Plato 1: Participation In Duality

[koganbot]

I'm auditing a class in introductory philosophy at Metro State. So I might toss some of my notes in here, from time-to-time.

"Well, then, if one is added to one or if one is divided, you would avoid saying that the addition or the division is the cause of two? You would exclaim loudly that you know no other way by which anything can come into

Comments

[koganbot]

isn't the "form of largeness" another way of saying "the idea of size"*

*ie there wouldn't a separate "form of largeness" and "form of smallness" -- "largeness" is (in this particular context) a synonym for size or scale?

No. Unless I'm misunderstanding, he's saying that there is a separate form of largeness, separate from smallness - which I think he'd have to say if he wants beauty to be an idea or form in itself separate from ugliness, duality separate from unity, and so forth. And this passage (among other things) would argue against "largeness" - or "greatness," here - being just a synonym for size or scale: "I think it is evident not only that greatness itself will never be great and also small, but that the greatness in us will never admit the small or allow itself to be exceeded. One of two things must take place: either it flees or withdraws when its opposite, smallness, advances toward it, or it has already ceased to exist by the time smallness comes near it."

BUT there's an interesting wrinkle, which is that at first glance he seems to be contradicting himself, since earlier in the very same dialogue** he had Socrates say that opposites generate each other and he used smallness and greatness as a specific example! But that will be the subject of its own livejournal entry, if I get to it today.

**Phaedo isn't literally a dialogue, since it's Phaedo recounting to someone else in another city the discussion that Socrates and his friends had had right before Socrates' execution.