ABSTRACT
Plato's first, and most obvious, account of the eide is discernible in the Socratic elenchi of interlocutors who claim to know some commonly acknowledged standard of virtue, such as piety, justice, wisdom, courage, or even virtue itself, or the criteria responsible for something they claim to know about. The response of Plato's Socrates to the impossibility of direct knowledge of the eide contains the key to the dialogues first account of them. The response has two interrelated parts. The first is the methodical necessity of abandoning the "investigation of nature" and taking refuge in speaking to investigate the truth of the things that are in spoken words. The second interrelated part of Plato's Socrates response to the impossibility of directly knowing an eidos through perception or thought concerns the way Socrates investigates the answer to the questions why the things that come to be come to be and why the things that are have being.
