  Another fundamental triad is the triad Unparticipated-Participated-Participating (amethekton-metechomenon-metechon). Plato’s theory of participation, which explains the relation between the intelligible world and the sensible reality it grounds, raised many problems, several of which Plato himself brings up in the first part of his Parmenides. Most pressing was the puzzle: How can a Form be at the same time one and the same and exist as a whole in many participants? (see Plato, Parmenides 131a-b). The basic idea of the triad of participation, which can also be seen as responding to Aristotle’s criticism of participation, is to maintain the transcendence, and hence, the unity of the Form, while allowing for its presence in the participants.  Thanks to the existence of an ‘unparticipated’ principle, that is, one that is not such as to be participated in by anything, to which the ‘participated’ entities, the ones that are participated in by something, are connected by means of “the triad of triads” (Elem. Theol. § 23), the universal nature of the Form can be safeguarded.