more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Socrates began the quest for something universal in addition to the radical flux of perceptible particulars, with his definitions. But he rightly understood that universals cannot be separated from particulars.
Clarification
Plato made definitions separate, with his 'Forms'
Gist of Idea
Socrates began the quest for something universal with his definitions, but he didn't make them separate
Source
report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1086b
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'Metaphysics', ed/tr. Lawson-Tancred,Hugh [Penguin 1998], p.425
| 648 | Socrates began the quest for something universal with his definitions, but he didn't make them separate [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| 166 | A speaker should be able to divide a subject, right down to the limits of divisibility [Plato] |
| 16123 | Whenever you perceive a community of things, you should also hunt out differences in the group [Plato] |
| 2083 | Either a syllable is its letters (making parts as knowable as whole) or it isn't (meaning it has no parts) [Plato] |
| 2086 | Understanding mainly involves knowing the elements, not their combinations [Plato] |
| 12274 | Begin examination with basics, and subdivide till you can go no further [Aristotle] |
| 1484 | We should say nothing of the whole if our contact is with the parts [Epicurus, by Plutarch] |
| 1887 | You cannot divide anything into many parts, because after the first division you are no longer dividing the original [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 8014 | Resolve a complex into simple elements, then reconstruct the complex by using them [Hobbes, by MacIntyre] |
| 13099 | Analysing right down to primitive concepts seems beyond our powers [Leibniz] |