Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 3Grote, George
Philosophy
Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 3
Grote, George
Philosophy, Ancient; Plato; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC
"But if any one demand here, where this [Greek: a)ki/nêtos
ou)si/a], these immutable Entities do exist? I answer, first, that
as they are considered formally, they do not properly exist in the
Individuals without us, as if they were from them imprinted upon
the Understanding, which some have taken to be Aristotle's
opinion; because no Individual Material thing is either Universal
or Immutable. . . . Because they perish not together with them, it
is a certain argument that they exist independently upon them.
Neither, in the next place, do they exist somewhere else apart
from the Individual Sensibles, and without the Mind, which is that
opinion that Aristotle justly condemns, but either unjustly or
unskilfully attributes to Plato. . . . Wherefore these
Intelligible Ideas or Essences of Things, those Forms by which we
understand all Things, exist nowhere but in the mind itself; for
it was very well determined long ago by Socrates, in Plato's
Parmenidês, that these things are nothing else but Noemata: 'These
Species or Ideas are all of them nothing but Noemata or Notions
that exist nowhere but in the Soul itself'. . . .
"And yet notwithstanding, though these Things exist only in the
Mind, they are not therefore mere Figments of the
Understanding. . . .
"It is evident that though the Mind thinks of these Things at
pleasure, yet they are not arbitrarily framed by the Mind, but
have certain, determinate, and immutable Natures of their own,
which are independent upon the Mind, and which are blown (quære
_not blown_) away into Nothing at the pleasure of the same Being
that arbitrarily made them."
It is an inadvertence on the part of Cudworth to cite this passage
of the Parmenidês as authenticating Plato's opinion that Forms or
Ideas existed only in the mind. Certainly Sokrates is here made to
express that opinion, among others; but the opinion is refuted by
Parmenidês and dropped by Sokrates. But the very different
opinion, which Cudworth accuses Aristotle of _wrongly_ attributing
to Plato, is repeated by Sokrates in the Phædon, Republic, and
elsewhere, and never refuted.]
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