But the two sections are not meant to be on all fours with each other.

The conclusion of the Wrst

section is, as we have seen, self-stultifying and the whole argument can only be taken seriously as

a reductio ad absurdum. The 211 METAPHYSICS second section, however, leads to a conclusion
that, though it may be surprising, can be understood in a way which is in no way self-refuting.

Summing up the results of this section, Parmenides says that the One sometimes partakes of
being and sometimes does not. His words echo the complaint made in the Republic about the

ordinary objects of sense-perception, namely that they roll about between being and non-being.
But now it is a form that displays this pattern, whereas in the heyday of the theory what marked

oV Ideas from common or garden objects was that they did not roll about. The Idea of F was not
sometimes F and sometimes not F, nor was it F in one respect and not F in another respect. What

is now said about the One marks a very signiWcant departure from the original Theory of Ideas.
In the case of the sensible particulars, we could specify the times, respects, relations, and so forth

that made them—without any violation of the principle of non-contradiction—both F and not F.
What we now have to do is to draw appropriate distinctions to see how both a predicate and its

opposite can be true in diVerent respects, of the One, and by implication, of other Forms. It is to
be noted that the subjects of all Parmenides’ predications are Ideas, or at least they are all items

referred to by universal terms, not individual names: the expressions for them are things like ‘the
same’, ‘the other’, not ‘Callias’, or ‘Dio’. In order to resolve some of the problems about Ideas,

Plato introduces a distinction between two types of predication. Using a terminology which
belongs to a later period, we can say that he makes a distinction between predication per se and

predication per accidens. The diVerence between the two can be brought out thus: S is P per se if
being P is part of what it is to be S. Thus, an oak is a tree per se. (If we allow improper as well as

proper parts of what it is to be S, then an oak is oak per se.) S is P per accidens, on the other
hand, if S is as a matter of fact P, but it is no part of being S to be P. Thus, if oaks are as a matter

of fact plentiful in a certain area, ‘plentiful’ is predicated only per accidens.2 We have seen that
Plato, in the Parmenides, abandoned the Principles of Purity and Uniqueness. With respect to the

Principle of Self-predication he makes use of his distinction between types of predicate.