Troubling Play: Meaning and Entity in Plato's Parmenides

Chapter 4. From Irony to Comedy

Chapter 4 From Irony to Comedy “IwouldratherbewrongwithPlatothanrightwithsuchmenasthese [Pythagoreans].” —Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes I, 17 Logos as Structure and Process Like the Parmenides, the Cratylus raises questions about language and the manner of learning about being. And like Parmenides, a mature Socrates in the Cratylus challenges his young interlocutors with ironic and humorous reductions to absurdity. Socrates throws into question the notion that names(onomata)resemblebeings.Cratylusclaimstheremustbesomebasis for language in nature (phusis), while Hermogenes believes that linguistic usage and naming is a matter of convention (sunthemkem) and agreement (homologia). Socrates challenges both these interpretations of the beginnings of logos, and indicates a third alternative. But though it is clear that Socrates’ third way is intended to avoid Protagorean relativism, it is also evident that the role of custom and social practice in the assigning of terms is not entirely ruled out: in fact Socrates claims that discourse (legein) is a kind of praxis (387b8–9). But near the end of the Cratylus, Socrates discloses the reason for his skepticismregardinghypothesesontheoriginsoflogos.Wecannotanswer such questions because we do not know the manner (tropos) for learning about and discovering ta onta, or what exists (439b). And yet Socrates is surprisingly earnest in urging that there must be ideai named in language. The beautiful and the good are terms that indicate eide m; these allow intelligibility by holding their form, for the flux of chronos in itself is unintelligible (Crat. 439c–440d). In light of all this, how are we to understand this Socratic alternative, that existence has a dimension of stable form? For the Parmenides also involves the effort to understand ousia in light of time. IfthestructureoftheParmenidesistakenasbeingunambiguous,then the dialogue is utterly contradictory, but if it is said to be noncontradic91 tory then it is thoroughly ambiguous. Plato ensured such questioning by indicating schematization and yet undermining it. For whichever interpretationoneprefers ,contradictoryorambiguous,thedialogueeludesthe very form that it suggests. If the effort to maintain an interpretation that discounts ambiguity is carried so far as to allow actual contradiction, this would not eliminate syntactic amphiboly.1 Furthermore, at 135e–136c, Parmenides mentions eight beginnings within one integrated inquiry, but in fact there are nine explicit and many more implicit returns to the beginnings (archai). Pros hauto and pros allo orientations are interchanged and juxtaposed throughout the dialogue. These considerations imply that an interpretation that purports to overcome both contradiction and ambiguity in fact takes one ever further from the actual text. The problem is compounded by the history of the manuscripts. As is well known, research has indicated errors in copying and other changes.2 Obviously, if a text is ironic, such issues become more difficult to determine with precision. The Parmenides is ironic, and there are deductions withindeductions,implicitlyaswellasexplicitly.Moreover,timeandtranslation efface the plays on words, allusions, and distinctions that were signi ficant for Plato’s contemporaries. But, even if we divide the dialogue indefinitely by focusing on ambiguities and difficulties of interpretation, nevertheless it is informed by the wholeness of a unified theme. The only alternativeistothinkphilosophically,alongwiththesilentSocrates,about this unifying theme, and see which specific questions about the structure of the text are resolved. Plato, in fact, makes imperative this philosophical engagement with his texts by the use of irony and other means. What then is the philosophically significant, unifying theme of Plato’s Parmenides? Chronos is made thematic in the Parmenides beginning in the initial passages; for the account of the dialogue is related long after the deaths of its participants. The narrator Cephalus originally heard it from Antiphon who heard it from Pythodorus (126a–127a). Because Pythodorus came in when Zeno’s arguments were nearly finished, the ostensible source of the repetition was present for only part of the original discussion (127d). Plato situates the Parmenides by means of these dramatic chronological removes because, as the Phaedrus and Seventh Letter make clear, Plato held that there can be no adequate disclosure of what exists in logos. These texts suggest not only an awareness on Plato’s part of difficulties relating to the history of the interpretation of manuscripts, but also, and more importantly, fundamental and immediate problems involving the disclosure of truth in languages. This is one of the primary reasons for the variations in mode of presentation and form throughout the Platonic 92 TROUBLING PLAY corpus. Socratic irony and the dialogue form indicate Plato’s concern that we follow him in questioning the subject...