Abstract

For some of Plato’s commentators some passages of the Republic and the Parmenides provide a clear guideline regarding the extension of the noetic “world”, namely, a criterion that allows us to know what kind of Platonic forms there are, and which there are not. There are forms only for a pair of opposite properties such as “big” and “small”; indeed, smallness itself is not what appears to the senses, since each sensible instance of smallness appears “mixed” with its opposite, bigness. On the contrary, things that are perceived by the senses such as fingers, do not have an eidos. However, a more careful reading of the relevant passages, taking into account what Socrates says in 476a about the unity and multiplicity of the forms, will show us the incorrectness of this interpretation.