Self-refutation, self-predication and self-reference in the philosophy of Plato

The phenomenon of self-reference combines self-refutation (the principle of peritrope ) in the case of Plato’s critics of Protagoras in “Theaetetus” and self-predication in the case of a difficulty which Plato himself faces developing the theory of ideas in “Parmenides”. The author of the article asserts that self-predication does not produce a negative impact on Plato’s metaphysics and in no way destroys the integrality of Plato’s philosophy: It is logically correct as are both his criticism of Protagoras’ relativism (by means of the principle of peritrope ) and the theory of ideas (in which the phenomenon of self-predication is also proposed).