Parmenides | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Sue Asscher

PARMENIDES
by Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

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