25 Stallbaum, Prolegom. pp. 52-286-332.
26 According to Stallbaum (Prolegg. pp. 277-337) the Parmenidês is the only dialogue in which Plato has discussed, with philosophical exactness, the theory of Ideas; in all the other dialogues he handles it in a popular and superficial manner. There is truth in this — indeed more truth (I think) than Stallbaum himself supposed: otherwise he would hardly have said that the objections in the Parmenides could easily have been answered, if Plato had chosen.
Stallbaum tells us, not only respecting Socher but respecting Schleiermacher (pp. 324-332), “Parmenidem omnino non intellexit”. In my judgment, Socher understands the dialogue better than Stallbaum, when he (Socher) says, that the objections in the first half bear against the genuine Platonic Ideas; though I do not agree with his inference about the spuriousness of the dialogue.
Views of Stallbaum and Socher. The latter maintains that Plato would never make such objections against his own theory, and denies the authenticity of the Parmenidês.
Socher has so much difficulty in conceiving that Plato can have advanced such forcible objections against a doctrine, which nevertheless in other Platonic dialogues is proclaimed as true and important, — that he declares the Parmenidês (together with the Sophistês and Politikus) not to be genuine, but to have been composed by some unknown Megaric contemporary. To pass over the improbability that any unknown author should have been capable of composing works of so much ability as these — Socher’s decision about spuriousness is founded upon an estimate of Plato’s philosophical character, which I think incorrect. Socher expects (or at least reasons as if he expected) to find in Plato a preconceived system and a scheme of conclusions to which every thing is made subservient.
Philosophers are usually advocates, each of a positive system of his own.
In most philosophers, doubtless, this is what we do find. Each starts with some favourite conclusions, which he believes to be true, and which he supports by all the arguments in their favour, as far as his power goes. If he mentions the arguments against them, he usually answers the weak, slurs over or sneers at the strong: at any rate, he takes every precaution that these counter arguments shall appear unimportant in the eyes of his readers. His purpose is, like that of a speaker in the public assembly, to obtain assent and belief: whether the hearers understand the question or not, is a matter of comparative indifference: at any rate, they must be induced to embrace his conclusion. Unless he thus foregoes the character of an impartial judge, to take up that of an earnest advocate; unless he bends the whole force of his mind to the establishment of the given conclusion — he becomes suspected as deficient in faith or sincerity, and loses much in persuasive power. For an earnest belief, expressed with eloquence and feeling, is commonly more persuasive than any logic.
Different spirit of Plato in his Dialogues of Search.
Now whether this exclusive devotion to the affirmative side of certain questions be the true spirit of philosophy or not, it is certainly not the spirit of Plato in his Dialogues of Search; wherein he conceives the work of philosophy in a totally different manner. He does not begin by stating, even to himself a certain conclusion at which he has arrived, and then proceed to prove that conclusion to others. The search or debate (as I have observed in a preceding chapter) has greater importance in his eyes than the conclusion: nay, in a large proportion of his dialogues, there is no conclusion at all: we see something disproved, but nothing proved. The negative element has with him a value and importance of its own, apart from the affirmative. He is anxious to set forth what can be said against a given conclusion; even though not prepared to establish any thing in its place.
The Parmenidês is the extreme manifestation of the negative element. That Plato should employ one dialogue in setting forth the negative case against the Theory of Ideas is not unnatural.
Such negative element, manifested as it is in so many of the Platonic dialogues, has its extreme manifestation in the Parmenidês. When we see it here applied to a doctrine which Plato in other dialogues insists upon as truth, we must call to mind (what sincere believers are apt to forget) that a case may always be made out against truth as well as in its favour: and that its privilege as a certified portion of “reasoned truth,” rests upon no better title than the superiority of the latter case over the former. It is for testing the two cases — for determining where the superiority lies — and for graduating its amount — that the process of philosophising is called for, and that improvements in the method thereof become desirable. That Plato should, in one of his many diversified dialogues, apply this test to a doctrine which, in other dialogues, he holds out as true — is noway inconsistent with the general spirit of these compositions. Each of his dialogues has its own point of view, worked out on that particular occasion; what is common to them all, is the process of philosophising applied in various ways to the same general topics.
Those who, like Socher, deny Plato’s authorship of the Parmenidês, on the ground of what is urged therein against the theory of Ideas, must suppose, either that he did not know that a negative case could be made out against that theory; or that knowing it, he refrained from undertaking the duty.27 Neither supposition is consistent with what we know both of his negative ingenuity, and of his multifarious manner of handling.
27 Plato, Philêbus, p. 14, where the distinction taken coincides accurately enough with that which we read in Plato, Parmenid. p. 129 A-D.
Strümpell thinks that the Parmenidês was composed at a time of Plato’s life when he had become sensible of the difficulties and contradictions attaching to his doctrine of self-existent Forms or Ideas, and when he was looking about for some way of extrication from them: which way he afterwards thought that he found in that approximation to Pythagorism — that exchange of Ideas for Ideal numbers, &c. — which we find imputed to him by Aristotle (Gesch. der Griech. Phil. sect. 96, 3). This is not impossible; but I find no sufficient ground for affirming it. Nor can I see how the doctrine which Aristotle ascribes to Plato about the Ideas (that they are generated by two στοιχεῖα or elements, τὸ ἕν along with τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ μικρόν) affords any escape from the difficulties started in the Parmenidês.
Strümpell considers the dialogue Parmenidês to have been composed “ganz ausdrücklich zur dialektischen Uebung,” ib. s. 96, 2, p. 128.
Force of the negative case in the Parmenidês. Difficulties about participation of sensible objects in the world of Ideas.
The negative case, made out in the Parmenidês against the theory of Ideas, is indeed most powerful. The hypothesis of the Ideal World is unequivocally affirmed by Sokrates, with its four principal characteristics. 1. Complete essential separation from the world of sense. 2. Absolute self-existence. 3. Plurality of constituent items, several contrary to each other. 4. Unchangeable sameness and unity of each and all of them. — Here we have full satisfaction given to the Platonic sentiment, which often delights in soaring above the world of sense, and sometimes (see Phædon) in heaping contemptuous metaphors upon it. But unfortunately Sokrates cannot disengage himself from this world of sense: he is obliged to maintain that it partakes of, or is determined by, these extra-sensible Forms or Ideas. Here commence the series of difficulties and contradictions brought out by the Elenchus of Parmenides. Are all sensible objects, even such as are vulgar, repulsive, and contemptible, represented in this higher world? The Platonic sentiment shrinks from the admission: the Platonic sense of analogy hesitates to deny it. Then again, how can both assertions be true — first that the two worlds are essentially separate, next, that the one participates in, and derives its essence from, the other? How (to use Aristotelian language28) can the essence be separated from that of which it is the essence? How can the Form, essentially One, belong at once to a multitude of particulars?
28 Arist. Met. A. 991, b. 1. ἀδύνατον, χωρὶς εἶναι τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ οὖ ἡ οὐσία.
Two points deserve notice in this debate respecting the doctrine of Ideas:—
Difficulties about the Cognizability of Ideas. If Ideas are absolute, they cannot be cognizable: if they are cognizable, they must be relative. Doctrine of Homo Mensura.
1. Parmenides shows, and Sokrates does not deny, that these Forms or Ideas described as absolute, self-existent, unchangeable, must of necessity be unknown and unknowable to us.29 Whatever we do know, or can know, is relative to us; — to our actual cognition, or to our cognitive power. If you declare an object to be absolute, you declare it to be neither known nor knowable by us: if it be announced as known or knowable by us, it is thereby implied at the same time not to be absolute. If these Forms or Objects called absolute are known, they can be known only by an absolute Subject, or the Form of a cognizant Subject: that is, by God or the Gods. Even thus, to call them absolute is a misnomer: they are relative to the Subject, and the Subject is relative to them.
29 Plato, Parmenid. 133 B. εἴ τις φαίη μηδὲ προσήκειν αὐτὰ γιγνώσκεσθαι ὄντα τοιαῦτα οἷά φαμεν δεῖν εἶναι τὰ εἴδη.… ἀπίθανος ἂν εἴη ὁ ἄγνωστα αὐτὰ ἀναγκάζων εἶναι. 134 A. ἡ δὲ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐπιστήμη οὐ τῆς παρ’ ἡμῖν ἂν ἀληθείας εἴη; καὶ αὖ ἑκάστη ἡ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἑπιστήμη τῶν παρ’ ἡμῖν ὄντων ἑκάστου ἂν ἐπιστήμη ξύμβαινοι εἶναι; 134 C. ἄγνωστον ἄρα ἡμῖν ἔστι καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ καλὸν ὃ ἔστι, καὶ τὸ ἀγαθόν, καὶ πάντα ἃ δὴ ὡς ἰδέας αὐτὰς οὔσας ὑπολαμβάνομεν.
The opinion here advanced by the Platonic Parmenides asserts, in other words, what is equivalent to the memorable dictum of Protagoras — “Man is the measure of all things — of things existent, that they do exist — and of things non-existent, that they do not exist”. This dictum affirms universal relativity, and nothing else: though Plato, as we shall see in the elaborate argument against it delivered by Sokrates in the Theætêtus, mixed it up with another doctrine altogether distinct and independent — the doctrine that knowledge is sensible perception.30 Parmenides here argues that if these Forms or Ideas are known by us, they can be known only as relative to us: and that if they be not relative to us, they cannot be known by us at all. Such relativity belongs as much to the world of Conception, as to the world of Perception. And it is remarkable that Plato admits this essential relativity not merely here, but also in the Sophistês: in which latter dialogue he denies the Forms or Ideas to be absolute existences, on the special ground that they are known:— and on the farther ground that what is known must act upon the knowing mind, and must be acted upon thereby, i.e., must be relative. He there defines the existent to be, that which has power to act upon something else, or to be acted upon by something else. Such relativeness he declares to constitute existence:31 defining existence to mean potentiality.
31 Plato, Sophistês, pp. 248-249. This reasoning is put into the mouth of the Eleatic Stranger, the principal person in that dialogue.
Answer of Sokrates — That Ideas are mere conceptions of the mind. Objection of Parmenides correct, though undeveloped.
2. The second point which deserves notice in this portion of the Parmenidês, is the answer of Sokrates (when embarrassed by some of the questions of the Eleatic veteran) — “That these Forms or Ideas are conceptions of the mind, and have no existence out of the mind”. This answer gives us the purely Subjective, or negation of Object: instead of the purely Objective (Absolute), or negation of Subject.32 Here we have what Porphyry calls the deepest question of philosophy33 explicitly raised: and, as far as we know, for the first time. Are the Forms or Ideas mere conceptions of the mind and nothing more? Or are they external, separate, self-existent realities? The opinion which Sokrates had first given declared the latter: that which he now gives declares the former. He passes from the pure Objective (i.e., without Subject) to the pure Subjective (i.e., without Object). Parmenides, in his reply, points out that there cannot be a conception of nothing: that if there be Conceptio, there must be Conceptum aliquid:34 and that this Conceptum or Concept is what is common to a great many distinct similar Percepta.
32 Plato, Parmenid. p. 132 A-B.
The doctrine, that ποιότητες were φιλαὶ ἔννοιαι, having no existence without the mind, was held by Antisthenes as well as by the Eretrian sect of philosophers, contemporary with Plato and shortly after him. Simplikius, Schol. ad Aristot. Categ. p. 68, a. 30, Brandis. See, respecting Antisthenes, the first volume of the present work, p. 165.
33 See the beginning of Porphyry’s Introduction to the Categories of Aristotle. βαθυτάτη οὔσης τῆς τοιαύτης πραγματείας, &c. Simplikius (in Schol. ad Aristot. Categ. p. 68, a. 28, ed. Brandis) alludes to the Eretrian philosophers and Theopompus, who considered τὰς ποιότητας as φιλὰς μόνας ἐννοίας διακενῶς λεγομένας κατ’ οὐδεμίας ὑποστάσεως, οἷον ἀνθρωπότητα ἢ ἱππότητα, &c.
34 Compare Republic, v. p. 476 B. ὁ γιγνώσκων γιγνώσκει τὶ ἢ οὐδὲν; Γιγνώσκει τί, &c.
The following passage in the learned work of Cudworth bears on the portion of the Parmenidês which we are now considering. Cudworth, Treatise of Immutable Morality, pp. 243-245.
“But if any one demand here, where this ἀκίνητος οὐσία, these immutable Entities do exist? I answer, first, that as they are considered formally, they do not properly exist in the Individuals without us, as if they were from them imprinted upon the Understanding, which some have taken to be Aristotle’s opinion; because no Individual Material thing is either Universal or Immutable.… Because they perish not together with them, it is a certain argument that they exist independently upon them. Neither, in the next place, do they exist somewhere else apart from the Individual Sensibles, and without the Mind, which is that opinion that Aristotle justly condemns, but either unjustly or unskilfully attributes to Plato.… Wherefore these Intelligible Ideas or Essences of Things, those Forms by which we understand all Things, exist nowhere but in the mind itself; for it was very well determined long ago by Socrates, in Plato’s Parmenidês, that these things are nothing else but Noemata: ‘These Species or Ideas are all of them nothing but Noemata or Notions that exist nowhere but in the Soul itself’.…
“And yet notwithstanding, though these Things exist only in the Mind, they are not therefore mere Figments of the Understanding.…
“It is evident that though the Mind thinks of these Things at pleasure, yet they are not arbitrarily framed by the Mind, but have certain, determinate, and immutable Natures of their own, which are independent upon the Mind, and which are blown (quære not blown) away into Nothing at the pleasure of the same Being that arbitrarily made them.”
It is an inadvertence on the part of Cudworth to cite this passage of the Parmenidês as authenticating Plato’s opinion that Forms or Ideas existed only in the mind. Certainly Sokrates is here made to express that opinion, among others; but the opinion is refuted by Parmenidês and dropped by Sokrates. But the very different opinion, which Cudworth accuses Aristotle of wrongly attributing to Plato, is repeated by Sokrates in the Phædon, Republic, and elsewhere, and never refuted.
This reply, though scanty and undeveloped, is in my judgment both valid, as it negatives the Subject pure and simple, and affirms that to every conception in the mind, there must correspond a Concept out of (or rather along with) the mind (the one correlating with or implying the other) — and correct as far as it goes, in declaring what that Concept is. Such Concept is, or may be, the Form. Parmenides does not show that it is not so. He proceeds to impugn, by a second argument, the assertion of Sokrates — that the form is a Conception wholly within the mind: he goes on to argue that individual things (which are out of the mind) cannot participate in these Forms (which are asserted to be altogether in the mind): because, if that were admitted, either every such thing must be a Concipient, or must run into the contradiction of being a Conceptio non concipiens.35 Now this argument may refute the affirmation of Sokrates literally taken, that the Form is a Conception entirely belonging to the mind, and having nothing Objective corresponding to it — but does not refute the doctrine that the Form is a Concept correlating with the mind — or out of the mind as well as in it. In this as in other Concepts, the subjective point of view preponderates over the objective, though Object is not altogether eliminated: just as, in the particular external things, the objective point of view predominates, though Subject cannot be altogether dismissed. Neither Subject nor Object can ever entirely disappear: the one is the inseparable correlative and complement of the other: but sometimes the subjective point of view may preponderate, sometimes the objective. Such preponderance (or logical priority), either of the one or the other, may be implied or connoted by the denomination given. Though the special connotation of the name creates an illusion which makes the preponderant point of view seem to be all, and magnifies the Relatum so as to eclipse and extinguish the Correlatum — yet such preponderance, or logical priority, is all that is really meant when the Concepts are said to be “in the mind” — and the Percepts (Percepta, things perceived) to be “out of the mind”: for both Concepts and Percepts are “of the mind, or relative to the mind”.36
35 On this point the argument in the dialogue itself, as stated by Parmenides, is not clear to follow. Strümpell remarks on the terms employed by Plato. “Der Umstand, dass die Ausdrücke εἶδος und ἰδέα nicht sowie λόγος den Unterschied, zwischen Begriff und dem durch diesen begriffenen Realen, hervortreten lassen — sondern, weil dieselben bald im subjektiven Sinne den Begriff, bald im objektiven Sinne das Reale bezeichnen — bald in der einen bald in der andern Bedeutung zu nehmen sind — kann leicht eine Verwechselung und Unklarheit in der Auffassung veranlassen,” &c. (Gesch. der Gr. Philos. s. 90, p. 115).
36 This preponderance of the Objective point of view, though without altogether eliminating the Subjective, includes all that is true in the assertion of Aristotle, that the Perceptum is prior to the Percipient — the Percipiendum prior to the Perceptionis Capax. He assimilates the former to a Movens, the latter to a Motum. But he declares that he means not a priority in time or real existence, but simply a priority in nature or logical priority; and he also declares the two to be relatives or reciproca. The Prius is relative to the Posterius, as the Posterius is relative to the Prius. — Metaphys. Γ. 1010, b. 36 seq. ἀλλ’ ἔστι τι καὶ ἕτερον παρὰ τὴν αἴσθησιν, ὃ ἀναγκη πρότερον εἶναι τῆς αἰσθήσεῶς· τὸ γὰρ κινοῦν τοῦ κινουμένου φύσει πρότερόν ἐστι· κἂν εἰ λέγεται πρὸς ἄλληλα ταῦτα, οὐδὲν ἧττον.
See respecting the πρότερον φύσει, Aristot. Categor. p. 12, b. 5-15, and Metaphys. Δ. 1018, b. 12 — ἁπλῶς καὶ τῇ φύσει πρότερον.
Meaning of Abstract and General Terms, debated from ancient times to the present day — Different views of Plato and Aristotle upon it.
The question — What is the real and precise meaning attached to abstract and general words? — has been debated down to this day, and is still under debate. It seems to have first derived its importance, if not its origin, from Sokrates, who began the practice of inviting persons to define the familiar generalities of ethics and politics, and then tested by cross-examination the definitions given by men who thought that common sense would enable any one to define.37 But I see no ground for believing that Sokrates ever put to himself the question — Whether that which an abstract term denotes is a mental conception, or a separate and self-existent reality. That question was raised by Plato, and first stands clearly brought to view here in the Parmenidês.
37 Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 987, b. 3. M. 1078, b. 18-32.
If we follow up the opinion here delivered by the Platonic Sokrates, together with the first correction added to it by Parmenides, amounting to this — That the Form is a Conception of the mind with its corresponding Concept: if, besides, we dismiss the doctrine held by Plato, that the Form is a separate self-existent unchangeable Ens (ἓν παρὰ τὰ πολλὰ): there will then be no greater difficulty in understanding how it can be partaken by, or be at once in, many distinct particulars, than in understanding (what is at bottom the same question) how one and the same attribute can belong at once to many different objects: how hardness or smoothness can be at once in an indefinite number of hard and smooth bodies dispersed everywhere.38 The object and the attribute are both of them relative to the same percipient and concipient mind: we may perceive or conceive many objects as distinct individuals — we may also conceive them all as resembling in a particular manner, making abstraction of the individuality of each: both these are psychological facts, and the latter of the two is what we mean when we say, that all of them possess or participate in one and the same attribute. The concrete term, and its corresponding abstract, stand for the same facts of sense differently conceived. Now the word one, when applied to the attribute, has a different meaning from one when applied to an individual object. Plato speaks sometimes elsewhere as if he felt this diversity of meaning: not however in the Parmenidês, though there is great demand for it. But Aristotle (in this respect far superior) takes much pains to point out that Unum Ens — and the preposition In (to be in any thing) — are among the πολλαχῶς λεγόμενα, having several different meanings derived from one primary or radical by diverse and distant ramifications.39 The important logical distinction between Unum numero and Unum specie (or genere, &c.) belongs first to Aristotle.40
38 That “the attribute is in its subject,” is explained by Aristotle only by saying That it is in its subject, not as a part in the whole, yet as that which cannot exist apart from its subject (Categor. 1, a. 30-3, a. 30). Compare Hobbes, Comput. or Logic. iii. 3, viii. 3. Respecting the number of different modes τοῦ ἔν τινι εἶναι, see Aristot. Physic. iii. p. 210, a. 18 seq., with the Scholia, p. 373 Brandis, and p. 446, 10 Brand. The commentators made out, variously, nine, eleven, sixteen distinct τρόπους τοῦ ἔν τινι εἶναι. In the language of Aristotle, genus, species, εἶδος, and even differentia are not ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ, but are predicated καθ’ ὑποκειμένου (see Cat. p. 3, a. 20). The proprium and accidens alone are ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ. Here is a difference between his language and that of Plato, according to whom τὸ εἶδος is ἐν ἑκάστῳ τῶν πολλῶν (Parmenid. 131 A). But we remark in that same dialogue, that when Parmenides questions Sokrates whether he recognises εἴδη αὐτὰ καθ’ αὐτά he first asks whether Sokrates admits δικαίου τι εἶδος αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτό, καὶ καλοῦ, καὶ ἀγαθοῦ, καὶ πάντων τῶν τοιούτων. Sokrates answers without hesitation, Yes. Then Parmenides proceeds to ask, Do you recognise an εἶδος of man, separate and apart from all of us individual men? — or an εἶδος of fire, water, and such like? Here Sokrates hesitates: he will neither admit nor deny it (130 D). The first list, which Sokrates at once accepts, is of what Aristotle would call accidents: the second, which Sokrates doubts about, is of what Aristotle would call second substances. We thus see that the conception of a self-existent εἶδος realised itself most easily and distinctly to the mind of Plato in the case of accidents. He would, therefore, naturally conceive τὰ εἴδη as being ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ, agreeing substantially, though not in terms, with Aristotle. It is in the case of accidents or attributes that abstract names are most usually invented; and it is the abstract name, or the neuter adjective used as its equivalent, which suggests the belief in an εἶδος.
39 Aristotel. Metaphys. Δ. 1015-1016, I. 1052, a. 29 seq. τὰ μὲν δὴ οὕτως ἓν ἢ συνεχὲς ἢ ὅλον· τὰ δὲ ὧν ἂν ὁ λόγος εἷς ᾖ· τοιαῦτα δὲ ὧν ἡ νόησις μία, &c.
About abstract names, or the names of attributes, see Mr. John Stuart Mill’s ‘System of Logic,’ i. 2, 4, p. 30, edit. 5th. “When only one attribute, neither variable in degree nor in kind, is designated by the name — as visibleness, tangibleness, equality, &c. — though it denotes an attribute of many different objects, the attribute itself is always considered as one, not as many.” Compare, also, on this point, p. 153, and a note added by Mr. Mill to the fifth edition, p. 203, in reply to Mr. Herbert Spencer. The oneness of the attribute, in different subjects, is not conceded by every one. Mr. Spencer thinks that the same abstract word denotes one attribute in Subject A, and another attribute, though exactly like it, in Subject B (Principles of Psychology, p. 126 seq.) Mr. Mill’s view appears the correct one; but the distinction (pointed out by Archbishop Whately) between undistinguishable likeness and positive identity, becomes in these cases imperceptible or forgotten.
Aristotle, however, in the beginning of the Categories ranks ἡ τίς γραμματικὴ as ἄτομον καὶ ἓν ἀριθμῷ (pp. 1, 6, 8), which I do not understand; and it seems opposed to another passage, pp. 3, 6, 15.
The argument between two such able thinkers as Mr. Mill and Mr. Spencer, illustrates forcibly the extreme nicety of this question respecting the One and the Many, under certain supposable circumstances. We cannot be surprised that it puzzled the dialecticians of the Platonic Aristotelian age, who fastened by preference on points of metaphysical difficulty.
40 See interesting remarks on the application of this logical distinction in Galen, De Methodo Medendi, Book iii. vol. x. p. 130 seq. Aristotle and Theophrastus both dwelt upon it.
Plato never expected to make his Ideas fit on to the facts of sense: Aristotle tried to do it and partly succeeded.
Plato has not followed out the hint which he has here put into the mouth of Sokrates in the Parmenidês — That the Ideas or Forms are conceptions existing only in the mind. Though the opinion thus stated is not strictly correct (and is so pointed out by himself), as falling back too exclusively on the subjective — yet if followed out, it might have served to modify the too objective and absolute character which in most dialogues (though not in the Sophistês) he ascribes to his Forms or Ideas: laying stress upon them as objects — and as objects not of sensible perception — but overlooking or disallowing the fact of their being relative to the concipient mind. The bent of Plato’s philosophy was to dwell upon these Forms, and to bring them into harmonious conjunction with each other: he neither took pains, nor expected, to make them fit on to the world of sense. With Aristotle, on the contrary, this last-mentioned purpose is kept very generally in view. Amidst all the extreme abstractions which he handles, he reverts often to the comparison of them with sensible particulars: indeed Substantia Prima was by him, for the first time in the history of philosophy, brought down to designate the concrete particular object of sense: in Plato’s Phædon, Republic, &c, the only Substances are the Forms or Ideas.
Continuation of the Dialogue — Parmenides admonishes Sokrates that he has been premature in delivering a doctrine, without sufficient preliminary exercise.
Parmenides now continues the debate. He has already fastened upon Sokrates several difficult problems: he now proposes a new one, different and worse. Which way are we to turn then, if these Forms be beyond our knowledge? I do not see my way (says Sokrates) out of the perplexity. The fact is, Sokrates (replies Parmenides), you have been too forward in producing your doctrine of Ideas, without a sufficient preliminary exercise and enquiry. Your love of philosophical research is highly praiseworthy: but you must employ your youth in exercising and improving yourself, through that continued philosophical discourse which the vulgar call useless prosing: otherwise you will never attain truth.41 You are however right in bestowing your attention, not on the objects of sense, but on those objects which we can best grasp in discussion, and which we presume to exist as Forms.42
41 Plato, Parmenid. p. 135 C. Πρῲ γάρ, πρὶν γυμνασθῆναι, ὦ Σώκρατες, ὁρίζεσθαι ἐπιχειρεῖς καλόν τέ τι καὶ δίκαιον καὶ ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἓν ἕκαστον τῶν εἰδῶν … καλὴ μὲν οὖν καὶ θεία, εἶ ἴσθι, ἡ ὁρμὴ ἣν ὁρμᾷς ἐπὶ τοὺς λόγους· ἕλκυσον δὲ σαυτὸν καὶ γυμνάσαι, μᾶλλον διὰ τῆς δοκούσης ἀχρήστου εἶναι καὶ καλουμένης ὑπὸ τῶν πολλῶν ἀδολεσχίας, ἕως ἔτι νέος εἶ· εἰ δὲ μὴ, σὲ διαφεύξεται ἡ ἀλήθεια.
42 Plato, Parmenid. p. 135 E.
What sort of exercise? Parmenides describes: To assume provisionally both the affirmative and the negative of many hypotheses about the most general terms, and to trace the consequences of each.
What sort of exercise must I go through? asks Sokrates. Zeno (replies Parmenides) has already given you a good specimen of it in his treatise, when he followed out the consequences flowing from the assumption — “That the self-existent and absolute Ens is plural”. When you are trying to find out the truth on any question, you must assume provisionally, first the affirmative and then the negative, and you must then follow out patiently the consequences deducible from one hypothesis as well as from the other. If you are enquiring about the Form of Likeness, whether it exists or does not exist, you must assume successively both one and the other;43 marking the deductions which follow, both with reference to the thing directly assumed, and with reference to other things also. You must do the like if you are investigating other Forms — Unlikeness, Motion, and Rest, or even Existence and Non-Existence. But you must not be content with following out only one side of the hypothesis: you must examine both sides with equal care and impartiality. This is the only sort of preparatory exercise which will qualify you for completely seeing through the truth.44
43 Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 A. καὶ αὖθις αὖ ἐὰν ὑποθῇ, εἰ ἔστιν ὁμοιότης ἢ εἰ μή ἐστι, τί ἐφ’ ἑκατέρας τῆς ὑποθέσεως συμβήσεται, καὶ αὐτοῖς τοῖς ὑποτεθεῖσι καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις καὶ πρὸς αὑτὰ καὶ πρὸς ἄλληλα.
44 Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 B.
Impossible to do this before a numerous audience — Parmenides is entreated to give a specimen — After much solicitation he agrees.
You propose to me, Parmenides (remarks Sokrates), a work of awful magnitude. At any rate, show me an example of it yourself, that I may know better how to begin. — Parmenides at first declines, on the ground of his old age: but Zeno and the others urge him, so that he at length consents. — The process will be tedious (observes Zeno); and I would not ask it from Parmenides unless among an audience small and select as we are here. Before any numerous audience, it would be an unseemly performance for a veteran like him. For most people are not aware that, without such discursive survey and travelling over the whole field, we cannot possibly attain truth or acquire intelligence.45