Plato's Individuals

by McCabe, Mary Margaret

• ISBN13: 9780691073514
• ISBN10: 0691073511
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-07-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Contradicting the long-held belief that Aristotle was the first to discuss individuation systematically, Mary Margaret McCabe argues that Plato was concerned with what makes something a something and that he solved the problem in a radically different way than did Aristotle. McCabe explores the centrality of individuation to Plato's thinking, from the Parmenides to the Politicus, illuminating Plato's later metaphysics in an exciting new way. Tradition associates Plato with the contrast between the particulars of the sensible world and transcendent forms, and supposes that therein lies the center of Plato's metaphysical universe. McCabe rebuts this view, arguing that Plato's thinking about individuals - which informs all his thought - comes to focus on the tension between "generous" or complex individuals and "austere" or simple individuals. In dialogues such as the Theaetetus and the Timaeus, Plato repeatedly poses the question of individuation but cannot provide an answer. Later, in the Sophist, the Philebus, and the Politicus, Plato devises what McCabe calls the "mesh of identity", an account of how individuals may be identified relative to each other. The mesh of identity, however, fails to explain satisfactorily how individuals are unified or made coherent. McCabe asserts that individuation may be absolute - and she questions philosophy's longtime reliance on Aristotle's solution.

Author Biography

Mary Margaret McCabe is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at King's College, London.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
List of Abbreviations	xiii
The Problem of Individuation	3	(22)
The Argument of This Book	3	(2)
Nothing from Nothing: Vehicles of Change	5	(4)
The Grammatical Prejudice	9	(2)
Counting the World, Sorting the World	11	(1)
Units and Unities	12	(4)
The Problems of Individuation	16	(2)
Reading Plato	18	(7)
PART ONE: PRELIMINARY: PLATO'S MIDDLE PERIOD METAPHYSICS
Particulars	25	(28)
Socratic Definitions	26	(3)
Natural Inherence	29	(8)
The Compresence of Opposites	37	(10)
Complex Individuals	47	(6)
Forms	53	(44)
Knowledge and the Separation of Forms	53	(7)
Simple Forms and Explanation	60	(7)
Understanding and Teleology	67	(8)
The Theory of Forms	75	(6)
Forms as Separate Substances	81	(2)
Counting Forms	83	(7)
Forms as the Objects of Knowledge	90	(7)
PART TWO: THE PROBLEM EMERGES
The One and the Others	97	(36)
Ones and Manies	97	(2)
Dialectic and Gymnastic	99	(8)
Ones and Parts	107	(7)
Sameness and Difference	114	(7)
The One in Time	121	(3)
The Unity of the First Stage	124	(3)
The Other Stages	127	(3)
The Verb ``to Be''	130	(3)
Bundles and Lumps	133	(29)
Knowledge and Perception	133	(4)
Protagorean Things	137	(4)
Platonic Bundles	141	(4)
Flux Attacked	145	(4)
Perception Attacked	149	(3)
The Objects of Thought	152	(6)
Socrates' Dream	158	(4)
Slices and Stuffs	162	(30)
Reading the Timaeus	162	(1)
The Universe Is One and Whole	163	(4)
Slices	167	(8)
The Work of Necessity	175	(1)
Something Basic	176	(8)
Rereading the Timaeus	184	(8)
Being and Talking	192	(29)
Not-Being	193	(6)
Being	199	(6)
``To Be'' or ``Not''?	205	(3)
Identity and Unity	208	(4)
Talking about Something or Other	212	(4)
The Unanswered Questions	216	(5)
PART THREE: TWO ANSWERS
Resolving Relations	221	(42)
Communing Kinds	221	(3)
The Mesh of Identity	224	(10)
Somethings Are Such	234	(4)
Opposites and Difference	238	(2)
What Kinds?	240	(3)
Limit and Unlimited	243	(6)
A Divine Cosmology	249	(4)
Numbers or What?	253	(4)
Collection and Division and the Mesh of Identity	257	(6)
The Unity of Persons	263	(38)
Immortal Souls	264	(3)
Complex Souls	267	(3)
Sophistic Somebodies	270	(4)
Persistence: Memory and Continuity	274	(2)
Consistency and the Arguing Subject	276	(4)
Syllogizing Souls and the Unity of Consciousness	280	(7)
Common Properties	287	(3)
Active Minds	290	(7)
The Understanding Mind	297	(4)
Conclusion	301	(14)
Plato's Changing Metaphysics	301	(1)
Plato's Account of Individuation	302	(5)
Plato and Aristotle	307	(2)
APPENDIX A
On the Order of the Dialogues	309	(2)
APPENDIX B
Arguments from First Principles	311	(4)
Select Bibliography	315	(10)
Index Locorum	325	(9)
Index of Persons	334	(2)
General Index	336