O método de “divisão” e a temporalidade no conhecimento das Ideias platônicas

Abstract

In Plato’s Statesman, the character Stranger of Elea establishes that, in the method of division, it is not enough to realize the “divisions”, but it is also fundamental the divided parts corresponding to really existing Ideas (262b-263a). His interlocutor, the character “young Socrates”, replies with a disconcerting question: “but, regarding that, how one can know that the genus and the part (so rendered more visible) are not the same but different from each other?” (263a). The question strikes the Stranger so hardly that he has no words to answer the young man. The reason seems to rest in the fact that the question points to the “circular” feature of the method of division, due to which, since the Antiquity, it receives the charge of being a petitio principii. The “circularity” in the time would be as following: if, in the outcomes of the divisions, what matters is the Ideas to become more visible to someone (Statesman 262b), on the other hand, the correct divisions only could be realized by the person who is somehow already “contemplating” the very structure of the Ideas (Sophist 253b-e). In Aristotle’s words, the division “is a weak syllogism”, because it reaches or tries to prove that from which it starts as a presupposition (Pr. An. 46a33). Nonetheless, the analysis of the Platonic dialogues’ passages on the “recollection” as well on the relationship between the Ideas and the time can indicate that Plato would have a rather surprising and interesting answer to his notable disciple.