Organon F

Volume 29, May 2022, Issue 2, Pages 246–267

ISSN 2585-7150 (online) ISSN 1335-0668 (print)

In this paper, I suggest a way of resolving the whole-part dilemma suggested in the Parmenides. Specifically, I argue that grabbing the second horn of the dilemma does not pose a significant challenge. To argue for this, I consider two theses about Forms, namely, the oneness and indivisibility theses. More specifically, I argue that the second horn does not violate the oneness thesis if we treat composition as identity and that the indivisibility thesis ought to be reinterpreted given Plato’s later dialogues. By doing so, I suggest a compositional understanding of Plato’s theory of Forms, which can resolve the whole-part dilemma.

Plato; Parmenides; theory of Forms; one and many.

Author

Seong Soo Park

Affiliation

Sungkyunkwan University

Address

Department of Philosophy, Sungkyunkwan University, Sungkyunk-wan-ro 25-2, Jongro-gu, Seoul, South Korea

E-mail

seongsoo@buffalo.edu 

Received

17 September 2020

Revised

8 January 2021

Accepted

23 June 2021

Published online

18 April 2022

Publishers

Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences

Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences

APA

Park, S. S. (2022). The Whole-Part Dilemma: A Compositional Understanding of Plato’s Theory of Forms. Organon F, 29(2), 246–267. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2022.29204

Chicago

Park, Seong Soo. 2022. "The Whole-Part Dilemma: A Compositional Understanding of Plato’s Theory of Forms." Organon F 29 (2): 246–267. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2022.29204

Harvard

Park, S. S. (2022). The Whole-Part Dilemma: A Compositional Understanding of Plato’s Theory of Forms. Organon F, 29(2), pp. 246–267. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2022.29204

© Seong Soo Park

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