OXFORD STUDIES IN ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY EDITOR: VICTOR CASTON VOLUME LIL SUMMER 2017THE THIRD MAN AND THE COHERENCE OF THE PARMENIDES HOWARD PEACOCK 1, Introduction Tue “Third Man Argument’ has often been presented—at least since the time of Aristotle'—as a threat to an entire Platonic metaphysics: under this conception, the Third Man reduces to ab- surdity, or reveals a latent contradiction in, the Theory of Forms as conceived by Plato around the time of the Republic and Phaedo. But this presentation is strikingly at odds with the treatment the Third ‘Man receives in Plato's own work, since in its two appearances in the Parmenides the participants discuss the argument briefly, and indeed clearly state the lesson they draw from the longer, second. presentation of the regress: not that the Theory of Forms must be abandoned, but rather: “Therefore [dpa] it is not by likeness [pouéryr) that particulars partici pate in the Forms, but itis necessary to search for some other means by ‘which they participate in them.” Tt seems 30." (33.4 5-7 Thus there is a prima facie case for distinguishing a ‘Platonik ception of the lesson of the Third Man from an ‘Aristotelian’ one: while the Aristotelian would say that the Third Man renders the Platonic Theory of Forms in need of substantial revision or whole- sale rejection, under the ‘Platonic’ conception it seems that the © Howard Peacock 2017 "This paper hat ben along time in che making, starting life ina very different form ‘overs decade ago. Many people have helped to bring it tots current state; however, special thanks go to Victor Carton and two excellent anomymous referees, to Robert Heinaman fr dealing patiently with my original ineaherene formulation of the cent fal ides, and slo a Jim Feri, without whom I would never have had a chance of Knowing shat & Zor meant in the fist place * See G. Fine, On Ideas: Aritole's Crticiom of Plato's Theory of Forms [deat] (Oxford, 1993), for a convincing reconstruction of Avistote’s criticisms. * Unless otherwise sated all translations from Greek are my own, Stephanus ine references ate taken from the Oxford Clasial Text edition of Burne14 Howard Peacock ‘Third Man serves only to block one candidate explanation of the nature of participation, namely that it is the resemblance between particular and Form that is responsible for the former participat- ing in the latter.’ However, most modern commentators are ‘Aris totelian’ in their approach: they see the ‘Third Man as revealing a difficulty which could be serious enough to overturn the entire Platonic system, ‘The reason for this is that it is hard to see how a regress can be generated from the argument(s) stated in the Par ‘menides without appealing to unwritten premisses which must have been part of Plato's ‘official’ theory, known to his audience if not to tus; once such ‘background commitments’ are incorporated into the reconstruction of the regress argument it can come to seem that the regress threatens the coherence of Plato’s wider Theory of Forms, and that its solution ean only be to modify the commitments of the theory itself, The locus classicus of such an approach is of course ‘Viastos's influential paper;* taking his lead, many subsequent com- mentators have engaged either in a search for a clearer statement of what these background commitments are, or in attempts to show which of them Plato might have been willing to abandon as he moved beyond the so-called ‘middle-period ‘Theory of Forms'.$ "The main business of this paper is to suggest that the search for “background commitments’ is unnecessary: in particular, that itis possible to motivate a Third Man regress using resources within the text of the Parmenides without introducing a ‘non-identity' or ‘non- self-explanation’ premiss as one of the background commitments of an ‘official’ Platonic Theory of Forms.* Once this is established, the > The idea that Plato saw the “Third Man’ merely a8 a constraint on eceptable cexplanetions of participation, and not asa pocential reductio of his entice metaphy= [Noy iseupported by the rest of the Platonic corpus: nowhere ese des he discus the Shrete that ouch a tegess could undermine the entire Theory of Forms (see Below, iisg.on the "Third Bed? inthe Repu), suheroa he can rete came about the ‘Gidieulty and necessity) of giving x coherent explanation of participation. See et pevially Phils 15 8-c, where the problem of how a Form ean bein? many things FSamong the probleme that are a “cause of the utmost perplexity if badly solved, tnd if well solved, ofthe greatest resource’ and Témaeus go, where the way in ‘which tenibles are copies of Forms i make as hard to describe and marvellous (Biegeacrar wai tayuaords) 1G, Viestos, “The Third Man Argument in the Parmenides' ("Third Man‘ in RE, Allen (ei), Studies tm Plato's Metaphysics (London, 196s), 231-6 * See eg. 8G, Rickless, Plato's Forms in Transition (Transition) (Cambridge 12007), 6: "The main message ofthe Parmenier se that the higher theory of forme Gan ad mist be altered to avoid inconsistency. See respectively Viestog,"Phitd Man’, 237, and S. Petercon,'A Reasonable Self The Third Man and the Coherence of the Parmenides 115 ‘Platonic’ reading of the Third Man's significance becomes much more plausible, since a regress reconstructed in the way I suggest follows from one particular account of participation (the account in terms of ‘copy-original’ resemblance proposed by Socrates at 132); from a perspective internal to the dialogue the regress can be blocked simply by rejecting that account, without modifying any core commitment of the Theory of Forms. This approach has se~ veral advantages over the standard readings: most notably, there is 1o need to attribute commitments such as ‘non-identity’ to Plato ‘on a questionable textual basis. Moreover, since blocking the re- ‘gress within the dialogue requires only that we reject the account, of participation which Socrates finds most plausible, and since that account is in fact rejected at 133 A 5-6, the difficulty revealed by the Third Man is the lack of a substantial account of participation— something which, I argue, Plato could count as an issue not de- cisive against the ‘Theory of Forms itself. Further, I suggest that the thesis that participation itself should be explained in terms of copy-particular resemblance—that this kind of resemblance is what participation essentially és—can be rejected at the same time as re- taining aspects of the canonical Theory of Forms such as the ‘self- predication’ thesis that both Form and particular are F, and the use of paradigm-copy vocabulary to describe particulars’ inferior meta- physical status compared to the Forms themselves; thus, I suggest, we need not suppose a fundamental inconsistency between this ac count of the Third Man and Plato's commitments in later dialogues such as the Timacus. Another major advantage of this account of the dialectical situ- ation is that it holds out the prospect of a coherent reading of the dialogue as a whole: if the Third Man is a recognition of a serious bur non-fatal issue for the Forms rather than a disastrous critique of core background commitments, it becomes much more plausible to read Part [ of the dialogue as acknowledging difficulties for the ‘Theory of Forms which are then outweighed by the more serious criticisms of Eleatic monism developed in Part IT. ‘Thus a secon- dary aim of this paper is to motivate the view that the whole of the Parmenides is a defence of the Forms, first by showing how the comments on his own method made by Zeno at 1288 7-# 4 can profitably be read as applying to the dialogue itself, introducing a Predication Premise for the"Thitd Man Argument’ [Reasonable], Philosophical Re- wer, B3 (2973), 458-70 88483