Plato's Forms in Transition: A Reading of the Parmenides

Samuel C. Rickless. Plato's Forms in Transition: A Reading of the Parmenides. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. v + 272. Cloth, $90.00.

Rickless construes Plato's middle-period account of the Forms as a theory comprising axioms, auxiliary principles, fundamental theorems, and specific premises and conclusions constituting particular arguments. This book attempts to reconstruct that theory (the "high theory"), to trace its further development (the "higher theory") and subsequent criticism in Parmenides 126a-35c (Parm I), and to show how Plato salvages the theory by alterations undertaken in 137c-66c (Parm II). Rickless's reconstruction of the "high theory" includes two axioms, seven auxiliary principles, and thirteen fundamental theorems. The "higher theory" adds another axiom and eight further principles.

To save the theory from Parmenides' criticism, Rickless thinks this additional axiom must be rejected, along with three of the original theorems. The main purpose of Parm II, he says, is to justify rejection of these four theses, thus saving the theory (244). What remains are the two initial axioms (that, for every plurality of F things, there is a form of F-ness that makes each thing F by participating in it, and that every Form "is itself by itself"), along with several theorems not depending on the rejected theses. Rickless...