Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'Cratylus' and 'Events and Their Names'

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6 ideas

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / c. Becoming

229	The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become [Plato]
	Full Idea: The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become.
	From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 155d)

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / f. Primary being

21821	Plato's Parmenides has a three-part theory, of Primal One, a One-Many, and a One-and-Many [Plato, by Plotinus]
	Full Idea: The Platonic Parmenides is more exact [than Parmenides himself]; the distinction is made between the Primal One, a strictly pure Unity, and a secondary One which is a One-Many, and a third which is a One-and-Many.
	From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.08
	A reaction: Plotinus approves of this three-part theory. Parmenides has the problem that the highest Being contains no movement. By placing the One outside Being you can give it powers which an existent thing cannot have. Cf the concept of God.

7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 1. Nature of Change

2063	How can beauty have identity if it changes? [Plato]
	Full Idea: If beauty never stays the same, how can it be something?
	From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 439e)

7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / c. Reduction of events

8978	Events are made of other things, and are not fundamental to ontology [Bennett]
	Full Idea: Events are not basic items in the universe; they should not be included in any fundamental ontology...all the truths about them are entailed by and explained and made true by truths that do not involve the event concept.
	From: Jonathan Bennett (Events and Their Names [1988], p.12), quoted by Peter Simons - Events 3.1
	A reaction: Given the variable time spans of events, their ability to coincide, their ability to contain no motion, their blatantly conventional component, and their recalcitrance to individuation, I say Bennett is right.

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 3. Reality

221	Absolute ideas, such as the Good and the Beautiful, cannot be known by us [Plato]
	Full Idea: The absolute good and the beautiful and all which we conceive to be absolute ideas are unknown to us.
	From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 134c)

7. Existence / E. Categories / 2. Categorisation

13775	We only succeed in cutting if we use appropriate tools, not if we approach it randomly [Plato]
	Full Idea: If we undertake to cut something and make the cut in whatever way we choose and with whatever tool we choose, we will not succeed. If we cut according to the nature of cutting and being cut, and with the natural tool, we'll succeed and cut correctly.
	From: Plato (Cratylus [c.377 BCE], 387a)
	A reaction: I take this passage to be the creed for realists about the physical world - a commitment not merely to the existence of an external world, but to the existence of facts about it, which we may or may not be able to discover.