display all the ideas for this combination of texts
7 ideas
| 21347 | If Simmias is taller than Socrates, that isn't a feature that is just in Simmias [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When you say Simmias is taller than Socrates but shorter than Phaedo, so you mean there is in Simmias both tallness and shortness? - I do. ...But surely he is not taller than Socrates because he is Simmias but because of the tallness he happens to have? | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.374 BCE], 102b-c) | |
| A reaction: He adds that both people must be cited. This appears to be what we now call a rejection relative height as an 'internal' relation, which is it would presumably be if it was a feature of one or of both men. |
| 360 | We must have a prior knowledge of equality, if we see 'equal' things and realise they fall short of it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: We must have some previous knowledge of equality, before the time when we saw equal things, but realised that they fell short of it. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.374 BCE], 075a) |
| 24230 | The Forms arise whenever we talk of something 'in itself'. [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Our present argument is about …the Equal, the Beautiful itself, the Good itself, the Just, the Pious, and about all those things to which we can attach the word 'itself', both when we are putting questions and when we are answering them. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.374 BCE], 75d) | |
| A reaction: This identifies the Forms with ideas which emerge during philosophical conversation (either the 'elenchus' interrogation or the 'dialectic' discussion). So they arise from using language. The 'itself' test works quite well in English. Cf essentialism. |
| 24225 | Things like the Equal and the Beautiful, which are real, must be unchanging [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Are these things ever the same …or do they vary from one time to another; can the Equal itself, the Beautiful itself, …the real, ever be affected by any change? - It must remain the same. …They can only be grasped by the reasoning part of the mind. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.374 BCE], 78d) | |
| A reaction: Note the assertion that they are 'real', as well as unchanging. It is hard to make sense of 'the Equal' as a Form. We can more easily see what is in common among beautiful things. The number three is equal and unequal. But see 74d. |
| 24227 | One and one can only become two by sharing in Twoness [Plato] |
| Full Idea: You do not know how else [when one is added to one it becomes two] except by sharing in a particular reality, which does not have any other cause of becoming two except by sharing in Twoness, …as that which is one must share in Oneness. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.374 BCE], 101c) | |
| A reaction: Close readers of such passages have always been baffled by what sharing [partaking, metechein] could actually mean. How can two apples 'share' a pure eternal idea? The best approach is, I'm afraid, mental files. |
| 368 | Other things are named after the Forms because they participate in them [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The reason why other things are called after the forms is that they participate in the forms. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.374 BCE], 102a) |
| 1 | There is only one source for all beauty [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If anything is beautiful other than beauty itself, it is beautiful for no other reason but because it participates in that beautiful. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.374 BCE], 100c) | |
| A reaction: The Greek word will be 'kalon' (beautiful, fine, noble). Like Aristotle, I find it baffling that such diversity could have a single source. Beautiful things have diverse aims. |