lOObl—c8. Socrates says that he will 'display' (1) the kind of reason with which he has been dealing (b3—4), and (2) 'the reason' (b8). He will thus (1) show what the general requirements for a 'reason' are (see next note and on 100e5—101b8), and also (2) indicate the particular 'reason' that he is seeking, i.e. the reason for coming-to-be and destruction. The word 'display' (cf.99d2) suggests that he will exhibit these things in what he says rather than state them directly.
Once again the Theory of Forms is readily accepted (cf.65d6, 74b 1). At 100b5—6 the literal meaning could be 'something is beautiful alone by itself', or 'there is something beautiful alone by itself', or 'beautiful alone by itself is something'. See on 74a9—bl and note 5. The translation is based on the third interpretation. Cf.l02bl.
The next step (c3—8) is to agree that things are beautiful for no reason save that they participate in the Form Beautiful. R. Robinson (P.E.D. 127) takes 'what comes next to those things' (c3) to mean 'what logically follows'. But the present step is not so much a logical consequence of the hypothesis that the Form Beautiful exists as an integral element in it. 'Next' may mean only that it belongs next in an orderly statement of the argument—cf. Gorgias 454c 1-2.
'If anything else is beautiful besides the beautiful itself' (c4—5): note that the words 'besides the beautiful itself' clearly imply that the Form Beautiful is beautiful. This raises the question whether the character of beauty is being attributed to the Form, or whether 'the Form F is F' should be understood in some other way. See on 74d4—8. For Beauty the 'self-predicative' interpretation is defensible (see G. Vlastos, R.M. 1972, 456). But what of the Forms Numer- ousness and Twoness (101b6, 101c5)? Could Twoness be two, or Numerousness numerous, without wrecking the base of the Theory, that there is just one Form for each set of things to which we apply a common name (.Republic 596a, 597c)?
The nature of the relation between beautiful things and the Form Beautiful will be deliberately put aside at 100d5—7 (see next note). The word translated 'participate' (c5, 101c3-6) is the ordinary Greek word for 'share' used semi-technically. 'Partake' is used similarly at 102b2. To say that beautiful things 'share' Beauty is to say that they have that feature in common. The relevant sense of 'share' is that in which x and y may share A, without its being the case that each of them has only a part of A (as two people may share an ancestor or a birthday). This point is exploited in the Parmenides (131a—e), where 'share' and 'partake' are wilfully misconstrued.
100c9—e4. The Form 'reason' for things being beautiful is now further elaborated. For the text at 100d5—7 see note 63. Socrates remains non-committal as to the relation between Forms and particulars. This relation is the focal point of criticism of the Theory in the Parmenides (131—5). See on 65d4—e5 and previous note. The language of 'presence' was perhaps already a source of sophistical objection. Cf. Euthydemus 300e—301b.
It is obvious why such 'wise reasons' as colour and shape are to be rejected. No given colour or shape is either a necessary or a sufficient condition for a thing's being beautiful. The reason why the Form answer would be 'safest' (d8, el, cf.l01d2, 105b7) is that any other answer could be refuted with counter-examples: a certain colour or shape might be present in a thing, and yet that thing might not be beautiful, or might be ugly; and other things might be beautiful, even when that colour or shape was lacking. But the Form reason, and it alone, would be 'safe' from all such objections: participation in the Form F is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for a thing's being F. The 'safety' in question is immunity from rebuttal by the counter-arguments sketched at 97a5—b3 and 101a5—b2.
Forms, interpreted as 'reasons', should not be taken as Aristotelian 'efficient causes'. The Form Beautiful, for example, should not be taken as a beautifying agent, which is somehow supposed to impart beauty to things, or generate beautiful objects. For this interpretation, which naturally thrives on the mistranslation of aitia as 'cause', see Aristotle, De Gen. et Corr. 335b7—16, and Hackforth, 144—5. If the Forms are causes, Aristotle asks, why do they not generate things continuously instead of intermittently? Hackforth thinks that Aristotle here fastens upon 'the weakest point in the theory', viz. its failure to explain what causes the acquisition of attributes. But since the Forms are not represented as explaining that, the criticism is irrelevant. See G. Vlastos, P.R. 1969, 303-7, E. L. Burge, Phronesis 1971,2, n.4.
On the other hand, the text should not be over-interpreted in another direction. Apart from exhibiting the requirement that the 'reason' should be a necessary and sufficient condition for any given concept, and insisting that Forms exist, the Form-Reason hypothesis is wholly uninformative. This, no doubt, is why it is called 'simple- minded' (d4) and 'ignorant' (105cl). It gives no analysis for any of the concepts mentioned. The appeal to Forms side-steps rather than performs this task. Vlastos (op.cit. 314—15) formulates plausible logico-mathematical conditions that such an analysis might yield, in the case of 'numerous' (101b4—6), and represents these conditions as 'what Socrates is telling us, put into more modern language'. However, Socrates refrains from 'telling us' any such things. All we can say is that participation in a Form requires, in each case, that some such conditions be satisfied. We are given no insight, in any particular case, into what they are.
Moreover, it need not be supposed that Socrates' sole concern in the wider argument is with the analysis of concepts, or the formulation of necessary and sufficient conditions. Even when it is recognized that a thing (x) is F in virtue of its participating in the Form F, and even when this latter notion is properly understood, there remains the question how x 'comes to' participate in that Form. Socrates does not answer this question here. But he can plausibly be seen as doing so at 105b—d. So the denial that Forms are 'efficient causes' does not entail that an interest in such causes is altogether extraneous to the argument. See on 105b5—c8 (p.211).
100e5-101b8. The Form-Reason hypothesis is now applied to the cases of 'large' and 'numerous'. Note that at 100e5 the Form Largeness is given as the reason not only for large things being large, but also for larger things being larger. Separate Forms are not posited for comparative adjectives. It is the Form F that accounts for things' being 'more F', just as it does for their being simply 'F'. Cf. also 101b4—7. In general, 'F' and 'more F' are subjects of the same conceptual inquiry. This would explain some looseness earlier (75c9), where Socrates spoke of 'the larger' and 'the smaller'. See on 70e4—71all, 75c7—d6.
G. Vlastos calls this feature of the account a 'blemish'. It is, he thinks, one of Plato's 'residual confusions and fallacies' that he has failed to bring out that the instances under discussion are 'special cases of the "greater than" relation, and that the absolute numer- ousness or bigness of the things he is talking about is irrelevant to the reasoning' (P.R. 1969, 315, n.64). But this overlooks the role of the Forms in connection with such concepts as 'large' and 'numerous'. It is just because particular things or groups are never 'absolutely' large or numerous, that Forms for those concepts are introduced. The connection between comparative adjectives and Forms is made explicit at 102b—c, where Socrates explicates 'larger' and 'smaller' with reference to the Forms Large and Small. This makes it highly unlikely that Plato has ignored, let alone overlooked, the difference between comparative and simple adjectives. See on 102al0—d4.