ABSTRACT

If everything is changing, what is the point in saying that anything has any quality? What it has it is already ceasing to have. You can never know what a thing is: (a) because it is changing while you learn about it; (b) because there is always much that you do not see; (c) because there is apparently no reason for saying it is of one sort rather than another (no essence from which the properties follow). (Compare Locke’s example of the properties of gold.)

For Plato, if you say it is thus because it is its nature to be thus, well then it should always be thus. Plato is facing difficulties to do with development (compare Anaxagoras).1 Why should there be this development rather than another? Can you understand becoming, except by reference to the eternal; that is, to what does not become?