Testing the theory of forms › Two ways the one becomes difficult

The opening deduction begins by treating the one as excluding plurality. It therefore cannot have parts; nor can it be a whole composed of parts. The argument excludes shape and location, and goes on to deny further attributes. Eventually it denies participation in time and being, reaching the unsettling result that this one is not. These are consequences within the deduction, not a casual declaration that nothing exists (137c–142a).

The next deduction begins again from the one being. It distinguishes the one from the being in which it participates: being one and having being are not treated as the same account. That difference supplies a route to plurality within the one-that-is. The exercise develops consequences very different from those obtained when unity was isolated from every differentiating feature (142b–143a and following).

One productive reading compares the assumptions at work. Under the first deduction's restrictive treatment of unity, including its exclusions of time, being and relations, the one lacks the differences needed for description. A one that has being already involves differentiation. The deductions can then train the reader to ask what a claim of unity permits us to say. This interpretation does not require accepting every step without scrutiny, or treating apparently conflicting results as straightforward assertions true in the same respect.

The whole second part is longer and stranger than these two examples. Later deductions test consequences of the one's not being and consequences for the others. A complete interpretation must account for those passages as well. Here the representative contrast gives us a way to start reading the exercise, not a substitute for its remaining arguments or a claim that its overall meaning has been settled.