From the Beginning to Plato

FROM THE BEGINNING TO PLATO 337
As the goal of a passionate longing, the Forms are objects of desire, and to
‘acquire’ them by knowing them is a mystical experience of divine 19 beings. All
people, most unconsciously, yearn to recapture the vision of the Forms which
they enjoyed before birth. This alone did give them and would give them
complete satisfaction and happiness.
All this makes some sense only if the Forms are perfect paradigms. Because of
their greater reality ‘possession’ of the Forms gives true satisfaction in a way in
which possession of sensibles does not. And part of that greater reality consists
in the Forms being perfectly what sensible objects are only deficiently or in
appearance.
Similarly, Forms are more real because of their greater ‘cognitive visibility’ in
comparison with sensible objects. 20 If we want to learn what a property F is, the
observation of a sensible F will typically prove of little use since the property
will be bound up with its opposite, and so the observation will provide a
confused idea of what F-ness is. However, if we could attain a clear view of the
Form we would immediately know what F-ness is because it is a ‘pure’ and
perfect example of F uncontaminated by its opposite (cf. Philebus 44d–45a).
Here again, the greater reality of the Forms depends on their being paradigms.
Self-predication, then, is fundamental for Plato’s philosophy. However, it is a
mistake, arising, in part, from confusions that helped to make it seem entirely
natural.
1 Plato does not distinguish different uses of ‘to be.’ His single Form of Being
merges these different uses with the features of true being noted before. So
the existential use is run together with the identifying use, 21 the existential
use is conflated with the predicative use, 22 and the predicative use is
confused with the identifying use. 23 Given the last confusion, since, plainly,
Beauty is Beauty, it may also seem self-evident that Beauty is beautiful.
2 Pre-Socratic philosophers did not always properly distinguish between
objects and properties. Thus, Anaxagoras spoke of ‘the hot’ and ‘the cold’
on a par with ‘earth’ as elements from which things come to be. If Plato too
was not clear on this point, then it would have been natural for him to think
of Beauty as a beautiful object. 24
The point is not that Plato did not distinguish attributes and objects but
that he did not adequately distinguish the kinds of thing which they are.
3 Greek uses expressions formed from the definite article and an adjective
such as ‘the beautiful’ to name properties. Occasionally Plato will even use
the adjective on its own as the subject of a sentence to refer to a Form. Such
expressions lend themselves to being understood as operating in the same
manner in which they do operate when applied to sensible individuals, namely
as describing the object named. And this danger is especially serious in
Plato’s case for (Cratylus 384d–385c) he does not adequately distinguish
naming and describing. So he could easily understand terms designating the