Plato's Parmenides (review)

Book Reviews R. E. Allen. Plato's Parmenides. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. Pp. xv + 329 . Plato's Parmenides contains a translation of the Parmenides and a commentary on the dialogue. The translation is careful and accurate; the commentary is synoptic and difficult. Allen argues for a unified structure for all of the arguments in the Parmen- /des, and he relates the Parmenides both to the other dialogues and to Aristotle's criticisms of the Ideas. Allen's general view of the Parmenides is that it is an ordered structure of aporetic arguments, akin to those found in Aristotle's Metaphysics B, and that these arguments are serious but not fatal problems for the theory of Ideas. If one makes the correct admissions, then the perplexities can be solved; the Parmenides itself does not solve them, but it invites us to seek out the wrong admissions which lead to trouble. Aristotle, Allen believes, does not think that the aporiai can be solved because he accepts the major assumptions which cause them, for example, that phenomena are substantial entities. Hence many of Aristotle's criticisms of the Ideas are the same as those found in the Parmenides. Plato's Parmenides must be understood against the background of Allen's interpretation of Plato. Allen believes the following: (l) Dialogues of all periods have the theory of separate Ideas, although this theory undergoes some non-essential modifications ; (2) Phenomena are in toto dependent resemblances of the Ideas, and neither do they have natures of their own nor do they share characteristics with the Forms; and (3) The Idea of Largeness and a large thing, to pick an example, are not large in the same sense. Largeness is what it is to be large, and it cannot be in any way small, while large things are large but also can be small. Allen better expresses (3) in Plato's Parmenides (9o-9 l, 143-44 ) than in his earlier writings, but he does not provide any new arguments for the above claims except to show how the Parmenides fits with them. Allen begins his commentary with a delightful discussion of the participants and setting of the dialogue. He then proceeds to the first major assumption which causes the perplexities. Parmenides gets Socrates to admit both that Ideas are separate from phenomena and that phenomena are separate from Ideas (1o3, m5). The young Socrates also declines to posit Ideas for sortals and for vile and worthless things, anti the consequence of these admissions is that phenomena are in some respects substantial entities in their own right (112--13). The youthful Socrates's first wrong admission is that phenomena in some respects are substantial real entities. But in his middle dialogues, Allen claims, Plato does not hold this view. Plato posits Ideas for every character including sortals (to8), and Zeno's paradoxes require Ideas for every [4711 472 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 22:4 OCT 198 4 character (79). For Zeno's paradoxes are the result of his failure to distinguish naming and meaning or characters from the things characterized (77), and it thus follows that if John is white and a man, then white and man are identical. The theory of Ideas saves the coincidence of characters from a fatal identity. Allen then argues that since phenomena are substantial, the "dilemma of participation " is a plausible way to relate independent entities. "If there is participation, there is participation either in the whole of an Idea or in part of it; there can be participation neither in the whole Idea nor in part of it; therefore, there is no participation" (113). Allen argues that the "dilemma of participation" is fundamental to the arguments in the Parmenides (113). Socrates rejects as logically absurd each participant having the whole Idea in it, and hence if there is participation it mast be in the parts of an Idea. But this will not work because of the infinite series argument at 13za-b, and for other reasons. Largeness is large in the infinite series argument because it is a whole which is larger than any of its parts (134). Young Socrates tries to save participation by construing...