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Single Idea 16108

[filed under theme 8. Modes of Existence / D. Universals / 6. Platonic Forms / d. Forms critiques ]

Full Idea

Why is man not Animal and Biped together? Then it will not be by participating in Man (or any other unity) that men exist but by doing so in two things, Animal and Biped. Then man would not be a unity but a plurality.

Gist of Idea

If men exist by participating in two forms (Animal and Biped), they are plural, not unities

Source

Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1045a17)

Book Ref

Aristotle: 'Metaphysics', ed/tr. Lawson-Tancred,Hugh [Penguin 1998], p.249

A Reaction

This is perhaps Aristotle's deepest metaphysical objection to the whole Plato programme, that it blocks a decent account of the unity of particulars, on which our whole understanding of the world rests.

Related Idea

Idea 16109 Things are a unity because there is no clash between potential matter and actual shape/form [Aristotle]

The 23 ideas with the same theme [criticisms of Plato's theory of Forms]:

12122 Plato mistakenly thought forms were totally abstracted away from matter [Bacon on Plato]
5574 Plato's Forms not only do not come from the senses, but they are beyond possibility of sensing [Plato, by Kant]
565 The Forms cannot be changeless if they are in changing things [Aristotle on Plato]
557 A Form is a cause of things only in the way that white mixed with white is a cause [Aristotle on Plato]
5130 It is meaningless to speak of 'man-himself', because it has the same definition as plain 'man' [Aristotle]
27 Eternal white is no whiter than temporary white, and it is the same with goodness [Aristotle]
28 How will a vision of pure goodness make someone a better doctor? [Aristotle]
16145 Predications only pick out kinds of things, not things in themselves [Aristotle]
16108 If men exist by participating in two forms (Animal and Biped), they are plural, not unities [Aristotle]
605 The Forms have to be potentialities, not actual knowledge or movement [Aristotle]
618 There is no point at all in the theory of Forms unless it contains a principle that produces movement [Aristotle]
640 All attempts to prove the Forms are either invalid, or prove Forms where there aren't supposed to be any [Aristotle]
641 Are there forms for everything, or for negations, or for destroyed things? [Aristotle]
642 What possible contribution can the Forms make to perceptible entities? [Aristotle]
4470 Aristotle is not asserting facts about the location of properties, but about their ontological status [Aristotle, by Moreland]
645 If two is part of three then numbers aren't Forms, because they would all be intermingled [Aristotle]
1677 We can forget the Forms, as they are irrelevant, and not needed in giving demonstrations [Aristotle]
20817 Platonic Forms are just our thoughts [Stoic school, by Ps-Plutarch]
11205 If the form of 'human' contains 'many', Socrates isn't human; if it contains 'one', Socrates is Plato [Aquinas]
17192 The 'universal' term 'man' is just imagining whatever is the same in a multitude of men [Spinoza]
11914 Platonic explanations of universals actually diminish our understanding [Molnar]
3353 If there is no causal interaction with transcendent Platonic objects, how can you learn about them? [Benardete,JA]
7039 How could you tell if the universals were missing from a world of instances? [Heil]