/lit/ - Literature

>>16087644
>third man
it only arises from a misconception

...the discussion of Socrates’ suggestion that Forms are “like patterns fixed in the nature of things”, of which things here are “likenesses”. Proclus’ only criticism of this formulation is that it appears to neglect the creative and preservative aspects of the Forms, in favour of the assimilative—unless, perhaps, he suggests (910.Iff.), we regard him as including these other aspects in assimilation, “for things that are assimilated to what ‘stands fixed’ are necessarily indissoluble, and are held together by their own reason- principles, and are conserved in their essence by them.” These things will not be sensible particulars, but rather the immanent forms of genera and species, which do enjoy a kind of eternity. He correctly draws attention to Socrates’ use of hṓsper with paradeigmata, as making clear that the term is not to be taken in any restrictively literal sense. The Forms are living and active principles, not just inert exemplars.
This brings us to the next lemma (132d5-e5), and to Parmenides’ objection that, if the image is like the exemplar, then the exemplar must be like the image, and in virtue of this “likeness” the Third Man Argument once again raises its head. “To this,” says Proclus (912.31ff.), “Socrates should have replied that ‘like’ has two senses—one, the likeness of coordinate entities, the other, the likeness which involves subordination to an archetype—and the one is to be seen as consisting in the identity of some one reason-principle, while the other involves not only identity but at the same time otherness, whenever something is ‘like’, as having the same Form derived from the other, but not along with it.”
>Proclus here seems to have exposed the flaw in Parmenides’ argument (as Cornford points out in his commentary ad loc.): the relation of a photograph to its original is not the same as that of one photograph of the same original to another. The photographs resemble each other through having the common quality of being images of the same original, but it is absurd to say that the original and the photograph have any quality in common by virtue of which they resemble some third thing. Once again, therefore, Parmenides is just provoking Socrates to deeper understanding, when he asks, “Or is there any way that what is like can avoid being like what is like it?” (914.41-42).

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