Note 12 — Chapter XXXII · PHILEBUS.

Plato, Philêbus, pp. 15-16.

In reading the difficulties thus started by Sokrates, we perceive them to be the same as those which we have seen set forth in the dialogue called Parmenidês, where they are put into the mouth of the philosopher so-called; as objections requiring to be removed by Sokrates, before the Platonic theory of self-existent Ideas, universal, eternal and unchangeable, can be admitted. We might expect that Plato having so emphatically and repeatedly announced his own sense of the difficulty, would proceed to suggest some mode of replying to it. But this he never does. In the Parmenidês, he does not even promise any explanation; in the Philêbus, he seems to promise one, but all the explanation which he gives ignores or jumps over the difficulty, enjoining us to proceed as if no such difficulty existed.