Plato’s Parmenides

Part I: Aporia

Part I Aporia 130a3–b3 While Socrates was saying that, Pythodorus told us he himself was thinking at each point that Parmenides and Zeno would grow vexed, but they paid great attention to Socrates and glancing frequently at each other smiled as in admiration of him. Now, when he finished, Parmenides intervened: —Socrates, said he, how worthy of admiration is your urge b toward arguments. But tell me: Have you yourself thus distinguished , as you say, on the one hand some forms [ei[dh] themselves apart [cwrivˇ], and on the other hand apart the things that participate in them? Parmenides reformulates Socrates’ position, stressing the separation of sensible things and forms. Cwrivˇ (130b2, b3, b4), ‘apart’, is used by the historical Parmenides when first introducing (illusory) plurality. (Cf. fr. 8.56.) True, it is Socrates who brings up the term in this discussion, at 129d7—but as one aspect or mode of the forms’ being. Socrates says he ‘would admire him wonderfully’ who would show forms both to be apart and to mix with each other. (Cf. 129d7–e2; for wonder as a mainspring of philosophy, cf. above, p. 51. But this is precisely what Parmenides opposes: he will allow forms and sensible things either to combine (and then they must be entities of the same type) or to be apart (and, thus, entities of two different types), but not both. For dichotomy as standard Eleatic procedure, see the Introduction, above, p. 4. 130b3–e4 And do you think that likeness itself is something apart from the likeness that we have, and the one as well as the many, and all the things you just heard from Zeno? —I do, said Socrates. —And such things, said Parmenides, as some form in itself of just and of beautiful and of good and, again, of all suchlike? 53 —Yes, he said. c —What, then? A form of man apart from us and from all that are like us, some form itself of man or of fire or also of water? —I have often been perplexed, he said, about these, Parmenides , whether one must speak about them as we did about those, or otherwise. —And about these too, Socrates, which would also seem ridiculous , such as hair and mud and dirt or any other most base and lowly thing: are you perplexed whether one must say that of each d of these too there is a form apart, which is again other than the things we handle, or not? —In no way, said Socrates. Rather, those things we see such as they are; to think of a form of those would be exceedingly strange. And yet, sometimes I am worried whether it should not be the same case with all things; but then, whenever I get to this point, I pull back in fear that once I fall into such a pit of nonsense I am lost; and I then go back there, to those things that we were just saying have forms, and I spend my time dealing with them. —For you are still young, Socrates, said Parmenides, and phie losophy has not yet taken hold of you as I believe it will, someday, when you will despise none of these things; but meanwhile you are still mindful of people’s opinions, because of your age. 130d1, ‘the’] Reading with Heindorf, Diès, and Cornford. A preliminary problem: What kinds of separate forms are there? What real unities are there, which do not appear as such in our world but are necessary for sensible things to be what they are? Parmenides suggests four kinds of forms: 1, 2. Mathematical and axiological concepts, such as likeness, or just, beautiful , and good. These first two kinds have not been problematic for Plato since the Meno and the Phaedo. There is a simple reason for accepting them: they never appear unadulterated, and of them it might understandably (although metaphorically) be said that sensible things “want to be” like them (Phaedo 74d9–10) but “fall short of them” (e1; cf. d6, e3–4). The unity of the just or the equal is not apparent in sensible things, and thus warrants the postulation of a just itself or an equal itself , which are those desired unities. 3. On the other hand, natural things, like man, are rather well-defined unities as they are. (Water and fire also, each taken as a whole, are wellde fined, natural unities.)1 Although sensible, they are what they are, 54...