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The long second part of the Parmenides includes many fantastic, apparently contradiction-ridden statements similar to the one above. The problem of formulating a convincing interpretation of the dialogue that makes sense of these statements has proven so difficult that it has simply been ignored by most commentators on the third man argument (or arguments) found in the first part of the dialogue. This by itself may be a serious defect of these analyses of the third man argument given by these scholars. For Plato made it clear (135d) that he thought the truth regarding the problems of the first part of the dialogue—such as that of the third man—is to be found by undertaking the intellectual ‘exercise’ demonstrated by Parmenides in the second part of the dialogue. And it is also clear that after writing the Parmenides Plato continued to endorse a theory of Forms. Thus, he must have thought that the problems brought up in the first part of the dialogue were to be treated utilizing the considerations from the second—treated in such a way that the problems do not rule out a theory of Forms continuous with that presented in the earlier dialogues. Therefore, in order to see how Plato formulated and countered these problems one must do the dirty work; one cannot rest content, as most have done, with some interpretation that fails to locate Plato’s response to the third man argument firmly in the second part of the Parmenides. One must, under pain of misinterpretation and irrelevance, explain the significance that the paradoxical arguments of the second part have for the problems of the first part.

Plato’s Response to the Third Man Argument in the Paradoxical Exercise of the Parmenides