[524b]
“Yes, indeed,” he
said, “these communications1 to the soul are strange and invite reconsideration.”
“Naturally, then,” said I, “it is in such cases as
these that the soul first summons to its aid the calculating reason2 and tries
to consider whether each of the things reported to it is one or two.3” “Of course.” “And if
it appears to be two, each of the two is a distinct unit.4”
“Yes.” “If, then, each is one and both two, the
very meaning5 of ‘two’ is
that the soul will conceive them as distinct.6 For if they were not separable,
1 For ἑρμηνεῖαι Cf. Theaet. 209 A.
2 Cf. Parmen. 130 Aτοῖς λογισμῷ λαμβανομένοις.
3 Cf. Theaet. 185 B, Laws 963 C, Sophist 254 D, Hipp. Major 301 D-E, and, for the dialectic here, Parmen. 143 D.
4 Or, as the Greek puts it, “both ‘one’ and ‘other.'” Cf. Vol. 1. p. 516, note f on 416 A. For ἕτερον Cf. What Plato Said, pp. 522, 580, 587-588.
5 γε “vi termini” Cf. 379 B, 576 C, Parmen. 145 A, Protag. 358 C.
6 κεχωρισμένα and ἀχώριστα suggest the terminology of Aristotle in dealing with the problem of abstraction.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.