned to writing dialogues, Plato insisted on the continuity of this particular literary project. In this case the stylistic-chronological gap turns out to be of importance only as evidence for the persistence of this project. There is another, less obvious literary signal connecting the Sophist with the Theaetetus. Both dialogues stand, as it were, in the shadow of the Parmenides. For in both dialogues Socrates refers to his meeting with Parmenides, when he was very young, as if it were a historical fact. (Th. 183e, Soph. 217c). Now the dramatic date of the Parmenides conversation is roughly 450 BC, when Socrates would have been about twenty. Since Parmenides must have been dead by then, the meeting is certainly4)

For the documentary evidence supporting the division into three groups, see my chapter On Platonic Chronology in J. Annas and C. Rowe (eds.), New Perpectives on Plato, Ancient and Modern (Cambridge, Mass./London, 2002).

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fictitious. The only occasion on which Socrates can have personally encountered Parmenides is in the pages of Platos dialogue. So these two references to a meeting between the two philosophers are in fact a reference to Platos Parmenides. I am not the first to notice these references to the dialogue Parmenides in the Theaetetus and Sophist.5 But I think their significance for the interpretation of our two dialogues has not been fully appreciated. For even if the composition of the Parmenides did not reflect some sort of intellectual crisis for Plato, as some modern interpreters have believed, Platos detailed criticism of his own theory is surely a major event. And since the objections of the Parmenides are never explicitly answered, we are left in doubt how far Plato thought the theory needed to be revised. We can be sure that it was not entirely abandoned, since Parmenides himself observes that giving up altogether on invariant forms would be equivalent to giving up on philosophy (135bc). It is natural, then, to look to the Theaetetus and Sophist, apparently the first writings after the Parmenides, for clues as to how Plato proposed to take account of the criticism presented in that dialogue. It is surely significant that the Theaetetus contains no explicit reference to the theory of Forms, while the Sophist treats that theory critically, from an external point of view, as the doctrine of the friends of Forms. It is as if Plato, after the Parmenides, had wiped the slate clean and was prepared to make a fresh start in metaphysics and epistemology. I propose to see the Theaetetus and the Sophist as Platos first moves in a long-term project of reshaping his metaphysical doctrine in the light of the problems raised in the Parmenides, a project continued in the Philebus and Timaeus. But in order to see what the challenge is, and how Plato responds to it, it will be helpful first to distinguish the fundamental conception of Platonic metaphysics from the particular formulation given to the theory in the Phaedo and Republic. I will refer to this Phaedo-Republic formulation as the classical theory of Forms. By Platonic metaphysics, on the other hand, I mean a less specific doctrine, whose essential feature is the commitment to a Being of Parmenidean type, that is, to a reality that is eternally unchanging and self-identical, accessible to rational cognition

5)

Cornford was already crediting Dis with this observation. See Platos Theory of Knowledge (London, 1935), 1.


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but not to sense-perception, and contrasted with a phenomenal realm of sensible change and Becoming. This is a dualism not of two worlds but of two levels of reality. This metaphysical dualism entails a sharp contrast between reason or intellect (nous) and sense perception, with doxa belonging on the side of sense perception. This double dualism, implied in the Symposium and Phaedo, is fully formulated in the central books of the Republic and reasserted in the Philebus and Timaeus. There are signs of it in the Sophist (253e-254a) and Statesman (285e-286a), though perhaps none in the Theaetetus. The evidence from the Statesman and Philebus, as well as from the Timaeus, shows that, for Plato, this double dualism has survived the Parmenidean criticism. Whatever changes he may have made in the classical theory of Forms, it is clear that Plato did not abandon his metaphysical vision after the Parmenides. There has been a tendency for some scholars to suppose that, if the Timaeus could somehow be redated, one might succeed in maintaining the Rylean picture of Plato as a philosopher who, in his latest period, has left transcendental metaphysics behind.6 I submit that the textual evidence to be cited below from the Statesman and Philebus, as well as from the Timaeus, is incompatible with this view. One clue, then, to understanding the connection between the Sophist and Theaetetus is to see both dialogues as follow-up to the Parmenides and to Platos all-out assault on the classical theory of Forms. I suggest that, as a consequence of the Parmenides criticism, at least two features of the classical theory must be abandoned: namely, the language of participation, which can be taken literally as the sharing of Forms by sensibles, and the recognition of something like immanent forms forms that we have or forms in us separate from the Forms themselves.7 The latter notion, taken at face value, leads to the conception of two separate worlds,

6)

The classical statement of this tendency is the influential paper of G.E.L. Owen, The Place of the Timaeus in Platos Dialogues, reprinted in Logic, Science and Dialectic (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), 65-84. Despite the dazzling brilliance of his arguments, Owens attempt to remove the Timaeus from its place among the late dialogues is, in my view, a complete failure. 7) The Phaedo makes frequent use of the terminology of participation for the sensibleForm relation, but of course it is not committed to a literal notion of sharing. On the contrary, this relation is there left undefined (100d). After the criticism of the Parmenides,

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a conception that makes the theory pointless, as Parmenides last objection demonstrates. (I note that the theme of separation for the Forms is a formula adopted by critics of the theory, such as Parmenides and Aristotle, not by Plato in the positive exposition of the Phaedo and Republic, nor in the Sophist report of the doctrine of the Friends of Forms.)8 Most of the Parmenides criticism concerns the problematic relationship between Forms and the sensible many. It is precisely this problem that is reformulated in the Philebus, where the question is asked how such unities, admitting neither generation nor corruption, can remain one and the same while coming to be in many and unlimited cases of becoming, either one unity being scattered and becoming many, or (most impossible of all) being separate from itself as a whole (Philebus 15a-b, essentially a summary of Parmenides 131a-c). The Philebus fails to answer this question; and that failure may be one of the reasons why the Philebus ends with the interlocutor saying to Socrates, in the very last words of the dialogue, I will remind you of what has been left out! (67b 12). On my view, then, one of Platos projects in the later dialogues is to find a way of reformulating his metaphysics that avoids the objections raised in the Parmenides. Such a project must confront three problems: 1) the nature of the Forms, 2) the nature of sensible phenomena, and 3) the connection between the two. This third problem, which we may call the problem of participation, is the most intractable. If there is any Platonic solution, I think it must be found in the Timaeus. As we have seen, the Philebus raises this question without offering a solution. The Sophist deals explicitly only with the theme of Being; it concerns itself both negatively and positively with the question of Forms, but not at all with the relation of Forms to sensibles. By contrast, the Theaetetus never mentions Forms

however, the metaphor of participation is abandoned as misleading for the sensible-Form relation, and it is transferred instead to the Form-Form relation in the Sophist as one of several expressions for connections between Forms. 8) Notice the cunning way in which Parmenides induces the immature Socrates to accept the separation of Forms from their participants at Parmenides 130b. Socrates had used the term once, harmlessly, for logical distinction at 129d 7. Parmenides then uses it three times in immediate succession (130b 2-4) and twice again in the near context (130c 1, d 1), thus emphasizing the problem of separation that leads to the greatest difficulty of two independent worlds (133b 4).


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as such and it is concerned primarily with Becoming, that is to say, with sensible phenomena. Neither the Sophist nor the Theaetetus confronts the problem of participation. As David Sedley has recently reminded us, the Theaetetus has the external form of an aporetic dialogue in the Socratic manner an unsuccessful attempt to define knowledge, with a series of definitions proposed and rejected.9 With regard to content, we can say that the argument of the Theaetetus has the structure of a double reductio. Part One takes as starting-point an account of knowledge in terms of sense perception, and shows that this account is unacceptable. Part Two begins with an account of knowledge in terms of doxa, and this assumption leads to equally unsatisfactory results. In both cases, the negative conclusion is prepared by important constructive argument. But despite many positive achievements, no clear progress is made towards a satisfactory account of knowledge. (I do not believe, as some commentators both ancient and modern have suggested, that the Theaetetus aims to lead us to an improved version of the Meno suggestion that knowledge should be conceived as a kind of doxa that has been tied down by a logos. That would be incompatible with the place of doxa in the cognitive dualism of the Philebus and Timaeus; see specifically the contrast between the objects of doxa and truest epistm at Philebus 59a-b.) Why is the Theaetetus so negative? And why this regression to a Socrates ignorant of Platonic metaphysics? I suggest that, as a consequence of Parmenides attack, Platos theory has been put on hold. At the same time, if we bear in mind the account of knowledge given in the Republic, and reasserted in the Philebus and Timaeus, the reasons for failure in the Theaetetus will be clear. In this standard Platonic account, the concept of knowledge is, on the one hand, grounded in the metaphysics of Being and, on the other hand, sharply distinguished from sense perception and doxa. If (as the Philebus and Timaeus will show) the author of the Theaetetus is still committed to this cognitive dualism, he knows in advance that an account of knowledge based on aisthsis and doxa, and excluding

9)

D. Sedley, The Midwife of Platonism. Text and Subtext in Platos Theaetetus (Oxford, 2004).

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the metaphysics of Being, is doomed to fail. (The problematic status of doxa as a basis for defining knowledge tends to be masked by the modern tradition of translating doxa in the Theaetetus as judgment rather than opinion. ) But if Plato has not changed his mind on these fundamental matters, why did he undertake such an elaborate double reductio? It may be helpful here to look back to the Parmenides, and to the philosophical method recommended and practiced in that dialogue. Parmenides urges the young Socrates to see not only what follows from his own hypothesis but also what follows from its denial (136a). Following Parmenides advice, in the Theaetetus Socrates and Theaetetus pursue an account of knowledge from the opposing, non-Platonic point of view. Assume that knowledge can be defined on the basis either of aisthsis or of doxa, without the metaphysics of Being, and see what follows. Since neither alternative gives a satisfactory outcome, we are justified in returning to the original, Platonic point of view. After attacking the classical theory, Parmenides had warned that, nevertheless, without invariant forms there can be no rational discourse (dialegesthai, Parm. 135c), and hence no knowledge. The strong version of this thesis is what I call the Parmenidean postulate, that knowledge in the full sense (knowledge pantels) takes as its object Being in the full sense (to pantels on). It is precisely in this respect that Plato can be rightly seen as a revisionist follower of Parmenides. This postulate is explicitly formulated as a premise in the argument introducing the Forms at the end of Republic V (477a 3). It is often taken for granted. For example, an equivalent assumption (referring to nous and Forms rather than to knowledge and Being) appears as an implicit premise in the argument for the existence of Forms in the Timaeus (51b 7-52a 4). The postulate itself is never argued for. But it is supported indirectly in the Theaetetus, by the failure of all attempts to give an account of knowledge while avoiding this assumption. This failure of the alternatives justifies, or at least supports, Platos return to his standard position in the Philebus and Timaeus. (Such is my slightly updated version of a traditional view of the Theaetetus as offering indirect support for Platonic metaphysics.)10

10) The standard modern version of this view of the Theaetetus is F.M. Cornford, Platos Theory of Knowledge (London, 1935). For an ancient precedent see D. Sedley, Three


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I turn now to the continuities between Theaetetus and Sophist. The most obvious connection is the theme of falsehood and error, which is developed at length as a problem in the first dialogue but restated and more fully resolved in the second. This division of labor between the two works is best understood in terms of the global contrast between them, symbolized by the role of Heraclitus in the first dialogue and Parmenides in the second. In thematic terms, the contrast is between flux and stasis, between Becoming and Being. The Theaetetus is primarily concerned with flux and the realm of change; a parallel discussion of stasis is acknowledged as necessary (181a), but deliberately excluded from this dialogue (183e-184a). Thus an examination of the Parmenidean position, which Theaetetus had requested, is postponed for the sequel. (That is why there must be a sequel to the Theaetetus.) This division between the two dialogues has important consequences for the discussion of error and falsehood. The problem of perceptual error is carefully treated in the Theaetetus, with the famous model of the wax tablet (191c-195b). But the more general problem of falsehood includes the problem of Not-Being, as the Theaetetus demonstrates (188d-189b). Now the Sophist insists that Being and Not-Being must be understood together (250e 7). Since Socrates is unwilling to engage Parmenides directly, the notion of Being as such is excluded from the Theaetetus, full discussion and solution of the problem of falsehood is necessarily reserved for the later dialogue. It might be objected to my account of the division of labor between the two dialogues that what is excluded from the Theaetetus is only the strong metaphysical or Parmenidean notion of Being, whereas what is needed for the account of Not-Being is something much weaker, more like the copula or identity use of the verb to be. But this, it turns out, is not a distinction that Plato will allow. There is no such thing as a nonmetaphysical sense of being, no philosophical difference between what we call existential and copula uses of is.11

Platonist Interpretations of the Theaetetus, in C. Gill and M.M. McCabe (eds.), Form and Argument in Late Plato (Oxford, 1996), 89-93. 11) I take it that this point is well established, in particular by the work of Lesley Brown. See Being in the Sophist: A Syntactical Enquiry, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy IV (1986), 49-70.

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The Sophist does argue, in criticizing the standard formulation of Platonic dualism, that the conception of Being must be generous enough to include changing as well as unchanging entities (249d). This is a new move in Platos revisionist version of Parmenidean metaphysics. Its implications are considerable, and most specifically for the theory of flux, as we shall see. We can also recognize signs of this broader ontology in some curious phrases of the Philebus: genesis eis ousian becoming into being at 26d 8, gegenmen ousia being that has come to be at 27b 8. These paradoxical expressions reflect the fact that the concept of Being has been explicitly extended to include things that move and change, such as soul. The Timaeus will even allow that phenomenal images cling somehow or other to being, on pain of being nothing at all ( . . . , , 52c 4). Hence not all beings are eternal essences, even if essences or Forms remain the onts onta, the true beings. But Being comes in degrees. That is why Being is the most universal of the koina (186a 2), or, in the terminology of the Sophist, a vowel Form, required for every connection, every symplok. But there is still no purely formal sense of the copula is, no predication without ontology. That is clear for the most conspicuous instance of Being in the Theaetetus, the fundamental predicative or veridical is, that provides the nerve of the argument in the final refutation of knowledge as sense perception at 186b-e. This is the propositional being needed for truth and falsity, the ousia that aisthsis cannot provide, and hence cannot be knowledge. It is, I suggest, because the hypothesis of the Theaetetus is deliberately designed to exclude Being as far as possible, that the account of logos at the end of this dialogue will still be unsatisfactory. The final section begins with a promising connection between knowledge and the capacity to give and receive a logos (202c 2). However, in a standard Platonic context the logos in question would be a , a statement of the essence or what a thing is. Hence no adequate account of logos can be given without reference to Being and ultimately to Forms. In the context of the Theaetetus, logos can be analyzed only as a symplok onomatn, a weavingtogether of words (202b). But the Sophist, with its broader metaphysical horizon, can point out that logos is given to us by a symplok eidn, a weaving-together of Forms. A similar insight lies behind the claim cited above from the Parmenides, that without invariant Forms there can be no dialegesthai, no philosophical discourse (Parm. 135b-c). Essentially the


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same claim, of a necessary connection between logos and stable concepts or essences, is made indirectly by the refutation of unrestricted flux in both the Cratylus and Theaetetus, as we shall see. First, however, we pause to take account of Platos monumental achievement in the syntactic and semantic analysis of propositional structure in the Sophist, where logos is described as an elementary symplok, the weaving-together of noun and verb as subject and predicate. It is a common feature for both Plato and Aristotle that the subjectpredicate analysis of simple sentences is given in terms of the word classes Noun (onoma) and Verb (rhma).12 The morphological distinction between noun and verb is easy to make in Greek but, as far as we know, no one before Plato had ever made it. In fact this passage at Sophist 262b is the first time in extant texts that rhma is used in the sense of verb. In all earlier occurrences, including occurrences in this dialogue, rhma means simply phrase, expression or saying. (And so again later in the Sophist, at 265c 5.) Plato has invented the noun-verb distinction in order to display the subject-predicate structure of elementary sentences such as Theaeteus sits and Theaetetus flies. Furthermore, in order to give an account of truth and falsehood, Plato has analyzed predication not only as a syntactic or sentential structure but also as a semantic or extra-linguistic relation between what is said and what it is said of. (Thus Theaetetus recognizes that these two sample sentences are about me 263a 10.) And all this is summed up in the formula for veridical being: the true logos says the things that are, as they are (ta onta hs estin) about you; the false logos says thing other than the things that are (hetera tn ontn) (263b).13 Exactly how the weaving-together of Forms is implicated in this elementary weaving-together of noun and verb is an obscure problem that deserves more attention than I can give it here. Presumably the Forms in question are Sitting, Flying, Human Being or anthrpos, and Being or ousia. Being is needed for each of the Forms separately as well as for their symplok. This symplok of Forms is somehow reflected in, or at least presupposed by, the subject-predicate fitting-together of a true statement. This fitting-together is represented in Platos formula for a true logos by

12) 13)

For the corresponding analysis in Aristotle, see De Interpretatione 2-5. (sc. ) . . . . . . (Sophist 263b).

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what I call the veridical use of the verb in ta onta hs estin. The repetition of the verb in this formula (onta, estin) makes clear that the symplok must be taken twice: once for the conjunction of subject and predicate in the assertion or judgment expressed in the logos, and again for the conjunction in fact or reality that makes the logos true. This is, I think, the same duality captured by the so-called disquotational view of truth: the sentence snow is white is true if and only if snow is white. In an earlier study of Platos use of einai, I pointed out that there is a similar judgmentfact ambiguity or parallelism in the key notion of ousia in the Theaetetus, the notion of propositional being that is decisive in the final refutation of aisthsis.14 Since aisthsis alone cannot judge that X is anything (or that X is), aisthsis cannot be true or false, and hence cannot be knowledge. The repetition of the verb to be in Platos formula for truth (saying ta onta hs estin) makes explicit this duality of being as thought and as fact, or as claim and truth value. Thus the Sophist, in its ontic formula for truth, offers a more fine-grained analysis of the same notion of propositional Being that functioned in the Theaetetus. This advance in the analysis of einai in the Sophist is parallel to the way in which the subject-predicate analysis of logos and its connection with the symplok of Forms carries the account of logos beyond what can be reached in the Theaetetus. These two advances in the analysis of einai and in the account of logos represent the most technical sense in which the Sophist is a sequel to the earlier dialogue. The Sophist provides the ontological and semantic resources for the analysis of not-being and falsehood, and hence it makes possible Platos definitive solution to the old problem of false judgment, the problem that the Theaetetus develops but does not solve. We should notice that the veridical or propositional notion of ta onta, the things that are, is needed in the Theaetetus not only for the final argument against aisthsis but throughout the dialogue for the discussion of what is true, as in the formula of Protagoras: man is the measure of what is, that it is, and what is not, that it is not. We note further that in this fundamental formula for truth, introduced by Protagoras but retained by Plato and Aristotle, the occurrence of einai is not only doubled in the way I have suggested (for both judgment and fact); it also neutralizes our distinction between the existential and copula uses of the verb: man is the14)

Some Philosophical Uses of to be in Plato, Phronesis 26 (1981), 105-34.


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measure of what exists, but also of what is the case measure of what is, but also of what is X and not Y. This systematic ambiguity in the notion of ta onta is fundamental in Greek thought. The notion of beings or what there is, ta onta, applies to things like the moon but also to events like the moon being eclipsed. (Even the ordinary words for things, ta pragmata or ta chrmata, are ambiguous in the same way.) Of course philosophers can make this distinction when they choose to do so, as in the noun-verb analysis of logos. But they automatically ignore the distinction between things and states of affairs when referring to ta onta. Returning to the Theaetetus, we note that, although the theory of universal flux aims to avoid expressions of einai or what is and seeks to replace them by gignesthai or what becomes (152e 1), it is unable to do so consistently. An account of knowledge cannot do without some notion of what is the case, what is really so; and for Plato (and for ordinary Greek) this implies the static aspect of einai, rather than the kinetic aspect of gignesthai. This idiomatic advantage of Being over Becoming in colloquial expressions for truth mirrors the philosophical claim that knowledge and truth require some fixity in the object. That is the thought behind Platos insistence in the Sophist that there can be no nous or understanding without stability (249b-c). In effect, the Theaetetus argues the same conclusion for logos: there can be no description of a world without stability, a world of unrestricted flux. That, I take it, is the conclusion at 182c-183b: there is no coherent statement of the thesis of total flux. The noun-verb or subject-predicate analysis of logos in the Sophist also sheds a retrospective light on the treatment of false judgment in the earlier dialogue. It has often been remarked that the examples of error given in the Theaetetus typically involve perceptual misidentification (mistaking Socrates for Theodorus) or conceptual confusion (taking 7 and 5 for 13). These examples give the impression that an erroneous judgment is always a mistake of identification, as if every judgment that X is Y involved the is of identity.15 Socrates choice of examples is puzzling here, because clearly the problem of error is intended to be more general.15) This is true even for the impossible examples of confusing two universal concepts taking the beautiful to be ugly or a cow to be a horse. See Burnyeats note in The Theaetetus of Plato, translation of M.J. Levett revised by Myles Burnyeat (Indianapolis/Cambridge, 1990), 323, n. 43.

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However, this limitation in the examples recalls a similar restriction on the use of is implied in the view of the late-learners in the Sophist, who refuse to say a man is good, but only that a man is a man or that something good is good (251b-c). In the case of predication for the late-learners, the identification is a semantic relation: the identity between a name and a nominatum, between a description and the thing described. In the perceptual case of Theaetetus Part Two, the identity is between a person perceived and the proper name or memory-trace of a person. Despite these differences, the semantic parallel is precise: most of the positive examples of error in the Theaetetus are compatible with the late-learners limitation of the notion of predication to statements of identity, in the sense of matching a name with a nominatum. In effect, the late-learners construe predication as naming. I suggest that Plato in the Theaetetus has largely restricted his examples of error to judgments of this kind, because he is not yet ready to give the richer account of propositional being and predication that he will offer in the Sophist. Since Plato has no purely formal notion of being as copula, he may well hold that the propositional symplok of an elementary logos cannot be adequately presented except in the context of symplok eidn, the weaving-together of Forms. Thus when the Sophist argues for the necessity of mixing between Kinds, the argument is expressly designed to tell against the late-learners restriction on predication, as well as against a denial of other kinds of connection (physical combination or conceptual links, 251e-252c). In each case, a rational account requires a symplok eidn. And this is a topic that is excluded by hypothesis from the Theaetetus but must await the new perspective introduced by the Stranger from Elea. I am assuming that Plato, when he composed the Theaetetus, had in mind most of the ideas that he would develop later in the Sophist. That is why, when the dialogue ends, the interlocutors plan to meet again at dawn. But nothing depends on this biographical assumption. If Plato had not yet recognized the complexity of noun-verb predication, he had in any case a sure instinct for avoiding such complexity in his choice of examples of error in the Theaetetus. There are, of course, allusions to the Forms in the Theaetetus. In the famous ethical digression, the many echoes of moral doctrine from the Gorgias and Republic culminate in the depiction of two patterns established in reality ( 176e 3), one a divine


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model of happiness, the other a godless model of misery. As models for a human life to copy, these two paradeigmata are functionally equivalent to Forms of Justice and Injustice. But they are not described in the ontological terms that would be distinctive of the theory of Forms. Even more suggestive of Forms is the introduction of the koina at 185a-186b. The examples given of these common elements of thought are extensionally equivalent to a list of Forms. The list given includes the following: Being, Not-Being, Same, Different, Similar, Dissimilar, One, Two and number generally with its subdivisions Odd and Even, as well as Admirable and Shameful (kalon, aischron), Good and Bad (agathon, kakon) (185a-186b). The positive members of the last two pairs represent typical examples of Forms in the classical theory; the other koina represent the Kinds that function in dialectical argument in Parmenides and Sophist. In the present context these koina serve to distinguish thought or judgment from sense perception, from aisthsis narrowly defined by dependence on the sense modalities of the body. In distinguishing these common concepts from the objects of the special senses, the Theaetetus comes exceedingly close to recognizing Forms as the objects of rational thought. Three of the koina mentioned in this passage (Being, Same and Different) will in fact reappear among the five Greatest Kinds discussed in the central section of the Sophist. This is one of the more obvious continuities between our two dialogues. But the Theaetetus says nothing whatsoever about the ontological status of the koina; they are simply items that the psyche considers by itself, without the aid of the body. However, without some metaphysical distinction between invariant Being and variant Becoming it is not clear how the corresponding epistemic distinction can be drawn. There are certainly allusions here to the notion of rational cognition (analogizesthai at 186a 10, analogismata 186c 2; syllogismos at 186d 3). The psyche in question is clearly the rational soul. But there is no attempt to distinguish conceptual thought as such from the more general notion of doxa or dianoia that includes perceptual judgment and imagination. Since it excludes any basis in Platonic metaphysics, the Theaetetus is unwilling to draw Platos distinction between nous and epistm, on the one hand, and doxa on the other. Of course the nominal distinction can be drawn: unlike knowledge and nous, doxa can be false. But what is it about nous and epistm that guarantees their contact with truth? At this point, I

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suspect, Platos epistemology cannot be fully articulated in separation from his metaphysics. The Sophist does deal at length with the metaphysical concept of Being, but it does not focus on the familiar contrast between the invariant and the changing, between Being and Becoming. On the contrary, it insists that Being must include both the unchanging and what changes (249d 3). The inclusion of change is new; less new is the insistence that, without some unchanging, self-identical reality, there can be no nous and, in effect, no philosophy (249b-d). The formula here for invariance, , sameness of respect, sameness of state, reference to the same thing (transl. L. Brown) is familiar from the Phaedo, where similar formulae occur repeatedly ( 79 9 d 2; again in the summary at 80b). This formula for invariance is twice cited in the Sophist as the characteristic doctrine of the Friends of Forms (248a 12, 252a 7). But it is also affirmed by the Eleatic Stranger himself, as a general requirement for knowledge, intelligence and reason (epistm, phronsis, nous at 249b 12-c 7). And it is just such stable reality that is avoided by the assumptions of the Theaetetus. Even in the Sophist, however, Plato remains strikingly reluctant to specify the ontological status of the Kinds under discussion. It is surely implied that these Kinds satisfy the requirement of invariance just cited. The network of connections and exclusions between these gen is, after all, the object of dialectic, the highest form of knowledge (253c-d). Each Kind has its definite nature, which determines its negative or positive relations to other Kinds. One of the Kinds is Being itself, which seems to contain all the rest as its parts. But in this dialogue Being is never contrasted with Becoming, and there is no explicit reference to either the metaphysical or the cognitive dualism that we recognize as distinctly Platonic. There is only one passage in the Sophist that can be read as an allusion to such dualism.This dialectical skill ( ) I imagine you would award it to none but those who philosophize in a pure and righteous manner? . . . . The philosopher ever clings through his reasoning to the form of what-is (or the form of eternal beings) ( ), and with him its rather the brightness of the place that makes it no easy matter to catch sight of him. For most of us cannot bear to keep the gaze of the souls eyes fixed firmly on the divine. (Sophist 253c-254b 1, translation after Lesley Brown)


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The light-darkness contrast here is strongly reminiscent of the Cave allegory, and the picture of the philosopher clinging by reasoning to the idea of beings that are forever (254a 8) cannot fail to recall the philosopher of the Republic. But the crucial phrase can also be read more innocently as clinging always to the form of being, without any mention of eternal reality. (This ambiguity in the syntax of seems to me deliberate.) By way of contrast, the only reference in the Sophist to the familiar oppositions Being-Becoming and epistm-doxa is in the doctrine ascribed to the Friends of Forms. Why is Plato so coy in this dialogue, on the one hand alluding to his familiar metaphysics in the picture of the true philosopher, and on the other hand distancing himself from that metaphysics by attributing it to the Friends of Forms? The answer must hang together with an explanation for his introducing the Eleatic Stranger as a replacement for Socrates. The Stranger is a kind of stand-in for his master Parmenides, who, in the earlier dialogue, was responsible for criticizing the theory of Forms. By assigning this role to Parmenides, the source of his own metaphysics, Plato had guaranteed that the criticism would be sympathetic rather than hostile. Similarly, by introducing now an Eleatic philosopher as critic of both his own theory and that of Parmenides, Plato has created a new philosophical perspective from which both theories can be surveyed and revised. So in the Sophist Parmenides rejection of Not-Being will be corrected, just as Platos extreme Parmenidean conception of Being will be modified to include change. By putting responsibility for all this in the hands of a follower of Parmenides, Plato arranges for the whole discussion to take place in a spirit of friendship and mutual respect. Furthermore, this new theoretical viewpoint coincides with a new conception of dialectic as Division and Collection, a version of dialectic less metaphysically oriented than the original version presented in the Divided Line. In this new dialectic, sketched in the Phaedrus and systematically practiced in the Sophist and Statesman, the terms genos and eidos tend to acquire their logical meaning of genus and species. Hence the corresponding notion of Form or Kind appears less loaded with metaphysical commitment. It is as if Plato had replaced his metaphysics of Being by a kind of transcendental logic, the study of logical connections and divisions between abstract or topic-neutral concepts. The ontological background, which was hinted at in the Sophist in the description of the true philosopher clinging to the bright idea of Being,

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begins to emerge more clearly (but still discreetly) in the Statesman, where the Stranger connects skill in dialectic with the study of the greatest and most precious of beings.I think most people dont realize that some beings () have by nature some perceptible likenesses ( ) that are easy to grasp . . . But the greatest and most precious of beings have no image () that one can adapt to the senses . . . Therefore one should practice being able to give and receive a logos for each thing. For the incorporeals, the finest and greatest beings ( , ), are clearly indicated by logos and by nothing else. (Statesman 285e-286a)

This seems to be the only passage in either the Statesman or Sophist that connects the dialectical Kinds with metaphysical dualism. Even in this passage that dualism is not represented in the standard way; there is no reference to Being and Becoming or to the contrast between epistm and doxa. Of course the oppositions of incorporeal-corporeal and logosaisthsis point in the same direction. But the absence of the standard formulation is still quite striking.16 If for contrast we glance briefly at the account of dialectic in the Philebus, we can see that this terminological restraint is a distinctive feature of the Sophist- Statesman and their Eleatic protagonist; it is not a permanent choice by the author. For Socrates in the Philebus (like Timaeus in his own dialogue) will not hesitate to describe the object of dialectic in the old way as true Being or the really real (to onts on) in contrast to what comes to be ( gignetai); only the former is fully stable and invariant (59a-c).I suppose every reasonable person would think that dialectic is by far the truest cognition (), namely, the cognition concerning being and what is truly and by nature forever in the same state in every respect ( ) . . . Most of the arts (technai) and those who work at them make use of doxai and are eagerly investigating matters of doxa, investigating the nature of things ( ).. and matters concerning this kosmos,

16) For a more deflationary reading of this passage, see G.E.L. Owen, Plato on the Undepictable, in Logic, Science and Dialectic (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), 138-47.


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how it came to be ( ) and how it acts and how it is acted on . . . . Such a person has chosen to work not on eternal beings ( ) but on what comes to be ( ) and will come to be and has come to be . . . Could we say with the most exact truth that any of these things occur precisely, since none of them ever was or ever will be or presently is in any self-identical state ( )? . . . So neither reason () nor the truest form of knowledge is concerned with these things that lack all stability (). (Philebus 58a-59b)

In this text we have not only the metaphysical opposition between Being and Becoming but also the epistemic contrast between nous or epistm and doxa.17 So when we encounter these standard Platonic dualisms again in the Timaeus, they are not to be regarded as a peculiarity of that dialogue.18 On the contrary, it is the relative silence of the Sophist-Statesman that calls out for an explanation. Interpreters in the tradition of Ryle and Owen have preferred to see the Sophist- Statesman, together with the Theaetetus, as reflecting a period in Platos life in which he adopted a less metaphysical conception of dialectic and a less dualistic metaphysics. But given the passage just cited from the Philebus, this assumption seems gratuitous. I suggest we see the shifts in doctrinal formulation in these dialogues as a deliberate literaryrhetorical device, comparable to the choice of a new protagonist. These dialogues, and specifically the Theaetetus and Sophist, stand as we have

Alexander Nehamas notes that, even in the Philebus, Plato can speak of epistm for coming-to-be as well as for eternal being. See his Epistm and Logos in Platos Later Thought in Virtues of Authenticity (Princeton, 1999), 238. However, only unchanging being is the object of knowledge which has the most truth (59b 7, 61d 10-e). With a shift in terminology, this cognitive contrast is preserved in the final ranking, where epistmai are listed in the level below nous, together with technai and orthai doxai (66b). 18) Timaeus 27d 5: , , , ; , , , , . The initial

17)

statement here of ontological dualism seems to ignore the extension of Being to include change that is introduced in the Sophist. But this intermediate possibility is allowed for by the implied contrast in the concluding words . What comes-tobe is not truly being; it has the lower degree of being () assigned to images at 52b 4-c5, cited in part above. And the mixed status of soul in the Timaeus may also represent a distinct ontological level.

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seen in the shadow of the Parmenides, under the impact of the critique of Platos own theory. That situation defines a moment in Platos career as an author in which he is distancing his written work and his reading audience from the doctrines of earlier dialogues like the Phaedo and Republic. This doctrinal liberation (provoked by the critique of the Parmenides and symbolized by the introduction of a new protagonist) allows him to pursue some arguments and clarify some issues more freely than would be possible or at least convenient within the framework of his familiar dualisms. In particular, he undertakes a solution to the problem of NotBeing that is designed to be accessible to any competent philosopher, and not only to a convinced Platonist. Thus Plato has good philosophical reasons for choosing an intellectual standpoint located outside the teachings of Parmenides and outside the doctrines of his own earlier writing, but sympathetic to both. He has, as it were, put Parmenidean metaphysics, and his own revised version of it, inside brackets for the sake of specific arguments in the Theaetetus and Sophist. This exercise in doctrinal restraint or bracketing has an interesting parallel in the Statesman, where Plato will deliberately ignore his own earlier account of the philosopher-king. Thus in describing the ideal Statesman and King, the Eleatic Stranger neither endorses nor denies the training in mathematics and metaphysics that is required of the ruler in the Republic. The true politikos is now defined by his expertise in ruling, but the content of this expertise is simply left blank. No reader of the Statesman can fail to be reminded of the philosopher-king. But the Eleatic Stranger has not read the Republic. And nothing in the Statesman argument depends upon doctrine from that dialogue. We saw that Platos project of reformulating his metaphysics had to deal with three problems: 1) the nature of Forms, 2) the nature of sensible phenomena, and 3) the relation between them. The Sophist presents the Forms (or Kinds) as logical parts of Being, that is, as deriving their own being by participating in Being itself. Since, if the Kinds are to be objects of nous they must be invariant and self-identical, they will in effect have the eternal nature defined for the Forms in the Phaedo and Republic. The Sophist gives us a completely new picture of the relations between Forms, and also of the internal structure of each Form. But the basic distinction between the timeless, unchanging being of Forms and the variable status of sensible becoming seems unaltered from the classical theory even


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though this dualism is never explicitly mentioned in the Sophist and only vaguely described in the Statesman. The Eleatic Strangers discretion on this point matches his general lack of interest in matters of sensation and change. For sense perception and Becoming we return to the Theaetetus. Part One of the Theaetetus expounds a complex theory of perception based upon a metaphysics of flux. I leave aside the controversial question whether this theory of perception can be regarded as Platos own, or simply as a hypothetical account. In regard to flux Platos position is clearer, because we can trace his treatment of flux through three dialogues, from the Cratylus to the Theaetetus, and beyond to the Timaeus. Despite the diversity of viewpoint between these three dialogues, there are enough common features to reveal a consistent philosophical core. Furthermore, the topic of flux ultimately connects up with the new requirement, urged in the Sophist, that the theory of Being must be extended to include things that change. In the end, this enlargement of Being to include Becoming, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the requirement of stability in Platos critique of the theory of flux, turn out to be two sides of the same coin: namely, the application of Platos metaphysics to an explanation of the physical world. Hence the attitude towards flux shifts from negative criticism to reappropriation. In the Phaedo the formula for invariance, which we have quoted above, is regularly contrasted with the description of a changing sensible realm that is never in the same state ( 79a 10,c 6, 80b 5). Both the Phaedo and the Cratylus wax ironical on the subject of thinkers who become so dizzy from the twists and turns of their own researches that they project their confusion onto the world and conclude that there is no stability in things (Crat. 411b-c), or who, because they have fallen into a whirlpool and got all mixed up, want to drag us in too (439c 5); or like someone with a cold, they imagine that everything is runny and dripping (440c 8).19 Despite such satirical comments, the Cratylus anticipates the Theaetetus in sketching a systematic theory of the

Similarly in Phaedo 90c 2, where the misologists conclude that there is nothing sound or stable either in things or in logoi, but that all things (panta ta onta) are reversing back and forth just like the current of the Euripus, and they do not stay in place for any time at all.

19)

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world as characterized by movement, flux and change. However, both the Cratylus and Theaetetus reject the thesis of unrestricted flux, and for similar reasons. The Cratylus argues that there can be no description, and in fact no existence, for anything completely devoid of stability (439d-e). The positive conclusion, which the Theaetetus does not draw, is that for reasons of both ontology and epistemology in order to be and to be known a changing world must contain elements of stability. This is the implicit conclusion of the Cratylus, where Socrates points out that the doctrine of flux does not apply to the Forms. Things like a beautiful face may be in flux, but the Beautiful itself is always such as it is (439d). Thus the Cratylus (like the Phaedo) presents the Forms as models of stability, both ontological and epistemic. But the Cratylus does not tell us how these Forms can provide a principle of fixity for sensible, changing things, so that they too might qualify for some kind of cognition and some kind of reality. The Theaetetus, on the other hand, makes no explicit reference to Forms, and hence it makes no attempt to explain how perceptual flux might be structured by elements of stability. Only the Timaeus (anticipated in part by the Philebus) undertakes to provide a positive theory of the physical world, in which the flux of phenomena is ultimately structured by a relationship to Forms. In the Phaedo Plato had sketched, as a desideratum for physics, an account of the world where everything is set in order by Nous, and hence ordered for the best (97c-98b). Plato was late in paying this large promissory note, but in the Timaeus he has done what he could to provide a cosmology that takes account of both Reason and Necessity, both formal structure and the flux of becoming. So far I have presented the Theaetetus and the Sophist as Platos first moves in the project of reshaping or reformulating his metaphysics after the Parmenides. As far as we can see, that project was completed in the Timaeus. The Theaetetus takes a fresh view of sensory phenomena and the Sophist presents a revised doctrine of Forms, but only the Timaeus attempts to bring the Forms and phenomena together, and thus to deal with the notorious problem of participation. The lynch-pin of Platos solution is his new concept of the Receptacle, introduced by a new and, for the first time, constructive treatment of flux. The Receptacle is the only entity recognized in the Timaeus as independent of the Forms. Sensible images of the Forms are now construed as modifications of the


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Receptacle, not as beings in their own right. Thus Plato avoids the problem of reifying images as separate entities or immanent forms, the problem that leads to the paradox of two independent worlds. This is not the occasion for an exegesis of the highly controversial flux passage in the Timaeus.20 But this positive account of flux is prepared to some extent in the Statesman and Philebus. To round off my sketch of a unifying vision of Platos later work, let me briefly summarize the steps leading to the attempted solution in the Timaeus. The Sophist insists that the notion of Being must be extended to include kinsis and change, but it does not show how this is to be done. Looking backwards from the role assigned to arithmetic and geometry in the Timaeus, we can see the treatment of mathematics in the Statesman and Philebus as motivated by precisely the same theoretical concern, namely, to give a rational account of change. In an important digression in the Statesman (corresponding formally to the treatment of Not-Being in the Sophist), the Eleatic Stranger introduces the notion of normative mathematics as an art of measurement (metrik) based on the concept of due measure (to metrion). This metrical art is said to concern all coming-to-be, to be the basis for all expertise and the source of all products that are fine and good (283d 8, 284b 2, 285a 2). The cosmic art of the Demiurge would be a special application of this metrical expertise to the ordering of the natural world. Such an application of metrik remains implicit in the Statesman, where the Demiurge is mentioned only in the myth (269d 9, 270a 5, 273d 4). But the Statesman myth can take for granted this notion of a cosmic craftsman, since the idea of a god responsible for shaping the products of nature was introduced earlier, as a species of the art of making (poitik) in the final divisions of the Sophist (265c). A different but parallel approach to the mathematical order of nature is developed in the Philebus, where, according to a principle tossed down from heaven by some Prometheus, all things that are ever said to be (ta aei legomena einai) are derived from one and many, and hence have Limit and Unlimited in their nature (16c). In the cosmological sketch that

20) For my reading of Timaeus 49c-50a see Flux and forms in the Timaeus, in M. Canto-Sperber and P. Pellegrin (eds.) Le Style de la Pense. Recueil de textes en hommage Jacques Brunschwig (Paris, 2002), 113-131.

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follows in the Philebus, all the beings that are now present in the universe (23c) are analyzed as a blended mixture of Limit and Unlimited, under the cosmic guidance of nous. In this sketch the Unlimited is conceived as a kind of qualitative flux (24d); but the correlative principle of Limit is represented by quantitative concepts: equality, numerical ratios, and mathematical proportion (metron pros metron, Ph. 25a7-b 2). We can see these two passages from the Statesman and Philebus as developing the application of mathematical concepts, first to the analysis of artistic making, and then to an analysis of cosmic order as a special case of artistic making. (The Philebus also prepares for the Timaeus in construing all causality in terms of making, 26e.) Both Statesman and Philebus share with the Timaeus a conception of mathematics that is quite different from that of the Republic. Whereas in the epistemology of the Republic mathematics is always pointed upwards, serving to raise the mind towards the Being of the Forms, in these three dialogues the power of mathematics is systematically directed downwards, to impose order on the mixed products of Becoming. We cannot discuss here in detail Platos attempt in the Timaeus to solve the problem of participation, but we can at least recognize the necessary ingredients prepared for this solution. These ingredients are, first of all the unchanging Forms, including Forms for fire and the elements of nature; second, the Receptacle, providing both the spatial framework and also the qualitative flux for Becoming. (The connection between flux and the Receptacle is a subject of dispute. I take it that what is described in the Philebus as the qualitative flux of the Unlimited is represented in the Timaeus narrative as the chaotic state of the Receptacle before the Demiurge goes to work, 52d-53b. Thus the qualitative dimension of phenomenal experience is accounted for as an attribute of the Receptacle itself, although each particular quality will be determined by specific modifications (or limits) imposed on the Receptacle. In that sense the Receptacle has no intrinsic properties, but only the capacity for qualitative determination, by limits imposed from above.) Finally, there is the appearance of phenomenal images, which are modifications of the Receptacle structured by imitation of the various Forms, imprinted from them in a marvelous way that is hard to describe, which we will pursue later, says Timaeus ( ,


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50c 6). Is this promise left unfulfilled, and the problem of par-

ticipation avoided once again? (Thus Zeyl, following Cornford, translates as we will pursue [this] at another time.) Or is a forward reference within the dialogue to the unfamiliar logos three Stephanus pages later, the logos in which Timaeus will describe the structuring of the cosmic elements by forms (eid) and numbers (53c 1)? On this second reading (which I prefer), the geometry of the elemental triangles and, more generally, the use of mathematics to give structure to the phenomena of nature, is the marvelous device by which Forms are imitated in phenomena. In other words, applied mathematics is the mechanism by which the noetic unity of unchanging Forms is transmitted to the perceptual plurality of kinds of things that come to be and perish. In this intermediate role, between the purely intelligible and the perceptible, between the eternal and the changing, mathematics provides the instrument by which the one becomes many, as an invariant Form is repeatedly imitated in regular modifications of the Receptacle. Such an interpretation of the Timaeus may well lie behind Aristotles references to the so-called mathematicals, which are said to account for plurality and hence to occupy an intermediate status between the Forms and their sensible homonyms.21 If this is even approximately correct, the numerical ratios and elementary triangles of the Timaeus would constitute Platos last and best attempt to deal with the problem of participation. In answer to the question, Why is the Sophist a sequel to the Theaetetus? I have suggested that we see these two dialogues as Platos first moves in a long-term project of reshaping his metaphysics in the light of the Parmenides critique, with the further goal of extending his theory to include the world of change and Becoming. Thus my story begins with the Parmenides (or even with the Cratylus) and ends with the Timaeus. In some ways this account may seem more developmental than unitarian. But perhaps that is the price to be paid for doing justice to the themes of both unity and plurality in Platos work.

21)

Met. A.6, 987b 14-18.

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