5. Texts with a vague meaning

The instability of Plato's terminology is such that it is necessary to note a mass of texts about which it is impossible even to say which shade of the previous one we have in mind here. I would beware even of understanding Plato's specific expression cat'eide diairein as an indication of the division of concepts. Indeed, when it is said, for example, of the two eidos megethos and smicrotes ("greatness" and "smallness"; Parai. 149a) or about eidos apeiron (158c), then it is probably the concepts that are meant. However, in view of the extreme terminological variety, of course, in such cases it is often permissible in Plato to divide not into concepts in the proper sense of the word, but into some images, ideas, things, etc.

In 1930, I counted in 1930 about 100 such texts in Plato with an indefinitely-general meaning of both terms, that is, 19.8%. At the present time, however, I think such calculations are hardly possible in the exact sense, since in the forty years that have passed since then I have found an incredible variety in Plato's use of his terms, so that in science we do not yet possess such a subtle methodological apparatus as to take into account all this diversity and calculate it mathematically.

6. Model-generative value

Now, finally, it is necessary to touch upon the meaning of our two terms which can no longer be reduced to material or only corporeal significance, but which in Plato speaks of pure ideality - this meaning is usually inflated for Plato to incredible proportions by virtue of age-old tradition. I will now list these few examples; But it is necessary to warn the reader that he will be very disappointed if he tries to find pure transcendence everywhere. It is clear that an idea in this sense is not a thing. However, it was only the neo-Kantians who discovered the regulative, or transcendental, character of this ideality (although also with great exaggeration). At the present time, after several decades of work on Plato, I have come to the conclusion that what Plato is preaching here is what might be called a generative model. An idea is quite transcendental if it is taken in an abstract form, but even if every thing is taken in isolation from other things (this table or this chair), then every thing will be transcendental. Is it worth doing, however, and is it not empty nonsense?

Let us take Plato's idea in its purest ideal form. It will turn out to be nothing more than a generative model of this or that thing, this or that sphere of existence. This alone introduces something material or corporeal into Plato's idea. With the greatest intensity of idealism, we could find in Plato's ideas no more than the laws of material being. It is here that it turns out that Plato is precisely an ancient, and not a medieval or modern European philosopher; it turns out that, for all his idealism, he is chained to corporeal material reality.

A syllable consists of separate sounds, but it is not a simple and mechanical sum of these sounds, but a kind of new quality, in the light of which we understand the individual sounds of the syllable (Theaet. 203e, 204a, 205d). There is no going beyond the limits of corporeality, but only the fixation of those general models which form the discrete and mutually isolated moments of this corporeal reality. Nor do I find anything supersensible in those places where it is not a syllable that appears, but a shuttle, in the same generative-model sense of the word (Crat. 389 ab, 390 a), or a bench (R. P. X 596 b, 597 a, c), or a beautiful body (Conv. 210 b; Phaedr. 251a), or a single eidos of the earth's appearance with the diversity and variegation of its individual elements (Phaed. 110d), or a thing in general (Gorg. 503e).

Nor does the matter change in the least in such texts, which refer not merely to the sensual body, but to some phenomena of moral, social, or political life. There is no doctrine of the transcendence of ideas either in the definition of the eidos of the king in terms of more particular moments (Politic. 278e), or in the idea of the constitution of the state (R. P. VIII 544a), or in the eidos of war (Lach. 191d), or in the definition of such concepts as piety (Euthyphr. 6d), beauty (Hipp. Mai. 289 d, 298 b), virtue (Men. 72 c-e), knowledge (Crat. 440 ab; Theaet. 148 d), useful (178 a), justice (R. P. IV 435 b, V 476 a), one and many (X 596 a), greater and lesser (II 369 a), madness (Phaedr. 265e, 266 a), the whole and parts in the more general sense of the word (Politic. 262 ab, 263 b, 306 c), the striving for the whole eidos (R. P. V 475 b), nor in considering everything under two eidos (Politic. 258c). When one of the branches of the logical series is fixed by eidos (258c), there is nothing transcendental about it, just as there is nothing transcendental in saying that "in the idea of a father" there is as yet no reference to the son (Hipp. Mai. 297b), or in the idea of duty, although duty is a kind of good, there is as yet no indication of the good itself (Crat. 418e). A certain number of texts emphasize in an idea its definiteness, form, and clarity of structure, when it is, as it were, a seal for something (Politic. 257c), or when it is impossible to go beyond it (Crat. 439e), or when it embraces a certain set (Phaedr. 273a, 265d; Phileb. 16d), or when one idea is derived from many sensations (Theaet. 184d), or when memory, sensation, knowledge, etc., belong to one and the same idea (Phileb. 60d), or when one idea is guessed at everything (64a), or when good is grasped in one idea (64e), or when reason and pleasure give way to a new idea (67a), or when, as a result of a correct division, one can arrive at one idea (Politic. 262b), or when knowledge constructs one idea out of many (380c), or when one idea out of many is spoken of at all (Legg. XII 965 p).

In total, there are approximately 90 texts with this descriptive model-generative meaning of our two terms, i.e. 16.6%.

7. "Dialectical" meaning

Let us now come to that area of Plato's terminology which we are studying which is the easiest to interpret transcendentally, and which, properly speaking, is the only thing that figures when it comes to Plato's doctrine of ideas. These are the passages from Plato's works in which the philosopher makes use of dialectics, because dialectics requires precise categories, and in the field of exact categories there is always a tendency to isolate the conceivable from all that is material and material. Is Plato to blame for this? An accurate philological examination of the texts, in any case, does not yield certain results here, and the doctrine of hypostatized ideas in the extreme case manifests itself only in the form of a certain kind of possibility, and even then rarely.

In the first place, investigators hasten to establish a doctrine of ideas, ignoring the much more comprehensible and philologically much more reliable interpretations of both our terms, as mere references to certain fields of study. In the Timaeus (35a) the single "idea" is treated as consisting of indivisible, divisible, and mixed being. One never changes and is eternally self-identical; the other is eternally changing and becoming; and the third is a being that is at the same time eternally in itself and is eternally changing, becoming. In the above-mentioned passage of the Timaeus it is stated that out of these three spheres of existence God created one "idea". The question is: what is this idea? Obviously, this is the unification of the three spheres of being into one general sphere of being. Again, I cannot find any "doctrine of ideas" here, since the "idea" in the text is nothing but the sum total of all the principal domains of being. The "idea" here cannot be interpreted in the form of traditional dualism with its metaphysical or conceptual hypostasis, that it includes everything that is becoming, changeable, that is, everything material and material. In exactly the same sense it is necessary to understand the other passages in the same dialogue (50e, 51a, cd, 52a, to which we can also add Soph. 258d), where the 'idea' is also simply the realm of the thinkable, as distinct from the realm of the sensuously becoming, which also forms an 'idea', only with a different content. When it is said that God has divided all things into four eidos, namely, gods, birds, aquatic gods, and terrestrial gods (Tim. 39e-40a), then even in this case "eidos" is not a spiritualistic idea at all, but simply an indication of this or that region of animate beings.