(8) This, Dancy claims, 'plainly isn't the same' as the kind of unlimitedness we saw in the Heavenly Tradition: being a particular (55).
If we add the phenomenological element into our understanding of the term, we find that these cases of unlimitedness (both of which Socrates does seem to have in mind at various points in the dialogue) can be integrated into a single definition.
This procedure, however, cannot do away with all unlimitedness that may be encountered.
It is also important to note that apeiron here is an instance of the injurious and treatable kind of unlimitedness that the Heavenly Tradition taught us how to deal with.
It rests on Socrates' statement in the introduction of the Heavenly Tradition that 'whatever is said to be consists of one and many, having in its nature limit and unlimitedness' (16d).
The first, injurious kind results from sloppiness and haste; it posits a state of unlimitedness where, in fact, there is only a finite multiplicity of unities (of infima species).
The symptoms of unlimitedness will continue to show themselves until the treatment of the divine method is administered, and the apparent malicious unlimitedness is shown to be actually a finite plurality of infima species.
As we have seen, the Heavenly Tradition begins with the claim that all things that exist consist of both limit and unlimitedness. However, as Dancy argues according to the Fourfold Division, it is only one class of beings of which this is true.
[has] in its nature limit and unlimitedness' (16d), it is also true that, 'limit' and 'unlimitedness' can 'exist' as well, though it is certainly a different kind of existence than the independent existence of a concrete object (and, for that matter, than the ideal being of a Form).
