Resemblance and imitation

Use in the book

The Parmenides proposal treats forms as patterns and the things resembling them as likenesses, explaining participation through being made like. The interpretation of Homer compares souls with reflections that resemble people and imitate their movements while lacking solid substance. A later account says that divine bodies imitate intellect. None of these relations requires the likeness to have every property of its original.

Places to read

1. I.12.2bResemblance is proposed as an explanation of participation.
2. I.49.50.11Reflections imitate movements without possessing solidity.
3. I.49.40.2Divine bodies are described as imitating intellect.
4. I.20.6.2Natural and artificial things provide likenesses of a principle.
5. I.1.29b.8An unusual list places likenesses among imperishable kinds.
6. I.3.56cDissimilarity of two sides is visible within one undivided body.

Translation in this edition

“Likeness” and “imitation” preserve the asserted relation without making it identity. The Parmenides passage remains a proposal within a debate.

Likeness as representation

Homoiōsis can name a likeness as well as a process of becoming like. In I.20.6.2, images and likenesses of the first principle occur among natural products and artifacts. Here the plural points to representations or analogues, not necessarily to a moral exercise of assimilation to God.

The noun homoiotēs

Homoiotēs is likeness or similarity. The unusual Epicurean report at I.1.29b.8 lists likenesses among imperishable kinds and then associates them with like-parted constituents. The wording must be acknowledged as transmitted rather than silently repaired into a familiar account of Epicurean images or Anaxagorean matter.

Dissimilarity within a whole

Anomoios means unlike; the related noun anomoiotēs names dissimilarity. The latter describes the visibly different male and female sides of a single statue in the account quoted by Porphyry from Bardisanes. Difference here coexists with bodily unity. The description does not itself identify the statue’s deity, and its final explanatory wording is textually questioned.