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Plato's Parmenides: Some Suggestions for its Interpretation. II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. L. Peck
A. L. Peck
Affiliation:
Christ's College, Cambridge
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Extract

In the space at my disposal I cannot attempt to deal with all the points which arise in the Second Part of the dialogue, and I therefore confine myself to a few which seem to be of special interest and importance. I hope it may be possible to deal more exhaustively with the dialogue in a fuller commentary. As in the previous part of the article, I have assumed the results of my study of the Sophist already referred to.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 4 , Issue 1-2 , May 1954 , pp. 31 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1954

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References

page 31 note 1 C.Q. iii (n.s.) (1953), pp. 126–150.

page 31 note 2 C.Q. ii (n.s.) (1952), pp. 32–56

page 32 note 1 Cf. the (sophistical) statement agreed by the E.V. and Theaetetus in the Sophi (252 a), that neidier Motion nor Rest will be if neither communicates ir Being.

page 33 note 1 This statement ‘of which they partake’ is not actually made here in the dialogue; but the phrase ‘partaking of the Other’ is used in a similar context at 146 e end.

page 33 note 2 Cf. the previous part of this article, C.Q. iii (n.s.) (1953). P. 137

page 36 note 1 This of course reminds us of the objection which Aristotle brought even againsst the Form ‘the Good’ (Eth.Nic. I. 1096 a 23 ff.).

page 36 note 2 ‘One’ and ‘other’ of course are not on a par in all respects: e.g. ‘one’ refers to a positive and essentially inherent character of a Form or of a particular, whereas ‘other’ does not refer directly to any such character, but at most to some . But they do coincide in needing completion before they are fully significant.

page 37 note 1 It will be noted that whereas the particular reproduces perfectly some of the characters of the Form(s) of which it partakes, it does not do so in all respects. E.g. no particular fully reproduces the ‘being’ of any Form; and we realize that the perfect ‘goodness’ implied by the Form ‘Good’ is not found in any actual particular. On the other hand, every particular shuttle does fully reproduce the unity of ‘the shuttle itself’.

page 37 note 2 From this arises a suggestion, which I make no claim to be able to prove, that in some sense the Great-and-Small must correspond to the other fundamental element of the Forms, viz. Being.

page 40 note 1 It should be borne in mind that in the Sophist this does not include statements of he type ‘Socrates is’ (nor, of course, those of he type ‘Socrates is just’). In this dialogue Plato is not concerned with particulars, but vith : the subjects of the verbs and are always ; so are the predicates, whether expressed or suppressed. By suppressing the words after the ‘sophist’ claims that the statement denies the existence of the subject, whereas it really denies the identity of the subject with the whose name has been suppressed; he wants us to take to mean ‘does not exist’. We must therefore beware in this dialogue of translating a phrase such as ‘Motion exists’, for this would (a) obliterate the parallelism between and (), and would also (b) prevent us, as it has prevented many commentators, from seeing that is an incomplete phrase, comparable with . Although Plato is chiefly concerned in the Sophist with in one instance he actually gives us the completed phrase in the case of , showing its parallelism with , at 257 a, where he says ‘So not being all those things (), is its own single self , whereas it is not all the other innumerable things. ‘Hence, to translate ‘Non-entity’ and ‘Existence’, and to translate ‘does not exist’ and ‘exists’, fails to represent the ambiguity on which the ‘sophist’ plays, and which it is Plato's aim to expose. In fact, such translations indicate that Plato's purpose in the dialogue has been completely missed.

page 41 note 1 Cf. p. 40, note to table

page 44 note 1 The word has, of course, a wider connotation than the singular ‘an attribute’, and in this way leads up to Parmenides' claim that the One is wholly ike the Others