Parmenides
1882
What is being? What exists, and how can we think about it? These questions, which every subsequent Western philosopher would inherit, first take their definitive form in this vertiginous dialogue. The scene is set in Athens circa 450 BC: the young Socrates encounters Parmenides, already legendary, and Zeno of Elea, whose paradoxes defend his master's radical claim that change is impossible and reality is One. The dialogue unfolds in two movements that have tormented and thrilled philosophers for millennia. First, Socrates articulates his theory of Forms, perfect unchanging ideals behind sensible particulars, only to receive Parmenides' devastating admonition: he is too young to grasp such matters. Then comes the extraordinary second half: Parmenides demonstrates his method by subjecting 'the One' to eight relentless logical exercises, each hypothesis spiraling into paradoxes that dissolve the boundaries of ordinary thought. This is philosophy as violent intellectual exercise, not gentle wisdom-seeking. It is notoriously difficult, often maddening, and absolutely foundational.
Editions
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“In the knowledgeable realm, the form of the good is the last thing to be seen, and it is reached only with difficulty. Once one has seen it, however, one must conclude that it is the cause of all that is correct and beautiful in anything, that it produces both light and its source in the visible realm, and that in the intelligible realm it controls and provides truth and understanding, so that anyone who is to act sensibly in private or public must see it.””
— Plato
“but if you wish to get better training, you must do something more than that; you must consider not only what happens if a particular hypothesis is true, but also what happens if it is not true. 135e-136a””
— Plato
“I fancy your reason for believing that each idea is one is something like this; when there is a number of things which seem to you to be great, you may think, as you look at them all, that there is one and the same idea in them, and hence you think the great is one...But if with your mind's eye you regard the absolute great and these many great things in the same way, will not another great appear beyond, by which all these must appear to be great?...That is, another idea of greatness will appear, in addition to absolute greatness and the objects which partake of it and another again in addition to these, by reason of which they are all great; and each of your ideas will no longer be one, but their number will be infinite.””
— Plato
“But can that which does not exist have anything pertaining or belonging to it? Of course not. Then the one has no name, nor is there any description or knowledge or perception or opinion of it....And it is neither named nor described nor thought of nor known, nor does any existing thing perceive it.””
— Plato
“Then if the one has no participation in time whatsoever, it neither has become nor became nor was in the past, it has neither become nor is it becoming nor is it in the present, and it will neither become nor be made to become nor will it be in the future...Can it then partake of being in any other way than in the past, present, or future? It cannot. Then the one has no share in being at all...Then it has no being even so as to be one, for if it were one, it would be and would partake of being; but apparently one neither is nor is one, if this argument is to be trusted.””
— Plato
“...I think that you or anyone else who claims that there is an absolute idea of each thing would agree in the first place that none of them exists in us. No, for if it did, it would no longer be absolute.””
— Plato
“...if it be shown that absolute unity is also many and the absolute many again are one, then I shall be amazed.””
— Plato
