Fundamentality and Forms in Plato's Parmenides

The author contends that recent scholarship has paid too little attention to the structure of fundamentality at work among the Forms in Plato’s Parmenides . This chapter argues that the Forms in the deductions of Parmenides stand to one another in a rather intricate and unique structure of fundamentality. All conceptual Forms are, in part, dependent on other Forms. However, in part, all Forms are also independent (i.e. they are in part foundational entities). Any one Form is thus partially dependent on the other Forms and partially an independent entity. The author labels this view Global Metaphysical Foundherentism and shows that it is unique among contemporary schemes of fundamentality.