The setting of the problem at 254d4-255a

To begin with, it is important to look at precisely how the topic of Sameness and Otherness as the fourth and fifth kinds emerges. In the previous section, we saw how their introduction is prepared for by the description of the dialectician at 253d-e. In the difficult case where different Forms are intimately related as parts and wholes, the dialectician is described as the one who is, nonetheless, able to tell Forms apart. He is able to discern how and why what appears to be a single Form is, in fact, a whole consisting of many other Forms as its parts, and conversely, to recognise how several distinct Forms nevertheless gather to Form a whole. This is paraphrased by the Stranger as the ability ‘not to take the same Form for a different one, nor a different Form for the same one’. Along these lines, we shall now see how the question of whether Sameness and Otherness should be established as fourth and fifth kinds is also raised on the basis of the distinction between the whole of Being and its parts Kinêsis and Stasis.

The passage starts with a restatement of the relation among Being, Kinêsis and Stasis. The Stranger declares that Kinêsis and Stasis do not mix with one another, but that Being mixes with both of them, for they both ‘are’. Then, the Stranger adds that Being, Kinêsis and Stasis are, thus, three kinds. In the light of the discussion in Chapter III, we know that what is at issue here, when the Stranger says that Kinêsis and Stasis do not mix with one another but that Being mixes with both of them, is not the participation of Kinêsis and Stasis in Being, but the composition relation among the three. Indeed, we know that it does not directly follow from the assertion that Kinêsis and Stasis both participate in Being that Being is a third kind, distinct from them. The Stranger is, thus, reminding his interlocutor here of the conclusion that they had reached earlier — namely that Being, Kinêsis and Stasis form a whole of parts in which the whole is a unity over and above its parts, and hence, must be counted as a third kind. On this point, it is significant that the Stranger here uses the vocabulary of the communion of kinds (meiktos, ameiktos), for we have seen that the communion of kinds is precisely a case of composition. The last point

the Stranger makes is that it follows from what he has just recalled that each of them is other than the other two but the same as itself.301_{Again, this claim is not trivial; it is the}

conclusion of the argument at 250a-251a. Indeed, that passage was addressed precisely to the question of whether Being is the same as Kinêsis or Stasis taken separately, or the same as Kinêsis and Stasis taken together, or rather, whether Being is a third kind, different from the other two. It is, thus, on the basis that Being, Kinêsis and Stasis form a whole of parts that the Stranger can now make such a claim.

The Stranger has now introduced Sameness and Otherness in relation to the whole of parts formed by Being, Kinêsis and Stasis. He then goes on to ask what is meant by ‘same’ and ‘different’. The possible answers on offer are as follows: either Sameness and Otherness are different kinds from those already established, namely Being, Kinêsis and Stasis, or they are just another way of referring to them. Again, this way of setting the problem is reminiscent of 250a-251a, and even of the Hot and Cold passage. At 250a-b, the question from the status of the kind Being arises as the Stranger observes that although Kinêsis and Stasis are most opposed to one another, we nonetheless say that each of them ‘is’ and both of them ‘are’. The Stranger then goes on asking what is meant by ‘being’, the first option considered being to be just another name for Kinêsis or for Stasis. Likewise, we find a similar question at 243d9-e2, where the Stranger, talking to the supporters of the Hot and the Cold, asks them what they are saying when they say about the Hot and the Cold that each of them is and both of them are. Again, the possibility that ‘being’ is just another name for either the Hot or the Cold is one of the three options discussed.

However, at 254e4, the Stranger employs a precision which is not found at 250a-251a, nor in the Hot and Cold passage. Spelling out the first option, that is, that Sameness and Otherness have to be established as fourth and fifth kinds, the Stranger adds that if they are two distinct kinds, they are nonetheless ‘always by necessity (ex anankês) mingling with them’.302 _{This precision is fundamental for the following reasons. First, it}

supports the idea, introduced earlier, that Sameness and Otherness are introduced as vowel- kinds, that is, as kinds that make communion among other kinds possible. Indeed, ‘always by necessity’ suggests that Sameness and Otherness are not exogenous kinds, but that they are already there in the composition relation among Being, Kinêsis and Stasis. Again, ‘by

301.Soph. 254d14-15: Οὐκοῦναὐτῶνἕκαστοντοῖν µὲνδυοῖνἕτερόνἐστιν, αὐτὸδ' ἑαυτῷταὐτόν. 302.Soph. 254e4: [...] συµµειγνυµένω µὴνἐκείνοιςἐξἀνάγκηςἀεί.

necessity’ goes well with the claim that they are necessary conditions for composition. Second, the present participle ‘mingling’ is given in the dual, which indicates that the precision is supposed to apply to both Sameness and Otherness. This is a point in favour of the claim that both Sameness and Otherness are introduced as vowel-kinds, and that they jointly make composition possible. Finally, this precision explains why the similarity between the present passage and the passage at 250a-251a, as well as the Hot and the Cold passage, is limited. In the previous paragraph, I noted how these passages start with a similar question, and how the same option is examined. But the similarity between these passages stops here, for unlike in the Hot and Cold passage and 250a-251a, the Stranger does not explore the two remaining options, namely that Sameness and Otherness are either wholes identical to Kinêsis and Stasis or wholes that are unities over and above their parts. Indeed, this precision makes it clear straightaway that they are meant for another purpose.