Parmenides (dialogue) - Discussion With Aristoteles

Discussion With Aristoteles

This difficult second part of the dialogue is generally agreed to be one of the most challenging, and sometimes bizarre, pieces in the whole of the Platonic corpus. It consists of an unrelenting series of difficult and subtle arguments, where the exchange is stripped of all but the bare essentials of the arguments involved. Gone are the drama and colour we are accustomed to from earlier dialogues.

The long, austere second half of the dialogue is organized as a series of eight (or alternatively, nine) deductions about the relation of the one to the many. The reasoning is often, as are Parmenides' arguments in the first section of the work, obscure, and at times appears to be blatantly fallacious. Further, the deductions appear to be set up in a way to deliberately produce antinomies, or mutually contradictory conclusions. A bare outline of the deductions runs as follows:

• Deduction 1 - Hypothesis: If it is one. Conclusion: The one is nothing, does not exist, and is not the object of perception, knowledge or opinion.

• Deduction 2 - Hypothesis: If the one is. Conclusion: The one is everything and is the object of perception, knowledge and opinion.

• Appendix to Deductions 1 and 2 - Hypothesis: If the one is one and many, neither one nor many, and in time. Conclusion: The one comes to be and passes away in an instant outside of time.

• Deduction 3 - Hypothesis: If the one is. Conclusion: The many have contrary properties.

• Deduction 4 - Hypothesis: If the one is. Conclusion: The one is not in the many and the many not in the one; the many have no properties.

• Deduction 5 - Hypothesis: If the one is not. Conclusion: The one comes to be and passes away and neither comes to be nor passes away.

• Deduction 6 - Hypothesis: If the one is not. Conclusion: The one is nothing and in no state.

• Deduction 7 - Hypothesis: If the one is not. Conclusion: The many have contrary properties.

• Deduction 8 - Hypothesis: If the one is not. Conclusion: Nothing exists.

A satisfactory characterisation of this part of the dialogue has eluded scholars since antiquity. Many thinkers have tried, among them Cornford, Russell, Ryle, and Owen; but few would accept without hesitation any of their characterisations as having got to the heart of the matter. Recent interpretations of the second part have been provided by Miller (1986), Meinwald (1991), Sayre (1996), Allen (1997), Turnbull (1998), Scolnicov (2003), and Rickless (2007). It is difficult to offer even a preliminary characterisation, since commentators disagree even on some of the more rudimentary features of any interpretation. The discussion, at the very least, concerns itself with topics close to Plato's heart in many of the later dialogues, such as Being, Sameness, Difference, and Unity; but any attempt to extract a moral from these passages invites contention.