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Chapter 1. Troubling Play
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Chapter 1 Troubling Play “. . . I have never written of these things; there is not and will not be any written work of Plato’s. What are now called his are the works of a Socrates made fair and young.” —The Second Letter Paideia in the Parmenides In studying Plato’s dialogues, especially later dialogues such as the Parmenides, we learn that whatever aspect of being we focus on, we always seem to uncover a dialectical interplay of what flows and what abides. For example, unity in the Parmenides manifests as many senses as “to be” does. Apparently, to exist at all, in whatever manner, is to stand out as a unified individual from a multiplicity. Not only does unity always seem to be displayed alongside being in any entity, but insofar as “unity” and “being” signify distinct natures, “difference” is also implicitly manifested alongside these two. Along the same lines, Socrates indicates in the Philebus (beginning at 23e) that not only does “the limited” reveal itself as an interplay of the limited and the unlimited, of the definite and the indefinite, but even “the unlimited” appears to be a synthesis: the unlimited is in a sense limited, just as the limited is, in a sense, unlimited. The Parmenides indicates that inquiry into logos and being is a motivated path that discloses a plurality of modes of being, and that these are not subsumable under a single category.1 And yet ambiguity is only part of the story: Parmenides’ humorous equivocations still always revolve around a one. In showing Socrates how logos misses the mark, Parmenides indicates by ironic via negativa the way of ale mtheia. In order to evoke this dialectical interplay of unity and multiplicity, the language of philosophy must be both literal and figurative. Plato’s dialogues show how to learn and how to teach (paideuein) this discourse. The persistenceandstrivingofdialecticasdemonstratedbythematureSocrates in other dialogues (and by Plato’s Socratic caricature of Parmenides) shows 19 that metaphor lies at the very core of the literal. The priority of being in Platonic dialogue means that the supplementarity of the origin does not imply an unreasonable regress because intelligibility is complemented by a different mode of being. But although participatory being toward the good is one with the goal-oriented strivings of dialectic, being exceeds conceptualization . Consequently, Plato’s reinscription of Eleatic negative dialectic implies much more than the logical method of reduction to absurdity: elenchi are supplemented by irony and other nonliteral uses of discourse, such as Socratic analogy. In Socrates’ image of the divided line in the Republic (509c–511e), modes of disclosure are related both up and down with contrasting modes which serve to contextualize. The icon of the line itself complements the likeness of the good to the sun because orientation toward the good is the occasion for ale mtheia. This convergence of axiology and ontology holds throughout the Platonic corpus; and it becomes especially clear if we remember that the stated aim of Parmenides’ game is the philosophical training of Socrates. But the spirit of philosophy as dialogical (or the unity of logos as a one in many) is an analogue for being itself. For that spirit is neither in the teacher’s mind, nor in the thoughts of the learner. Socrates is engaged in philosophical training (gumnasia) through dialectical provocation. Because Socrates has arrived independently at the distinction between intelligiblemeaningsandthepresenceofanentity,Parmenidesjudgesthat heisreflectiveenoughtobenefitfromthistroublesomegame.Parmenides’ pivotal reduction to absurdity of efforts to represent the being of time shows why the distinction between literal and figurative must be recon- figured, but not dispensed with: these poles prove to be inextricable in that the ambiguity they imply is a property of even the most rigorous discourse . Plato’s use of the dialogue form is not insignificant, for philosophical poie msis is explicitly justified within the dialogues by repeated emphasis on the incompleteness and ambiguity of modes of disclosure in logos. In the Phaedrus Socrates questions the supposed stability and reliability of the gramma (written text), and leads Phaedrus toward the insight that active involvement in living dialogue (275c–277a) engages the learner and more adequately gives insight into the many modes of logos and being. The composition of a text is one form of the decomposition of being because written words can only remind one who has already achieved insight through active engagement. But it is not only the mummification of truths in treatises that reduces and misrepresents the being of philosophy...