Abstract

Discussions of Plato's Third Man Argument (TMA) have tended to obscure its force within the context of "Parmenides". The TMA introduces a demonstration by Parmenides of the logic of dialectic. The argument does not refute the theory of forms: rather it illuminates particular difficulties involved in any attempt to conceive of what forms do. As a form, the large enables us to observe the same attribute in a number of objects. As such it is not an object of cognition. When we try to think of a form, however, we transform it into such an object. That object presupposes another form which enables us to conceive of it. "there will be no end to this emergence of fresh forms," parmenides tells socrates. "if the form is to be like the things which participate in it". What the regress of the tma manifests is that a form of which we conceive can never bebut will always presupposea form "with" which we conceive