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Plato’s “Parhelia”: Beauty, Symmetry and Truth

From the book Platonische Aufsätze

  • Rafael Ferber

Abstract

Under semantic monism I understand the thesis “The Good is said in one way” and under semantic pluralism the antithesis “The Good is said in many ways”. Plato’s Socrates seems to defend a “semantic monism”. As only one sun exists, so the “Good” has only one reference. Nevertheless, Plato’s Socrates defends in the Philebus a semantic pluralism, more exactly trialism, of “beauty, symmetry and truth” (Phlb. 65a2). Therefore, metaphorically speaking, there seem to exist not only one sun, but three suns. If Plato’s Socrates defends a semantic monism on the one hand and pluralism on the other, how can we unite his pluralism with his monism? My thesis is that the three references of the expression “the Good” are “qualities” (poia) (cf. Ep. VII, 343b8-c2) of the one single reference, or again, speaking metaphorically, parhelia (Nebensonnen) of the one single sun. In the following, I propose first an exegesis of Plato’s last written word on the Good in Phlb. 65a1-5 by dividing it into five sentences. Second, I ask a philosophical question on this monism and the corresponding hierarchy of values (Phlb. 66a6-c6).

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