Parmenides

Summary

The Parmenides is told at three removes. Cephalus of Clazomenae comes to Athens to find Antiphon, half-brother of Plato's brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon, who has memorised a conversation reported to him long ago by Pythodorus. Antiphon, now devoted to horses, reluctantly recites it. At the great Panathenaea, Parmenides of Elea, about sixty-five and white-haired, and his follower Zeno, nearly forty, lodged with Pythodorus outside the city wall. Zeno read aloud the book in which he defended his master's claim that being is one by showing that the hypothesis of many things leads to absurdities. A very young Socrates responds with a confident answer. There are Forms, such as likeness and unlikeness, one and many, in which visible things participate; it would be astonishing only if Unity itself were shown to be many. Parmenides, pleased with the young man's zeal, then tests the theory. Are there Forms of hair, mud and dirt? If a thing participates in a Form, does it receive the whole Form or a part of it? Socrates' image of the day, present in many places at once, is turned by Parmenides into a sail spread over many people, each covered by only a part. Considering many large things together seems to produce a further Largeness over them and then another, without end. Treating Forms as thoughts or as patterns fares no better. The gravest difficulty is that Forms existing by themselves would be related only to one another, so that we could not know them and the gods, who possess knowledge itself, could not know or rule our world. Yet Parmenides does not conclude that the Forms should be abandoned. Without something always one and the same on which the mind can rest, he says, reasoning itself is destroyed. Socrates' trouble is that he has tried to define the beautiful, the just and the good too early, without training. Parmenides prescribes an exercise: take a hypothesis, draw out the consequences both of its being and of its not being, for itself and for the others. Like an aged racehorse trembling before a familiar course, he agrees to demonstrate with his own hypothesis of the One, and the youngest present, Aristoteles, later one of the Thirty Tyrants, serves as respondent. The rest of the dialogue is a sequence of tightly linked deductions, usually counted as eight or nine. If the One is, taken strictly as one, it can have no parts, shape, place, time or being, and cannot even be named or known; taken as a one that is, it turns out to have every pair of opposite properties. The hypotheses on the One's not being end in the conclusion that if one is not, nothing is. Whether this second part is a training exercise, a covert solution to the earlier objections, or, as later Neoplatonists held, a theology of the One beyond being, is still debated. The work rewards students who want to see a philosopher subject his own most famous idea to criticism.

Plot or Argument

• The triple frame: Cephalus, Antiphon, Pythodorus (126a-127d)

  Cephalus narrates his visit from Clazomenae. Adeimantus and Glaucon lead him to Antiphon, who learned the conversation by heart from Pythodorus in his youth and now spends his time on horses. Antiphon describes Parmenides at about sixty-five, Zeno near forty, and Socrates as a very young man at the Panathenaea.

• Zeno's book and Socrates' theory of participation (127d-130a)

  Zeno explains that his treatise, written in youthful pugnacity and published without his consent, returns the ridicule of those who mocked Parmenides by showing that plurality entails contradictions. Socrates replies that sensible things can partake of opposite Forms without paradox; the marvel would be to find the Forms themselves mixing with their opposites.

• Which things have Forms (130a-e)

  Socrates readily accepts Forms of likeness, one and many, justice, beauty and goodness, hesitates over man, fire and water, and refuses Forms of hair, mud and dirt for fear of falling into a pit of nonsense. Parmenides tells him that when philosophy has a firmer hold on him he will not despise even the meanest things.

• Whole or part: the day and the sail (130e-131e)

  If many things share one Form, the Form is either wholly in each, and so separate from itself, or divided among them. Socrates suggests the Form is like a day, one and the same in many places; Parmenides substitutes a sail spread over many people, so that each would share in only a part of Largeness or Equality.

• The regress of Largeness and the Forms as thoughts or patterns (131e-133a)

  Viewing Largeness together with large things yields a second Largeness, and so on endlessly. Socrates tries treating Forms as thoughts in souls, which leads to things made of thoughts; then as patterns fixed in nature of which things are likenesses, which brings back the regress through resemblance.

• The greatest difficulty: unknowable Forms and ignorant gods (133a-135c)

  Forms that exist by themselves are related only to Forms, and things among us only to each other: the master is master of a slave, not of Slavery itself. Then human knowledge cannot reach the Forms, and divine knowledge cannot reach human affairs. Parmenides nonetheless insists that denying the Forms would destroy the power of reasoning.

• The prescription of training (135c-137c)

  Socrates has tried to define the beautiful and the good before being exercised. Parmenides recommends Zeno's method, extended to examine the consequences of both affirming and denying a hypothesis. After protesting like Ibycus' old racehorse, he begins on his own hypothesis with young Aristoteles as answerer.

• The deductions on the One (137c-166c)

  First, a strictly single One has no parts, limits, place, motion, likeness or time, and cannot be named, known or even be. Second, a One that is turns out to be whole and parts, limited and unlimited, in motion and at rest, older and younger. An appendix on 'the moment' of change follows; further deductions treat the others and the hypothesis that the One is not, ending in the verdict that whether one is or is not, all things both are and are not.

Characters

• Parmenides of Elea, elder philosopher

  The great Eleatic thinker, about sixty-five, who taught that being is one. Here he is a patient but searching examiner of young Socrates and the reluctant leader of the closing exercise.

• Zeno of Elea, Parmenides' follower

  Author of the paradoxes against plurality, about forty, who explains that his book was a young man's counterattack and urges Parmenides to give the demonstration.

• Socrates, very young questioner

  Unusually, the one examined rather than the examiner; bold in proposing the Forms, honest about his hesitations, and told he needs training.

• Aristoteles, respondent in the second part

  The youngest present, chosen because he will not make difficulties and his answers will give the old man time to breathe; the text notes he later became one of the Thirty. Not the philosopher Aristotle.

• Cephalus of Clazomenae, outer narrator

  A visitor from Ionia who has come with fellow citizens interested in philosophy to hear Antiphon's recitation.

• Antiphon, reciter

  Plato's half-brother, who once memorised the conversation from Pythodorus and has since turned to horsemanship.

• Pythodorus, original witness

  Friend of Zeno and host of the Eleatic visitors in the Ceramicus, whose report is the ultimate source of the narrative.

Lessons

• A great idea survives honest criticism

  Plato places his best-known doctrine in the mouth of a young Socrates and lets an older master press hard objections against it, without supplying full answers. Students learn that taking an idea seriously means stating the strongest objections to it, not only the arguments in its favour.

  • Why might Plato have chosen to show Socrates being corrected rather than correcting others?
  • Which of Parmenides' objections seems most serious to you, and why?
  • What is the difference between abandoning a belief because of difficulties and holding it while working on them?

• Do not despise the meanest things

  Socrates refuses Forms of hair, mud and dirt as beneath philosophy; Parmenides says that maturity will cure him of caring about what people find dignified. The passage invites reflection on whether truth extends to humble and ugly things, a question with echoes in the doctrine that God made and sustains all things.

  • Why is Socrates afraid of a 'bottomless pit of nonsense'?
  • What does Parmenides mean by saying the young are too disposed to regard the opinions of men?
  • Can something lowly be worthy of serious study? Give an example from science or ordinary life.

• Without something fixed, the mind has nowhere to rest

  After demolishing several accounts of the Forms, Parmenides warns that giving up all stable natures would destroy the power of reasoning. The dialogue holds together two things students often separate: rigorous doubt about our explanations and confidence that there is an unchanging truth to be explained.

  • Summarise Parmenides' 'greatest difficulty' in your own words. What does it imply about the gods?
  • Why does Parmenides still refuse to let Socrates give up the Forms?
  • Is it reasonable to hold that truth is fixed while admitting that our account of it is incomplete?

• Training before defining

  Parmenides diagnoses Socrates' trouble as premature definition of the beautiful, the just and the good, and prescribes exercise: testing a hypothesis by tracing what follows if it is true and if it is false. The long second part is that exercise, demanding patience and accuracy more than inspiration.

  • What two steps does Parmenides add to Zeno's method?
  • Why does Parmenides compare himself to an old racehorse before beginning?
  • Choose a simple hypothesis (for example, 'the school has no rules') and work out three consequences of it being true and three of it being false.

Context

Parmenides of Elea, in southern Italy, wrote a hexameter poem early in the fifth century BC arguing that what is cannot come to be, change or be many. His follower Zeno defended him with paradoxes against plurality and motion. The meeting with a very young Socrates would fall around 450 BC; given the ages Plato assigns, it is chronologically possible but probably a literary invention, and no other source confirms it. The elaborate frame, with Plato's own half-brother Antiphon reciting from memory, signals distance between the reader and the event.

Composition

The Parmenides is usually placed after the Republic and Phaedo, which present the theory of Forms confidently, and before or near the Theaetetus and Sophist, perhaps in the 370s or 360s BC; the date is not certain. The library's text is Benjamin Jowett's translation (3rd ed., 1892), Project Gutenberg #1687, preceded by Jowett's long introduction. Stephanus numbers given here are not printed in that text and are approximate.

Reception

Aristotle repeats the regress objection as the 'third man' argument. Neoplatonists from Plotinus to Proclus treated the second part as Plato's deepest theology, reading the first hypothesis as the One beyond being, and Proclus wrote a vast commentary on it. Modern analytic philosophers revived interest in the first part's arguments in the twentieth century. The work was included in the Great Books of the Western World (2nd ed., 1990), volume 6.

Comparisons

• Sophist

  In the Sophist an Eleatic Stranger, a follower of Parmenides, commits 'parricide' against him by arguing that not-being in some sense is, and develops the 'greatest kinds' whose mixing the young Socrates had said would amaze him.

• Theaetetus

  Socrates in the Theaetetus recalls meeting Parmenides as a very young man and declines to examine him, a nod back to this dialogue; both works test accounts of knowledge without reaching a settled definition.

• Metaphysics

  Aristotle's critique of separate Forms in Metaphysics A and M uses the third-man regress and the problem of participation, objections Plato had already staged against himself here.

• The Republic

  The Republic presents the Form of the Good, the divided line and the cave with little argument about how participation works; the Parmenides supplies the hard questions those images leave open.

• Enneads

  Plotinus took the first deduction's One, beyond being and knowledge, as an account of the first principle, and his hierarchy of One, Intellect and Soul was later mapped onto the dialogue's hypotheses.

Quotes

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Years later, Socrates meets Aristoteles, now a member of the Thirty. Write a short exchange in which Socrates asks what the training in argument did, or failed to do, for his character.

• Essay

  Choose one objection Parmenides raises against the Forms (whole or part, the regress, or the unknowable Forms) and argue whether a defender of the Forms can answer it.

• Classroom

  Draw Socrates' image of the day and Parmenides' image of the sail side by side. In a paragraph, explain why the change of image changes the argument.

• Poetry

  Write a short poem in the voice of Ibycus' old racehorse, trembling at the start of a course it knows too well, and connect it to Parmenides beginning his exercise.

Further Reading

• Plato and Parmenides, F. M. Cornford

  Translation of Parmenides' poem and Plato's dialogue with a running commentary.

• Plato's Parmenides, Constance C. Meinwald

  Argues that the second part distinguishes two ways of predicating and so answers the first part's objections.

• Parmenides' Lesson, Kenneth M. Sayre

  Translation and commentary reading the dialogue as preparation for Plato's later metaphysics.

• Sophist, Plato

  Plato's later return to Eleatic questions about being and not-being.