Parmenides

Ceph. Then it is impossible that anything be like the idea, or the idea like anything; for if they are alike, some further idea, in addition to the first, will always appear, and if that is like anything, still another, and a new idea will always be arising, if the idea is like that which partakes of it. Very true. Then it is not by likeness that other things partake of ideas we must seek some other method of participation. So it seems. Do you see, then, Socrates, how great the difficulty is, if we maintain that ideas are separate, independent entities? Yes, certainly. You may be sure, he said, that you do not yet, if I may say so, grasp the greatness of the difficulty involved in your assumption that each idea is one and is something distinct from concrete things. How is that? said he. There are many reasons, he said, but the greatest is this; if anyone should say that the ideas cannot even be known if they are such as we say they must be, no one could prove to him that he was wrong, unless he who argued that they could be known were a man of wide education and ability and were willing to follow the proof through many long and elaborate details; he who maintains that they cannot be known would be unconvinced. Why is that, Parmenides? said Socrates. Because, Socrates, I think that you or anyone else who claims that there is an absolute idea of each thing would agree in the first place that none of them exists in us. No, for if it did, it would no longer be absolute, said Socrates. You are right, he said. Then those absolute ideas which are relative to one another have their own nature in relation to themselves, and not in relation to the likenesses, or whatever we choose to call them, which are amongst us, and from which we receive certain names as we participate in them. And these concrete things, which have the same names with the ideas, are likewise relative only to themselves, not to the ideas, and, belong to themselves, not to the like-named ideas. What do you mean? said Socrates. For instance, said Parmenides, if one of us is master or slave of anyone, he is not the slave of master in the abstract, nor is the master the master of slave in the abstract; each is a man and is master or slave of a man but mastership in the abstract is mastership of slavery in the abstract, and likewise slavery in the abstract is slavery to mastership in the abstract, but our slaves and masters are not relative to them, nor they to us; they, as I say, belong to themselves and are relative to themselves and likewise our slaves and masters are relative to themselves.