Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on the text
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- PART I A SOCRATIC THEORY OF DEFINITION
- 2 Socrates' demand for definitions
- 3 Fixing the topic
- 4 Socrates' requirements: substitutivity
- 5 Socrates' requirements: paradigms
- 6 Socrates' requirements: explanations
- 7 Socrates' requirements: explaining by paradigms
- 8 Explaining: presence, participation; the Lysis
- PART II BETWEEN DEFINITIONS AND FORMS
- PART III PLATONIC FORMS
- References
- Index of passages cited
- General index
3 - Fixing the topic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on the text
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- PART I A SOCRATIC THEORY OF DEFINITION
- 2 Socrates' demand for definitions
- 3 Fixing the topic
- 4 Socrates' requirements: substitutivity
- 5 Socrates' requirements: paradigms
- 6 Socrates' requirements: explanations
- 7 Socrates' requirements: explaining by paradigms
- 8 Explaining: presence, participation; the Lysis
- PART II BETWEEN DEFINITIONS AND FORMS
- PART III PLATONIC FORMS
- References
- Index of passages cited
- General index
Summary
Sometimes Socrates introduces a topic for discussion or definition by asking whether his interlocutor agrees that there is a topic there to discuss: e.g., “is there such a thing as justice?” (Protagoras 330c1–2, Hippias Major 287c4–5). Later, these existential admissions will be seen as admissions of the existence of forms.
Precisely because they carry that weight in the doctrinal dialogues, unitarians have seen them as importing that theory into the Socratic dialogues, whereas I see them as merely ways of isolating the subject to be discussed.
EXISTENCE, UNITY, CAUSALITY, AND PLATONISM
Suppose you and I are standing beside the pool watching the swimmers and discussing swimming strokes. Suppose the following dialogue takes place:
I: Well, there's the Australian Crawl.
YOU: Oh, and what's that?
I: It's when you thrash about like this, and … {there follows an explanation, more or less, of this stroke}; like what that fellow over there is doing.
YOU: Talk about thrashing about! There's also the Butterfly Stroke, you know.
I: No, how does that go?
Suppose we are overheard by two more people, who whisper to each other as follows:
HE: Did you hear? They're Platonists!
SHE: I know; isn't it awful? But perhaps they're only immanentists, which wouldn't be so bad.
These two people strike me as mad. No less mad are the other two people who overhear us from the other side, and say:
HIM: Did you hear? They're Platonists!
HER: I know; isn't it wonderful? They have transcended the nominalism that threatens the fabric of our society.
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- Plato's Introduction of Forms , pp. 65 - 79Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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