Participation

21 December 2022

Participation

“For what less does ‘literary skill’ have in comparison with ‘a particular literary skill’ and in general ‘body of knowledge’ in comparison with ‘a particular body of knowledge’?  For literary skill is not posterior to the particular literary skill but rather it is because literary skill exists that that in you exists; since that in you is particular by being in you, but in itself is the same as the universal.  And Socrates did not in his own person give being human to the non-human but humanity gave being human to Socrates: the particular human is so by participation in humanity.  Since what could Socrates be except ‘a man of a particular kind’ and what could the ‘of a particular kind’ do towards being more of a substance?  But if it is because ‘humanity is only a form’ but Socrates is ‘form in matter’, he would be less human in this respect: for the rational form is worse in matter.  But if humanity is not in itself form, but in matter, what loss will it have than the particular human in matter, when it is itself the rational form of something in a kind of matter?  Again, the more general is prior by nature, as the species is prior to the individual, but the prior by nature is also simply prior: how then could it be less?  But the individual is prior in relation to us because it is more knowable; but this does not make a difference in actual fact.”

(Plotinus, Ennead VI.3.9, Plotinus: Ennead VI.1-5, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988, page 207, ISBN: 9780674994904)

“The question may here be asked ‘What deficiency has grammar compared with a particular grammar, and science as a whole in comparison with a science?’  Grammar is certainly not posterior to the particular grammar: on the contrary, the grammar as in you depends on the prior existence of grammar as such: the grammar as in you becomes a particular by the fact of being in you; it is otherwise identical with grammar the universal.  Turn to the case of Socrates: it is not Socrates who bestows manhood upon what was previously not man, but Man upon Socrates; the individual man exists by participation in the universal.  Besides, Socrates is merely a particular instance of man; this particularity can have no effect whatever in adding to his essential manhood.  We may be told that Man [the universal – added by the translators] is Form alone, Socrates Form in Matter.  But on this very ground Socrates will be less fully man than the universal; for the Reason-Principle will be less effectual in Matter.  If, on the contrary, Man is not determined by Form alone, but presupposes matter, what deficiency has Man in comparison with the material manifestation of Man, or the Reason-Principle in isolation as compared with its embodiment in a unit of Matter?  Besides, the more general is by nature prior to the individual: but what is prior by nature is prior unconditionally.  How then can the Form take a lower rank?  The individual, it is true, is prior in the sense of being more readily accessible to our cognizance; this fact, however, entails no objective difference.”

(Plotinus, The Enneads, Ennead VI.3.9, translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page, various editions published between 1917 and 1930, found online at sacred-texts.com)

1.  I think this is a fine example of what Platonists mean by participation and why Platonists consider form to be prior to particulars, and that particulars depend for their existence on forms.

2.  I think a passage like this helps us to understand why Platonists were focused on the nature of numbers; because numbers are a good example of this relationship of the general to the particular, that the abstract number is present in particulars by participation.  For example, we can have 3 apples, 3 disagreements, 3 books by a particular author, 3 hours, etc.  All of these examples participate in the number 3 which is how we know that there are three of them, but the number 3 is prior to particular objects participating in them.  That is why Platonists say that numbers and their relationships are discovered rather than created by the human psyche.

3.  Another example of this kind of relationship is poetic form.  A poetic form is defined abstractly with a collection, or set, of requirements such as number of lines, rhyme scheme, syllables or poetic feet per line, etc.  Poets create in the form by their participation in the form, but the poetic form is prior to any poet’s participation.

4.  It takes a while for newcomers to Platonism to understand that from a Platonic perspective, forms are more real than material objects.  In my own case I had to remind myself how this works because I wasn’t used to seeing things in this way.  My experience with numbers (which is not great) was helpful, but, again, in my own case it was my experience with poetic form that opened the gate to the idea of form as prior to individual manifestations that participated in the forms, and that it is through this participation that we recognize the poems specific form.  I suspect that different people will have different routes to this kind of comprehension, based on their own familiarity with topics such as literary skill, grammar, mathematics, music, architecture, etc.