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A. Introduction

• The setting of the dialogue (an alleged meeting between Socrates, Parmenides, and Zeno) is fictional. It is invented by Plato in order to illustrate how a master dialectician like Parmenides might criticize the theory of Forms.
  
• There are many indications that Plato does not intend the voiced by Parmenides to be conclusive. One is the fact that Socrates is portrayed as young and inexperienced, and hence not fully able to defend his own ideas (130e). Another is the statement of Parmenides that even the “worst difficulty” he has raised could be answered by “a man of wide experience and natural ability” (133b). Last and most important is Parmenides’ statement that someone who rejects the Forms “will have nothing on which to fix his thought” and “will completely destroy the significance of all discourse” (135c).
  
• So what is the purpose of the criticisms? Presumably to provoke thought in the reader. Plato may also be signaling that some things he has said earlier about the Forms he now wishes to retract or clarify.
  

  B. The Extent of the Forms

• Of precisely which sensible things or qualities are there Forms? Socrates is confident that there are Forms of justice, beauty, and goodness; unsure whether there are Forms of man, fire, and water; and confident that there are not Forms of hair, mud, or dirt (130b-c).
  
• Why? The only clue he gives is that in the latter case (hair, mud, and dirt) “the things are just the things we see” (130d). This is probably an allusion to the argument of the Phaedo and Republic V that equal things are not “just what we see”—and neither are just things, beautiful things, etc. Socrates’ point is that a sensible object need not fall short of being hair or mud in the same way that it inevitably falls short of being equal, just, or beautiful. Note that the same reasoning would apply to man, fire, and water, so Socrates should be equally sure that there are not Forms of these.
  
  • On the other hand, it is clear that Plato does not want to limit the Forms to just those that are justified by this line of reasoning.
    
  • Even the Phaedo speaks of a Form of Life (106d), and life is not the sort of thing that one has in some respects and does not have in others.
    
  • Book X of the Republic says that “whenever a number of individuals have a common name, we assume them to have a corresponding Form” (596a). This would seem to say that there is a Form for every predicate. Thus there would be Forms of Bed and Table (mentioned in Republic X) and also Forms of Man, Fire, Hair, Dirt, etc.
    
  • Parmenides remarks that when Socrates is more mature he will recognize that there are Forms of all the objects under discussion (130e).
    
• What all this indicates is that the argument of the Phaedo and Republic V, though it is a good starting point, does not go far enough. It presents the Forms as standards by which certain troublesome predicates like “equal” and “just” become intelligible. But Forms are also universals; each Form is a “one over many” that makes possible the application of a single predicate to many different objects.
  
• The tricky part is that Forms are not just universals. They are also “norms of ideal order” which derive their intelligibility from the Good (cf. the Myth of the Sun). So, although Forms are universals, not every universal is a Form. Whether a given universal “makes the grade” depends on whether it has the appropriate connection to the Good.
  
• For further discussion take PHI 503 (Plato) next fall!
  

  C. The Dilemma of Participation

• The question: Does each thing that participates in a Form receive the whole Form or only part of it? (131a)
  
• Socrates at first offers what seems to be a good answer: each Form is present as a whole in each thing that participates in it, much as a single day is present in many places (131b). But Parmenides brushes this aside in order to propose his own analogy, that of a sail. Obviously, if a Form is like a sail then it cannot be present as a whole in many places at once.
  
• What conclusion are we supposed to draw from this discussion? Clearly Parmenides is thinking of the Forms too closely on analogy with physical objects, and Plato expects the reader to recognize that. What about Socrates? Are we supposed to think that the day analogy is a good one, or was Parmenides right to brush it aside?
  

  D. The Largeness Regress (a.k.a. Third Man Argument)

• The next objection is the most famous. “Take Largeness itself and the other things which are large. Suppose you look at all these in the same way with your mind’s eye, will not yet another unity make its appearance—a Largeness by virtue of which they all appear large?” (132a). In other words, if the Form of X is itself X, then there must be another (higher) Form to explain how the original Form and the particular objects that participate in it can all have the same property, X.
  
• As Parmenides points out, this process can be continued indefinitely. The result is that “each of your Forms will no longer be one, but an indefinite number” (132b). That means that the original commonality of the X things will never be explained. Thus the theory of Forms will collapse before an “infinite regress.”
  
• Another name for this argument is the “Third Man Argument” (TMA). It is so-named because Aristotle gives a version of it using the Form of Man instead of the Form of Large.
  
• Socrates offers two proposals for trying to answer the TMA.
  
  • Forms are thoughts in a mind. Immediately one thinks of many questions—e.g., thoughts in which mind (or minds)? And how can the Forms be the “real being” of things if they are thoughts? The questions Parmenides raises, however, are somewhat different: (a) a thought has to be a thought of something, and what could each Form be a thought of other than the Form itself? (b) things that participate in Forms will participate in thoughts, and therefore be thoughts themselves. (132b-c)
    
  • Forms are “patterns fixed in the nature of things,” and “other things are made in their image and are likenesses” (132d). This hearkens back to the Myths of the Line and the Cave in the Republic. Parmenides’ objection is that, if one thing is an image of another, the two objects must resemble one another. In that case there must be a higher Form by virtue of which they resemble one another, and the TMA again arises. (132d-133a)
    

  E. Separation and Unknowability

• The last objection Parmenides raises is that, if the Forms are completely unrelated to sensible objects, then (a) they must be unknowable to us, and (b) even one who does know them (e.g., a god) would not gain thereby any understanding of the sensible world.
  
• It is sufficient to note about this argument that it is based on the assumption hat there is no likeness or participation of any kind between sensible objects and the Forms (133d). The best way to answer the argument will therefore be to address the Dilemma of Participation and the Largeness Regress.
  

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