Plato's Parmenides Reconsidered

M. Tabak

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137505989
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Plato's Parmenides Reconsidered offers a very accessible, detailed, and historically-sensitive account of Plato's Parmenides. Against the prevailing scholarly wisdom, he illustrates conclusively that Parmenides is a satirical dialogue in which Plato attempts to expose the absurd nature of the doctrines and method of his philosophical opponents.

Chapter 1

Forms in the Middle-Period Dialogues

Introduction

This chapter offers a brief introduction to Plato’s middle-period theory of Forms (TF) as this theory is found in Phaedo, Cratylus, and Republic. Actually, the TF is not Plato’s central concern in any of his dialogues; part I of Parmenides is an exception in this regard. To be sure, Forms are crucial to Plato’s philosophy, and Plato is sure that any philosophy worthy of being called such cannot function without the TF. Yet the TF is discussed in a rather scattered manner in his dialogues (including the three dialogues just named) and never amounts to an entirely neat and consistent theory. More often than one would think, Plato himself confesses to not having an entirely coherent vision of Forms. However, certain important patterns still emerge from his scattered discussions, which give us a somewhat stable sense of what his Forms are, are not, how we may come to know them, and the ontological and epistemological functions they have.

My aim in this chapter is to simply present the imprecise TF that Phaedo, Cratylus, and Republic offer without attempting to reconstruct it. I adopt this largely noninterventionist approach to avoid rigging these dialogues to suit the purposes of any pregiven agenda. In the ensuing chapters, I will use the information obtained here to evaluate various interpretations of Parmenides, including my own.

The Theory of Forms in Phaedo

The main narrator in Phaedo is Phaedo, a fictional character modeled after a devoted student of Socrates. We are told that Phaedo, along with Simmias, Cebes, and others, was with Socrates during his last day; Plato was absent because he “was ill” (59b).1 Every comment attributed to Socrates in this dialogue is narrated by Phaedo to Echecrates, who wishes to learn more about Socrates’s final hours. Socrates spends his final hours discussing his impending death philosophically. His ultimate message to his grieving friends is that his bodily death will not be the end of him. In order to convince them, he has to prove the immortality of the soul. Giving this proof is the main aim of Phaedo.

Socrates’s proof of the immortality of the soul depends heavily on his theory of knowledge. At about eight Stephanus pages into the dialogue, Socrates says the body hinders the acquisition of true knowledge. Even the superior senses of sight and hearing are too “inaccurate and indistinct” to give us true knowledge. For this reason, the soul will be “deceived” if it relies on sense perception. In other words, true knowledge must be “revealed” to the soul “in thought” or through pure reflection, “and thought is best when the mind,” which is the rational part of the soul, is not disturbed by any of the bodily senses. In short, in the acquisition of true knowledge, the soul must ignore the body as much as possible (65a–c).

This theory of knowledge is related to the TF. Since true knowledge depends on avoiding the senses, which sense the sensible objects, it follows that the proper objects of knowledge cannot be sensible things. Rather, they are the “absolute” entities called Forms. Socrates stipulates first that there must be such entities as “absolute justice,” “absolute beauty,” and “absolute good,” which are the Forms of Justice, Beauty, and Good. Forms such as these are “the essences or true nature of everything.” This formulation already assumes that Forms participate in sensible things and give them their “essence,” or essential identity, in so doing (65d–66a).

Nevertheless, even though they somehow participate in these objects, Forms qua Forms cannot be among or within sensible objects. For this reason, in order to have “true knowledge,” the soul must depart from the body and visit the nonexistential realm of Forms. This could only happen “after death.” In “this present life, . . . we [can only] make the nearest approach to knowledge when we have the least possible intercourse or communion with the body” (66e–67b). Here, Socrates has already assumed two things: perfect knowledge is not possible while we live in this world, and the soul continues to live on after death in a nonsensible realm in which it encounters Forms directly.

However, Socrates recognizes that he has yet to prove the immortality of the soul. The proof of the soul’s immortality begins with an “ancient doctrine, which affirms that [souls] go from hence into the other world, and returning hither, are born again from the dead.” Socrates’s task now is to attempt to provide “conclusive” proof in favor of this doctrine or hypothesis. Should he fail to do so, “then other arguments will have to be adduced” (70c–d). This last comment gives us a gist of the method of hypothesis utilized in Phaedo. The ultimate aim is to discover the best approximation of truth by testing the validity, or logical consistency, of different hypotheses. The soundest hypothesis is to be accepted.

The validity of the hypothesis “the soul is immortal” depends on its generalizability—on its applicability to all things that admit of generation (this, as we will see, excludes Forms). The first premise of the proof is that “all things which have opposites [are] generated out of their opposites.” In other words, Socrates wants “to show that in all opposites there is of necessity a similar alternation.” Since the soul is found in two opposite conditions (life and death), it too abides by this universal law (70e–71a).

This premise is problematic, for it already presupposes what Socrates intends to prove—namely, generation. In other words, instead of why, Socrates is merely telling us how generation occurs. Moreover, it is not clear how the soul’s residence in the body and its postbodily existence (death?) are opposites. It seems that the only death Socrates is admitting here is the death of the body and not that of the soul, which is immortal to begin with.

In order to prove his opposites theory, Socrates provides several problematic examples. For instance, good and evil and just and unjust generate out of each other. This statement concludes that these opposite qualities generate out of each other even though Socrates cannot accept, and will deny, this conclusion later on. He accepts it here by confusing these qualities with their comparative, relational counterparts, which are better suited for his present conclusion. He thus says that “the worse is [generated] from the better, and the more just is [generated] from the more unjust” (70e–71a). This confusion of categories will remain with us throughout Phaedo.

Other examples that endorse Socrates’s law of generation include the following: “Anything which becomes greater must become greater after being less,” and “that which becomes less must have been once greater and then have become less.” Moreover, “in this universal opposition of all things, there . . . [are] also two intermediate [opposite] processes, which are ever going on, from one to the other opposite, and back again,” and “where there is a greater and a less there is also an intermediate process of increase and diminution, and that which grows is said to wax, and that which decays to wane.” These examples, and others, provide a satisfactory proof, it is agreed, that the law of generation holds true universally—namely, that “all opposites . . . are really generated out of one another, and there is a . . . process [of becoming] from one to the other of them.” If so, reasons Socrates, “life” and “death,” since they are also opposites, are “generated” from one another. If “the previous admissions” are true, then we have “a most certain proof that the souls of the dead exist in some place out of which they come again” (71b–72b). Socrates will radically modify this claim in the following discussion and assert instead that life and death replace one another in the body, rather than “[generate] out of one another.”

At this point in the dialogue, Cebes reminds Socrates that the latter has another, related proof of the immortality of the soul: “Your favorite doctrine, Socrates, that knowledge is simply recollection, if true, also necessarily implies a previous time in which we have learned that which we now recollect. But this would be impossible unless our soul had been in some place before existing in the form of man; here then is another proof of the soul’s immortality.” Simmias demands further proof, and Cebes gives one on Socrates’s behalf: “One excellent proof . . . is afforded by questions. If you put a question to a person in a right way, he will give a true answer of himself, but how could he do this unless there were knowledge and right reason already in him? And this is most clearly shown when he is taken to a diagram or to anything of that sort” (72e–73b). Clearly, Cebes is repeating the proof of the theory of recollection that Socrates provides in Meno (80a–86c).2

Given Simmias’s apparent skepticism, Socrates proceeds to offer further proof in favor of the recollection theory of knowledge, and with that, the immortality of the soul. For instance, since they are associated with one another, “anyone who sees Simmias may remember [recollect] Cebes,” even if he is not present with Simmias. In short, there is obviously such “a process of recovering” a memory that is precisely recollection by association. This may happen through the association of both like and unlike things. For instance, seeing a horse may also remind one of a person related to that horse, even though the horse and the person in question are unlike each other (Phaedo, 73b–74a).

What Socrates says next is very crucial to understanding the TF: “When the recollection is derived from [the observation of] like things, then another consideration is sure to arise, which is—whether the likeness in any degree falls short or not of that which is recollected.” This statement already assumes that Forms are the perfect, absolute entities (perhaps paradigms) we recollect from our observation of the imperfection of the likenesses found in sensible things. In order to prove his point, and in a circular manner, Socrates first takes it for granted again that, for instance, “there is such a thing as equality, not of one piece of wood or stone with another, but that, over and above this, there is absolute [Form of] equality.” We recollect this Form from the observation of the “equalities of material things, such as pieces of wood and stones,” and reason that the Form of Equality must be distinct from these sensible equalities.3 To look at this “matter in another way,” the “same pieces of wood or stone appear at one time equal, and at another time unequal.” But the true Equality cannot alter in this manner and thus appear both equal and unequal. This reflection shows that these fluctuating “equals are not the same with the idea [Form] of equality.” Yet, “from these equals,” we have “conceived and attained that idea [i.e., the Form of Equality].” This conception “surely” is “an act of recollection” (74d–d).

In short, the equalities found in sensible things are not the same as the absolute Equality; they are its “inferior” and manifold “copies.” Furthermore, whoever “makes this observation must have had a previous knowledge of that [Form] to which the other [equality], although similar [alike], was inferior.” Then the Form of Equality, which we appropriate before birth and now recollect, serves as the “standard” by which we make sense of the observable equalities, which are the both imperfect and fluctuating likenesses of this absolute “standard” (74d–75b). Forms, then, are like, but not the same as, their imperfect representations in things.

Socrates adds that what has been said of the Form of Equality is also true of the Forms of Beauty, Good, and all other absolute essences. By referring to “our sensations” and comparing their imperfect representations to one another, we discover that these Forms must be our “pre-existent and inborn” possessions. This discovery presumably shows once again that “our souls must have had a prior existence.” Overall, the “proof that these ideas [Forms] must have existed before we were born” amounts to the same proof “that our souls existed before we were born.” If one proof falls, so does the other, says Socrates (76d–e). At the same time, this proof clearly implies that Forms themselves, even though they participate in the sensible objects as imperfect instances and copies, are also beyond this sensible, bodily world.

After another discussion on the possibility of afterlife, Socrates returns to his theory of Forms. On the one hand, unlike their variable instances, these absolute essences are not “liable” to any “degree of change.” Instead, “each of them” is “always” what it is in itself, never “admitting of variation . . . in any way, or at any time.” They are “always the same.” On the other hand, the many beautiful, sensible things are “hardly ever the same, either with themselves or with one another.” Also, these can be sensed, “but the unchanging [Forms] . . . can only [be grasped] with the mind—they are invisible and are not seen” (78d–79d).

A comparable description of the Form of Beauty is given in Symposium. It is “everlasting”; it “neither comes nor goes . . . neither flowers nor fades,” for the Form of Beauty is always “the same.” It does not exist in time or space, meaning that it is “the same then as now, here as there.” Forms, then, in no sense vary, change, or fluctuate. Moreover, the Form of Beauty is “neither words, nor knowledge, nor a something that exists in something else, such as a living creature, or the earth, or the heavens, or anything that is [i.e., exists]—but subsisting of itself and by itself in an eternal oneness.” Of course, Socrates is not denying participation here. He is only denying that Forms as Forms exist in any place, in any time, or in any thing. In this spirit, he adds immediately that “every lovely thing partakes [of] such sort that, however much the parts may wax and wane, [the Form] will be neither more nor less, but still the same inviolable whole” (211a–b).4 Likewise, Phaedrus says Forms are “veritable . . . without color or shape” and “cannot be touched” (247c–e).

After a long detour on various already familiar topics, Socrates proposes to return to the earlier discussion on the “nature of generation and corruption [destruction]” (Phaedo, 96a). He begins with an interesting account of the development of his own theory of causes, which basically explains how he came to reject the materialist explanations of causation. Socrates does not in this context deny material causation tout court. He is ultimately trying to tell us that the materialist explanations are incapable of accounting for essential (and moral) causation and that we must instead have “recourse to the world of mind and seek there the truth of existence”—namely, the essential causes of things in existence (96a–100a).

Once again, Socrates repeats, with a modification, that the method of hypothesis is the best method to determine the validity of different theories. This “method” first assumes “some principle . . . judged to be the strongest, and then . . . [affirms] as true whatever . . . [seems] to agree with [the principle],” and whatever disagrees with it should be “regarded as untrue.” (This method, as we should have already noted, is not based on deductive reasoning—presumably invented by the historical Parmenides and rigorously practiced by Zeno, Gorgias, and others.)5 The soundest and strongest principle is one with which many people already agree: “There is an absolute beauty and goodness and greatness, and the like.” If this principle is granted, then Socrates can proceed to prove both his own theory of “the nature” of causation and “the immortality of the soul.” Given the soundest principle as his premise, argues Socrates, “other than absolute beauty,” whatever is beautiful “can be beautiful only in as far as it partakes of absolute beauty.” Even though there have been other hints at it earlier, what we get with Socrates’s theory of causation here is precisely the participation theory of Forms. Importantly, participation is described here as the “presence” of a Form “in” things, though, admits Socrates, “as to the manner” of participation, he is “uncertain.” Still, he is firmly convinced that it is by the participation of the Form of Beauty in them that “all beautiful things become [or are] beautiful.” However, Socrates’s causation-participation theory becomes further complicated when he adds the following examples: it is also “by [the absolute] greatness only [that] great things become great and greater [still], . . . and by [the absolute] smallness [that] the less become less” (100a–101b). Because Socrates includes relational measures (“greater,” “taller,” “less,” and “smaller”) to his causation theory, he will have difficulty with his ensuing explanations of causation.

Socrates has already admitted that he does not know the details of participation. In order to validate his admittedly obscure theory, he has to show that the alternative theory of causation is unsound. He has already mentioned an unpersuasive (materialist) theory, which holds, for instance, that a man is “taller than the other by a head” (96a–97b). Anyone who says one person is taller than another person by (or because of) a head, “which is the same in both [persons],” commits an “absurdity.” In other words, we cannot say one person is taller than another because of the head they both have in common. Moreover, since a head is a short thing, it is unreasonable to argue that a short thing is the cause of tallness (100e–101b).

These two objections to the materialist causation theory already indicate some confusion on Socrates’s part. The first objection speaks of the relational measure of being taller and shorter, whereas the second objection points to the essential quality of tallness—or shortness. Moreover, the first objection is not denying that adding a head could make someone taller. Instead, it is denying that the same (sized?) head that is already possessed by two persons could account for one person being taller than the other person. At any rate, since the materialist theory has been found to produce absurd consequences, Socrates reurges that there is no other way in which any given object can be what it essentially is, except by partaking of its relevant Form (101c).

After agreeing once again that there are Forms, “that other things . . . [partake of] them,” and that these other things “derive their names from” their relevant Forms, Socrates proceeds to explain in what manner a sensible thing can and cannot have contrary attributes. When we say “Simmias is greater than Socrates and [smaller] than Phaedo,” we “predicate of Simmias both greatness and smallness,” or tallness and shortness. However, contrary to what this saying may imply, Simmias is not taller than Socrates “because he is Simmias”; he is taller “by reason of the size which he has” in comparison to Socrates. Likewise, Simmias is not shorter than Phaedo because of his essential identity (of tallness?); rather, he is so because of the accidental size attribute he has relative to Phaedo. In this manner, we may say Simmias is both taller and shorter “because he is in a mean between” Socrates and Phaedo. Thus Simmias is taller because his physical size exceeds Socrates’s physi...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Forms in the Middle-Period Dialogues
• Chapter 2. Parmenides, Part I
• Chapter 3. Parmenides, Part II
• Chapter 4. Parmenides in Theaetetus and Sophist
• Notes
• Bibliography