The Platonic Theory of Forms has received many critiques from many critics, among which stands out the well-known “Third man argument”. Although traditionally the studies about this subject only have considered the versions of the argument introduced by Plato and Aristotle, the Megarian philosophers also developed other versions of the same reasoning. In this paper I would like to analyze the argument which is attributed by Alexander of Aphrodisias to “the sophists” and to Polyxenus in his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. I will try to show that the main point of these objections is to criticize the homonymy of the universal terms, a problem that Plato evokes in his Parmenides, where he also points out some difficulties in relation to the semantics of his own theory.
<p class='p1'>Este trabajo pretende elucidar los rasgos generales de la metafísica de los megáricos en contra de las interpretaciones tradicionales que les atribuyen la defensa de un monismo numérico o una teoría de las Formas. Con base en los testimonios sobre Euclides y Estilpón de Mégara, intentaré mostrar que la metafísica megárica se caracteriza principalmente por el desarrollo de los conceptos de unidad e identidad de cada cosa consigo misma, lo que conlleva el rechazo de la diferencia y, en consecuencia, de cualquier tipo de cambio. Esta perspectiva no excluye la existencia de múltiples entidades que, sin embargo, no son Formas. Por esta razón, los megáricos no desarrollan un monismo de tipo numérico, sino que su visión es coherente con un monismo de tipo predicativo que impugna la posibilidad de adjudicar atributos múltiples a una misma entidad.</p>
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.