Please join us for this week's History of Philosophy Works-in-Progress Luncheon! This week's presenter is Bruce McCuskey (Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame), who will present on "NeoPlatonic Responses to the Third Man Argument: Taxonomy and Analysis."
Each meeting consists of a presentation by a graduate student, visiting scholar, or faculty member on a project that they are working on in the history of philosophy, followed by a period of comments/questions from other participants. The workshop is designed to give contributors the opportunity to develop ideas and receive helpful feedback on projects/papers in a friendly and low stakes environment.
Lunch is provided for registered attendees.
Abstract: This paper has three primary goals. First, I will develop a taxonomy of several late antique Platonists' responses to the Third Man Argument. On the one hand, there is a response developed in Plotinus and present to greater and lesser extents in Porphyry and Syrianus, which attempts to avoid the regress involved in the Third Man Argument while maintaining the self-predication of the form through a kind of self-participation. On the other hand, there is a response developed first in Iamblichus and championed by Proclus, which uses the Law of Mean Terms to avoid the regress. Second, I will analyze the two responses, arguing that the Plotinian response fails and the Iamblichean-Proclean response succeeds in avoiding the regress involved in the Third Man Argument. Third, in the process of achieving the first two goals I will respond to and refute recent secondary scholarship on NeoPlatonic responses to the Third Man Argument that have sought to collapse the Plotinian and Iamblichean responses into one position.
Originally published at historyofphilosophy.nd.edu.