The participation among Forms model

By participation among Forms, I mean the view that the structural relation among Forms in theSophistcan be explained in terms of participation of Forms in one another. This model has for its starting point the claim made by the Stranger at 252e that some Forms combine with one another while others do not, which has been interpreted by critics as the claim that some Forms have a share in other Forms whereas other Forms do not. I shall thus here use ‘combine’ and ‘participate’ interchangeably, as those critics have, although it will appear in Chapter IV that there might be more to the communion of Forms than a simple relation of participation among Forms. This model establishes a distinction between at least three types of Forms: the ‘widest’ Forms, in which all or most of the Forms participate; the average Forms, in which some Forms participate but not all, and which also participate in many Forms; and the isolated Forms, in which no other Form participates and which, in turn, participate in no other Form. Participation, thus, introduces some structure into the realm of Forms, because if we were to represent this model by drawing arrows, there would be a question as to where to put the arrows, and it would emerge that some particular Forms are connected with all other Forms. Although critics who can be associated with this view have mainly ignored the essential and extensional relation among

161.This interpretation will be examined again in section 3.3.1 of the present chapter, in relation to the interpretation of Being as a triton ti in the context of the 249d-251a passage.

Being, Kinêsis and Stasis, and the essential relation, in particular, and although they may not have recognised that Kinêsis and Stasis are non-coreferential, in what follows, I shall nonetheless try to give an account of these three relations in terms of participation among Forms.

On this model, Kinêsis and Stasis are examples of Forms which cannot participate in one another, but which both participate in Being, for the latter is one of those Forms in which all other Forms participate. The consequence of Kinêsis and Stasis participating in Being is that each and both of them ‘are’. By contrast, the Stranger never says explicitly that Being, in turn, participates in Kinêsis and Stasis. The only passage which comes close to saying this is at 254d10, where the Stranger says that Being mixes with both Kinêsis and Stasis, but he immediately clarifies that what he means by this is that Kinêsis and Stasis are.162_{Consequently, I shall take it here that participation among Being, Kinêsis and Stasis}

is a one-way or uni-directional relation, that is, that it is Kinêsis and Stasis that participate in Being, and not the other way round. Taking the example of arrows again, the arrows go from Kinêsis to Being and from Stasis to Being, but there is no arrow from Being to Kinêsis or Stasis, and no arrow between Kinêsis and Stasis. As a result, the extensional and essential relation among the three must be contained in that phrase, namely that Kinêsis and Stasis ‘are’. To put it differently, it is because Kinêsis and Stasis participate in Being that they are part of the logos of Being, and likewise, it is because Kinêsis and Stasis participate in Being that all the things that are are changing or unchangeable.

The advantage of this explanation is that it is parsimonious: all we need is a relation of participation among Forms. However, it is also insufficient. The biggest problem that this account faces is that if this is all that there is to account for the fact that Kinêsis and Stasis are part of thelogosof Being, then one must infer from this that each time a Form is participated in by other Forms, orgenê, the latter are part of its essence and they have the same extension.163 _{Indeed, there is nothing which singles out the participation of Kinêsis}

and Stasis in Being from the participation of the othergenêin Being, and more generally, from the participation of any Form in another. For instance, compare the way Kinêsis is said to participate in Being at 256a1 ‘It [Kinêsis] is thus because of participating

162.Soph. 254d10: Τὸδέγεὂν µεικτὸνἀµφοῖν·ἐστὸνγὰρἄµφωπου.

163.The hypothesis that the participation relation is like a parthood relation is explored by Plato in particular inParm. 131a-d. However, the crucial difference with our passage is that we are here concerned with parts of the essence of the Form.

(metechein) in Being (tou ontos)’ with the way Kinêsis is said to participate in Sameness at 256a7-8 ‘But it [Kinêsis] is the same because of all things participating (metechein) in it [Sameness]’.164_{If the participation of Kinêsis in Being was what accounted for the fact that}

Kinêsis is part of the logos of Being, then the same conclusion should be drawn of the participation of Kinêsis in Sameness, namely that Kinêsis, and even more ‘everything’, would be part of the logosof Sameness, which is very unlikely. Likewise, it would imply that Being, Kinêsis, Stasis and Sameness are all part of the logos of Otherness, since it is asserted at 255e3-6 that all of them participate in it. But nothing in the text supports this reading. It is, thus, much more likely that participation also happens between Forms that are also essentially related, but that it is not the participation relation, as such, that necessitates the conclusion that to participate in a Form is to be part of its essence.