Past Events › Symposium Platonicum XII

La deuxième partie du Parménide : identité et altérité de l’intelligible Quel rapport entretient la deuxième partie du Parménide avec la première partie ? Parménide précise que l’exercice proposé doit porter sur les « choses qui sont par excellence objets de la raison et dont on pourrait estimer que ce sont des Formes » (135e2-4). Nous essaierons de montrer dans cette présentation que Parménide suggère dans la deuxième partie du dialogue un changement de point de vue : si les apories de la première partie étaient causées par l’analyse de la notion de participation du sensible à l’intelligible, la deuxième partie, à travers les huit séries de déductions, développe une réflexion concernant la nécessité pour l’intelligible de posséder une identité propre sans toutefois que cette identité implique qu’il faille considérer les Formes intelligibles comme autarciques et complètement isolées. En réalité, chaque Forme, dans sa dimension d’altérité, doit s’ouvrir sur ce qui lui est [...]

Is the Sophist a sequel to the Parmenides?  The question of the unity of the world in the two dialogues In his 2002 seminal paper, Brisson proposes a new interpretation of Plato’s Parmenides, whereby he defends the view that the dialogue is best understood as being addressed, from beginning to end, to the question of the historical Parmenides, namely ‘Is the world one?’. One strength of Brisson’s interpretation is that it allows us to understand better the notoriously vexed question of the relation between the two parts of the dialogue: according to his interpretation, the first part stages how the theory of Forms is initially a response to the Eleatics, whereas the second part offers an example of how the Eleatics themselves address the problem. Brisson’s thesis is illuminating in many respects. Nevertheless, the question remains as to whether and how the issues raised in the Parmenides are addressed by [...]

«Théétète» & «Parménide»: le problème des parallèles structurels et discursifs.   L'expérience montre que l'étude des textes de Platon peut être basé sur une variété de procédures d'interprétation. Les tendances des dernières décennies ont fait sérieusement trembler des stratégies traditionnelles de la lecture des dialogues de Platon. Et surtout, il nous semble clair que la tentative d'identifier la question principalle du texte concrete, en procédant de la division habituelle en physique,  logique, l'éthique, l'ontologie, le gnoseologie, l'épistémologie, ne conduisent pas à la réussite. Dans ce cadre nous voyons maintenant la possibilité de comparer les dialogues, qui sont lieés aux disciplines différentes. Ce droit de comparaison était largement bloqué par les modèles précédents d'études de Platon. Cela est particulièrement vrai pour des dialogues, qui sont unis dans certains cycles - soit par leur sujet dramatique, soit par les noms et l'identification philosophique des personnages qui participent dans ces dialogues. L'un de [...]

From the Theaetetus to the Parmenides   This paper will show the continuity of considerations after the Parmenides by observing the relationship between the Parmenides and the Theaetetus, paying particular attention to the expression ‘nothing is one thing just by itself’ in the Theaetetus and the conditional phrase, ‘if one is not’ in the second part of the Parmenides. Although there have been many discussions on interpretations of this latter phrase, scholars have paid little attention to the phrase in the Theaetetus: ‘nothing is one thing just by itself (ἓν μὲν αὐτὸ καθ᾽ αὑτὸ οὐδέν ἐστίν, 152d2-3)’. However, there is a close relationship between these phrases, and I will interpret  these phrases from the first part of the Theaetetus. For many years, scholars have debated the Third Man Problem in the Parmenides based on the analysis by Vlastos. While Vlastos analyses the argument, he neglects the words ‘seem (δοκεῖν)’and ‘appear (φαίνεσθαι)’ [...]

How does the Sophist reply to the Parmenides? -or- Why the One is not among the Megista Gene   This paper explores the relation of the Sophist to the Parmenides; in what ways the Sophist responds to the questions, aporias and demands raised in the Parmenides. It aims to show how the problems encountered in the first part and the categories used in the second part of the Parmenides relate to the solutions proposed in the Sophist. The Parmenides has been interpreted in various ways: as a logical exercise and as a theory about gods, even as an example of perfect symmetry in impossibility. It has been acclaimed as the best collection of antinomies ever produced, but also, as an impossible map; how the theory of forms should not be thought. Its purpose; a parody, or – training; pedagogic, exercise necessary for the proper way to truth. Not, however, to [...]

The Second Part of the Parmenides as Plato's "Way of Seeming":  What the Equestrian Theme Can Tell Us. Horses and horsemanship are prominent in the pages of the Parmenides that precede its second part.  I propose that the system of allusions their mention generates has some bearing on the status Plato intended us to attribute to the arguments that follow the prologue.   Antiphon, the immediate source of transmission for the discussion with Parmenides, is described as a dedicated horseman (126c), and first shown to us at his home in the company of a blacksmith, who is there to get instructions about a bridle that Antiphon would like fixed up (127a).  In his original poem, the real Parmenides portrays himself as a charioteer who drives his horses to meet with a goddess, whose words he then transmits to the audience for his poem.  We have here a parallel, then:  two [...]

‘Why is the recovery of thought and philosophy conducted through an investigation into the one?’   The outcome of the arguments in the first part of the Parmenides is an aporia and Socrates’ profession (135c7) that he does not at all know where to turn in response to it. The aporia is as radical as can be imagined, because it concerns the prospect of philosophy, and indeed thought in general, being undermined. This prospect, Parmenides has concluded (135b-c), is a consequence of giving up on the existence of Forms, and on our desire to mark off and define them, in response to the series of objections that have been levelled against Forms. The remainder of the dialogue is cast as at least the beginning of a recovery from this predicament, conducted in terms of an extended investigation into the one. But why is the recovery conducted in terms of this [...]

Parmenides on Trial: Infinite difficulties and one challenge   In Plato’s Parmenides the reader faces a fictional Parmenides who, in the second half of his exercise, treads the very path which, according to the poem of the historical philosopher, is utterly inscrutable (παναπευθέα, Parm. 2, 6). This puzzling, yet fundamental observation is the starting point for the following claim: The Parmenides represents an invitation to examine critically Eleatic philosophy, which is of central importance to Plato, by revealing some of its difficulties. In light of this assumption, Plato’s masterstroke is to choose the initiator of Parmenidean thought to first question it himself, and to undertake this by the means of his own student Zeno, the ‘Eleatic Palamedes’ (Phdr. 261d6). For the exercise is explicitly (Prm. 135d8) based on Zeno’s method and can be considered a consistent further development of the same. This interpretation presents at least two advantages: firstly, it [...]

Apuleian Evidence regarding Pre-Plotinian Interpretation of the Parmenides   The multi-level metaphysical interpretation of Parmenides surfaces openly in Plotinus, most obviously in Ennead V.i [10] 8, where Plotinus is denying his originality. Furthermore, only three of the nine ‘hypotheses’ are correlated with a metaphysical level, so that Plotinus says nothing about the referent of the final two pictures that emerge from the affirmation of the One, nor about what emerges from its denial. For complete interpretations Proclus had to employ Amelius and Porphyry. Plotinus himself presupposes such an interpretation of Parmenides, rather than announcing it. Proclus does not credit Plotinus with the invention of such an interpretation, since at Theol.Plat. 2.4.31.4-22 he thinks that Origenes, having shared the same education, ought to have attributed the same transcendence to the One, following the first hypothesis. Ammonius Saccas is thus credited with separating the Ones described in the first two hypotheses. Clearly, [...]

“Plotinus and Parmenides”   In 1939, F.M. Cornford published his Plato and Parmenides. In the course of this influential commentary on the dialogue, Cornford takes a few pages to heap scorn on what he calls “the Neoplatonic interpretation” of the hypotheses of the second part of the dialogue.  In part owing to this dismissal, and no doubt in part owing to many others who have followed Cornford in their work on Parmenides, interpretations of the “exercise,”  especially in the English-speaking world, have not been fruitful.  Even among those who see in the second part of the dialogue a positive contribution to the solution to the problems raised in the first part of the dialogue, it is supposed that the superposition of a One above Being is irrelevant to that contribution. In this paper, I hope to show that (1) there is an entire “family” of interpretations of Parmenides that can [...]

The Ground of Being in the Parmenides' First and Second Hypotheses: Damascius' Inheritance of Proclus' Reading of the First Hypothesis   Like nearly all Neoplatonists, Proclus and Damascius were well-known for holding an ontological reading of the Parmenides' hypotheses in the second half of the dialogue, according to which the first three hypotheses respectively describe the three main principles of all things: the One, which is prior to Being; Being-itself, or the intelligible world; and Soul and all particular souls. In the background for both philosophers, as with most Neoplatonists, is a longstanding problem of explaining how the second hypothesis' affirmations come to be from the negations of the first hypothesis. This in turn corresponds with the problem of how the principle of Being comes to be from the first principle which is beyond being, so that Being is an effect that comes from a cause that shares none of [...]