July 2019
Nonbeing and the Final Four Hypotheses in Plato’s Parmenides How much is the Platonic Parmenides based on the historical thinker himself? While the question is obviously ridden with difficulties, one must nevertheless attempt an answer since Plato presents his philosophy as the true heir to Parmenides’ thought. It is of some interest to inquire into how Plato portrays Parmenides so that the nature of his disagreements with the latter can be more precisely located. This paper is a partial attempt to tackle this issue with respect to the question of nonbeing. Parmenides’ poem prohibits one from thinking nonbeing by the following reasoning. Since thinking is always thinking something, and something is something that is, then nonbeing cannot be thought (DK 28B3, B6, B7). By contrast, the Platonic Parmenides outlines a program of mental gymnastics or dialectical exercise (Parm. 135c8-9), which proceeds by first positing the being of a chosen [...]
Find out more'Let us say the third': The Meaning of τὸ τρίτον in the Deductions of Plato's Parmenides Among the many sections of argument concerning the One in the second half of Plato's Parmenides, only one is explicitly numbered: the third (to triton, 155e4). This suggests, on the face of it, that it is to be counted both after and among the first two deductions (or 'hypotheses'), as one of them. Yet one rare area of consensus today, met with only a few dissenting voices, is that it is not to be counted as a third deduction at all and can even be ignored in interpreting the genuine deductions: the only argument explicitly counted is the one that does not count. If this interpretation appears to contradict the explicit words of the text, there are still good reasons for denying that 'the third' is a third deduction. But then must we disregard [...]
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