  The debate over self-predication involves both statements and what the statements are about, i.e., the ontological correlates of those statements. (Thus at times it may be important to distinguish linguistic predication from ontological predication.) In investigating self-predication statements, perhaps it is again easiest to distinguish three factors, the subject or subject term, ‘The Just’, the linking verb, ‘is’, and the predicate adjective ‘just’. Apparently both the subject and the predicate adjective, ‘The Just’ and ‘just’, refer to the same thing, namely the Form of Justice. One question then concerns the copula, or linking verb: in what manner is the predicate related to the subject, or how is the Form related to itself? There are three basic approaches to consider. In his seminal discussion of self-predication, Vlastos maintained that we should understand the relation between the Form and itself to be the same as that between a particular and the Form (Vlastos 1981d).  This is to say that Justice is just in the same way as Socrates is just, or that Beauty is beautiful in the same way as Helen is beautiful, or that the Circle Itself is circular in the same way as my basketball: both are round. Let us label this way of understanding the copula in self-predication statements ‘characterization’. Then Beauty is a beautiful thing, an item to be included in an inventory of beautiful things right along with Helen.