Troubling Play: Meaning and Entity in Plato's Parmenides

Chapter 5. If the All Is a Many, Change Is Impossible

Chapter 5 If the All Is a Many, Change Is Impossible “Nonetheless, be well aware that you cannot yet say or grasp the aporia there is, if you are going to always set out one eidos for every distinction among things that exist.” —Parmenides (133a13–b3) The Greatest Perplexity In his initial exchanges with Socrates, before beginning his dialectical game, Parmenides warned that Socrates did not yet realize the aporia implied in distinguishing a singular form in itself, apart from beings (133a–b). Suppose someone asserts that, if the forms are as we say they ought to be, they cannot be known? At this point in their introductory exchange, Parmenides had already raised difficulties about the extent of ideas (130a–e); he has already invoked the dilemma of participation (131a–c), the paradox of divisibility (131c–e), the largeness regress (131e–132b), and reduced to absurdity Socrates’ efforts to conceive the forms as thoughts or paradigms (132b–133a). Shortly after this, Parmenides informs Socrates that he must reorient his questioning toward the eide mthemselves (135e). What precisely, is this greatest aporia that Socrates does not yet apprehend , but that he can only discover if he focuses on the forms grasped in logos, the eide m? And how could this eidetic paradox be more difficult than the regresses and other difficulties relating to how sensible particulars are unified by the form? The form of this greater aporia that Parmenides’ game discloses for Socrates invokes the paradoxical wholeness of to eon in the fullness of ale mtheia. Parmenides is showing Socrates that if being is one in itself, then this oneness cannot be truly spoken in mortal logos; for insofar as the disclosure of being is unified, then it is also irreducibly ambiguous / non119 consistent. If the formality of logos involves singularity and universality— as we philosophers say it does—then how is intelligibility possible? Parmenides’ game has decisively undercut the notion of ideal presence by showing that even if the eide mcould allow assimilation of particulars in a perfectly consistent synthesis—as Socrates initially believed—this conception of formal universality would strip the eidos of its singularity. This paradox of unmixed ale mtheia implies that being itself is a sign function , not a term. The third beginning will show that, without the contrast allowed by the anticipation of “will be” based on the retention of “was,” “is” would be entirely empty of significance. The significance of any “is” depends on this juxtaposition. The existence of the one is disclosed only alongside this nonpresence at the heart of presence. The Central Problematic: Repetition or Discontinuity? The motif of logos as repetition and discontinuity is made thematic from the beginning of the Parmenides. Cephalus, the narrator, learned the discourse from Antiphon, who learned it from Pythodorus (126a–127a), who cameinwhenthepresentationofZeno’sreductionstoabsurditywasnearly finished. Both the first and the second beginnings culminate in exposure of the same problem: how can language disclose the nature of beings that are constantly changing? The Socratic enigma of the limitations of logos and absence at the origin—already discernible in the Republic—informs Parmenides’ troublesome game. The first beginning shows unification without reference to that which is unified to be utterly empty and meaningless (141d–e). And the second beginning indicates ways that logos can succeed and fail to disclose the nature of beings: unification in logos must involve acceptable phrasings , modified grammatically according to rules and with reference to the particular circumstances of their use in varying contexts. Both beginnings make clear that ale mtheia in logos depends not only on grammar, but also on logic: if a discourse is to be disclosive of the nature of beings, it must avoid absurdities and contradictions. The second beginning illustrates how these absurdities can arise or be avoided: unintelligibility about entities arises in the improper combination of terms, phrases, propositions, arguments, or more general linguistic tropoi such as empirical and nonempirical orientations. The first and second beginnings together indicate the need for timeless logical rules that govern the unification of expressions by is, was, and will be. These formal rules would be atemporal inso120 TROUBLING PLAY far as they would be repeatable in all circumstances, all places and times. Only such rules could allow differentiation of the many senses of being disclosed in the second beginning. The problem is that even such ruled-governed disclosure of...