The Dialectic of Essence: A Study of Plato's Metaphysics

THE DIALECTIC OF ESSENCE

THE DIALECTIC OF ESSENCE

ASTUDYOFPLATO’SMETAPHYSICS

ALLANSILVERMAN

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON AND OXFORD

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Silverman, Allan Jay.

The dialectic of essence : a study of Plato’s metaphysics / Allan Silverman.

p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

eISBN: 978-1-40082-534-9

1. Plato—Contributions in metaphysics. 2. Metaphysics—History. I. Title.

B398.M4 S55 2002

110′.92—dc212001059164

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Minion

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www.pupress.princeton.edu

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

Preface

Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION

The Dialectic of Essence

Précis of the Chapters

CHAPTER ONE AN OVERVIEW OF PLATIONI CMETAPHYSICS

The Philosophical Background

Forms

Particulars

Metaphysics and Epistemology

CHAPTER TWO SOCRATIC METAPHYSICS?

Socrates

The Craft Analogy

Socratic Properties

Metaphysical Conjectures

The Meno

CHAPTER THREE THE EMERGENCE OF FORMS

Section One

The Phaedo

The Final Argument

Section Two

The Republic

Book VII

Section Three

Being and Participation

CHAPTER FOUR REFINING THE THEORY OF FORMS

Section One

Overview

The Parmenides

The First Part

The First Two Hypotheses

Section Two

Separation

CHAPTER FIVE THEORY AND LANGUAGE

Overview

Background to the Argument of the Sophist

The Sophist

The Interweaving of Forms

CHAPTER SIX NOT-BEINGS

Overview

Not-Being in the Sophist :

The Background to 255e

Sophist 255e8 – 257a7

Sophist 257a8 – 259b5

Sophist 263a – 263d4

Collection and Division

CHAPTER SEVEN THE NATURE OF MATERIAL PARTICULARS

Section One

Overview

The Philebus

The Mixed Life

The Fourfold Ontology (23c – 27c)

The End of the Philebus

Section Two

The Timaeus

Talk of Phenomena in Flux

Necessity and Matter

The Two Theories

Conclusion

Conclusion

Appendix

Notes

Bibliography

Index Locorum

General Index

PREFACE

THIS IS and is not the book I wanted to write. I wanted to model my work on the books and articles of the various authors from whom I learned so much. I wanted to address the extensive ancient literature on Plato and the central topics of his metaphysics. I have fallen short on both counts. My greatest debts are acknowledged in the body of the book and notes. Were I not so prolix I might have been able to give proper respect to other approaches to Plato’s metaphysics. I wanted to discuss more topics, for instance Plato’s teleology, and to examine others better. Nonetheless, the book is what it is. Its failings are mine.

Some of the book dates back to a paper written for a Timaeus seminar taught by John Dillon at Berkeley in 1979. I have racked up enormous debts over the years, not least to all my teachers and friends at Berkeley. I was fortunate to have been able to work with Gregory Vlastos throughout my studies and to have assisted G.E.L. Owen during his memorable visit as Sat-her Professor. Donald Davidson kindly gave me a copy of his dissertation. I am also deeply indebted to my colleagues in the Departments of Philosophy and Classics at Ohio State, where I have been since 1985, for their tolerance, encouragement, and philosophy. The departments and the university as a whole have supported my research intellectually and financially. I am grateful to all. The Center for Hellenic Studies provided an ideal environment in which to work through a Junior Fellowship in 1988–89. My thanks go especially to Zeph and Diana Stewart. The idea to write the book took shape while I was a Visiting Professor at Yale in 1993 and 1994. I learned much from conversations with Bob Adams and others in New Haven. The National Endowment for the Humanities supported the actual beginnings of the book with a Fellowship in 1995–96.

Parts of chapters have been read at various places—Northwestern, Purdue, Stanford, The University of Washington, UCLA. I thank the audiences on all those occasions for their comments.

I cannot count the individuals to whom I owe thanks: friends, students, colleagues, hosts, and visitors over the years. But there are some special debts to acknowledge. Bob Batterman, Sylvia Berryman, Lee Franklin, Peter King, George Pappas, Diana Raffman, William Taschek, and Neil Tennant have read or conversed with me about various parts of the book at Ohio State. I was abetted by conversations with June Allison, Dirk Baltzly, Simon Blackburn, Chris Bobonich, Myles Burnyeat, Marc Cohen, John Cooper, Pat Curd, Nick Denyer, John Dillon, Michael Ferejohn, Gail Fine, Charles Griswold, Adam Hayward, Verity Harte, Sally Haslanger, Richard Kraut, Jonathan Lear, M. M. McCabe, Connie Meinwald, Henry Mendell, Julius Moravcsik, Calvin Normore, Richard Patterson, Chris Rowe, Dory Scaltsas, Malcolm Schofield, Steve Tracy, Bob Turnbull, Nick Wolterstorff, and Steve Yablo. Mark Griffith, Tony Long, and David Sedley have been extraordinarily generous with their time and comments over long years of friendship. Robert Kraut has been a constant sounding board. Alexander Nehamas has supported this endeavor in numerous ways. My greatest debt by far is to Alan Code, an exemplary teacher, friend, colleague, reader, interlocutor, writer, and philosopher. I am sure there are others whom I have failed to mention. My apologies.

The manuscript was vastly improved by the comments of the anonymous readers for Princeton University Press. I was also fortunate to have Ian Malcolm as my editor and David Allen as my copy editor.

I cannot even begin to thank my family. My in-laws, Robert and Kit Corley, generously allowed me to use their cabin in the woods whenever I really needed isolation. My father, who passed away when I was just beginning to write, and my mother have always been there in all of my pursuits. Words fail me when I try to appropriately thank my children, Alexander and Elena, and my wife, Ann. The book is dedicated to them.

THEDIALECTICOFESSENCE

INTRODUCTION

How ought one to live? I take this question to be the starting point for Plato’s philosophy, his Platonism. No doubt others before him asked it: Socrates for one. But it is not the mere posing of the question that makes it so special. Rather, it is the manner in which Plato considers it. In his hands it calls for reflection, and reflection of a certain, increasingly systematic variety. Plato thinks that systematic reflection, what he and we call philosophy, shows that this question can be answered. Indeed, philosophical reflection reveals that philosophy itself, the practice of philosophizing, is the answer to the question.

From this starting point spring his ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. For Plato, these domains are interdependent. Plato is rightly honored for his synoptic vision, his power to see systematic connections between different parts of life, science, the arts, and philosophy. If the question is, broadly speaking, part of ethical inquiry, his answer requires the development of much of his metaphysics and epistemology.

My aim in this work is to explore Plato’s metaphysics. The book has three parts, modeled on what I believe to be the three key elements of his meta-physics: the Theory of Forms; the account of particulars; and the nature of metaphysical theory itself.

At the core of Plato’s entire philosophy is the Theory of Forms. For Plato, Forms are both the goal and the grounds of philosophical inquiry. In seeking to answer the question of how ought one to live, Plato thinks that we come ineluctably to recognize their presence, in part through the realization that they are needed if one is to engage in any inquiry at all.

Thus while I will try to steer clear of most of his ethics and much of his epistemology, I cannot avoid the epistemology entirely. The fact that reflection is a critical component of the best way to live ensures that epistemology will be in play from the outset. The capacity for reflection is distinctive of humans. Reflection presupposes that we take objects or states of affairs, including our own mental states, e.g., beliefs, perceptions, or feelings, as fixed in some sense, so that we may examine and think about them. The assumption that the world is a certain determinate way, constant and fixed to some degree, was as much a part of the Greek world view as it is of our own. Plato’s philosophy is predicated on the notion that the cosmos of which we are an integral part is rationally ordered and (therefore) in principle intelligible to us.¹

But this is not to say that every Greek thinker accepted that the world was fixed and determinate. Perhaps its most problematic aspects are properties such as good and bad, right and wrong, or justice and injustice. Heraclitus, Gorgias, and Protagoras, thinkers whom Plato regarded as rivals, and no doubt countless tragedians, historians, and politicians challenged assumptions about the universality and sameness of ethical notions. Plato sees that reflection is a source of anxiety for humans. For us alone constancy is an issue, since only humans, it seems, have the ability to raise issues about it in our everyday thought and talk. And yet, aware of the challenges posed by reason, Plato concludes that in order to save the phenomenon of reason there must be stable, determinate Forms.

Part and parcel, then, of the reflective inquiry into the question of how ought one to live is this issue of fixity and stability. Socrates claims, against the sophists and others, that there are objective ethical values. Plato recognizes that Socrates’ method of argumentation presupposes determinate concepts and beliefs that can be juxtaposed with other beliefs and concepts and judged to be compatible or incompatible, consistent or inconsistent with one another. Because there are these fixed, determinate contents, it is possible for one to deny the same judgment or statement that another asserts. Plato’s Doctrine of Forms is the crystallization of his insight that there must be fixity or constancy, both in the world and in our thoughts . Indeed, I take this intuition to be at the heart of Realism or Platonism, Platonic or otherwise. Forms are the preconditions of an ordered, intelligible cosmos. They are principles of fixity, stability, and changelessness. Forms have a distinctively philosophical legacy. They are universals. They are objective, mind-independent entities. Among their heirs are Frege’s sharp borders² and the rules of Wittgenstein’s Investigations. Let us refer to these fixed entities as properties. The guiding insight, then, into the Theory of Forms is that properties cannot change their nature or properties. In my view, Plato’s primary metaphysical goal is to explore and analyze this bedrock intuition that properties or Forms are the source and principles of stability in nature.

Set against this commitment to stable Forms is the apparent fact that things change. Plato accepts that change is also a phenomenon to be saved and explained. Among the changing things are the ordinary particulars and events of the physical, material, sensible world. Included among the ordinary particulars are the inorganic rocks, metals, and liquids, as well as the various kinds of living things, plants, animals, and humans. For Plato, the domain of nature is a subject of metaphysical inquiry. Therefore, a second goal of Plato’s metaphysical theory is to explain the nature and characteristics of the particulars of the material world, a critical part of which will be to explain how change is possible.

Humans are a special part of nature. So too are the capacities of humans, especially language and thought. When we understand what it is to be human, we appreciate the need for an account of what the world must be like if there are to be thought and language. Thus in the pursuit of our metaphysical inquiry we have to examine the nature of the cognitive states and the nature of their objects. It turns out that the objects of knowledge, our highest rational capacity and the foundation of all our rational capacities, are the Forms. Thus the culmination of metaphysical and epistemological inquiry returns us once again to Forms. (And since, for Plato, knowledge turns out to be the crucial component in the good life for a human, the inquiry into the question of how ought one to live also culminates in Forms.)

According to Plato, at the end of the day the only way for metaphysical inquiry to proceed is by looking at the cognitive and linguistic capacities of humans, for there is no route of inquiry independent of language and thought. Hence, in developing a metaphysical theory, Plato attempts to give an account of metaphysical theorizing. This surfaces most visibly in the Parmenides, which is only fitting, given that this most august predecessor had, it seems, identified what is with what is thought.³ After his Parmenides declares that Forms are necessary if there is to be dialectical inquiry (Parm. 135b–c), issues pertaining to the nature of metaphysical inquiry itself become part of metaphysics in the second part of the dialogue. Given various assumptions about what the objects of inquiry are, Plato undertakes to show that there are general principles that hold true about whatever may be, in part by showing that certain forms of inquiry are possible and others impossible.

Thus, Plato investigates what we might call general or analytic ontology, the aim of which is to set out general principles governing any specific or special ontology which might be proposed. Here we find, though worked out in a less detailed fashion, the family of notions subsequently to be familiar from Aristotle’s Metaphysics: subject and predicate, universal and particular, part and whole, one and many, same and different, inherence, separation and others. In so far as a philosopher is studying and proving things about metaphysical inquiry, one is engaged in what is today perhaps considered part of epistemology. In the pursuit of a wholly general ontological account, however, the boundary between metaphysics and epistemology is blurred.

But for Plato, there is a second, more specific arena in which the boundary is blurred. In accounting for the nature and behavior of ordinary particulars, Plato develops a pattern of inference or argument that we, following his successors, call the One-Over-Many. We recognize that many items are the same in kind or type: Secretariat and Seattle Slew are both horses; Aristides and Socrates are both just. From such facts Plato infers that there are Forms, e.g., Justice, Beauty, Squareness, Equality. In so far as thought and speech are part of the study of nature, they too should be subject to a One-Over-Many argument. Accordingly, Plato asserts that Knowledge is a Form, and apparently commits himself to Forms of Belief, Perception, Name, and Statement. Moreover, items that his inquiry shows to be necessary not only for thought and speech in general, but for metaphysical or philosophical inquiry in particular, seem worthy of being regarded as Forms. Plato, especially in the Parmenides and Sophist, attributes a special status to a host of Forms or Kinds whose raison d’etre is arguably to make possible thought, language, and metaphysical inquiry. Yet, one desideratum we try to satisfy in considering whether the Horse itself or Squareness be Forms is that they be objective and mind-independent entities, items which would exist were there no thinkers at all. One is hesitant to say the same about what is required by thought and speech, for in some sense they are not independent, or at least not in the same intuitive fashion. Indeed, Gilbert Ryle, in his epoch-making study of the Parmenides,⁴ argued that Plato’s recognition of the syncategorematic nature of these properties prompted revolutionary changes in his Theory of Forms. Making sense of Forms such as Unity, Sameness, Difference, and other Forms introduced in the later works, must then be an integral part of the reconstruction of Plato’s metaphysics. This requires one to examine the boundary between epistemology and metaphysics, and to be alert to the difficulties of distinguishing conceptual/epistemological⁵ from metaphysical realism. Tracking Plato’s development of a general metaphysics is the third major goal of this work.

The Dialectic of Essence

There are many ways into the labyrinth of Plato’s metaphysics. And while I would like to think that there is only one way out, i.e., the path I will travel, I am pretty sure that there are many. (My fear is that there is none! Perhaps Wittgenstein is right and the only way to deal with the labyrinth of Platonism is to refuse to enter it.) The path I will follow tracks the thread of ousia, which I shall translate essence. There is no hoarier notion in ancient metaphysics.

While Aristotle’s Metaphysics is the locus classicus among the ancient investigations into ousia, almost all of his philosophical ancestors were concerned with the notion in one guise or another. Canonically, Greek philosophy begins with the Ionian inquiries into nature, phusis, which yielded different speculative accounts of how the present cosmos, marked by change and multiplicity, came to be out of some single and undifferentiated principle, e.g., air or the apeiron. Ionian methodology, we might say, was empirical and democratic. Their conclusions were based on observations of the phenomena of the physical world (istoria). The phenomena, though not the processes which produced them nor the principle(s) from which they were produced, were widely accepted by their fellow citizens and inquirers. Xenophanes seems to have been the first to question the extent to which humans could in fact have knowledge, or perfect knowledge, of the physical world. Whatever we are to make of his obscure remarks about the limitations of human knowledge, to him we can credit the distinction between perfected knowledge of the true state of affairs and our usual epistemic condition, dokos, in which, unawares, we are concerned with mere appearances (B36, B35, B2).

Parmenides and Heraclitus change everything. Both distinguish mere appearances, what the ordinary individual or (half-baked) philosopher mistakenly thinks is fact, from the true, hidden nature of reality. But despite their shared rejection of the Ionian account of nature, Heraclitus and Parmenides espouse vastly different ontologies. Heraclitus is the apostle of change, Parmenides the evangelist of a static reality.

For Heraclitus, the ordinary objects of the physical world seem to be continually changing. The only constant, the underlying commonality, is the pattern of change itself. In the Theaetetus, Plato ascribes to him a doctrine of flux in all dimensions: at every moment any particular is both changing location and (ex)changing all of its properties. Plato’s material particulars are distant heirs of Heraclitus’s. Plato’s particulars are subject to change in every respect, although not necessarily in every respect at each moment. Platonic particulars are nothing essentially: there is no property that a particular cannot lose.⁶

Particulars, because they change, can be neither metaphysically nor epistemologically basic for Plato. Nor can change itself be the fundamental principle, since Plato finds change intelligible only if there are stable points or states from which it begins and at which it ends. But Plato does think that change must be possible, and he seeks a metaphysical account that secures its possibility. The key to this account are his Forms, entities which are unchanging and essentially and completely the very entities they are. In conceiving of Forms in this way, Plato owes a profound debt to Parmenides.

Unfortunately, Parmenides’ poem is too enigmatic to permit a confident assessment of his account of Being. There are, for us and I think for Plato, two fundamental and related issues of interpretation: the nature of Parmenides’ monism and the nature of the Parmenidean is, the verb which figures in the critical premises of the argument in The Way of Truth. According to a tradition that begins no later than Plato’s Sophist, Parmenides is a numerical monist: there is exactly one item in Parmenides’ metaphysical cosmos. What that item is is unclear. It seems to be Mind, Being, or the One. Plato devotes much effort in the Sophist and Parmenides to separating Being, as the object of thought or language, from one’s language and thought about it. As he reads the poem, the Parmenidean One/Being/Mind is incapable of being the object of thought or language.

Others argue that Parmenides is a kind monist. They find him committed to exactly one kind of entity, Being, but they allow that there may be many entities of that one kind. Support for this interpretation can be found in the fact that some of his successors, Plato perhaps included, do not think it necessary to defend their assumption of a pluralistic metaphysics. Anaximander, Empedocles, and the Atomists all start their accounts with many different items, each of which is something that is. At issue are the possibilities of change, or generation and destruction.

In large measure, the question of Parmenides’ monism turns on the way he conceives of Being. Our best guide to understanding his conception is the way the notion is deployed in the arguments of his poem.⁷ Two broad lines of interpretation distinguish an existential is from a predicational is. The existential reading typically treats Parmenides as a numerical monist. What might be called a pure existentialist reading maintains that the is of The Way of Truth stands simply for existence.⁸ All that can be said of any subject is that it is. For admitting any other property, even (self-)identity, seems to require that the subject be a plurality of some sort, e.g., that it be both an existent and self-identical. Once pluralism is accepted, difference and not-being seem to follow. At least the last notion is anathema to Parmenides.

The predicationalists⁹ are in general inclined towards kind monism. A plurality of beings is possible because, according to the predicationalist, what is required in order for something to be is that it satisfy certain standards, namely that it be a predicational unity. To be a predicational unity is for the candidate being, F, to be of a single kind, mounogenes (B8.4): it must be completely and solely F, and admit of a single account specifying its unique nature as F. But nothing about Being, or the arguments of the poem, restricts the number of items that can be predicational unities.¹⁰

The nexus of notions introduced by Parmenides, and especially by the predicationalist reading of him, e.g., being, existence, essence or nature, sameness, difference, not-being, clearly demands to be untangled. While his immediate successors tackle problems relating to change and generation by appealing to a plurality of entities and processes that allegedly satisfy Parmenidean strictures, Plato is the first to critique Parmenides’ assumptions about Being and how one can theorize about what is. In his dialogues, Plato treats Parmenides as a numerical monist and, on balance, conceives of his is along existentialist lines. Of course Plato’s purpose is dialectical and thus we should not base our understanding of Parmenides solely or even principally on Plato’s use of the fragments. Indeed, the predicational reading is very similar to the notion of Being Plato develops for his Forms. There would, then, be good reason for Plato to suppress this reading of Parmenides in order to highlight his own originality. But regardless of which sense of is is at work in Parmenides’ poem, the effort to identify the different ways in which essence or properties or predicates can belong to a being (an on), whether that on be a Form, or a particular, or a linguistic subject, would be continuous with the metaphysical tradition of Parmenides.

Plato’s Theory of Forms is his revolutionary contribution to the tradition. For Plato, Forms are the primary bearers of essence.¹¹ Their possession of ousia guarantees their stability and allows them to be the source of constancy in nature. They may be the only bearers of ousia. If other items bear essences, their possession of an essence will depend in some fashion on the Form’s possession of that same essence.

In this respect, essence is the thread that leads us through the maze of Plato’s dialogues as well as his metaphysics. To select essence over other properties or items, e.g., unity, or sameness, or soul, is to imply (conversationally at least) that it deserves to be privileged.¹² Not only do I believe it to be at the core of his metaphysical theory, I contend that the study of essence is the most useful heuristic for the reconstruction of that metaphysical theory.

In trying to understand the role essence plays in Plato, one begins from its earliest manifestations in the so-called Socratic dialogues. Socrates’ distinctive mode of inquiry is the elenchus, at whose heart is what we refer to as a Socratic question. It takes the form of a What is it? question (Ti esti . . . ?) where in place of the it typically is found the name of some ethical property, e.g., What is Justice? or What is Piety? A Socratic question is answered by a definition or logos, an account that says what Piety or Justice, or for any property X, what X is. Today we typically regard definitions as (of) linguistic items. While it is appropriate at times to treat definitions as linguistic items, they are, for Plato, primarily ontological items; that is, definitions are of things, not words or concepts. If we are careful, we can toggle easily between the linguistic and ontological senses of definition. It is critical, however, to recognize that what the linguistic definition picks out or refers to is the essence or ousia of X.

My inquiry into Plato’s metaphysics is guided by three related questions about essence. The first question is:

What items have essences?

The obvious candidates are Forms or particulars.¹³

The second question concerns the ontological relation between the essence and what has an essence:

Can essence be predicated of anything with which it is not identical?

Is an essence (always) identical with whatever possesses it? The answer to this question is terribly complex. Aristotle, in Metaphysics Zeta 6, asserts that primary substance is, strictly speaking, identical with its essence.¹⁴ While this suggests that Aristotle’s answer to the second question is no, the adjective, primary, and the phrase, strictly speaking, leave (vast) room for qualifications. Perhaps essence is predicable of, but not identical with, substances that are not primary; or perhaps when one is not speaking strictly, we can predicate essence of a subject with which it is not identical.

The third question is:

What is the relation between the ontological nature of an essence and the way we learn about and, at the ideal limit, define it?

Can one distinguish the way in which we know and define a Form from the way the Form is? A vivid way to pose this third question is to contrast the syntactic complexity of the linguistic definition of, e.g., Human, say rational, two-footed animal, with the apparent simplicity or unity of the essence. A Platonic Form is supposed to be simple or unique, a one over many. The tension between the unitary nature of the Platonic Form and our understanding of that nature becomes pronounced when Plato develops the Method of Collection and Division in the late dialogues. The weblike or holistic structure of the collections and divisions suggests that Plato has either abandoned the unitary nature of the Forms or revised his conception of essence such that Forms are now complex unities.

These three questions shape my account of Plato’s metaphysics and my selection of texts and topics. I will ignore many dialogues and even some metaphysical aspects of those dialogues to which my chapters are devoted. For instance, I will not discuss Plato’s teleology, the interaction of soul and body, or other aspects of his philosophy of science, including what might be described as his account of efficient causation. Also I will deal only cursorily with the Theory of Recollection in the Phaedo and the epistemology of the Republic.

On my account, Plato’s metaphysics emerges in response to his attempts to answer these three questions. In the Phaedo, which I take to be the beginning of his metaphysics, his goals are to develop a special ontology of Forms as the stable bearers of essence, and to distinguish Forms from particulars, items that lack essence. In the next phase, his concern is to investigate what it is for a Form to possess an essence. In the Parmenides, this endeavor prompts his initial efforts to advance a general ontology, a crucial aspect of which is his isolation of Being, Identity, Unity, Sameness, Difference, and other properties that characterize any Form simply in virtue of the fact that it is a Form. In the late dialogues, his continuing investigation into general ontology and the relations between Forms leads to new insights into the difference between the metaphysical and conceptual realms. Here he develops the Method of Collection and Division and the notion of the interweaving of Forms. These allow him to give an account of false statement and to differentiate terms which make distinctions that don’t correspond to the way things are in nature from those that do signify real kinds, two clear instances where what we say and what there is come apart. Finally, the account of the interweaving of Forms and the Method of Collection and Division allows him to address the third question about definition and knowledge. According to the general ontology, there can be no ontological relation between a Form and a part of its essence.¹⁵ Statements such as Man is animal are conceptual truths; the relations between the Forms are those of compatibility or implication. The only beings of whom Man and Animal are (ontologically) predicated are the individual humans. The relations between Forms are discovered and displayed in the collections and divisions of particulars and the Forms over them. Armed with these new weapons, Plato is at last prepared to give an account in the Timaeus and Philebus of the nature of the particular and the relations between particulars and Forms.

Précis of the Chapters

This book is addressed to the expert who is familiar with the primary metaphysical passages in the dialogues, as well as the secondary literature. But I have tried to make the book accessible to the relative newcomer who might be reading for the first time a book devoted to Plato’s metaphysics. The somewhat expansive discussions of the Phaedo, Republic, and Parmenides provide the texts from which I’d like to think my interpretation of Plato’s metaphysics falls out rather naturally. Together with more detailed discussions of the late dialogues, the book provides a general introduction to Plato’s metaphysics.

Chapter 1 examines in greater detail some of the philosophical issues involved in Plato’s account of Forms, particulars, and general metaphysics.

The succeeding six chapters track Plato’s metaphysics from its origin in the Socratic dialogues to its conclusion in the Timaeus.

Chapter 2 provides the backdrop to the Platonic metaphysics of the Phaedo.

I look at properties in the so-called Socratic dialogues and how essence emerges in response to Socrates’ What is X? questions. The metaphysics of these dialogues is adumbrative and problematic. It is unclear whether Socra tic properties are simple or related to other properties. Of special interest is the role of a Socratic property as the primary bearer of (its) essence, in virtue of which it explains all instances of itself. Socratic properties self-predicate, i.e., each seems to be qualified by the very property it is: Piety is pious. In a coda I turn to the Meno, a transitional dialogue, to consider its new demands on definitions and the new kinds of properties mentioned there.

In the third chapter, I present my interpretation of Plato’s initial metaphysics of Forms and particulars lacking essence. I begin with the arguments of the Phaedo, especially the Hypothesis of Forms commencing at 100 and culminating with the final argument for the immortality of the soul. In the second part of the chapter I turn briefly to the central books of the Republic. Mine is, I would like to believe, a fairly orthodox reading of these dialogues. In the final part of the chapter I offer my rational reconstruction of Plato’s account of Forms and particulars in the middle period, to include a defense of the controversial forms-in-us,¹⁶ and my interpretation of the relations of Participation and Being in the middle period. (In an appendix to chapter 2, there is a discussion of Irwin’s and Fine’s alternative account of Plato’s initial metaphysics.)

In the fourth chapter, I examine the Parmenides, tracking the argument through the beginning stages of the Second Hypothesis (126–143b8). Here Plato begins the examination of the nature of metaphysics. The critical features of the first two hypotheses concern what must be true of any beings that are to serve as subjects of metaphysical inquiry, beginning from the consideration of how many archai, beings or principles, must be posited in order to account for what there is. Special attention is given to the nature of Forms as bearers of essence; what follows from the postulation of two primitives, a one-component and a being-component; and what relations Forms bear to one another. Forms are shown to be both Beings, as they were introduced to be, and partakers, a role that was uncertain in the initial exposition of the theory. In the second part of the chapter I take up the question of separation, the critical feature of the theory according to Aristotle. I argue that (for Plato) Forms are definitionally separate from particulars; that is, since Forms, and not particulars, are bearers of essence, definitions are predicable of Forms and not of particulars. Here I also consider an important rival account, the view that Forms are existentially separate from particulars.

Chapter 5, the longest discussion of a single dialogue, is devoted to the Sophist and the interweaving of Forms. I try to show how Forms and metaphysical inquiry emerge into new light prior to Sophist 254. I then offer my own account of the interweaving of Forms, addressing the questions why there is no Form of Participation and what we are to make of the nature of Being, as well as the nature of statements involving the copula. While the vast literature on the dialogue operates in the background, at the outset of the chapter I briefly consider Ryle’s account of Plato’s development, and at the end the culmination of the linguistic turn initiated by Ryle and others, namely Frede’s interpretation of Sophist 255c12–13.¹⁷

The sixth chapter then takes up the status of not-beings in Plato. In general, the goal of the chapter is to consider whether there is an ontological correlate to every linguistic and conceptual notion. The bulk of the chapter is devoted to the treatment of not-beings in the Sophist: for instance, the question whether there is a Form of the Not-Beautiful correlated with the predicate not-beautiful. Since this question arises in the course of Plato’s treatment of false statement, I try to reconstruct Plato’s account of this phenomenon. Of all the passages considered in this book, I am least confident about my grip on Plato’s argument here (and not confident that Plato himself has a good grip on the problem.) The second part of the chapter addresses the question whether Forms are ontologically related in a manner corresponding to the patterns displayed in the Method of Collection and Division.

In the seventh and longest chapter, I present a detailed account of the nature of particulars. The first part of the chapter looks at the metaphysics of the Philebus. In the second part I take up the Timaeus.¹⁸ The key question is why Plato offers in each dialogue two accounts of particulars: the Gift of Prometheus (14c–19) and the fourfold ontology (23bff.) in the Philebus; the initial creation of the cosmos (27dff.) and the restart (47eff.) in the Timaeus. The earlier accounts, I will claim, are wedded to the traditional Theory of Forms, even as they push the envelope of that theory. The nature of the Gift of Prometheus and the World Animal itself is fully revealed in their respective dialogues only when the novel and far more detailed second accounts are developed. I consider the metaphysical program of the Philebus to be a preliminary take on the nature of particulars. I thus try to show how the fourfold ontology can be assimilated especially to the Timaeus’s second account involving the receptacle, geometrical and traditional Forms, and two kinds of causes. According to my reconstruction of the theory of particulars in the Timaeus, matter is not a primitive. Platonic particulars, I contend, are composed of matter or body, but matter itself is a construct. Particulars remain dependent beings; they (still) lack ousia. They are beholden for their nature both to the natureless medium in which they come to be, the receptacle, and to the form-copies of the geometrical and traditional Forms, which bequeath to them whatever properties they have.

Given the progress of my chapters, perhaps a few remarks about chronology are in order. In all likelihood, Plato wrote the dialogues at different times. I believe, however, that nothing in what I take to be a later dialogue requires that an earlier doctrine be rejected. But chronology does have some implications for me, insofar as I believe that there are developments in Plato’s metaphysics. On my account, issues addressed in the later dialogues rely on notions discussed elsewhere, e.g., the so-called first part of the Parmenides looks back to the Phaedo. Plato’s metaphysics becomes increasingly more sophisticated. I accept the traditional chronology because I think it allows for the most illuminating reconstruction of his metaphysics. Nonetheless, there are good reasons to read the dialogues in a variety of orders, say in the order of the Tetralogies of Thrasyllus, or according to the age of Socrates.¹⁹

Leaving aside the lateness of the Timaeus, I adopt a fairly orthodox view about which dialogues belong to the various periods.²⁰ In the early Socratic period I include Apology, Crito, Euthyphro, Charmides, Ion, Lysis, Laches, Hippias Minor, Menexenus, Euthydemus(?) and the Protagoras. The Hippias Major, Gorgias, and perhaps the Meno belong to the end of this period, maybe with the Gorgias and more likely the Meno verging into the middle period. The middle period works include the Cratylus, Symposium, Phaedo, Republic, and perhaps the Phaedrus. In the post-Republic phase we then find the Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist, Politicus, Timaeus, Philebus, and Laws, along with the Critias.²¹ I omit the dubiously Platonic dialogues as well as the Letters. The former have no bearing on my account. As for the Seventh Letter, I believe that it is either by Plato or by one sufficiently in tune with his thinking that we should consider most of the doctrinal elements, especially those concerning writing, knowledge, and definition (341–44c), to reflect accurately his late thought.²²

1 AN OVERVIEW OF PLATONIC METAPHYSICS

The Philosophical Background

. It is not clear what separation amounts to in Plato’s philosophy.(I shall transliterate this phrase).² A Form is separate in that it is what it is itself by itself or, better, in virtue of itself.

The task is to explain what it is for a Form to be what it is in virtue of itself. Certainly a part of this task is to say in what sense a Form is not what it is in virtue of something else; for this will help to establish what a given Form is separate from. On my account, essence plays the crucial role in the explanation of the separation of Forms. And corresponding to the three questions about essence (see Introduction), I think that there are three intertwined aspects to Plato’s notion of separation or being auto kath auto, all of which are part of the legacy of Parmenides. The first is the separation of Forms from physical particulars. Their separation prompts the development of two ontological predication relations, each appropriate to its own kind of item. The second aspect is the separation of Being and Identity, or Being and Being the Same (as oneself). With their separation Plato comes to have a plurality of Forms, each of which is separate from any other. The third is the separation of mind, or what knows from what is known. The attempt to pry these apart yields the differentiation of the metaphysical from the conceptual realms.

I think that Plato’s metaphysics develops in tandem with his views on these three aspects of separation. These views emerge at different times, in response to different worries, if not in response to changes in doctrines. In the next three sections, I want to sketch my account of Forms, particulars, and general metaphysics against the backdrop of these aspects of separation.

Forms

Fundamentally, each Form is separate in virtue of a special ontological relation, Being, which holds between a Form and its essence. (This is part of the answer to the second question; see Introduction) This relation is introduced in the Phaedo (see chapter 3), along with a second relation, Participating, with which it is contrasted.³ This is a watershed moment: it is the first time a metaphysician proposes an account utilizing two primitive ontological relations. The contrast suggests that Beings, i.e., Forms, initially are separate from whatever participates.

The fundamental difference between them, on my view of Plato, is that Participation is a characterizing relation whereas Being is not. By characterizing I mean that the subject, in virtue of participating in a Form, comes to have a property in an ordinary, naive sense. My pants are red because they partake of Redness. Being, on the other hand, is what I will call a logicizing relation. I use logicizing to mark the special role this relation plays in specifying the answer, the logos, to a What is X? question. In contrast to participating, the subject is not characterized by the essence to which it is related via Being. I will capitalize the first letter of the verb or participle when I mean to speak of this special relation. The fact that Redness Is red does not entail that the Form is another red thing like my pants. Being and Participating are the primitive ontological relations in Plato’s metaphysics. I will develop an account of these notions and their evolution through the course of the dialogues.

In the Phaedo, it seems. To many it seems that a Form is nothing else besides its essence. How one understands these notions and their interrelations largely determines how one conceives of the nature of Forms (and, correspondingly, the nature of particulars). And if one thinks that Plato’s metaphysical theory evolves, this is likely because one thinks that his views on these matters change.

On my interpretation, Being is a primitive ontological relation designed exclusively to capture the special tie between that which possesses an essence and the essence possessed. Put differently, whenever essence is predicated of something, the relation of Being is at work. I will argue that in virtue of Being its essence, a Form is an auto kath auto on. Similarly, a Form is monoeidetic in virtue of the fact that it Is only its essence. Finally, it is one for many reasons: because it is the same one Form over many particulars; because the essence it Is is a unity; and because it alone (among Forms) Is its essence.

My account of the ontological relation of Being stands in contrast not only to the account of those who think that Forms are characterized by the property for which the Form stands,⁵ but also to the account of those who think that the Form is identical with the property it constitutes.⁶ A useful way to portray these differences is to consider the notorious statements of the form Justice is just or Beauty is beautiful. Traditionally, these are referred to as self-predication statements. If one understands the copula to signal characterization, then one thinks of Beauty as a beautiful thing, an item to be included in an inventory of beautiful things. Characterizing readings come in different flavors. An approximationist thinks that only the Form is perfectly beautiful, i.e., is characterized by exceptional beauty as it were, whereas any other item that is properly called beautiful is beautiful to some lesser degree. An alternative is to allow that while both Beauty itself and other items are characterized by beauty, Beauty itself is simply and solely beautiful. This second characterizing account emphasizes the Phaedo’s claims that a Form is monoeides and one (Phaedo 78b4ff.). Beauty is nothing but beautiful and thus is completely beautiful, differing from other beautiful things in that they are much else besides beautiful. Helen is a woman and beautiful and unfaithful.⁷

Identity accounts, on the other hand, treat self-predications as identity statements asserting that a Form and its essence are identical. That is to say, with respect to Forms, Being and Identity are the same relation.⁸

On my account, Being and Identity are distinct relations. This leaves open, however, the possibility that one can be understood in terms of the other. This is in fact what I shall maintain. Since Being is primitive on my account, I will argue that Identity should be understood in terms of Being (see chapters 3 and 5). And since Being differs from Partaking, on my account a statement of the form Beauty is beautiful admits of three different interpretations. When understood to involve the primitive relation of Being, the statement does predicate something of a subject. What it predicates is the ousia, the whole of the essence, of that of which it is the essence. I shall henceforth refer to a statement, when so understood, as a self-predication. When understood to involve the primitive relation of Partaking, the statement characterizes the Form as having the very property that it Is. So understood, Beauty is beautiful says that Beauty itself is a beautiful thing. I shall refer to a statement, when so understood, as a self-participation. Finally, when understood to involve Identity, or the is of identity, the statement says that Beauty itself is identical with Beauty. Eventually Plato comes to posit a special Form, Sameness, to account for statements of identity. On my account, from beginning to end, every Form self-predicates. By the time of the Sophist, Plato can also show that every Form is self-identical, but that only certain Forms self-participate (see chapter 5).

In the Phaedo and other middle period dialogues, it is an open question whether Forms can be anything besides their essence. (The same is true of the properties found in the Socratic dialogues.) Thus according to the initial conception of Forms, Being, and Partaking, it may turn out that the only true statement one can make about a Form, F, would be of the form F is F,however that is understood. If a Form is related to another Form, then it seems a Form either partakes of other Forms or Is other Forms.

Particulars, on the other hand, appear not to be Beings in the Phaedo and Republic. Every property a particular has, it has in virtue of participating in Forms. (As early as the Phaedo, then, there is a wide range of Forms, including Forms of the natural kinds.) Moreover, a particular is complex in that it does—and maybe must—partake of many Forms. At this point in Plato’s thinking, there is, then, a gulf between Forms and particulars: Forms Are since of them ousia is predicated; particulars partake and of them ousia is not predicated. Plato has a two worlds account, according to which particulars, in virtue of their lack of essence, are imperfect and dependent on Forms, and Forms, in turn, make particulars what they are. Precisely why particulars are imperfect is hard to determine. They are imperfect, in part, because in some sense they depend on Forms for their properties. They are imperfect, in part, because the ontological relation of Being is seemingly a superior way to be. Finally, they are imperfect, or perhaps manifest their imperfection, in that they change. Their lack of essence also has epistemological consequences. Since what is defined is essence and since Forms alone possess essences, Forms alone are definable. And insofar as knowledge is always and only of essence, i.e., of what is definable, it follows that only Forms can be known. Forms are metaphysically and epistemologically prior to particulars. It seems, therefore, that in the two-world metaphysics of Beings and Partakers, Forms are initially separate from particulars.

At least by the time of the Parmenides, however, Plato develops an account of Forms that requires them to stand in relations to various other Forms, in addition to whatever relations they stand in to particulars (or souls or the activities of soul, e.g., thought or speech). These relations fall broadly into two groups: (a) relations obtaining between any Form and Forms of the greatest rank such as Sameness, Difference, Being; and (b) relations between Forms which are found in the same category or, better, which appear in reasonably close proximity to each other in some categorization of the world, especially those Forms which appear in the definition of a given Form. I have in mind here the relation between, for instance, the Forms Man, Rationality, Animality, Bipedality, and, more distantly, Chimpanzee, Horse, Pedality, and so on. With respect to the greatest kinds, I will argue that Plato concludes that Forms, too, participate in these other Forms. Since participation is a characterizing relation, I will also argue that he accepts that all Forms have the properties constituted by these greatest kinds. Because this is true of all Forms, the greatest kinds (which, I believe, include Motion, Rest, Unity, Goodness, and Beauty) self-participate as well as self-predicate.Since Forms now participate in other Forms, there is reason to rethink the notion of separation. It can no longer be, if it ever was, simply a function of the fact that particulars partake and Forms do not. Nor can it be that a Form is separate insofar as it can exist independently from everything else. For no Form could exist apart from any of the greatest kinds.

While I think that the issue of the separation of Form from Form is tractable in the case of the greatest kinds, the advent of the Method of Collection and Division (in the Phaedrus) poses severe problems. For instance, the Form, the Human itself, seems to be related to the Animal itself and to Bipedality itself, and so, given that Forms either Are or participate in other Forms, we have to explore Plato’s Method of Collection and Division to see in what sense Forms can be separate from other Forms which appear in their definitions or divisions.

We can complete this task only after we have studied the evolution of Being and Partaking through the course of the dialogues. By the time of the Parmenides and Sophist, there will be reason to wonder whether Being and Participating have been altered beyond recognition. Since Being and Participating will turn out to be principles necessary, by Plato’s lights, for any specific metaphysical theory, this aspect of his theory is properly considered to be general metaphysics or analytic ontology. Before turning to general metaphysics, let us consider the other element in his special ontology.

Particulars

Plato’s account of particulars is part of the second great branch of metaphysics, speculative cosmology. Speculative cosmology enumerates and an alyzes the entities in one’s ontology, with the goal of isolating some primitive elements and then explaining how the rest are constructed from them. Speculative cosmology is thus concerned with the kinds of things that there are, their manner and mode of composition, and how they come to be composed or made. Here we can think of Plato constructing the cosmos in the Timaeus, enrolling himself in the ranks of the Ionians and the post-Parmenidean natural philosophers who wrote On Nature

The fact is that prior to the Timaeus, Plato says comparatively little about the nature of particulars. Given the novelty of the account of Forms, and given that Forms are primary and explanatory of some or all aspects of particulars, perhaps this is not surprising. (A second factor, of course, is his interest in what are broadly speaking ethical and epistemological inquiries, both of which concern the soul.) Plato, like the Socrates of the early dialogues, evinces a naive view of ordinary material objects. They live, die, change their properties and go about a variety of tasks. No explanation is given of how they can be subject to the kinds of change they apparently undergo beyond the claim that they participate in Forms. What it is that participates, and in what sense a particular endures or persists through its changes, is not discussed.⁹

I think Plato says enough in the Phaedo to allow us to reconstruct an account of particulars and their interaction with Forms. The key is found in the passage in which Plato posits the two metaphysical relations of Being and Partaking. In developing his Hypothesis of Forms, Plato introduces a third item (or a fourth if we count the soul), the forms-in-us. The forms-in-us are property-instances, e.g., the large-in-Socrates, the beautiful-in-Helen. I shall refer to them as form-copies.¹⁰ Form-copies serve as intermediaries between the Forms of which they are copies and the particulars to which they belong. Forms, then, on my account, are not present in particulars. Rather, instances of Forms are present: a particular is large, for instance, when it comes to have a form-copy of Largeness. It comes to have this form-copy in virtue of partaking of Largeness itself. I do not maintain that Plato has a well-developed account of form-copies in the Phaedo. I take seriously the idea that, at this stage in his thought, the doctrine of Forms, and its corollary of form-copies, is a hypothesis whose implications Plato has yet to work out. My aim, therefore, will be to offer a rational reconstruction of the metaphysics of the Phaedo. Of special concern will be the problem of distinguishing or separating a form-copy from the Form whose copy it is, and both form-copies and Forms from particulars.

My reconstruction, based on the account of the relations of Being and Participating, rests on three metaprinciples which, I believe, Plato treats as archai of his general metaphysical program. The first two are broadly Parmenidean, since they concern Forms and essences (ousiai):

Parmenidean Principle One: Each essence is (Is) the essence of exactly one Form.

Parmenidean Principle Two: Each Form has (or Is) exactly one essence.

The third principle is broadly Heraclitean. It concerns particulars and essence:

Heraclitean Principle: No particular has (or Is) an essence.

Often it is said that Platonic particulars are subject to Heraclitean flux. I believe that the doctrine of flux amounts to the thesis that there is no property which a Platonic particular cannot lose. The flux of particulars, then, is best understood in light of the dependence particulars have with respect to Forms, form-copies, and eventually the medium in which these form-copies occur, the receptacle.

Between these three principles we can locate much of the notorious Platonic separation of the Forms. On my understanding, separation has little to do with existential issues, i.e., the question of whether Platonic Forms exist uninstantiated. I am prepared to affirm that Forms are existentially independent, but only because I think that existence, if it makes sense as a notion at all to Plato, flows from essence. Hence, anything that possesses an essence exists. Thus, for me, the traditional separation debate turns on the question of whether a Form’s possession of an essence depends on a particular’s instantiation of the Form. This question in turn can be refined to read: Does the Form’s possession of its ousia depend on a particular’s possession of an ousia? The answer is no. Since particulars on my interpretation lack ousiai—the Heraclitean Principle—a Form is separate from particulars. And since anything that possesses or is identical with an ousia exists, the Forms are separate and, I shall say, existentially independent.

But this is not the last word on separation. For if Plato insists to the end that particulars, strictly speaking, do not have essences, there does seem to be another class of items of which essence is predicated, namely the form-copies. On my account, then, the answer to the first question, of what items is ousia predicated, will be Forms and form-copies. (About souls, see chapter 3.) Since I understand separation in terms of the predication of essence, it follows that Forms are not definitionally separate from their form-copies. On the other hand, Forms and their form-copies are not identical; for no property is identical with an instance. In trying to understand the relation between