Key Arguments

• When asked whether any 'beautiful' will not be found 'ugly,' or 'just' not 'unjust,' the interlocutor concedes that in some point of view each will bear its opposite predicate.
• Pairs like double/half, great/small, heavy/light show the same relativity, indicating that sensible items receive both contrary names.
• Because these things cannot be fixed 'either as being or not-being, or both, or neither,' they are best placed 'between being and not-being.'
• Since the intermediate objects are 'matter of opinion, and not ... matter of knowledge,' those who apprehend only the many sensibles 'may be said to have opinion but not knowledge.'

Source Quotes

This being premised, I would ask the gentleman who is of opinion that there is no absolute or unchangeable idea of beauty—in whose opinion the beautiful is the manifold—he, I say, your lover of beautiful sights, who cannot bear to be told that the beautiful is one, and the just is one, or that anything is one—to him I would appeal, saying, Will you be so very kind, sir, as to tell us whether, of all these beautiful things, there is one which will not be found ugly; or of the just, which will not be found unjust; or of the holy, which will not also be unholy? No, he replied; the beautiful will in some point of view be found ugly; and the same is true of the rest. And may not the many which are doubles be also halves?—doubles, that is, of one thing, and halves of another?

Quite true. And things great and small, heavy and light, as they are termed, will not be denoted by these any more than by the opposite names? True; both these and the opposite names will always attach to all of them.

He replied: They are like the punning riddles which are asked at feasts or the children's puzzle about the eunuch aiming at the bat, with what he hit him, as they say in the puzzle, and upon what the bat was sitting. The individual objects of which I am speaking are also a riddle, and have a double sense: nor can you fix them in your mind, either as being or not-being, or both, or neither. Then what will you do with them?

I said. Can they have a better place than between being and not-being? For they are clearly not in greater darkness or negation than not-being, or more full of light and existence than being.

We have. Yes; and we had before agreed that anything of this kind which we might find was to be described as matter of opinion, and not as matter of knowledge; being the intermediate flux which is caught and detained by the intermediate faculty. Quite true.

Quite true. Then those who see the many beautiful, and who yet neither see absolute beauty, nor can follow any guide who points the way thither; who see the many just, and not absolute justice, and the like,—such persons may be said to have opinion but not knowledge? That is certain.

Key Concepts

• the beautiful will in some point of view be found ugly; and the same is true of the rest.
• And things great and small, heavy and light, as they are termed, will not be denoted by these any more than by the opposite names?
• nor can you fix them in your mind, either as being or not-being, or both, or neither.
• Can they have a better place than between being and not-being?
• anything of this kind which we might find was to be described as matter of opinion, and not as matter of knowledge; being the intermediate flux which is caught and detained by the intermediate faculty.
• such persons may be said to have opinion but not knowledge?

Context

Socrates confronts the 'lover of beautiful sights' who denies unities, using the relativity of sensible predicates to argue that particulars straddle being and not-being and so are fit objects for opinion.

Perspectives

Plato

Supports the participation/appearance thesis: sensibles partake of opposites and are in flux; only Forms are fully what they are, grounding the doxa/epistêmê divide.

Socrates

Exploits everyday predicate-variance to show that sense-objects are indeterminate, thus aligning them with opinion’s intermediate status.