The Southern Journal of Philosophy (1986) Vol. X X I V , No.

PARMENIDES DILEMMA A N D
ARISTOTLE’S WAY OUT
Donald Brownstein
University of Kansas
I have argued elsewhere that the Third Man Argument in the
Parmenides reveals Plato’s rejection of the view that Forms are
universals.’ By a “universal” I mean an entity which may be “wholly
present in” more than a single thing at a single time. The paradigm of a
universal is a (most determinate) quality which is the quality of more
than a single thing. So, for example, two uniformly colored discs of the
same (indiscernibly) shade can be construed to share such a quality. To
suggest that such a quality is “wholly present in” two or more individual
things is not to suggest that the principle of individuation (its identity
conditions) governing it is necessarily radically different than the
principle(s) governing the identity of those things. We may, for
example, adopt as part of our view on identity the principle that neither
individual things nor their qualities may differ in number alone. I will
call such a principle the Discernibility of Non-identicals (DNI). It will
be enough for two individual things to meet the requirements of DNI if
they differ in some quality-e.g., if one is square, the other round.
Again, it will be enough for two qualities to meet the requirements of
DNI ifthey differ as qualities-e.g., in the way being round (roundness)
differs from being square (squareness), or in the way two distinct shades
of green may differ (though they are both greens).
In the Parmenides Plato has Socrates respond to Zeno’s claim that it
is absurd to suppose that objects can be both like and unlike one
another by saying:2
“If things are many”, you say, “they must be both like and unlike. But that is impossible:
unlike things cannot be like, nor like things unlike.” That is what you say, isn’t it?

“Yes” replied Zeno.

And so, if unlike things cannot be like or like things unlike, it is also impossible that things
should be a plurality; if many things did exist, they would have impossible attributes.

Donald Brownstein teaches at the University of Kansas. His work on metaphysics, and
the philosophy of language has appeared in Philosophical Studies, The American
Philosophical Quarterly, Nous, Theoria, Philosophy of Science, and ofherjournals. His
book Aspects of The Problem of Universals was published in 1973.

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(127E) , , . Do you not recognize that there exists, just by itself, a Form of Likeness and
again another contrary Form, Unlikeness itself, and that of these two Forms you and I
and all the things we speak of as‘many’come to partake. Also, that things which come to
partake of Likeness come to bealike in rhar respecr(my emphasis) and just insofar as they
do come to partake of it, and those that come to partake of both come to be both? . . . If
onecould point to things whicharesimply‘alike’or‘unlike’proving to be unlikeor alike,
that, no doubt, would be a portent; but when things which have a share in both are shown
to have both characters, I see nothing strange in that, Zeno . . . (128E-129C)

I take Plato, here, to be adopting a view of similarity and dissimilarity

which is compatible with DNI. Ordinary things may be both similar and
dissimilar-similar in one respect, dissimilar in some other. The forms
(or, at least, some of them) cannot, however, be simply alike andunlike
one another. I want to forestall one obvious objection here: Plato
admits a plurality of forms, i.e., a multiplicity of entities that are all
forms and, yet, differ from one another. Isn’t this incompatible with the
claim that the forms cannot differ in number alone? The response is that
forms differ intrinsically (i.e., in a way similar to that in which distinct
qualities differ) while being alike insofar as they are all forms. The point
is that even forms cannot differ in number alone. In agreeing to DNI
Plato concedes to Parmenides the absurdity of supposing that there is
(at least with respect to the “many” and the forms) pure numerical
difference. What he hopes to show is that this, in itself, does not entail
extreme (i.e., Parmenidean) monism. But in the passages of Parmenides
which follow the lines just cited, Parmenides, taking over from Zeno,
attacks Plato’s theory of forms in a particularly effective way. We can
isolate a series of steps within this attack.
( I ) One over many (OOM): Parmenides solicits Socrates’ agreement
that it is only in virtue of “partaking of” some one form that things
come to be like one another (in the relevant respect). (Parmenides,
130E-131).
(2) Separation of Forms (SF): Parmenides forces Socrates to admit
that the forms are not “received” by the things which partake of
them. (Parmenides, 131B-131E).
(3) Third Man Argument (TMA): Parmenides purports to show that,
rather than there being a single, separate form of which many
similar (like) things partake, and in virtue of which they are like,
there is a (nonterminating) series of forms for the respect in which
things are similar (Parmenides, 131E-132B).
I suggest that we may profitably think of S F and TMA as involving
essentially the same difficulty for Plato’s theory. In S F Parmenides gets
Socrates to agree that if the forms were received by (i.e., present in) the
“many” they would be divided among the many. While it remains
inexplicit in Parmenides, each such “part” of a given form would have
to be exactly like every other part of that form, for otherwise the
receiving of such parts would not render the many similar (in the

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relevant respect) to one another. Thus we would have a plurality of
form-parts without there being a difference between them. This violates
DNI since it amounts to these form-parts differing in number alone. So
Plato, in order to maintain the unity of the forms-hence DNI’s
applicability to them-separates them from the many: The forms are
not present in or received by the many. Likewise TMA purports to show
that there are a plurality of forms for any respect in which things
resemble one another. Since each of such a plurality of forms would also
(for the reasons just noted in connection with SF) be exactly like every
other we again have violation of DNI. The problem for Plato with
TMA, then, is not merely that there is a regress but that the plurality of
forms amounts to a concession that “things which are simply a1ike”may
prove to be unlike-which Plato has Socrates say “would be a portent.”
The two stages, SF and TMA, in Parmenides constitute the horns of a
dilemma set for Plato’s theory: Either the forms are present in the many
or they are not. But either case seems to involve a violation of DNI. DNI
clearly represents a deep commitment for Plato. It is at one level a
commitment to the intelligibility of the world’s structure: that the
differences between things are intelligible to us, knowable by us.
I d o not wish to defend DNI, OOM, SF, or TMA. There are,
obviously enough, difficulties in each of them. Rather, I want to
consider Aristotle’s way of avoiding the purported difficulties, as
revealed in Parmenides, in Plato’s theory of forms. In Metaphysicsand
Categories we have Aristotle’s way out. The latter work contains a
passage in many respects similar to the passage from Parmenides
quoted above( 128E-129C). At Categories3 Chap. 5a10 Aristotle writes:
Most characteristic of substance seems to be the fact that something the same and one in
number can receive contraries. Thus among other things one can cite nothing one in
number that is able to receive contraries. For example, a color that is one and the same in
number will not be white and black; nor will the same action, one in number, be both bad
and good; and similarly for other things that are not substance. But a substance, one and
the same in number, can receive contraries. An individual man, for example, being one
and the same, becomes now white and now black, now hot and now cold, now bad and
now good. This sort of thing is to be seen in no other case.

We know from Metaphysics and elsewhere that primary substances

are for Aristotle complex entities. They are combinations of matter and
form. As such they can receive contraries, and be both like and unlike
other primary substances. (The things Aristotle calls secondary
substances, also being-though in a different way-complex, can be
both like and unlike each other.) But Aristotle insists that there is
nothing else, ‘one in number, that is able to receive contraries’. We
might, then suppose that Aristotle agrees with Plato that things which
are simply alike cannot be, also, unlike-suppose that Aristotle accepts
DNI. But this, as I shall argue, is not the case. In proposing an
alternative to Plato’s theory of forms Aristotle does not so much find a
way out of the dilemma of the Parmenides as he rejects the shared
assumption underlying the dispute between Plato and Parmenides-
DNI.
In Categories, Chapter 2, Aristotle makes a fourfold distinction
among ‘things that there are’ (Ia20). The distinction is developed in
terms of the two relations: (a) x is said of y (as a subject) (b) x is in y (as a
subject). While Aristotle’s account of these relations is far from
unproblematic we can get by, informally, with what he supplies.
(a) x is said of y (as a subject) if and only if both the name of x and the
definition of x (perhaps, of the name of x ) are truly predicable of
Y.
(b) x is in y (as a subject) if and only if
(i) x is an attribute or quality “in” y (J. L. Ackrill’s translation of
and notes on Categories contains an explanation of the flagged
use of ‘in’ above).
(ii) x belongs to y not as a part (of y).
(iii) x cannot exist apart from what it is in.
Armed with these relations Aristotle distinguishes secondary substances-
species and genera of primary substances-as things that are said of but
not in any subject. Primary substances are neither said of nor in any
subject. The distinguishing feature here is that no substance (of either
sort) is in any subject. Given (b)(iii) above this secures a form of
independence of any one substance (of either kind) from any one other
substance. But only primary substances are independent in another
sense: no primary substance depends upon (i.e., it can exist apart from)
any class of substances in the way in which every secondary substance
depends upon a special class of primary substances-those of which it is
‘said’. For Aristotle a secondary substance, while not in, and hence
independent of any one of the things of which it is said, exists just
insofar as there is a class of things of which it may be said. As Aristotle
says ‘if there were no primary substances, there could not be anything
else’ (Chap. 5, 2a43).
G. Matthews and S. M. Cohen have argued convincingly that the
relationship between a secondary substance and the primary substances
of which it is said is best understood as a kind of fundamental
classification of the latter in terms of the former. They write, e.g.:

So where F is . . . a secondary substance or the differentia of some species, what it is for x

to be F and for y to be F is not explained by saying that x and y bear some relation to
F-ness. Rather it is to be explained be reference to the idea of a completely fundamental
classification. The fundamental character of this classification is brought out by saying
that, instead of simply ordering individuals that have been somehow previously marked
off as individuals, thisclassification provides the terms in which individuals are said and
seen to be individuals.5

The secondary substance man is said of individual (primary

substances) men. But, to agree with Matthews and Cohen, this is not to

4
say that the secondary substance is itself a thing alongside the individual
men. In Categories (Chap. 5 , 3b10f.) Aristotle tells us that while each
primary substance is “a particular this”the same is not true of secondary
substances. Rather, he says, ‘man’ and ‘animal’ signify “a particular
sort” of substance-primary substances. T o recognize that man is said
of Socrates and Plato, then, is simply t o note that both of these primary
substances are individuals of a certain kind-men. They could not be
primary substances without being some sort of primary substances. T o
call them individual men is not, that is, to call them individuals andmen
(as one might say, e.g. that their being Greek men is the same as their
being Greek and men). Rather, in being men they are individual men.
So man’s being said of them amounts t o their being some determinate
type or sort of individuals.
Aristotle avoids the dilemma of Parmenides in connection with the
relation between primary and secondary substances, then, by reinter-
preting the one over many (OOM) principle and the manner in which
the “forms” are separate (SF). Plato counts a form as a kind of entity
and treats likeness among “the many” as consisting in a single relation
obtaining between some form and each of “the many”. Aristotle denies
independent status to such forms thereby forestalling the question of
how they are related to the many. Again the manner of separation of the
forms (secondary substances), hence their independence of primary
substances, is made clear by the denial that they are present in, in
Aristotle’s technical sense, any single primary substance. By adopting
these positions Aristotle forestalls Parmenides’ division of the forms in
that stage of the latter’s attack on Plato’s doctrine I referred t o above as
SF, as well as the Third Man Argument. Aristotle seems to d o this,
moreover, in a way which is compatible with his still havingan account
of the likeness among numerically different men. That some primary
substances are similar in being men is t o be understood in terms of a
“fundamental classification” or grouping among those substances. But
since primary substances are complex rather than simple there will be
other respects (respects drawn from the other Aristotelian categories) in
which things that are alike in being men are also unlike. So Aristotle’s
way out of Parmenides’ dilemma in connection with primary and
secondary substances does not involve a rejection of DNI.
Aristotle tries, however, t o adopt essentially the same tactics in
providing an account of another kind of likeness among numerically
different primary substances.6 Some of the “things there are’lare in, but
not said of any subject. Such things include, e.g., the bit of white in
Socrates.’ Aristotle, it seems clear, thinks of such so-called “unit
qualities”* in a very different way than he thinks of secondary
substances. Unit qualities are “individual and one in numbef’as well as
localized in primary substances. The bit of white in Socrates is unique t o
Socrates and cannot exist apart from him. Aristotle begins his account
of the resemblance of Socrates and Plato with respect of their both

5
being, let us imagine, the same shade of white, by allowing that there is a
bit of white, white,, in Socrates. A numerically non-identical bit of
white, white,, is in Plato. Unit qualities are, moreover, not merely sorts
but (though of a lowly status) things. Were he t o leave the matter at that
Aristotle would have no adequate account of the resemblance (in this
respect) of Plato and Socrates. It is only because of some further
relation between white, and white, that the presence of these things in
Plato and Socrates can ground the likeness of the two men. Aristotle’s
account of this relation between unit qualities is a n attempt t o employ
the same device he uses in connection with the relation between a
secondary substance and its subordinate primary substances: fun-
damental classification. Thus he tells us9 that there are things that are
both said of a subject and in something as a subject. These include the
species and genera of qualities-in particular unit qualities. White, that
is, is said of both white, and white,. So, just as man (the secondary
substance) is a fundamental classification of individual men, white is a
fundamental classification of individual bits of white, e.g., white, and
white,. The similarity, in respect of color, of Plato and Socrates is
grounded, then, by their each having a distinct unit quality of their own,
and these unit qualities belonging to the same fundamental clas-
sification-white. If we allow the notion of fundamental classification
in connection with primary and secondary substance it is difficult t o
reject it here. Whitesand white,, that is, are no more unit qualities and
whites than individual men are both individuals and men. Just as the
latter are individuals in being men, so the former are unit qualities in
being whites.
I d o not wish to argue for the cogency of Aristotle’s use of the notion
of fundamental classification in either sort of case. Instead 1 want t o
note that in using that notion in connection with unit qualities Aristotle
commits himself t o a rejection of DNI as applicable t o them. White,
and white, are, that is, simply alike in Plato’s sense. While Plato and
Socrates may be alike in respect of one fundamental classification, e.g.,
being men, they will also be unlike in some other respect (not necessarily
a secondary substance). This is possible because Plato and Socrates are
complex, i.e., they are primary substances. White, and white, are
simple, rather than complex and, as important, they must be exactly
similar. Were they not exactly similar then the presence of one in Plato
would not ground Plato’s precise similarity in color to Socrates who has
the other in him. (The need for exact similarity of white,and whitesis, in
fact, what makes it pointless to regard them as complex-if they were
complex their parts would have t o be, somehow exactly similar.) Since
white, and white, are classified in the same fundamental way without
there being some respect in which they are different, DNI would appear
to require that white, and white, be numerically identical. But in
making them unit qualities Aristotle denies that they are numerically
identical. While white, can exist apart from Socrates it cannot exist

6
apart from Plato. Since whitescan, it follows that whitesdoes not equal
white,. Thus Aristotle implicitly rejects DNIS applicability to unit
qualities.
It might be objected that Aristotle can distinguish between whitep
and white, via the numerical non-identity of Plato and Socrates-the
primary substances white,and whitesare in. But this gets the cart before
the horse, since we (or Parmenides) could equally argue that one and the
same thing is in Plato and Socrates, that white, = white,. This, of
course, is the whole point of maintaining DNI. Without DNI the notion
of a plurality of things becomes problematic: are whitep and white,,
otherwise exactly similar, numerically distinct things present in Plato
and Socrates, or is whitep = white, hence a single thing present in both
Plato and Socrates?
Parmenides poses so formidable a threat to Plato precisely because
his dilemma seems to involve a clash between DNI and Plato’s other
principles. Plato sees no easy way to give up either DNI or those other
principles. If what I have suggested about Aristotle is right, he gives up
DNI, but without providing a way of salvaging what DNI secured. Thus
as a response to Parmenides’ challenge Aristotle’s theory seems
inadequate. It is not at all clear how such a theory could be made
adequate.
NOTES

I D. Brownstein, Aspects ofthe Problem of Universals, (University of Kansas, 1973),

pp. 49-6 1.
All Parmenides references are t o F. M. Cornford, Plato and Parmenides, (Bobbs-
Merrill, New York).
3 All Categories references are to a privately distributed translation by Gareth
Matthews and S. Marc Cohen. This translation is similar to that of J . L. Ackrill,
Aristorle’s Categories and De Interpretatione, (Oxford University Press, 1963).
4 G. Matthews, S. Marc Cohen,“The One and The Many”, The Review of Metaphysics,
Vol. XXI, no. 4, (March 1968). pp. 630-655.
5 Ibid., p. 636.
Categories, 1820, I I a15.
Categories, I a20.
8 The expression ‘unit quality’ is used in the sense of Matthews and Cohen, Op. cit..
Roughly, the idea is that unit qualities are peculiar to the primary substance they are
(technical sense) in.
9 Categories, 1a20.