Common Properties and Eponymy in Plato

Common Properties and Eponymy in Plato
Author(s): Thomas W. Bestor

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Source: The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 112 (Jul., 1978), pp. 189-207
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THE
PHILOSOPHICAL
QUARTERLY
VOL. 28 No. 112 JULY 1978
COMMON PROPERTIES AND EPONYMY IN PLATO
BY THOMAS W. BESTOR
Dating right
back to
Proclus,
there has
long
existed a
minority opinion
that Plato was aware that his notorious "Third Man"
argument
was not
an effective
objection
to his
theory
of Forms after all. In recent times1 this
opinion
has been based on a distinctive
insight:
since for Plato words have
both direct and also
strictly
second-hand
referents,
it is
plain
that
though
the
(second-hand) application
of a word 'F' to a
particular inevitably
in-
volves
regressing
to a
Form,
the
(direct) application
of the same word to
the Form itself does not.
Usually
this
minority opinion
is dismissed
very
casually.
But
recently Roger
Shiner and Frank White2 have
subjected
it
to
searching
criticism: no matter in what other
ways
it
might
be
F,
Plato's
theory
of
predication
has to
presuppose
that the Form b is also F in the
ruinous sense of
possessing
the
property
F-ness,
or else it remains
utterly
mysterious why
it is
specifically
the Form
0b
which is
"responsible",
as re-
quired,
for the
particulars possessing
that
property
rather than some other.
I am sure that this is the most
damaging
criticism which the
minority
opinion
has to face. In what follows I want to do what I can to weaken
it,
concentrating primarily
on White's recent article in this
journal.
1See for
example
G. E. L.
Owen,
"Logic
and
Metaphysics
in Some Earlier Works of
Aristotle",
in I.
During
and G. E. L. Owen
(edd.),
Aristotle and Plato in the Mid-Fourth
Century (Goteborg, 1960), pp.
181-2;
R. E.
Alien,
"Participation
and Predication
in Plato's Middle
Dialogues",
in R. E. Allen
(ed.),
Studies in Plato's
Metaphysics (London,
1965), p.
59;
Arthur L.
Peck,
"Plato versus
Parmenides", Philosophical Review,
81
(1962), pp.
160-61, 164-9;
Max
Cresswell,
"Participation
in Plato's
Parmenides",
Southern
Journal
of Philosophy,
13
(1975), pp.
164-5.
2Shiner,
"Self-Predication and the "Third Man"
Argument",
Journal
of
the
History
of Philosophy,
8
(1970), pp.
373-5, 384-6; White,
"Plato's Middle
Dialogues
and the
Independence
of
Particulars", Philosophical
Quarterly,
27
(1977), pp.
206-11.
190 THOMAS W. BESTOR
I. THE DISPUTE
Essentially
the Third Man
argument (specifically
the "first Third Man"
at Parm.
132a-b) goes
like this:
(A)
If
any
set of x1,
x2
. . .
n
are all
F,
they
must be F because
there is some Form b
separate
from them all in which
they
all
participate.
(B)
The Form c is F as well.
(C) Therefore,
since x1,
x. ..
xn
and the Form
f
are all
F,
they
must be F because there is some Form
02
separate
from them all in
which
they
all
participate.
Step (A)
here is the famous "One over
Many" principle. Step (B)
is the
equally
famous
"Self-predication"
thesis. The conclusion
(C)
results from
simply re-applying
the One over
Many principle
to the One itself. And the
entire
controversy
boils down to whether Plato's
theory
of
predication
rules
out or backs
up
such a
re-application.
According
to the
minority opinion,
the central moves of Plato's semantics
are these. That words have
primary
and also
purely secondary
referents.
That the manner in which one and the same word hooks
up
to its
primary
referent is
quite
different
from the
way
in which it hooks
up
to its
secondary
referents. That the
primary
hook is direct and the derivative hook
only
roundabout. Thus the
single
Form b is what the
general
word 'F'
names,
precisely
as a
proper
name names. The
many
different F
particulars,
how-
ever,
are
only
"named after" the
Form;
to them 'F'
applies
not as a
proper
name but
eponymously, indirectly,
at second-hand as it were. This
gives
us not one but two
ways
of
applying
the same word 'F' to different
pieces
of the world-'F' names the
eponym (the
Form
b)
and
eponymously desig-
nates the named-after
things (the xl,
x2
. . .
n
particulars
which
participate
in that
Form).
This
simple
semantic
point
breaks the back of Parmenides'
Third Man
completely.
In that
argument step (A)
tells us what it is like
with the
Many
which are named after a
One;
we can indeed
rightly
call
several
things by
the
single
word
'F',
but
only
insofar as those
things
are
appropriately
related to the One named
by
the word.
Step (B),
on the other
hand,
is not about
any
named-after
thing
at
all,
but
simply repeats
the
point
that it is the One
itself,
the Form
b,
which the word 'F'
properly
stands for. Of course the conclusion
(C)
does not then follow. It makes the
Form into a named-after
thing
like all the F
particulars
it has
just
given
its name to and then
posits
another Form which it must have been named
after in turn. But the Form
f
is not named F
after anything
else. It is the
thing
which 'F' names.
Consequently,
when we
apply
'F' to a
pedestrian
particular
we refer to-and hence
regress to-something
else,
to the Form
f,
but when we
apply
that same term to the Form c itself we
bring
in
nothing
further and hence can never
regress
past
it.
According
to the
majority opinion,
however,
eponymous predication
cannot stand on its own like this. Plato's
theory
will not do the work it is
COMMON PROPERTIES AND EPONYMY 191
supposed
to if
particulars
are
simply
named after some
eponym
and have
no other relation to it.
Eponymous predication
must
always
be backed
up
by
some
explanation
of
why
the named-after
things
are named after what
they
are.
By way
of
contrast,
think of the
widespread application
of such
an
eponym
as
'George Washington'
in the United States. Countless
high-
schools are named
"George Washington High
School" after
George Washing-
ton,
but there are no
nagging questions
about
why
these but not other
high
schools take
George Washington's
name. Various school boards
could,
and
probably
did, just adopt
the name out of a hat. With
general
words,
how-
ever,
the
puzzle
has
always
been to find some account that will
explain why
it is in some sense "correct" or
"fitting"
or
"appropriate",
rather than
merely arbitrary,
to
group
some individuals
together
under one word and
not other individuals. So to insist that the
particulars
we call F are named-
after
things
is never more than the start of the
explanation
we want. We are
always
bound to
go
one
step
further and ask
"Why
are these
specific partic-
ulars
(but
not
others) justifiably
to be called after this
specific
Form
(and
not after some
other)?".
Plato's
answer,
according
to the
majority opinion,
is that a
particular
F
thing
is
justifiably
called F after the Form b because
and
only
because it
possesses
the
property
F-ness in common with it:
Beauty
itself and beautiful
particulars
are both beautiful
univocally.
They
differ because when beautiful
particulars
are
beautiful,
they
are
not so without limit or
qualification.
They
are
only
beautiful in
part,
or at one time and not
another,
and so on.
By
contrast, Beauty
itself is beautiful but without limit or
qualification,
without admixture
of
opposites (White,
op. cit.,
p. 210).
In this
way
it makes
perfectly good
sense to
say
of a
given
item, x,
that x is a
secondary designate
of a
predicate,
F,
because
although
x has uni-
vocally
the same
property
as
y
which is the
primary designate
of
'F',
x owes its
possession
of F to
y (p. 208).
Now if this is how
eponymy goes
for
Plato,
the
majority opinion
continues,
then it is
perfectly legitimate
to
apply step (A)
to
step (B)
and so derive
the conclusion
(C)
after all. When all is said and
done,
the One over
Many
principle (step (A))
is what
gives
Plato's fundamental
analysis
of the ex-
pression
'possesses
a
property':
to
say
that some
thing possesses
the
property
F-ness is
ultimately
to
say nothing
more,
and
nothing
less,
than that it
stands in a
special
relation
(of participation)
to some additional
philosophical
entity (the
Form
q).
That is what
'possesses
the
property
F-ness' means.
And
hence,
no matter whether the Form
qb
is also F in the sense that it is
the
eponym
which the word 'F'
names,
as
long
as the Form itself does
possess
the
property
F-ness,
there is no
way
to avoid
saying
that it too
participates
in some additional
entity,
the further Form
2--again,
that is
just
what
'possesses
the
property'
means. Hence the
regress
which Plato
deliberately
allows the Third Man to
bring
out is fundamental and inevitable.
It should be
obvious, then,
that it
really
is crucial to decide whether or
not a
theory
of
builds on an
assumption
of common
properties-either
in
point
of fact or in Plato's own mind.
II. ARE COMMON PROPERTIES AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE SEMANTICS OF
EPONYMY?
To decide the
point
of fact I think we have to look at some
semantics,
because,
though
Plato did not see himself
primarily
as a
philosopher
of
language,
his
theory
of
is indeed a
distinctly
semantic
theory.
(1) Eponymous predication provides
a
deliberately one-many
hook as
opposed
to a one-one hook between words and the world. In
saying
that
words must first of all name
Forms,
Plato
gives
in to our natural inclination
to assume that the case of one
single
name for each
single
item is the
paradigm
case of
naming.
Not so with
eponymous predication,
however. To
explain
the
point
of
letting
a word do this extra
job
and so become
general
is to
explain
what Eucleides and
Antisthenes,
for
instance,
found so
unexplain-
able: how one word can
apply
to more than one item. It looks as if it is
not
possible
at all if the
only job
a word can do is be a
proper
name as 'Thomas
Wheaton Bestor' is a
proper
name. This is where
eponymy steps
in.
Perhaps
there can
rightly
be
only
one
piece
of the world named
F,
but there can
easily
be
many
more than one
piece
of the world
rightly
called F
after
it.
Thus there
may
be
only
one The Beautiful which the word 'beautiful' names
-but lots of
things
can bear some relation to that Beautiful and so be called
beautiful after it.
(2) Furthermore,
is a
distinctly
indirect relation
between our words and the world. Take a
simple parallel.
With 'Fido' and
Fido we have an
immediate,
direct relation. Here we have the
word,
there
the
thing.
We use the word in
place
of the
thing
for
purposes
of communica-
tion. Other words are not like
this,
however.
'Sandwich',
for
example,
is
the
proper
name of John
Montagu,
fourth earl of
Sandwich,
and
applies
to
that man as
directly
as 'Fido' ever does to Fido. But the word also
applies
to
my
favourite
snacks,
and it does so
only by picking
out the man who
invented them on the
way:
here we have the
word,
there the man named
by
the
word,
and there
again
the
things
in
my lunch-bag
named after the man.
The
application
of the word to
my
snacks is thus a roundabout
affair,
not a
direct one.
Indeed,
this is the whole
point
of
calling
sandwiches "named-
after"
things
and Sandwich a
"named'"
thing
in the first
place.
No word
can
possibly
attach to
any
named-after
thing
as
directly
as it attaches to
the
original
named
thing, simply
because it attaches to the named-after
thing only
via
attaching
to the named
thing.
And so it is with Forms and
particulars
for Plato. It is the Forms which are the named items. Partic-
ulars are
only
named-after
things.
A
general
word attaches to each
Many
only indirectly, only by attaching
to the One on the
way.
(3) Though eponymous predication vastly
extends the
range
of a
term,
it does not do so
arbitrarily.
Not
just anything
can be named after some
named
item,
only
those
things "appropriately"
related to it. Thus with
'sandwich',
the word is the
proper
name of the man Sandwich and
applies
eponymously
to certain
things
in
my lunch-bag
as well-but not to
every-
thing
in
my lunch-bag;
the man has
given
his name
only
to those snacks he
is famous for
inventing.
So too for
particulars
and Forms in Plato's
theory.
Not
every particular
can be named F after the Form
k, only
those
partic-
ulars which are
specially
related to it. The
pen
on
my
desk cannot
possibly
be called
pious,
even after the Form of
Piety;
it is not close
enough
to the
Form for that. But the
hymnal
on
my
desk
can,
and is. What all this means
is that the relation of
being
named after is
always parasitic
on an additional
relation
obtaining
between the named item and the named-after
things,
a
relation in virtue of which the
eponym
relation also holds. For Plato this
additional
relation,
however it is cashed
in,
is often dubbed
"participation":
F
particulars
are
rightly
named F after the Form
<
because
they (and
not
others) "participate
in" that Form
(and
not in the Form
0 say).
The
point
of
bringing
out these
special
features of
eponymy
is
simple.
According
to the
majority opinion
a
particular
can be called after a Form if
and
only
if the
particular
and the Form share a common
property
in some
way. Semantically,
this amounts to the view that the
only
relation which
will
support
the indirect extension of a One's name to some
Many
is
sharing
a
property.
The
eponym possesses
a distinctive
property (in
a
quintessential
way).
The named-after
things possess
that
property
too
(in
a
rough
and
ready way).
And the named-after
things
take the
eponym's
name
just
be-
cause
they
share the
eponym's property.
The
majority opinion
here is
by
no
means eccentric
(it
is the
majority opinion
after
all).
Nonetheless it is
entirely false.
As a semantic thesis the
theory
of
eponymous predication says
nothing
at all about what the named
things
must be
like,
about what the
named-after
things
must be
like,
or about what the
undergirding
relation
between named
thing
and named-after
things
must be like. Consider
just
a
few extra
possibilities
in the rest of this
section,
as a sort of insurance
against
the usual one-sided diet.
(The groupings
are
naturally fairly arbitrary
and
fluid.
And,
of
course,
the
eponymous
Forms are not themselves
people,
nor
even
always objects,
as most of the
following eponyms are.)
Class One: There are cases where a named-after
thing
is so named because
it does share a common
property
with the named
thing-indeed,
because it
shares
precisely
that
property
which the
eponym
itself is distinctive and
memorable for
possessing.
White's favourite
example
is a case in
point:
a
girl may
be called "a Helen" because she is
beautiful,
as Helen wife of Menelaus
was famed for
being (pp. 206-7).
We seldom talk this
way
in real
life,
of
course,
but there are lots of more
ordinary
cases to be
going
on with: a
feeble-minded
person
is called a moron after the
memorably
feeble-minded
character Moron in Moliere's
play
La Princesse
d'Elide;
a
shady lawyer
is
called a
shyster
after a
memorably shady
New York
lawyer
named Scheuster.
Calling something
"an X" after X is not the
only pattern;
'X'
undergoes
a
variety
of
grammatical
transformations as it moves from one function
(noun,
adjective, verb)
to another in a sentence-thus 'a
Cartesian',
'Byronic',
'to
dun'.
Class Two:
Many
other named-after
things
are so called
simply
as a
means of
honouring
those
eponyms.
The normal
procedure
with flower
species,
for
instance,
is to name a
plant
after someone not
memorably plant-
like himself but at least memorable for
plant-centred
activities. Thus
my
lobelias are called after Malthias de
l'Obel,
a
distinguished
Flemish botanist
(who
never saw a lobelia in his
life,
much less was
one); my magnolias
are
called after Pierre
Magnol,
who wrote a book
classifying plants.
The names
of the units of measurement are much the same. In none of these cases are
the named-after
things
named what
they
are because
they
share a
property
with their
eponyms.
The
very
idea is
preposterous.
But still it is
by
no
means
capricious
to honour one
specific person
rather than another
by
making
him the
eponym
for the
specific
kind of
thing
at hand. It would
have been
decidedly
odd to name the unit of
brightness
the volt to honour
Volta,
for
instance,
since Volta never worked on
light;
Lambert
did, though,
and so the unit is
quite justifiably
named the lambert after him instead.
Class Three: In a vast number of
cases,
though,
a named-after
thing
is
so called because it
belongs
to a class
originated by
the
person
named. Thus
we
already
have the case of the
sandwich;
so too braille is the
special system
of
writing
for the blind devised
by
Louis
Braille;
sideburns are the
special
kind of facial
fungus
first
sported by
General Ambrose
Burnside,
and so on.
Discoverers also are
frequently eponyms:
thus salmonella is named after the
pathologist
Daniel Salmon who first identified it and
guppies
take their name
from R. J. L.
Guppy
who
presented
the British Museum with its first
speci-
mens. In each of these cases the
specific
named-after
things may
all
possess
a common
property,
but it
certainly
is not a
property possessed
in common
with the
eponym,
nor is it because the items
possess
that
property
that
they
take the
eponym's
name.
Indeed,
the class of
sandwiches,
for
example,
can
be individuated
by
the common
properties
of its
members,
making
no refer-
ence at all to their
eponym, yet things falling
in that class are
rightly
called
"sandwiches" and not
something
else because Sandwich was
responsible
for
the first of them. The class is formed on the basis of
properties
shared
by
each of its members. The
name, however,
comes from outside and
applies
for another reason
entirely.
Class Four: In another kind of case the
undergirding
association between
eponym
and named-after
thing
is much less immediate than this. Thus the
nuts I
occasionally buy
are called
filberts,
after St
Philbert,
because that
saint's feast
day
falls on
August
22,
the
height
of the season for
harvesting
them. The
type
of shoes called
plimsolls
are so named because the line be-
tween cloth and rubber on them resembles the horizontal load line
painted
on merchant
ships
and named after one Samuel Plimsoll who led the
parlia-
mentary
crusade for its
requirement.
And so on ad nauseam.3 Here
again
we have
properties
shared
by
all the named-after
things, properties
which
individuate those
things, though
not
properties
shared with their
eponym
and not
properties
in virtue of which
they
take the
eponym's
name. But
what
exactly
the
undergirding
relation is varies almost without limit
depend-
ing
on the
specific
case,
and
may
not even
require
the
eponym
ever to have
been
immediately
involved with
any
of the named-after
things
at all.
Class Five: On the other
hand,
there is another
important type
of case
where the involvement of the
eponym
is so immediate that there is no other
common
property
shared
by
the named-after
things
except
their
being
so
related to it. For
example,
a vehicle
may
come as close as it likes in
appear-
ance or
performance
to a Honda car
yet
still cannot
rightly
be called a Honda
unless it was
actually
manufactured
by
the
company
founded
by
Soichiro
Honda. It is not because
they
share some common
property
with the
epony-
mous Mr Honda himself that millions of Hondas are
rightly
called what
they
are
(as
with Class
One)-for
the man and the vehicles have themselves
nothing
in common
(Mr
Honda is not
finely engineered).
It is not because
they
share
properties
with a
thing originated by
Mr Honda that
they
are
called Hondas either
(as
with Class
Three)-for
Honda did not invent a
kind of vehicle which other
people
now can make
(no
one can make Hondas
but Honda's
company
or those he
may license). Indeed,
it is not because
they
share
any independently
characterizable common
properties among
themselves that
they
take the same name
(as
with Class
Four)-for
there
could well be an
infinitely
various
range
of
entirely
different Hondas
(cars,
trucks, motorbikes,
of all sizes and
shapes).
If we want to talk about "com-
mon
properties"
at all
here,
we have to
say
that the
property
common to
all Hondas is
solely
their
having
been caused to come into
being by
the action
of Soichiro Honda.
(Note
how
nicely
this
parallels
the
peculiarly dependent
status of
particulars
on Forms: the
eponym
itself does not
possess
the relevant
property
at
all,
and
yet
it is a
property
which none of the named-after
things
could
possibly possess
were it not for the
eponym.)
In
precisely
the same
way you
cannot eat off
Wedgwood
not made
by
Josiah
Wedgwood; you
cannot wear a
Givenchy
outfit not
designed by
Hubert de
Givenchy.
Class Six: Other created
things
are named not after who or what made
them but who or what
they
are about.
Every
cartoonist in the United States
once had his Nixon caricature and the reason
why
some
particular display
of
pictures
in a
museum,
say,
is
rightly
called a
display
of Nixons would
therefore be because that man is their
subject (rather
than their
author).
In like manner
heaps
of books and
shaving mugs
are
rightly
called Lincolnalia
after the man Lincoln because
they
are
objects pertaining
to him
(in
fact
the suffix 'iana' can be attached to almost
any
name to turn it into an
eponym
in this
way).
3There are some 3500
(!) more,
covering every part
of
speech,
in Robert
Hendrickson,
Human Words
(Radnor, 1972).
Class Seven: Still other named-after
things
are named after their source
rather than after their creator or his
subject (and
it is this
provenance
which
individuates as well as names
them,
as with Class
Five).
For
example,
the
many
different bottles of
cognac
scattered around the world are all
rightly
called what
they
are for no other reason than that
they
contain
brandy
distilled from
grapes grown
in the area around the town named
Cognac
in
France.
(At
least in the
beginning
it was so. We are now less
pernickety.)
There, then,
are
just
a few of the manifold relations which a named after
thing
can have to a named
thing
in virtue of which it is
quite rightly
called
after that
thing. Though
not all are
equally likely possibilities
for
Plato,
and
though
he seems to have other ones in mind
too,
these classes are suf-
ficient to make the
point
I want to make. Taken as a semantic
thesis,
Plato's
theory
of
requires
that there be some extra
relation between a Form and its
participants
in virtue of which one is named
after the other. But it does not
by
itself
require any specific
relation. An
eponym
can be
"responsible
for" a
thing being
what it is and
being
called
what it is for all manner
of
reasons. We have to take the matter case
by
case.
III. DID PLATO HIMSELF BELIEVE EPONYMY INVOLVED COMMON
PROPERTIES?
Did Plato see
any
of
this,
though?
The
majority opinion
is that he did
not. The
minority opinion
is that he did. Plato was no more
single-minded
in this matter than in
any
other,
certainly,
but the balance of the
evidence,
I
think,
is in favour of
crediting
Plato with
understanding fairly
well that
many relationships
can and do underwrite the
eponym
relation.
First Fact: As a
way
into the matter it is useful to notice how
unordinary
all this talk about
eponyms
is in
English.
The word alone makes the blood
run cold. Not so in
Greek,
however.
Eponymy
was a
very
familiar
pheno-
menon. The term was not at all uncommon or technical or
off-putting.
For
example, every
Athenian was himself a
many
times named-after
thing
and knew it full well. Thus
(i)
when Kleisthenes
re-organized
the
constitution,
one of his
major
innovations was to institute ten artificial
tribes,
to which
every
citizen
belonged,
as a
replacement
for the old blood
clans. Each man's tribe was named after a
tutelary
hero of Attica who was
known as its
"eponymous
hero".
Indeed,
during
Plato's
prime
a monument
called "The Statues of the
Eponymous
Heroes" was erected in the market
place
for all to see.
(ii)
Another of Kleisthenes' innovations was to fix
by
official sanction the names of the individual demes
(parishes)
that were now
the basic social
group (usually
after a
prominent
natural feature or the
name of their
supposed founder),
so that each inhabitant could become
officially
named after his deme.
Before,
citizens were
picked
out
by
their
own
(first)
name
plus
the
(first)
name of their
father,
but now a
person's
full name consisted of three
parts-as
in the
charge against
Socrates: "this
indictment is sworn
by
Meletus son of Meletus of the deme of Pitthos
against
Socrates son of
Sophroniscus
of
Alopece".4 (iii) Simultaneously every 18-year-
old was also enrolled in the official lists of citizens under the name of the
current Archon
Eponymos,
the head
magistrate
who
gave
his name to the
year
in which he held office.
The
point
is
simple.
In not one of these cases do the named-after
things
share
any
common
property
with their
eponym.
Yet in
every
one of these
cases there is a
perfectly good
reason
why
these
specific things
(and
not
others)
should be named after what
they
are
(and
not after
something else).
Other
cases
display
other
just
as
"appropriate"
relations
('Hecademus'-'Academy'
-'academic').
Insofar as Plato was himself an ancient Greek and worked
against
an ancient Greek
background,
therefore,
he
certainly
was under no
presumption
that
eponymous predication required
common
properties.
The
most familiar facts would have
suggested
Classes Four and Five as models
rather than Class One.
Second Fact: Plato's own use of the term
'eponymy',
in non-Form-ist
contexts at
least,
demonstrates
just
as wanton
disregard
for the
majority
restriction. The Greek for 'is named
after',
commonly
rendered
by
three
cognates,
the
passive
of the verb
cErouvotajco,
the noun
'rrcovvlita
and the
adjec-
tive
errVcvvvLos,
is used to refer to
everyday eponym
relations some 45 times
in the course of the
dialogues. Only
about half the
time, however,
do these
terms work in the
way they
are
supposed always
to work.
Start with the ones where common
properties
do seem to
figure.
Thus
a man is said to be called a
glutton
after the
gluttony
in him
(Phdr. 238a);
crazy
after the craziness of his conversations
(Symp. 173d);
wise after the
wisdom
present
in his
writings,
lover of wisdom after the serious
pursuit
those
writings
show
(Phdr. 278d-e).
The
appetitive component
of the soul
takes its name from the
intensity
of its
bodily appetites (Rep. 580e).
A
certain life
style
is called
Pythagorean
after the man who was
distinguished
among
his
contemporaries
for it
(Rep. 600b).
In the
Cratylus etymologies
section we have a
great
list of similar
epony-
mous
predications.
There Plato
says personal
names tell a
story
or
predict
a
destiny
and so
"truly" apply
to a
thing only
insofar as the
thing actually
has that
property;
otherwise
they
are
"lying"
names.
"Archepolis"
means
ruler of a
city,
for
instance,
"Theophilus"
means beloved of
God,
"Sosias"
means
saviour;
these names should not be
applied
to
people they
don't fit
(394c, e, 397b).
The same for the names of heroes and
gods:
"Tantalus"
means
weighed
down
by fortune,
which he was
(395d-e);
"Artemis" means
hates
intercourse,
which she did
(406b);
and so on. The term
E'rcovvptla
is
used in seven of these
specific
derivations and also twice so as to make the
more
general point.
When Socrates turns to
explaining
the correctness of
general
words he
employs
much the same mechanism: a
general
word is
often
phonetically
similar to a
phrase
or
compressed
statement which
speci-
fies some
particular property
and so
rightly applies
to the
things
it does
only
4John Edwin
Sandys,
Aristotle's Constitution
of
Athens
(London, 1912), p.
85.
when and because
they
have the
property
so
specified.
Thus the word for
'god'
sounds like the word for 'run' and so was
truly applied by
the
aboriginal
Hellenes to their deities because
they
were
always running
about in their
starry
courses
(397d).
The word for 'wisdom' is
phonetically
similar to the
phrase
for
'perception
of motion and flux' and
applies
because the Name-
giver, turning
around from one
thing
to the
next, got dizzy
and
thought
that
the
things
so
perceived
were
really
in motion rather than
realizing
that the
motion was an internal condition in himself
(411b-e).
Socrates
goes through
some 60
examples
in this
manner,
ending
in a veritable
barrage
of
eponymous
one-liners. As
before,
the term
ETrowvvtla
frequently
carries the
weight
here
(some
14
times).
The
general pattern
so far seems clear
enough.
Both in the
Cratylus
and
in other
dialogues,
a
thing
is named F after its distinctive F-ness. Yet we
must not
go
overboard. Socrates is
quite
facetious about the
Cratylus theory
of the "natural fitness" of words from start to
finish,
and
besides,
in several
of the crucial occurrences of ErrowvvJla the
undergirding
relation is not
actually
one of
sharing
a
property
after all.
Thus,
for
example, 'good' (like 'wisdom')
comes from an
expression referring
to motion not because it is itself in
motion but because the
Namegiver (mistakenly) thought
it was about motions
(412c)-Class
Six,
that
is,
rather than Class
One; longing
too is named after
its
subject. Passion,
on the other
hand,
is named after its
special effects,
and mind is called beautiful for the same reason
(416d)-Class Five,
I
sup-
pose.
Love is named after its source-Class
Seven; similarly
men are named
after their ancestors
(397b).
All sorts of relations
carry
the
weight,
then.
Nor are
things
much better in the
non-Cratylus
cases. Is it
really perfectly
obvious,
say,
that Socrates shares a common
property
with his
eponym
craziness and so can be called after it? Are there three
things
here:
Socrates,
craziness,
and the distinctive
property
which the
eponym
craziness
possesses
and that Socrates also
possesses?
The real
equalizer, however,
is the fact that these are
by
no means the
only
cases of
legitimate eponymy
that Plato entertains. Thus he uses
exactly
the same set of
expressions
to
repeat
the traditional view that Athenians
take their name from the
goddess
Athena whom
they
venerate
(Laws 626d).
Likewise the ideal
city
Plato
plans
will be called after some
god, probably
the local
deity
of the area in which it will be constructed
(Laws
704a, 969a),
and each of the 12 tribes that make
up
its
population
are to be named after
the
god
to whom it has been allocated and consecrated
(Laws 745d-e, 828c).
The ideal
city apart,
Plato
says
that the name of a
religious temple usually
comes from the name of the
god
or
goddess
to whom it is dedicated
(Laws
738b).
Stars have been named after the various
gods
and
goddesses
too,
as
a means of
honouring
them
(Epin. 987b).
The art of
harping, singing
and
dancing (i.e., music)
is named after the Muses because
they
are the
specific
goddesses
that foster that
specific
art
(Alc.
I
108c-d); alternatively,
Plato
suggests
the Muses themselves
might
be so called because
they
are the main
goddesses
of the race of
Ligyans
renowned for their
musicianship (Phdr.
237a).
The island of Atlantis and also the ocean it is
in,
the
Atlantic,
are
both so called after the name of the first
king
of that
island,
Atlas
(Critias
114a).
A child is
usually
named after his kin
(Lys. 204e;
cf.
Rep. 330b,
Pol.
257d-258a),
but in certain circumstances can
rightly
be named after someone
of another blood line
(Laws 878a).
Since it is a
general principle
that a
city's
constitution takes its name from the name of the
ruling
class in
it,
the ideal
constitution should
properly
take its name from that of the
god
who is
master of ideal
(i.e., rational)
men
(Laws 713a).
By
contrast with the other
eponymous predications,
in these it makes
no sense to look for some
property
the named
thing
shares with the named-
after
things
in virtue of which it
rightly gives
them its name. The island of
Atlantis,
for
instance,
possesses
no distinctive
property
in common with the
delni-god Atlas; yet
that does not somehow make it
inappropriate
for the
one to be named after the
other-being
the
king of
is a
perfectly good
relation
for
undergirding eponymy.
So is
being
an
object of
veneration. So is
fostering
or
nourishing.
So is
being
the ancestor
of.
All in
all, then,
we have some 20 or so occurrences of
commonplace
"eponymy"
in the
dialogues
which trail no clouds of common
properties,
25
or so which
may.
This is
hardly convincing
evidence that Plato himself
felt
especially
constrained to
explain why
X is named after Y in terms of X
possessing
that distinctive
property
which Y
possesses.
Third Fact: When we turn to
distinctly
Form-ist contexts I think we have
to come to the same conclusion. The textual
proof
of this can be
put
in a
surprisingly simple argument:
(1) Throughout
the course of his
dialogues
Plato
seriously
enter-
tains
only
one basic
theory
of
predication, eponymy:
from start to
finish it is
by being
somehow or other related to the Form that a
particular
comes
rightly
to take what is in fact the Form's name.
(2)
At the same
time,
throughout
the course of his
dialogues
Plato
seriously
entertains a
great many different
accounts of the basic relation
holding
between Forms and
particulars,
some in no
way
reducible to
sharing
a common
property.
(3)
Therefore,
Plato must have realized for himself
(what
is in fact
true)
that the
theory
of
is
compatible
with
several
ontological
models and does not
require
the
backing
of the
common
properties
model.
Let me
try
to
unpack
this a bit.
Undoubtedly
the clearest
expressions
of Plato's basic account of
predica-
tion occur in the
Phaedo,
Parmenides and Timaeus
(Loeb
translations: the
italicized
phrases
translate variations on the term
e'rcowvla):
As I remember
it,
after all this had been admitted
[that nothing
can
come into existence other than
by participating
in the
proper
essence
of each
thing,
beautiful
things
in
Beauty
and two
things
in
Duality,
for
example],
and
they
had
agreed
that each of the abstract
qualities
exists and that other
things
which
participate
in these
get
their names
from
them,
then Socrates asked . . .
(Phd. 102a-b).
We said before that in the case of concrete
things opposites
are
gener-
ated from
opposites;
whereas now we
say
that the abstract
concept
of an
opposite
can never become its own
opposite.
. . . Then we
were
talking
about
things
which
possess opposite qualities
and are
called
after
them,
but now about those
very opposites
the immanence
of which
gives
the
things
their names
(Phd. 103b).
Well, tell me: do
you
think
that,
as
you say,
there are
ideas,
and that
these other
things
which
partake
of them are named
from
them, as,
for
instance,
those that
partake
of likeness become
like,
those that
partake
of
greatness great,
those that
partake
of
beauty
and
justice
just
and beautiful?
Certainly (Parm. 130e-131a).
We must
agree
that One Kind is the self-identical
Form,
ungenerated
and
indestructible,
. . . invisible and in all
ways imperceptible by
sense,
it
being
the
object
which is the
province
of Reason to contem-
plate;
and a Second Kind is that which is named after
((ojLcvvlzov)
the
former and similar
thereto,
an
object perceptible by sense,
generated,
ever carried
about,
. . .
apprehensible by Opinion
with the aid of
Sensation
(Tim. 52a).
In
fact, however,
the
theory
is
given expression
as
early
as the
Lysis
and
as late as the Laws and
changes
not one whit from first to last.5 Later
authorities are also unanimous in
reporting
the same
single theory
of
predication.6
In
sharp
contrast to this
constancy
in his basic account of
predication,
Plato is
notoriously
fickle about
just
what
specific
relation it is that
partic-
ulars must have to Forms in order to be named after them. He
rings
the
changes
on some 15 technical
terms;
no
single
model is
specially
consecrated
either.
(i)
Thus in the
Hippias
Major,
much as the
ingredient
alcohol is in
gin
and
whisky
and
thereby
makes them
"alcoholic",
so
beauty
is said to
be
something
that can be "added to"
particular
things
(289d, 292c-d),
almost
drop by drop;
when it
is,
that
explains why
the
examples
are entitled
to the name
(288a, 303d-e). (ii)
In the
Euthyphro
the Form of F
particulars
has become the character common and
peculiar
to a set of
examples
whose
exemplification puts
them all in the same
pot (5d, 6d-e).
There is
only
one such real Form: it is the
defining
character of the F
things,
the word
'F' is its
proper
name,
but it has no
independent
existence
separate
from
the
particulars
that
exemplify
it
(unlike
an
ingredient
then-were there no
alcoholic drinks there
might
still be some distilled alcohol
somewhere;
were
there no
pious
deeds, however,
there
simply
would not be that character
common and
peculiar
to
pious deeds). (iii)
In the
Republic
a Form is con-
sidered to be itself a discrete
particular,
of a
kind;
it is unlike the more
5Lys. 219c-220b, Laws 963a-964 with 965c-d. Also see Phd.
78e, 102c,
Phdr. 249b,
250e,
Parm.
133d, Soph. 234b, 252b,
and Tim. 41c.
6See,
for
example,
Aristotle
(Metaph.
987a 31-b
15,
Eud. Eth. 1217b
2-14);
Alexander
of
Aphrodisias (Comm.
in Arist.
Metaph.
82.
11-83, 16);
Proclus
(Comm.
in Plato Parm.
125); Asclepius
of Tralles (Schol.
in
Metaph.
567a
41);
and
Diogenes
Laertius (Lives
III
13).
mundane
particulars
we meet with
every day,
to be sure
(it
is
non-sensible,
not in
physical space,
eternal,
unchanging,
divine,
and so
on),
but still it is
one
specific 'entity.
Such Forms are the inhabitants of a
special
world which
we can
gaze upon
with our souls and which the inhabitants of this world
can be
compared against
and named after.
They
are
prototypes
which the
particulars try
to
pattern
themselves on
(472b-c, 484c-d, 500d, 501b), para-
digmatic objects
which
particulars copy
more or less
accurately (519c-520c,
597b-c), perfect
entities that
particulars
are mere shadows of
(510b-d, 515c).
(On
such models a Form is
nothing
at all like the common character Bed-
steadity
which
my
bed
has,
say,
but more like the First Bed which
my
bed
yearningly
likens itself
to.) (iv)
The
Cratylus
makes a Form not some kind
of
perfect particular
but rather an abstract
rationally intelligible design
or
pattern,
more on the lines of a schematic
diagram,
a chemical
formula,
a
list of instructions or architectural
specifications.
Thus if we want to make
a new shuttle to
replace
a broken one we have
naturally
to look to the real
shuttle,
the
Form;
but this
"looking"
is not
gazing
at a
perfectly shaped
piece
of
something
but
attending
to the functions of shuttles and to the
specific requirements
a shuttle must
embody
to
perform
that function best
(389a-390e). (v)
In the Timaeus
appears
a model of the Form as an ancestor.
Things
of this world in a
process
of
generation
are like
children;
the
receiving
matrix in which all this
generation
takes
place
is like the
mother;
the source
of the
generated things' being
what
they
are is like the father. In the rather
special
sense that kin are "resemblances" of their
primogenitor,
the "races"
of
particulars
are thus "resemblances" of Forms and named after them
accordingly (50c-e). Contrary
to common
opinion,
none of these various
models
wholly displaces any
other in the
dialogues.
For
example,
the in-
gredient
model is
present
not
only
in
Hippias
but also in Laws 963a-965d.
Common and
peculiar
characteristics show
up
at Meno 72c but also at
Sophist
247a-b. The
copying
account
appears
in Phaedo 74b-75b and
again
in Politicus 285e-286a and
Epistle
VII 343b-c. The functional
specifications
view occurs in the
Cratylus
but also at
Republic
601c-e and Timaeus 28a-29b.
The
primogenitor
model occurs at Timaeus 36e and also at
Hippias
297a-b
and Politicus 258a.
This
gets
us to the heart of the
problem.
Plato takes
seriously
several
ontological
models. But he takes
seriously only
one semantic
theory.
The
obvious conclusion is that Plato felt no more committed to a
single
relation
undergirding eponymy
than he felt committed to a
single
characterization
of
"participation"-which
is to
say
the same
thing
of course. And lest it
be said that all these models
"really"
boil down to the
single sharing-a-
common
property
model
nonetheless,
just pause
a bit. What
property
does
a
shadow,
on
rocky ground say,
have in common with the
object
that
pro-
jects
it in virtue of which we
say
that it is this
particular
shadow which is
the shadow of this
particular man?-clearly
it is who
projects
it that matters.
Again,
what
property
does a functional
specification necessarily
have in
common with the
thing
that embodies it? What
property
does a
primo-
genitor necessarily
have in common with his
offspring?
The truth is that
for Plato it seems not to matter what
precisely
the
appropriate
relation
is,
just
that it is because and
only
because sensible
particulars
are somehow
"appropriately"
related to Forms that
they
have the character and name
they
do:
I
cling simply
and
straight-forwardly
and no doubt
foolishly
to the
explanation
that the one
thing
that makes that
object
beautiful is
the
presence
in it or association with
it,
in whatever
way
the relation
comes
about,
of absolute
beauty.
I do not
go
so far as to insist on the
precise details-only upon
the fact that it is
by beauty
that beautiful
things
are beautiful
(Phd.
100d,
Tredennick
translation;
cf. Tim. 50c,
51b).
If Plato does not insist on the
precise
details,
neither I think should we.
IV. THE CASE FOR A COMMON PROPERTY RESTRICTION ON EPONYMY
At least this should be our conclusion in the absence of
any convincing
evidence to the
contrary.
The
majority opinion
believes that there is evi-
dence to the
contrary,
however,
and White
spends
much of his recent article
marshalling
it. So this side of
things
has to be looked at too.
(1)
White's first
point
is the
expression
of a
widespread incredulity:
if the
implications
of the
[unrestricted] image analogy
and the
epony-
my theory
of
predication
had been clear to
Plato,
it is not
plausible
to
suppose
that he would have hesitated to
spell
out their relevance
to the Third Man and other
regress arguments.
It is too
high
a
compliment
to the
general
run of his readers to
argue
that Plato
would have taken for
granted
that
they
would
easily spot
what he
took to be an obvious
fallacy.
It is too little
complimentary
to
Aristotle and others unable to see in what
way
Plato could have
dealt with the
arguments (p. 208).
We
cannot,
I
think,
put any weight
on the
argument
from Plato's silence
here. The whole of the Parmenides is a
hotch-potch
of
good
and bad
argu-
ments from
beginning
to end and Plato never offers
any commentary
on
any
argument
or
any antinomy.
Socrates is the official
yes-man
in this
dialogue
and he does his
duty devotedly
and
uncritically.
He nods at
superb pieces
of
reasoning.
He nods at
outrageous
fallacies. That he nods at the Third
Man as well therefore tells us
nothing. Actually,
the conclusion that Plato
himself
thought
the Third Man a
devastating objection
to the
theory
of
Forms runs into even worse difficulties than the conclusion that he
thought
it no
objection
at
all,
for Plato continues
quite openly
to use both of the
main accounts of
participation supposedly
devastated
by
it.7
Moreover,
in
fact Plato does offer some hints that the Third Man is
specious.
He
prefaces
it and the rest of the
arguments
in the first section with the clearest ever
7For
example,
the
sharing
account at
Soph. 240a, 247a-b, 248c,
Tim.
65e-66a,
77a-b, 90c,
Pol.
275c,
Laws 965c-d; and the
copying
account at
Soph. 234b, 235d-e,
Tim.
31a, 50c-d, 51a,
Pol.
285e-286a,
Laws
962a-b, Epist.
VII 343b-c.
statement of his
theory
of
eponymous predication (130e-131a)-which theory
does in fact break the back of each and
every
one of those
arguments.
And
then he
goes
on to insist that Socrates is a
"quite young"
man
(127c, 130e,
135d)
and for that reason cannot refute his
objections
as a
sufficiently "gifted
man" with the
"proper training" (in logic) easily
could
(133b, 135a-d).
Curiously,
the
argument
from Aristotle's
loquacity
here is in even worse
case. White believes that Aristotle offered his famous
battery
of Third Man
arguments
because he saw
(as eventually
did
Plato)
that
naming-after
is
univocal
(we
are
indicating
the
possession
of the same
property
both
times).
The
astonishing
fact, however,
is that Aristotle himself
thought precisely
the
opposite! Every
case where we
apply
a
single predicate
to both a
copy
and its
original
is a case of
equivocation pure
and
simple,
he insists.
Thus,
for
example,
a saw is defined
by
what it can
actually
do. But a saw in a
painting
cannot
actually
do
anything.
Hence it is
really
no more a saw in the sense
of a
cutting
instrument than a wise
saying
is a saw in the sense of a
cutting
instrument.
Accordingly,
if Plato is serious in
believing
that
particulars
in
this world are
copies
of Forms in another
world,
as his
"intriguing
meta-
phors" (Metaph.
991a
20-23) suggest,
then,
Aristotle
says,
when we
apply
the same word 'F' both to a
particular
and to the Form
f,
we have committed
a
simple 'saw'/'saw'-type equivocation.8
This is so even when we name the
particular
F "after" the Form S.
(2)
The most
important
of White's
arguments
is that Plato's own
reflec-
tions or shadows
analogy
itself shows that
eponymy
must be backed
up by
the Form's
possessing properties
in common with their
participants.
For
several reasons. Because it is
implausible
to
suppose
we are
using
a different
language
when we come to
speak
of mirror
images
and the like:
we
might imagine
two
persons being taught
the
meaning
of the word
'red',
the one
being
shown red
scarves,
the other
being
shown mirror-
images
of red scarves. Is it not
implausible
to
argue
[as
Aristotle
did]
that the two are
being taught quite
different
meanings
of the
word 'red'
(p. 208)?
Because otherwise how could we
possibly
confuse reflections with their
originals?
Surely,
in the case of
images,
what makes
something
an
image
is
precisely
its
possession
of so
many properties
in common with its
original
that,
given
the
right
circumstances,
a man
might
even mis-
take one for the other
(pp. 209-10).
Because
particulars
serve to
help
us to recollect the Forms:
suppose
we ask: how do like
things
remind us of like
things?
How
do
images
remind us of their
originals?
Is it not
by presenting
us
with a selection of the
very properties
that the
originals
themselves
possess (p. 209)?
8Compare
Meteor. 389b 30-390a
14,
Pts.
of
Animals 640b 30-641a
6,
On the Soul
412b
30-22, Categ.
la
1-5,
Pol. 1253a
20-25,
Gen.
of
Animals 726b 22-24. This
point
is
Owen's
discovery
in
"Logic
and
Metaphysics
in Some Earlier Works of
Aristotle",
op. cit.,
pp.
187-8.
These
points
are
not,
I
think,
as
strong
as
they might
seem at first
glance.
The reflection view which underlies all of
them,
and which is
certainly
the
Official
Doctrine,
is what
might
be called a "static" one. We start with the
familiar mundane
objects
of our
ordinary
world,
sensible
particulars.
In
addition,
Plato has
discovered,
there are also certain other non-sensible
Forms, belonging
to a
different,
higher
world. Each has a determinate
nature of its own. It turns
out, however,
that the two are also related to
each other-the familiar
objects
of the sensible world turn out
actually
to
be
dummies, simulacra,
imitations of the other
really
real
things.
This is a
sensible,
coherent
view,
but it is not Plato's view-at least not in the main
passages (Phd. 74d-75b,
Parm.
132d-133a,
Tim.
48e-52d).
Plato's own
imitation model is a
decidedly "dynamic"
one:
copying
a Form is much more
like
copying
a master's tennis
technique
than like
copying by Xerography.
The crucial feature of
particulars
is not that
they
have a
(static)
nature like
the nature the Form
has,
but instead that
they
are in a
(dynamic) process
of
constantly likening
themselves to the Form. Particulars
ceaselessly
attempt
to imitate the Forms but
just
as
ceaselessly
fail to do so
successfully
-and so
ceaselessly
fail to achieve a
plateau
where
they actually possess
what the Form
possesses.
For
example,
a
pair
of
particulars
we call
equal
are so-called because what
they
"aim at
being
like",
what
they
"strive
after",
is the Form of
Equality; being particulars,
however, they inevitably
"fall
short";
and
so,
naturally, they
never come at last to share
any supposed
equal-making
characteristic with the Form
(Phd.
74d, 75a).
What White has done to Plato here is what Parmenides did to Socrates
long ago
(in
the "second" Third Man at Parm.
132d-133a).
Both
replace
a
process
with a state: "Is there an
activity
of
striving
to be like a Form
going
on? Yes.
Well,
consider that
activity
as
having
reached
just
the state it
has reached in relation to its
target.
Freeze it there. Now insofar as the
particular
has reached
just
that
state,
it must bear some achieved resem-
blance to the Form. That
is,
it must
possess
in some
degree
the
property
which the Form
possesses
to an ultimate
degree."
A clever
ploy.
A
typically
Eleatic
ploy.9
But in other
contexts,
like Zeno's
arrow,
it is an
admittedly
fraudulent one.
Why
then should it be
particularly acceptable
here? If we
really
do freeze a
copy,
refuse to consider it as
something
in
process
but
consider it
just
on its
own,
clearly
it is no more to be
compared
with one
specific original
than with
any other-frozen, everything
in the universe is
like
everything
else. The
alternative,
dynamic,
view
usually
makes at least
as much sense: what determines that some
particular
is a
copy
of this rather
than that Form is not that it
possesses something
which the Form is distinctive
for
possessing,
but rather that its
activity
is directed to this rather than to
some other
target. (Think
of Class Six
eponyms
here.)
(3)
White too shares the Official Doctrine that Plato's
general theory of
9As Edward N. Lee shows in "The Second 'Third Man': An
Interpretation",
in
J. M. E. Moravcsik
(ed.),
Patterns in Plato's
Thought (Dordrecht, 1973), pp.
102-6.
causation
depends
on shared
properties:
whatever is the "cause" in another
thing
of a
property,
F,
must
itself
possess
F-it must be true of it that it is F.
Clearly
if this
interpretation
is correct it follows at once that in Plato's mind the
Forms are
satisfactory
as "causes" of
properties precisely
and
only
because the Forms themselves first
possess
those
properties.
But let
us
suppose
for the moment that the narrower
interpretation
is
accept-
ed,
namely,
that if
something
is to be the "cause" of F it must not
be
Opposite-F,
even if it does not itself
positively possess
F. On this
interpretation
too it is
plain
that if Plato
rejects
other sorts of
things
as "causes" on the
grounds
that
they possess
the
wrong
kind of
properties (e.g.,
he
argues
that a head cannot be the "cause" of a
man's
being
taller than another because a head is
something
small,
Phd.
101a),
then in some sense he means that the Forms are
acceptable
as "causes" because
they
have the
right properties (p. 209).
This is so. Of course. But consider the
variety
of Class Three and Five
eponyms
a
moment,
for instance. Hondas
certainly
cannot be caused to be
by just anything.
Flatworms cannot sire them.
They require
the
"right"
sort of
cause,
with the
"right" properties
for
causing
such a
thing.
Yet
whoever would think that the
"right" properties
for
producing
Hondas
include
being
a car-or even not
being
an
opposite-of-car?
The whole idea
is
utterly
ridiculous.
Why
must we
pin
such
idiocy
on
Plato,
even in the
apparently
idiotic
passages
of the Phaedo?
Having
bones
rigid
and
separated
at the
joints
is the
wrong
sort of
property
for
causing
Socrates to be
sitting
in a bent
position
in
prison (98c-d). Conducing
to the overall
goodness
of
the universe is the
right
sort of
property
for
causing
that
(98b).
So is
being
condemned
by
the Athenians
(98e).
Here,
in Plato's own
examples, "right-
ness" and
"wrongness"
in a cause have
nothing
at all to do with
sharing
or not
sharing
a
property
with the effect. Nor
probably
have
they anything
to do with most cases where an
agent brings
about
something (you cry
because I hit
you)
or where one
thing grows
into another
(an
acorn into an
oak)-and
these,
not the billiard-ball conservation-of-momentum sort of
case,
were the model cases for causation in Plato's time.
(4)
The fact that Plato often
says
the Forms can never bear their
opposites
once
again
shows that the Form
0b
must itself have the
property
F-ness,
White
argues:
If a
particular,
x,
is F it is also
Opposite-F.
But if a
Form, b,
is F
it is not also
Opposite-F.
If a
particular
man or act is
just,
the man
or act is also in some
respects unjust. By
contrast,
Justice itself is
just
without
being
in
any respect unjust.
Now on the
supposition
that
by
'b is F' Plato means 'b is identical with b'
[rather
than
'd
possesses
the
property F'],
the contrast he draws between Forms and
particulars
turns out to be
curiously lacking
in
symmetry.
For in
place
of a
readily intelligible
contrast
(a,
b
below),
we have one that
reads
very awkwardly (a', b'):
(a)
Particulars
possess
their
properties
in some
respects only;
in
other
respects they possess
the
opposites
of those
properties.
(b)
Forms
possess
their
properties
without
qualification; they
ex-
clude the
possession
of the
opposites
of these
properties.
(a')
Particulars
possess
their
properties
in some
respects only;
in
other
respects they possess
the
opposites
of those
properties.
(b')
Forms are identical with themselves and are never non-identical
with themselves . . .
(p. 211).
It is true that there is a fundamental "lack of
symmetry"
here: 'is F'
said of a
particular
attributes the
property
F-ness to
it,
'is F' said of the
Form b does not.
However,
this
asymmetry
is
hardly
"curious" since it is
precisely
what we
expect
of a semantic
theory designed
to allow a
predicate
(be
it 'F' or
'Opposite-F')
to
apply
for either one of two
quite
different
reasons-because x
just
is itself the relevant Form or else because x is
ap-
propriately
related to the relevant Form. Nor is the
asymmetry
in the least
bit "awkward".
White,
like so
many
others,
assumes that because 'b is F'
expresses
a
"proposition
of
identity",
as he calls it
(p. 206),
it
expresses
the
proposition
'the Form b is identical to the Form s'. This is what makes
'< can never be
Opposite-F'
into the
admittedly
awkward
(b')
after all. But
the
assumption
is
really very strange.
There are all kinds of
propositions
of
identity.
So
why
choose the one that is
patently empty, tautologous,
hardly
ever worth
saying? Why
not choose one that is at least
significant
and
synthetic
and
gives
us
something
we should like to know? In
'o
is F'
Plato is in
point
of fact
telling
us what manner of beastie F is: the Form +
just
is
itself
the
property
F-ness. What we think is
commonplace property
talk,
that
is,
is
actually, upon proper analysis,
talk about rather ethereal
and
sophisticated philosophical
animals
(Forms).l0 Accordingly,
the most
reasonable translation of the so-called
"proposition
of
identity"
is not 'The
Form b is identical to the Form <' but 'It is the Form b which the word
'F'
ultimately
hooks
up
to,
not
anything
less
(like
a transient
sensible,
for
instance)'.
This is
exactly
the
analysis
which
eponymy
also
suggests:
'The
Form b is the nominatum of 'F' '. And on this translation the
explanation
of 'b can never be
Opposite-F'
is not awkward at all.
Any particular
can
be both F and
Opposite-F
because such terms
apply
to it
only
at second-
hand and the
particular
can
readily participate
in both named
Forms,
the
Form b and the Form
Opposite-of-+ (e.g.
Parm.
129a-b). However,
if the
Form S itself were to be both F and
Opposite-F,
since such terms
apply
there
directly,
as
proper
names,
this would mean that the different words 'F' and
'Opposite-F'
would between them name
only
one
thing-i.e., they
would
have the same
meaning.
In
fact,
of
course,
they plainly
have
quite
different
meanings-i.e., they
name
quite
different
things (e.g.
Phd.
103b-c,
Parm.
129c-130a).1
10As
H. F.
Cherniss,
"The Relation of the Timaeus to Plato's Later
Dialogues",
in
Allen, Studies, pp. 370-71,
and
Allen, "Participation
and Predication in Plato's Middle
Dialogues",
op. cit., pp. 44-6,
have insisted all
along
in their
"identity proposal".
1This is K. W. Mills'
point
in "Plato's Phaedo 74b 7-c
6", Phronesis,
II
(1957),
pp.
145-147.
V. CONCLUSIONS
I dare
say
the truth is
probably
that Plato sometimes did think that the
Form b and its F
participants
shared the common
property
F-ness and some-
times did think that this was the reason
why
the
particulars
were
rightly
called after that Form and not some other. But this is not an
unsettling
conclusion. It would be
downright silly
to insist that Plato never backed
up
eponymy
with common
properties.
What I have tried to show instead is
(1)
that there is
nothing
about
eponymy
taken as a semantic
theory
which
requires
such a
backing up, (2)
that there is no evidence Plato himself ever
believed
was limited to shared
properties
cases,
and
hence
(3)
that there is no reason to believe Plato's Third Man
expresses
his
final realization that
limiting
it thus
proves
fatal.
Massey University,
New Zealand

Common Properties and Eponymy in Plato

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Common Properties and Eponymy in Plato

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Common Properties and Eponymy in Plato

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