Parmenides
ParmenidesINTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.PARMENIDESCopyright
Parmenides
Plato
INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
The awe with which Plato regarded the character of 'the
great' Parmenides has extended to the dialogue which he calls by
his name. None of the writings of Plato have been more copiously
illustrated, both in ancient and modern times, and in none of them
have the interpreters been more at variance with one another. Nor
is this surprising. For the Parmenides is more fragmentary and
isolated than any other dialogue, and the design of the writer is
not expressly stated. The date is uncertain; the relation to the
other writings of Plato is also uncertain; the connexion between
the two parts is at first sight extremely obscure; and in the
latter of the two we are left in doubt as to whether Plato is
speaking his own sentiments by the lips of Parmenides, and
overthrowing him out of his own mouth, or whether he is propounding
consequences which would have been admitted by Zeno and Parmenides
themselves. The contradictions which follow from the hypotheses of
the one and many have been regarded by some as transcendental
mysteries; by others as a mere illustration, taken at random, of a
new method. They seem to have been inspired by a sort of
dialectical frenzy, such as may be supposed to have prevailed in
the Megarian School (compare Cratylus, etc.). The criticism on his
own doctrine of Ideas has also been considered, not as a real
criticism, but as an exuberance of the metaphysical imagination
which enabled Plato to go beyond himself. To the latter part of the
dialogue we may certainly apply the words in which he himself
describes the earlier philosophers in the Sophist: 'They went on
their way rather regardless of whether we understood them or
not.'The Parmenides in point of style is one of the best of the
Platonic writings; the first portion of the dialogue is in no way
defective in ease and grace and dramatic interest; nor in the
second part, where there was no room for such qualities, is there
any want of clearness or precision. The latter half is an exquisite
mosaic, of which the small pieces are with the utmost fineness and
regularity adapted to one another. Like the Protagoras, Phaedo, and
others, the whole is a narrated dialogue, combining with the mere
recital of the words spoken, the observations of the reciter on the
effect produced by them. Thus we are informed by him that Zeno and
Parmenides were not altogether pleased at the request of Socrates
that they would examine into the nature of the one and many in the
sphere of Ideas, although they received his suggestion with
approving smiles. And we are glad to be told that Parmenides was
'aged but well-favoured,' and that Zeno was 'very good-looking';
also that Parmenides affected to decline the great argument, on
which, as Zeno knew from experience, he was not unwilling to enter.
The character of Antiphon, the half-brother of Plato, who had once
been inclined to philosophy, but has now shown the hereditary
disposition for horses, is very naturally described. He is the sole
depositary of the famous dialogue; but, although he receives the
strangers like a courteous gentleman, he is impatient of the
trouble of reciting it. As they enter, he has been giving orders to
a bridle-maker; by this slight touch Plato verifies the previous
description of him. After a little persuasion he is induced to
favour the Clazomenians, who come from a distance, with a
rehearsal. Respecting the visit of Zeno and Parmenides to Athens,
we may observe—first, that such a visit is consistent with dates,
and may possibly have occurred; secondly, that Plato is very likely
to have invented the meeting ('You, Socrates, can easily invent
Egyptian tales or anything else,' Phaedrus); thirdly, that no
reliance can be placed on the circumstance as determining the date
of Parmenides and Zeno; fourthly, that the same occasion appears to
be referred to by Plato in two other places (Theaet.,
Soph.).Many interpreters have regarded the Parmenides as a 'reductio
ad absurdum' of the Eleatic philosophy. But would Plato have been
likely to place this in the mouth of the great Parmenides himself,
who appeared to him, in Homeric language, to be 'venerable and
awful,' and to have a 'glorious depth of mind'? (Theaet.). It may
be admitted that he has ascribed to an Eleatic stranger in the
Sophist opinions which went beyond the doctrines of the Eleatics.
But the Eleatic stranger expressly criticises the doctrines in
which he had been brought up; he admits that he is going to 'lay
hands on his father Parmenides.' Nothing of this kind is said of
Zeno and Parmenides. How then, without a word of explanation, could
Plato assign to them the refutation of their own
tenets?The conclusion at which we must arrive is that the Parmenides
is not a refutation of the Eleatic philosophy. Nor would such an
explanation afford any satisfactory connexion of the first and
second parts of the dialogue. And it is quite inconsistent with
Plato's own relation to the Eleatics. For of all the pre-Socratic
philosophers, he speaks of them with the greatest respect. But he
could hardly have passed upon them a more unmeaning slight than to
ascribe to their great master tenets the reverse of those which he
actually held.Two preliminary remarks may be made. First, that whatever
latitude we may allow to Plato in bringing together by a 'tour de
force,' as in the Phaedrus, dissimilar themes, yet he always in
some way seeks to find a connexion for them. Many threads join
together in one the love and dialectic of the Phaedrus. We cannot
conceive that the great artist would place in juxtaposition two
absolutely divided and incoherent subjects. And hence we are led to
make a second remark: viz. that no explanation of the Parmenides
can be satisfactory which does not indicate the connexion of the
first and second parts. To suppose that Plato would first go out of
his way to make Parmenides attack the Platonic Ideas, and then
proceed to a similar but more fatal assault on his own doctrine of
Being, appears to be the height of absurdity.Perhaps there is no passage in Plato showing greater
metaphysical power than that in which he assails his own theory of
Ideas. The arguments are nearly, if not quite, those of Aristotle;
they are the objections which naturally occur to a modern student
of philosophy. Many persons will be surprised to find Plato
criticizing the very conceptions which have been supposed in after
ages to be peculiarly characteristic of him. How can he have placed
himself so completely without them? How can he have ever persisted
in them after seeing the fatal objections which might be urged
against them? The consideration of this difficulty has led a recent
critic (Ueberweg), who in general accepts the authorised canon of
the Platonic writings, to condemn the Parmenides as spurious. The
accidental want of external evidence, at first sight, seems to
favour this opinion.In answer, it might be sufficient to say, that no ancient
writing of equal length and excellence is known to be spurious. Nor
is the silence of Aristotle to be hastily assumed; there is at
least a doubt whether his use of the same arguments does not
involve the inference that he knew the work. And, if the Parmenides
is spurious, like Ueberweg, we are led on further than we
originally intended, to pass a similar condemnation on the
Theaetetus and Sophist, and therefore on the Politicus (compare
Theaet., Soph.). But the objection is in reality fanciful, and
rests on the assumption that the doctrine of the Ideas was held by
Plato throughout his life in the same form. For the truth is, that
the Platonic Ideas were in constant process of growth and
transmutation; sometimes veiled in poetry and mythology, then again
emerging as fixed Ideas, in some passages regarded as absolute and
eternal, and in others as relative to the human mind, existing in
and derived from external objects as well as transcending them. The
anamnesis of the Ideas is chiefly insisted upon in the mythical
portions of the dialogues, and really occupies a very small space
in the entire works of Plato. Their transcendental existence is not
asserted, and is therefore implicitly denied in the Philebus;
different forms are ascribed to them in the Republic, and they are
mentioned in the Theaetetus, the Sophist, the Politicus, and the
Laws, much as Universals would be spoken of in modern books.
Indeed, there are very faint traces of the transcendental doctrine
of Ideas, that is, of their existence apart from the mind, in any
of Plato's writings, with the exception of the Meno, the Phaedrus,
the Phaedo, and in portions of the Republic. The stereotyped form
which Aristotle has given to them is not found in Plato (compare
Essay on the Platonic Ideas in the Introduction to the
Meno.)The full discussion of this subject involves a comprehensive
survey of the philosophy of Plato, which would be out of place
here. But, without digressing further from the immediate subject of
the Parmenides, we may remark that Plato is quite serious in his
objections to his own doctrines: nor does Socrates attempt to offer
any answer to them. The perplexities which surround the one and
many in the sphere of the Ideas are also alluded to in the
Philebus, and no answer is given to them. Nor have they ever been
answered, nor can they be answered by any one else who separates
the phenomenal from the real. To suppose that Plato, at a later
period of his life, reached a point of view from which he was able
to answer them, is a groundless assumption. The real progress of
Plato's own mind has been partly concealed from us by the dogmatic
statements of Aristotle, and also by the degeneracy of his own
followers, with whom a doctrine of numbers quickly superseded
Ideas.As a preparation for answering some of the difficulties which
have been suggested, we may begin by sketching the first portion of
the dialogue:—Cephalus, of Clazomenae in Ionia, the birthplace of
Anaxagoras, a citizen of no mean city in the history of philosophy,
who is the narrator of the dialogue, describes himself as meeting
Adeimantus and Glaucon in the Agora at Athens. 'Welcome, Cephalus:
can we do anything for you in Athens?' 'Why, yes: I came to ask a
favour of you. First, tell me your half-brother's name, which I
have forgotten—he was a mere child when I was last here;—I know his
father's, which is Pyrilampes.' 'Yes, and the name of our brother
is Antiphon. But why do you ask?' 'Let me introduce to you some
countrymen of mine, who are lovers of philosophy; they have heard
that Antiphon remembers a conversation of Socrates with Parmenides
and Zeno, of which the report came to him from Pythodorus, Zeno's
friend.' 'That is quite true.' 'And can they hear the dialogue?'
'Nothing easier; in the days of his youth he made a careful study
of the piece; at present, his thoughts have another direction: he
takes after his grandfather, and has given up philosophy for
horses.''We went to look for him, and found him giving instructions
to a worker in brass about a bridle. When he had done with him, and
had learned from his brothers the purpose of our visit, he saluted
me as an old acquaintance, and we asked him to repeat the dialogue.
At first, he complained of the trouble, but he soon consented. He
told us that Pythodorus had described to him the appearance of
Parmenides and Zeno; they had come to Athens at the great
Panathenaea, the former being at the time about sixty-five years
old, aged but well-favoured—Zeno, who was said to have been beloved
of Parmenides in the days of his youth, about forty, and very
good-looking:—that they lodged with Pythodorus at the Ceramicus
outside the wall, whither Socrates, then a very young man, came to
see them: Zeno was reading one of his theses, which he had nearly
finished, when Pythodorus entered with Parmenides and Aristoteles,
who was afterwards one of the Thirty. When the recitation was
completed, Socrates requested that the first thesis of the treatise
might be read again.''You mean, Zeno,' said Socrates, 'to argue that being, if it
is many, must be both like and unlike, which is a contradiction;
and each division of your argument is intended to elicit a similar
absurdity, which may be supposed to follow from the assumption that
being is many.' 'Such is my meaning.' 'I see,' said Socrates,
turning to Parmenides, 'that Zeno is your second self in his
writings too; you prove admirably that the all is one: he gives
proofs no less convincing that the many are nought. To deceive the
world by saying the same thing in entirely different forms, is a
strain of art beyond most of us.' 'Yes, Socrates,' said Zeno; 'but
though you are as keen as a Spartan hound, you do not quite catch
the motive of the piece, which was only intended to protect
Parmenides against ridicule by showing that the hypothesis of the
existence of the many involved greater absurdities than the
hypothesis of the one. The book was a youthful composition of mine,
which was stolen from me, and therefore I had no choice about the
publication.' 'I quite believe you,' said Socrates; 'but will you
answer me a question? I should like to know, whether you would
assume an idea of likeness in the abstract, which is the
contradictory of unlikeness in the abstract, by participation in
either or both of which things are like or unlike or partly both.
For the same things may very well partake of like and unlike in the
concrete, though like and unlike in the abstract are
irreconcilable. Nor does there appear to me to be any absurdity in
maintaining that the same things may partake of the one and many,
though I should be indeed surprised to hear that the absolute one
is also many. For example, I, being many, that is to say, having
many parts or members, am yet also one, and partake of the one,
being one of seven who are here present (compare Philebus). This is
not an absurdity, but a truism. But I should be amazed if there
were a similar entanglement in the nature of the ideas themselves,
nor can I believe that one and many, like and unlike, rest and
motion, in the abstract, are capable either of admixture or of
separation.'