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Wellsprings
metaphysics

Sameness and Difference

ταὐτὸν καὶ ἕτερον

To say what something is not, Plato had to weave Otherness through all of being — and rescue language from Parmenides.

In the Sophist, Plato names five "greatest kinds" that run through all reality — being, motion, rest, and the crucial pair of Sameness and Difference. Every thing is the same as itself and different from everything else, and it is this thread of Difference, woven through all that exists, that lets us speak meaningfully about what is not. With this move Plato answers Parmenides' ban on non-being and explains how falsehood and negation are possible at all. Aristotle later refined the analysis, distinguishing the several senses in which things can be called the same or other.

Where this idea shows up

9 Greek sources·1 Jewish-canon citation

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