Once you reach a high enough power level, you realize that this is perhaps the most lethal dialogue ever conceived against the field of philosophy, at least for its time. Plato crashes the chariot of philosophy with no survivors. Not the Friends of the Forms, not the Eleatics, not the Pythagoreans, and not the Heracliteans. They all must die.
What is Plato's Parmenides? TOTAL PHILOSOPHY DEATH!!! TPD!!!
oh sweet! More impractical unfalsifiable nonsense
bump
>Plato crashes the chariot of philosophy
How?
Because of what I mentioned in the OP. Plato decides to destroy his theory of forms, but he gets Parmenides to do it, and he ends up getting Parmenides to destroy Eleatic philosophy in the process. Nothing coherent emerges out of the dialogue. In fact, given the developments after the first and second hypotheses, nothing coherent is possible. It’s over.
Why do you believe that this dialogue features young Socrates? It is obviously a sign that these arguments can be refuted. Also the first hypothese is the root of neoplatonism.
Can the One withstand the challenges levied against it from Parmenides?
They're not challenges but "attributes" of his.
Including “Not One”? And “Many”?
How can "Not One" and "Many" be an attribute of The One?
How can "not many" and "one" be an attribute of "many"?
>Why do you believe that this dialogue features young Socrates? It is obviously a sign that these arguments can be refuted. Also the first hypothese is the root of neoplatonism.
>The young Socrates represents quite the opposite. As it is a general pattern in Plato's late dialogues, the displacement of Socrates to the position of a lower speaker or outside the dialogue entirely represents Plato going beyond the philosophy of his early and middle years, for which Socrates was the chief mouthpiece.
It wouldn't be the former, on account of how Socrates in the Theaetetus is made to say that he had a "grand and noble depth," and that "I'm afraid that we'll fail as much to understand what he was saying as we'll fall far short of what he thought when he spoke..." (Theaetetus 183e-184a), which falls far short of showing that Parmenides can be refuted. That Plato would have him say this in a dialogue chosen to take place at the end of Socrates' life suggests Plato wants us to think about what Socrates is doing still positing the Forms while not grasping to his own satisfaction what Parmenides taught him. That Theaetetus was purposely set at the start of the seven dialogues covering Socrates' trial and execution, inclines me to suspect Plato wants us to consider it alongside a dialogue like Phaedo.
As for the latter view, I don't think Plato intends to draw a line between what Socrates does and what he himself does, otherwise it wouldn't be a young Socrates being refuted, but an old one. Plato would presumably be aware that his depiction of the young Socrates resembles the old Socrates of the Phaedo, which raises the question of why Socrates would be depicted asking the same questions and positing the same beings all his life.
The dialogue ends with a positive assertion of something beyond all philosophies contended for and against by Plato, the most esoteric words in all Western thought. It is far from a mere aporia. But it is so far ahead it seems like a return to that feature of his early dialogues.
>Let this therefore be said, and let us also say the following, as it seems appropriate. Whether or not there is a unity, the unity itself and the manifold otherness, both in relation to themselves as well as to each other—all this, in every way, both is and is not, appears [phainetai] and does not appear. —This is most true [alēthestata].
Heidegger:
>The third passage of the Parmenides is the most profound point to which Occidental metaphysics has ever advanced. It is the most radical advance into the problem of Being and time—an advance which afterwards was not caught up with [aufgefangen] but instead intercepted [abgefangen] (by Aristotle)
Karl Jaspers in a letter to Heidegger:
>If the second half of his [Plato’s] Parmenides would be performed anew with today’s methods (and not Neoplatonically), then all bad metaphysics would be overcome, and the space would be open for a pure hearing of the language of Being.
The young Socrates represents quite the opposite. As it is a general pattern in Plato's late dialogues, the displacement of Socrates to the position of a lower speaker or outside the dialogue entirely represents Plato going beyond the philosophy of his early and middle years, for which Socrates was the chief mouthpiece.
>>Let this therefore be said, and let us also say the following, as it seems appropriate. Whether or not there is a unity, the unity itself and the manifold otherness, both in relation to themselves as well as to each other—all this, in every way, both is and is not, appears [phainetai] and does not appear. —This is most true [alēthestata].
Yes, this is Plato demonstrating the transcendence of the One (Unity) over being and non-being, appearance and non-appearance. He also demonstrates that the Indefinite Dyad ("Other") transcends being and non-being in the opposite sense.
How? Doesn’t Plato debunk the One in Parmenides, or renders it severely problematic? What exactly is the Indefinite Dyad anyway? Does it have to do with the unlimited, limited, mixed, and the causes of Philebus?
>Does it have to do with the unlimited, limited, mixed, and the causes of Philebus?
The Dyad is associated with the unlimited in Philebus, this much is noted by Aristotle. Aristotle recognizes that Plato's use of the Dyad is similar to the relative terms that he examines in his treatment of language, e.g. the greater and the lesser, which Plato explicitly states in the Philebus itself, the main difference is Plato treats them ontologically rather than linguistically or categorically. And according to Plotinus, the One is that which limits the unlimited, so that it provides a definite form to the resulting mixture - without the mixture, there is only the purely limited or the purely unlimited, neither of which can "be", or "be substantial." So in the mixture there is a collection of beings which are both one (i.e. partake of the One, or limited) and many (i.e. partake of the unlimited, or Indefinite Dyad), however they are also true beings in that they definitely exist, unlike the One and Dyad, because the union of Oneness and Multiplicity just is what we know as Being. Beyond Being/Substantiality pertains to these transcendent principles. The One does not admit of substantialization in itself, nor does the Dyad. The One and Dyad represent the greatest paradox of two principles which are so totally opposite that their difference causes a union into one, so that it might even be correct to say that the differentiation between the two is purely logical. Both transcend substantiality (Being and non-Being), both are unlimited (in opposite senses).
In Peripatetic terms, this union of Limited and Unlimited is Substantiality, and you can easily see the analogy between Limited and Act, and Unlimited and Potency, in the most pure sense that these Aristotelian terms can be conceived. However, the keen observer notices that "limitation" is exactly the opposite way Peripatetics describe Act, but this is a matter of slight confusion again. Act is that which is unlimited in its perfection, but limited in its definition or substantiality, potency is that which is unlimited in its substantiality, but limited in its perfection (matter, which is a manifestation of potency, is what causes imperfection in the "pure triangle", to use a geometric example, in that triangularity is only made imperfect through its reception into pure potency, or matter, which is "impure" potency).
>Doesn’t Plato debunk the One in Parmenides, or renders it severely problematic?
If you're looking at the dialogue that way, you should have noticed that it debunks "The Many" to the same extent as it debunks "The One." Looking at it this way, the question remains: what is left of reality if the purpose of the exercise is just to debunk? Does reality not exist? If the One is not, then the Many is not and is. So it debunks the non-existence of the One just as much as it does the existence. The contention is that the One is not constrained to being.
>Act is that which is unlimited in its perfection, but limited in its definition or substantiality, potency is that which is unlimited in its substantiality, but limited in its perfection (matter, which is a manifestation of potency, is what causes imperfection in the "pure triangle", to use a geometric example, in that triangularity is only made imperfect through its reception into pure potency, or matter, which is "impure" potency).
I didn't have enough room to finish this thought: So what the Limited approximates in Plato is the unlimited perfection said here of Act. The Limited is naturally "deficient" in the sense that it it is neither "greater" nor "smaller", so it lacks the properties conferred by the Unlimited, or Dyad. Also, I forgot to parenthesize the fact that, where I said Potency is unlimited with respect to substantiality, I meant this in a different sense than the Substantiality of Being. The substantiality of Potency is simply its pure possibility, the insubstantiality of Act is simply its pure impossibility of being anything other than it is. Pure Potency does not have true Substantiality, because of itself it is nothing actual. This is simply recapitulating well known points of Peripatetic philosophy.
The question I leave unanswered is the relationship between the One, and the Cause. I am somewhat uncertain how the One relates to the Cause and the Limited. I tend to the Neoplatonic view that the Cause is the intelligible principle, the One is itself the Limited (in the Philebus, Plato uses the example of the Equal as Limiting, equality is interchangeable with oneness). But the Cause would have to arise out of the One and Dyad without action by anything external, which begs the question of why a Cause is necessary if it can generate spontaneously to begin with. Unless the Cause, Limited and Unlimited are coeternal. But this again conflicts with the idea that the Cause is of the One, unless the Cause being of the One is not meant in a temporal sense, but only logical sense. I believe this is what the Neoplatonists tend to assert, especially when they refer to the creation of the cosmos, that the "creation" is an "eternal analogy." And so it holds with the notion that time is the moving image of eternity.
>The question I leave unanswered is the relationship between the One, and the Cause. I am somewhat uncertain how the One relates to the Cause and the Limited.
How does Euthyphro’s dilemma play into this? Does associating Cause with mind help at all? How compatible is this with Aristotle’s cosmology with the Unmoved Mover contemplating itself?
>the analogy between Limited and Act, and Unlimited and Potency, in the most pure sense that these Aristotelian terms can be conceived.
It is weird to describe God as “pure act”, then, isn’t it?
>but this is a matter of slight confusion again. Act is that which is unlimited in its perfection, but limited in its definition or substantiality, potency is that which is unlimited in its substantiality, but limited in its perfection
Why is potency limited in its perfection? Perhaps I’m looking at the wrong angle and need to do some Heideggerian wordplay. It seems like there’s a yin and yang going on. Potency needs a limit for perfection might be a better way of putting it. Idk
>Why is potency limited in its perfection?
Potency is the receptivity of all form, and the perfection of none. In order for a potency to contain one form it must, qua potency, maintain the potentiality of acquiring another form. And by retaining this potentiality, it must also maintain its "otherness" as something other than the form it currently possesses in itself. Imagine a wife who is not fully committed to her husband, and keeps someone on the side whom she might choose if she decides she gets bored of her husband. That's what all potency is like, albeit analogically. The main problem with the analogy is that with pure potency, there is no "truly loyal" wife by definition, so potency will always be waiting and receptive to form other than that it currently possesses.
Potency is also the explanatory principle of all imperfection, which is part of its raison d'etre. The question arises for the Peripatetic: why are there things like spheres, triangles, which approximate the perfection of the concept but never actually perfect it? Second, why are there so many of them, when "triangularity" of itself is a unity?
First, we possess the "perfect form" of a thing, which is its definition or essence. We then need this unity to become a multiplicity, and to become multiple, we need a principuum individuationis, which will be distinct from the form itself; something to allow us to differentiate one from another. Now potency is just that: through its imperfection, it allows multiples to exist, because if all were purely perfect, how would they be distinguished from one another? Time and place? But if a perfection is limited to a time and place, then it is imperfect insofar as it is localized and goes out of existence in time. So in this sense, you can see potency as a kind of "maker's mark." Or even a "curse mark", if you're very pessimistic.
>How does Euthyphro’s dilemma play into this?
Well, I think the resolution of this dilemma underpins most of Plato's philosophy to begin with. Plato does not root much or any of his theory upon the divine command theory of justice.
>Does associating Cause with mind help at all?
In the explanation I gave, Cause would be the same as the Divine Mind. That is what Plotinus also suggests, although Plotinus still refers to the One as the Ultimate Cause.
>ow compatible is this with Aristotle’s cosmology with the Unmoved Mover contemplating itself?
Unmoved Mover? Not very. Self-contemplation? Yes, that is how the Intellect is meant to have differentiated itself from the One.
>Well, I think the resolution of this dilemma underpins most of Plato's philosophy to begin with. Plato does not root much or any of his theory upon the divine command theory of justice
I don’t mean justice, but rather how the implication of the gods and the good have on cosmology and theology. It implies that the good can exist without gods. Where does the Good fit in with the One?
>Unmoved Mover? Not very. Self-contemplation? Yes, that is how the Intellect is meant to have differentiated itself from the One.
Doesn’t that imply that the Intellect was contained in the One or that the One is some kind of primordial awareness or consciousness?
>Where does the Good fit in with the One?
The Good is the One. It transcends all deity. The gods cannot exist without the One, but the One completely transcends personal deity and has no dependence.
>Doesn’t that imply that the Intellect was contained in the One
Intellect is eminently contained "in" the One, if we use the scholastic division of proportionate causes (eminent, virtual, formal). This means the Intellect is not contained in the One like the part in a whole, rather the One is the pure possibility of Intellect's being, or rather One is the pure possibility of Being itself. The One is so much more than some kind of primordial awareness, at least if we're speaking about the same thing by "awareness." If by primordial awareness we mean something far beyond the human condition, something supremely intellectual, then this would be the contemplation of the One by the Intellect, which is the Plotinian equivalent of Aristotle's self-contemplation, which results in the generation of Soul and the intelligibles (gods, forms, etc.). The One, in its transcendent unity, has nothing to contemplate. I don't like to bring in extraneous traditions to the discussion, but in Buddhism, the highest Jhana is described as the "cessation of consciousness and non-consciousness", which gives you a similar idea of how the One is beyond even self-contemplation, without it being the same thing as "non-existence" or complete void in the way that is usually taken.
Why is the One called the Good if it is a purely unspoken void of voids, can you extend upon the Good, why is it called the Good for example Simplicius here when talking about Principles, says Principle of beauty, principle of truth, and then even principle of principles, why does he ignore though that there is a principle of ugliness, principle of falsity, can you give me the platonic understanding on why these principles of Evil, are not real and have no place in the higher ontology, I have heard here and there that "evil" is the absence of "the good" but if that is so, and the Good is the One, how can there be an absence of the Good? Maybe I'm missing something critical
>"The fountain and principle of all things is the good: for that which all things desire, and to which all things are extended, is the principle and end of all things. The good also produces from itself all things, first, [p. xxv] middle, and last. But it produces such as are first and proximate to itself, similar to itself; one goodness, many goodnesses, one simplicity and unity which transcends all others, many unities, and one principle many principles. For the one, the principle, the good, and deity, are the same: for deity is the first and the cause of all things. But it is necessary that the first should also be most simple; since whatever is a composite and has multitude is posterior to the one. And multitude and things which are not good desire the good as being above them: and in short, that which is not itself the principle is from the principle.
>“But it is also necessary that the principle of all things should possess the highest, and all, power. For the amplitude of power consists in producing all things from itself, and in giving subsistence to similars prior to things which are dissimilar. Hence the one principle produces many principles, many simplicities, and many goodnesses, proximately from itself. For since all things differ from each other, and are multiplied with their proper differences, each of these multitudes is suspended from its one proper principle. Thus, for instance, all beautiful things, whatever and wherever they may be, whether in souls or in bodies, are suspended from one fountain of beauty. Thus too, whatever possesses symmetry, and whatever is true, and all principles, are in a certain respect connate with the first principle, so far as they are principles and fountains and goodnesses, with an appropriate subjection and analogy. For what the one principle is to all beings, that each of the other principles is to the multitude comprehended under the idiom of its principle. For it is impossible, since each multitude is characterized by a certain difference, that it should not be extended to its proper principle, which illuminates one and the same form to all the individuals of that multitude. For the one is the leader of every multitude; and every peculiarity or idiom in the many, is derived to the many from the one.
>“All partial [xxvi] principles therefore are established in that principle which ranks as a whole, and are comprehended in it, not with interval and multitude, but as parts in the whole, as multitude in the one, and number in the monad. For this first principle is all things prior to all: and many principles are multiplied about the one principle, and in the one goodness, many goodnesses are established. This too is not a certain principle like each of the rest: for of these, one is the principle of beauty, another of symmetry, another of truth, and another of something else, but it is simply principle. Nor is it simply the principle of beings, but it is the principle of principles. For it is necessary that the idiom of principle, after the same manner as other things, should not begin from multitude, but should be collected into one monad as a summit, and which is the principle of principles.
>“Such things therefore as are first produced by the first good, in consequence of being connascent with it, do not recede from essential goodness, since they are immovable and unchanged, and are eternally established in the same blessedness. They are likewise not indigent of the good, because they are goodnesses themselves. All other natures however, being produced by the one good, and many goodnesses, since they fall off from essential goodness, and are not immovably established in the hyparxis of divine goodness, on this account they possess the good according to participation.”
And also the way I understand, the One in the Parmenides is as Beyond Being,
That is beyond Being and Non-Being, Infinite possibility, could the platonic terms unbound and bound, or limit and unlimited not be related to the vedantic Manifest and unmanifest? As I understand it the One being needy of nothing, transcends all unity and multiplicity, so all duplicity and triplicity, is the total affirmation of a double negative, is beyond all determinative language and concept, but also Being in itself. Because it is not other to itself, and is itself.
A lot of people think that the One is the Good, but this is simply a Neoplatonic tenet of faith, not something that is strongly supported by the dialogue.
Excellent posts.
I'm a simple layman passing by but there seems to be an intimation of something similar to the Trinity in that last paragraph.
This doesn't make it any more clear. It's just as much a big frick you to his whole earlier philosophy.
>It's just as much a big frick you to his whole earlier philosophy.
How so?
Can you please elaborate on the opposite ways in which the One and the Dyad each transcends being and non-being in their own different way?
Total Platonoid Delusion (TPD). Many such cases.
>but he gets Parmenides to do it
Go to hell, Straussian.
Only philosophers Plato couldn’t beat were the cynics
I started doing this to women who read Colleen Hoover over the last year directly because of this image. The pool thots at my complex all despise me now and life is good.
I would have asked him where his knowledge that a plato reader is not an intellectual come from. He must have read plato himself or he learned it from a master. if it's the first hypothesis then he is not an intellectual himself and if he learned it from a master he is not an intellectual either since he rely on the opinion of someone else instead of engaging with the primary source, then the whole wagon would have applauded
>if it's the first hypothesis then he is not an intellectual
no, plato readers not being intellectuals doesn't entail that they never will be
That darkie was a materialist. You shouldn't take them seriously.
The true joke here is implying that the black man knew what Plato even said
Tweetophon has been real silent ever since this dropped
Yeah real silent since his laptop IP got range banned for some unknown reason, and his mobile phone has always been perma banned because some brainlet on this network no doubt got in trouble with the jannies and got swept away.
I've been drinking, but what challenge does this thread posit to the Eleatics? "Platonist says that Plato's puppet show reveals that non-Platonist is wrong!" spare me. Utter drivel from drooling midwits who attached themselves to the first ancient thinker their freshman professor showed them.
You're a special sort of moronic. Bifurcation of what-is, or any other descriptive scheme, is not inherently wrong. Parmenides himself says there are "many signs" regarding the nature of Being. What-is admits of details, at least insofar as we or the goddess discuss it, and can be said to discuss it. So I will not necessarily fault those who draw up some framework or schema.
The mistake lies in their discussions of negation, in thinking they can create and destroy, of not recognising that they say that what is not is, and what is is not. Whereupon their words are all rendered gibberish and their ridiculous philosophies are no more than straw.
To be clear: Daoists are at fault because they are tied to language of change. They do not understand the sheer omnipresence of Being, although they clearly have some grasp of it by describing dao in ways such as 包通天地。
To go further, none of them understand what was implicit in Parmenides and made explicit by Melissus regarding arrangements. If you rearrange permanent matter or source material, you have still created "new arrangements" of what is. Which means that in your system the arrangements have significance, and you must account for how they previously "were not", and now are created or come to be, and what will become of them.
For particular thinkers, they each have their own problems. Wang Bi for example is mired in problems because he thinks of the mother as being a source and sustainer of existence, and a place where things return in death. Which shows he is blinkered and does not have a full glimpse of the truth (both the eternal mother and the child that is created and perishes, in sum total), does not understand the issues with rearrangement, and may well assume there is a genuine alternative to what-is in speaking of death. His Dao or One or TaiJi or whatever is almost like an Anaximanderean unlimited that burps forth and swallows back the particulars, coupled with some gross thomistic doctrine of divine conservation.
On the other hand, I appreciate how he notes certain things such as the fact that the dark can be no more hot than cold, one note than another, because it must in some sense encompass and thread through both. In its omnipresence it threads through the mutually exclusive, or for these daoists is at least beyond the opposition. There is more, but whatever. Eleatics and dialecticians reach the absolute high point of metaphysics but are hyper focused on that topic and sometimes need elucidation, and these later Daoist commentators (and to some extent Zhuangzi and maybe one or two other earlier works) will combine such high tier observations with social and political commentary, albeit they are tied to some inferior teachings and are unable to really reach the eleatics in that sense.
A real philosophical education would involve deep study of eleatics and daoists, we can basically write out aristotle from the curriculum and reduce plato to a footnote, and woe betide the medievals.
>If you rearrange permanent matter or source material, you have still created "new arrangements" of what is.
Arrangements aren't things, they're relations between things. You haven't created nor destroyed anything with substance.
Semantics. The question isn't whether you can define "arrangments" and "things" in a way that places them in different categories of "what is". Similarly, the question isn't whether you can define "arrangements" so they don't overlap with your definition of "substance".
Rather, the question is whether arrangements have any significance at all. Obviously they do, because you are using them to account for your confused model of change. So therefore you are creating or destroying some significance, and thus fall prey to the objection/problem.
The totality of things isn't a thing in itself. There is no substance in said totality. If you have two things, and then they switch places, there is no new thing created.
There's no way you're that stupid. Think harder.
You have a ball at the top of the hill. That's the sum total of "what-is" in your presentist worldview.
Now, you have a ball at the bottom of the hill. Is that a new state of affairs or arrangment?
Wow, it is, so you literally altered what-is in some manner, presumably by adding and subtracting from it. You have an arrangement that was an "is not" but now "is" (the ball at the bottom of the hill), and I suppose your previous arrangement (ball at the top of the hill) was an "is" and is now an "is not" (unless you have some growing block world sort of view).
So you should either answer how you can talk about a literal "is not", or else explain how the ball at the bottom of the hill exists equally alongside the ball at the top of the hill (presumably via eternalism, or whatever method you have of avoiding the incoherence of positing an "is not").
No, it is not a new arrangement because the only things that have changed are accidents. No substance has been modified. Stop knocking down your own straw men.
ofc you’d think the dialogue is part of an anti-Eleatic conspiracy you schizo lol I bet you haven’t even read it
He's not worth bothering with, the moment you try to engage with him on the level of detail in any dialogue or even on Parmenides' poem he just repeats himself as though typing "Plato copes over Parmenides" is a substantive argument.
Fourfold hypotheses: 1) what x is in itself, 2) what x is in relation to everything else, 3) what everything else is in relation to x, and 4) given x, what everything else is in relation to everything else. This expands to eight by going through the four again by asking "if x is not...". Usually in each subsequent argument, he clarifies what they were just doing, or reminds what the next hypothesis should be looking at differently from the prior. The puzzling thing about the exercises is that, while it's for the most part clear enough how to hypothesize about the Same, the Other, the Many, and so on, it's not as clear on how it works, if it works, with the Good, the Beautiful, the Just, and becomes more difficult with Man, Fire, Water, and even moreso with Hair, Mud, Dirt (and, in contrast to how I see a lot of people take it, Parmenides seems to lean toward having to hypothesize about these latter things; see 130e, where Parmenides says "you don't inquire into these because you still respect men's opinions".).
I think they infer that it must be the same as the other based on Aristotle referring to the One as one of Plato's principles. Presumably they and their 2nd century AD Neo-Pythagorean predecessors were trying to work out an interpretation of Plato that took seriously both Aristotle's claim, and what Socrates is depicted saying about the Good in the Republic.
>1) what x is in itself, 2) what x is in relation to everything else, 3) what everything else is in relation to x, and 4) given x, what everything else is in relation to everything else. This expands to eight by going through the four again by asking "if x is not...". Usually in each subsequent argument, he clarifies what they were just doing, or reminds what the next hypothesis should be looking at differently from the prior.
So… this is the noesis of The Republic, but in practice? And practiced disjunctively, too.
>The puzzling thing about the exercises is that, while it's for the most part clear enough how to hypothesize about the Same, the Other, the Many, and so on
Does Aristotle have anything to say about the semantics involved? I remember that he had things to say about Plato’s diaeresis in Politicus, stating he did it incorrectly and incurred the possibility of category error by making legitimate and illegitimate spawn from government before discussing quantity. The correct alternative is by making it into both into parallel branches spawning from government, before mixing and matching one, few, many, etc. with legitimate and illegitimate.
Also, whenever I hear four-fold, I immediately think of Aristotle.
>So… this is the noesis of The Republic, but in practice? And practiced disjunctively, too.
Well, it seems as though it lines up with the (brief) characterization Socrates gives of it there, but the difference seems to be that here, you can attain a "lordly (or authoritative) view of the True", but based on the arguments beforehand, that doesn't seem to mean you have the same consequences, e.g., discovering the Idea of the Good. And hypothesis in the Republic and the Parmenides would have to be compared with hypothesis in the Phaedo (99d-102a) and Meno (86e-87b, 87d, 89c). Those other accounts seem to fit better with the tentative character of hypothesis in the Parmenides than the surer account of the Republic.
>Aristotle
He talks about hypothesis in the Organon texts, but I don't know if he directly addresses anything like how hypothesis is discussed in the Republic or Parmenides.
Before I continue, are you the same Plato anon who dominated much of the Plotinus thread from a few days ago?
Yeah, I've only popped into this thread at
and
. Feel free to decide whether engaging is worth your time accordingly, kek.
samegay
False, I'm half-expecting them to be a bit pissed
Perfect. I always enjoy your commentary and your pointers, even if I switch "characters" to drag out any insight you have. You have to love imageboards for that ability. I also like listening to what Tweetophon has to say, when I can soothe him (or enrage him) into addressing the text, but I digress.
I'm still working on your readings for the meaning of "participation", but I'm getting the sense that the Republic postures toward there being a "Form of the Good" that grants wisdom, though Socrates is reluctant to say that he has seen it or even give an opinion about it. However, now that we've arrived at, Parmenides, close, if not at the pinnacle of, dialectic, and we're finding out that not only the "forms" as we may have naively held are problematic, but that going beyond forms reveals nothing but an eight-fold tangled mess. The text itself even neglects to provide the usual literary accoutrements that Plato affords his dialogues after we make a certain amount of progress into it. In addition, Socrates elsewhere has claimed that he doesn't know anything at all, especially in the Apology, which you believe stands the firmest among all of Plato's dialogues.
I'm getting the sense that there's a Jodorowsky-esque twist at the end here (if you've ever seen Holy Mountain, it's a cult classic). After this arduous, mystical alchemical journey to find immortality, we arrive at the mountain, still mortal men, and we find that there's nothing there. We found something out, and we're at point B rather than point A, now zoom out cameras.
I'm at work atm, but good to chat with you again, anon, and I'll try to address your questions and observations when I get off later.
checked
no worries, I'll keep the thread up
I'm back, I'll try and share some observations.
However, now that we've arrived at, Parmenides, close, if not at the pinnacle of, dialectic, and we're finding out that not only the "forms" as we may have naively held are problematic, but that going beyond forms reveals nothing but an eight-fold tangled mess. The text itself even neglects to provide the usual literary accoutrements that Plato affords his dialogues after we make a certain amount of progress into it.
The latter observation is easier, I think, to take up. We definitely see a leaner form of the dialogue format for the whole second half, which makes what we do have for the first half presumably more important. If we consider what we have, what do we find? We have, as with Symposium, a narrative at several levels of remove (Cephalus to us, Antiphon to Cephalus, Pythodorus to Antiphon, Pythodorus present at the original occasion); we have an account of Socrates' turn to philosophy (both Phaedo and Symposium have him share that account privately among friends, but this one isn't shared by him at all, and, per a slight reference to it in Theaetetus, he seems unsure in old age whether he ever understood what was happening); we have the event coinciding with the Panathenea (otoh, an example of Sicrates' peculiarity, preferring to speak to foreign philosophers instead of attend an important religious festival; otoh, it's also a joke, since the Panathenea celebrates the "Oneness" of Athens); we have the *only* dialogue where Socrates converses with other philosophers (If one takes Timaeus and the Eleatic Stranger as philosophers, then he only listens quietly); we have two questionable political figures present (Pythodorus, I think per Thucydides, was sent into exile for failure during the Peloponnesian War, and Aristoteles is noted to go on to be one of the Thirty Tyrants); we have allusions both to thumos (Zeno's own reason for writing his treatise) and eros (Socrates' suspicion of why Zeno wrote his treatise, Parmenides' citation of Ibycus' poem before going over the gymnastic); we have seven people specified to be present (cf 129d; we only know who five are, and *two* are unnamed; is *this* a slight allusion to the "indeterminate dyad"? It's certainly an indeterminate two, but it's hard to say what to do with that observation...); we get slight allusion to the Republic (through Glaucon and Adeimantus in, but also a Cephalus, tho a different one); we get a slight allusion to Anaxagoras, who Socrates read with disappointment in his youth (Cephalus comes from Anaxagoras' home country of Clazomenae, and see the autobiography of Socrates in the Phaedo). Regarding the young Aristoteles, I have to wonder if the passage in the Republic about the dangers of the young learning dialectic are relevant here (537e-539d). And, of course, Plato, as an author, attributes this story to his younger brother ("Same" mother, "Other" father? "One" family, "Many" siblings? Maybe a joke?).
Thank you for the wonderful, detailed exposition as always. I don't know if I can sustain this conversation for much longer, let alone give it the adequate treatment it deserves, but I'll leave with some parting thoughts.
>We have, as with Symposium, a narrative at several levels of remove
This is an element that I've often failed to look into. How is the account being relayed? If this isn't necessarily supposed to be an accurate account of the telephone game, if it wasn't completely fabricated, then what is it supposed to be?
>Regarding the young Aristoteles, I have to wonder if the passage in the Republic about the dangers of the young learning dialectic are relevant here (537e-539d).
You're also probably familiar with the "Glaucon was a thirty tyrant" theory by Jacob Howland, too. The Republic never hit the same after that.
Speaking of family, there's also another element you just hit upon, which is the intended audience. How much of Plato's dialogues are written with his brothers in mind?
>"But I do not think such an undertaking concerning these matters would be a good for human beings, unless for some few, those who are themselves able to discover them through a small indication; of the rest, it would unsuitably fill some of them with a mistaken contempt, and others with lofty and empty hope as if they had learned awesome matters."
No wonder Plato also warns in the 7th letter that if you don't have the memory, acuity, and pure intention of getting to the bottom of things, you'll be led astray. I think this is what happens when you stop before you finish, which has been a major reason for me continuing. Because, while there sometimes is a nagging sense that there's no "there", there, at the same time, the way Socrates reasons leads us for there to believe that something must be "there" that makes life intelligible at all.
>"After much effort, as names, definitions, sights, and other data of sense, are brought into contact and friction one with another, in the course of scrutiny and kindly testing by men who proceed by question and answer without ill will, with a sudden flash there shines forth understanding about every problem, and an intelligence whose efforts reach the furthest limits of human powers."
And I've experienced maybe the slightest glimpse of this throughout my philosophical travels. At least clarity of sight. I'm not enthralled like I used to be, but I wasn't looking to be enthralled, I was looking to understand the whole.
I think I'm going to return to Aristotle, Kant, and Peirce studies for a little longer, for that's returning a lot more bang for my buck right now (I recently purchased an amazing book on Peirce's categories, Charles S. Peirce's Phenomenology by Atkins, that was one of the few times a $50 book was worth the price). But I'll return to Plato when the time is right.
Cheers man, it's been a pleasure.
>This is an element that I've often failed to look into. How is the account being relayed? If this isn't necessarily supposed to be an accurate account of the telephone game, if it wasn't completely fabricated, then what is it supposed to be?
I think the answer might have to be sought in asking, "why do philosophers from Clazomenae come to Athens seeking the conversations between Socrates and Parmenides?" Being from Clazomenae points to (but doesn't necessarily prove) the probability of these men being Anaxagoreans, and Anaxagoras' accounts seem to posit a Many that are caused by Mind. Socrates himself engaged with Anaxagoreanism before his turn to the Forms, so one wonders whether the Clazomenaean philosophers are wondering whether Socrates found a better account of Mind as the cause of things. But it's hard, since Cephalus doesn't say more than that. We can infer that if he didn't know Socrates, then he knew about Socrates, having stayed in Athens before with Plato's family, who just about all associated with him. But the other result of putting up such a distant frame is to cast some degree of uncertainty; Pythodorus and Antiphon are both non-philosophers, so one *could* explain the obscurities of the dialogue through that. The other result is plausible deniability for Plato; the Symposium, for instance, which also uses several frames (Apollodorus to an unnamed man, recalling a conversation the previous day with a [not the same?] Glaucon, which consisted of recalling what Aristodemus told him about a private party he'd been at about a decade before), seems to do so to similarly cast a little bit of doubt (Aristodemus and Apollodorus are both unbalanced followers of Socrates), especially given that in his speech, Socrates asserts that Eros isn't a god, at a party where at least three people are prosecuted for knocking the dicks off of Herm statues and blaspheming the Mysteries. It might be that the Parmenides depicts philosophy in an unlikeable way, so while perhaps a more naked depiction, perhaps it needs something to qualify it with, so that it doesn't look merely garrulous.
>You're also probably familiar with the "Glaucon was a thirty tyrant" theory by Jacob Howland, too. The Republic never hit the same after that.
Lol, yep, if you came across that on a thread here, that might've been from me, I brought it up excitedly as soon as it came out.
>Speaking of family, there's also another element you just hit upon, which is the intended audience. How much of Plato's dialogues are written with his brothers in mind?
That's a very good question, and I honestly don't know. According to a will that Diogenes Laertius quotes (if it can be trusted at all), Plato left the majority of his property to "young Adeimantus", so probably Adeimantus' grandson; obvs, Adeimantus appears in the Apology, and Glaucon (who, as you note, may be dead) does not. But it's hard to tell what else to do with the thought.
Regarding the rest, I don't really have more to add, except that I think you're right. In any case, enjoy the Peirce, and catch ya in some future thread!
So, with respect to "dramatic" elements, the best sense (and it's incomplete, I feel) is that this, the most overtly "philosophic" dialogue, seems to point to questions about Socrates' piety (skipping the Panathenea), his philosophical development (his post-Anaxagorean grappling with opinions in speech), the bearing of philosophy on politics (via both the eventual tyrant Aristoteles, and the peculiar consequences for political life of Parmenides' criticisms of Socrates' Forms). That's a bit surprising for what initially appears pretty insular and abstruse!
Regarding your observation about Jodorowsky (nice ref btw!), I think there *is* a difference, that it's so much ending the journey with the same understanding one started with but deepened (if that's what you mean?), but I think there's a very real "conversion" (or "turnaround"; I just mean the "periagoge" in the Cave passage), where there is something one gains. But I think, if it's genuine, Plato's warning in the seventh letter: "But I do not think such an undertaking concerning these matters would be a good for human beings, unless for some few, those who are themselves able to discover them through a small indication; of the rest, it would unsuitably fill some of them with a mistaken contempt, and others with lofty and empty hope as if they had learned awesome matters." (341d-e or thereabouts) So, if we take that seriously, somehow, what we discover won't be contemptible to us (if we've worked it out for ourselves?), but also, surprisingly, we won't be inclined to treat it like something monumental. (And a little of this is why I don't spell everything out, there's definitely a stronger pleasure in working it out, kek) But there does seem to be something at the end.
>Did you read the dialogue? That's not the structure at all.
>It's: 1) What X is in itself, 2) What X is in itself (contradicting (1) entirely), 3) what not-X is in itself, 4) what not-X is in itself (contradicting (3) entirely).
No, check 136a for Parmenides' own summary. Using Zeno's example, he says:
>If Many is, what must result both for 1) the Many themselves in relation to themselves and 2) in relation to the One and 3) for the One both in relation to itself and 4) in relation to the Many?
Switch the words to match the hypothesis of the One Parmenides runs through, and it's:
1) The One itself in relation to itself
2) The One itself in relation to the Many
3) The Many in relation to itself
4) The Many in relation to the One
Followed by the four negated hypotheses. Each successive hypothesis starts off usually with a summary of the previous one and saying what will be done differently for the one they're starting (so, e.g., the difference between 1 and 2 is specified at 142b-c, between 2 and 3 at 152b-c, between 3 and 4 at 159b-c).
>that it's so much ending the journey with the same understanding one started with but deepened
That it's *not* so much etc.
>Fourfold hypotheses: 1) what x is in itself, 2) what x is in relation to everything else, 3) what everything else is in relation to x, and 4) given x, what everything else is in relation to everything else.
Did you read the dialogue? That's not the structure at all.
It's: 1) What X is in itself, 2) What X is in itself (contradicting (1) entirely), 3) what not-X is in itself, 4) what not-X is in itself (contradicting (3) entirely). Then it switches over to the hypothesis "if X is not" and repeats the same pattern.
It's literally his apophatic theology, moron.
>theology
No such thing for Plato after Euthyphro. The Good > the god.
Moronic Christards like to assert their god is the “good” despite the fact the Bible is filled with divine command theory.
https://cadelllast.com/2020/01/15/platos-parmenides-theory-of-forms/
ofc Tweetophon doesn’t chime in lol
You’re talking about the guy who studied Daoism—the literal bifurcation of the world into yin and yang—and expected not to be disappointed. Neo-Eleatics aren’t very bright.
Parmenides? Why not Parwomenides?
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This sounds like a dumb question, but humor me for a moment. If reality is One, as the Eleatics put it and as late Platonic philosophy/Neoplatonism expands upon, what exactly is it about temporal existence that forces us to take a relativistic perspective? Why do we observe change as the primary element when reality is truly unchanging?
>hardmode: no mumbo jumbo analogies about higher and lower perspectives. really get into the logic of it.
>bonus points: relate it to Platonic metaphysical categories, like the unlimited and the limited if that's what makes sense.
Good question anon.
I mean, the answer is in your question.
Either the change is illusion or theory of unchanging reallity is true.
What is interesting to think about this (i think) possibility that ancient greeks, such as Plato, had mistaken abstractions (what we recognize as patterns) with reallity it self and not representations of what is happening. If we suppose this paterns are reallity then they are trully unchanging no? For how can a pattern change, expecialy if its an idea. But if we do not take them as reallity, rather as patern, then reallity is changing.
>For how can a pattern change, expecialy if its an idea.
This was a question that was covered in a previous thread about Neoplatonism and the intellect (which has since slid), funnily enough. Perl has written about the "motion of the intellect" in a convincing way, especially in The Sophist.
>What is interesting to think about this (i think) possibility that ancient greeks, such as Plato, had mistaken abstractions (what we recognize as patterns) with reallity it self and not representations of what is happening. If we suppose this paterns are reallity then they are trully unchanging no? For how can a pattern change, expecialy if its an idea. But if we do not take them as reallity, rather as patern, then reallity is changing.
Perceiving the forms was likened to "seeing" in a way that is far richer, far more complete, than ordinary sense-perception. Abstraction shouldn't be taken as the same thing as intellection, since abstraction takes away from the picture, it doesn't complete it.
>What is interesting to think about this (i think) possibility that ancient greeks, such as Plato, had mistaken abstractions (what we recognize as patterns) with reallity it self and not representations of what is happening.
Representation is such a tricky word for me. Do we mean "re-presenting" what is/was present? Because that would be akin to the form theory itself: reality is merely a copy of the forms. Do we mean an additional medium by which we navigate the world? That would add to the detachment we have and illustrate how much patterns/forms/etc. bridge the gap between us and the world around us.
That's just as confusing. But before there could be Many, there had to be just One, right? A Many could be seen as as collection, One, but a One can't really be seen as a Many unless you were to divide it in some way that would no longer make it One.
Also, I find it interesting that "the One" is referred to by the cardinal number 1 (hen) and not the ordinal number 1 (protos) or the collective number 1 (monas). That means that it has to be "a thing" rather than a relation (protos) or a mere supervening collection of things (monas). I can see why some would refuse to call it "above Being" since we are already describing it in terms that has Being. Either that means we're describing it inappropriately, or we need to go back to the drawing table (as per Eleatic criticism).
>since we are already describing it in terms that has Being.
We're also describing it terms by which it doesn't have Being. One of the hypotheses of the dialogue is, "if The One is not, then..."
> A Many could be seen as as collection, One, but a One can't really be seen as a Many unless you were to divide it in some way that would no longer make it One.
You're recapitulating the same points in these two statements, but they are both irrelevant to the question. If you confer Oneness on a Many, that is a mediated or participatory oneness, it is no longer "to hen" in the sense in which it really is a thing, and not a relation or collection. As for the second statement, a One can be seen as a Many (in the sense you're using it) because every part in a whole is a unity, and there are multiple parts, which are all, taken by themselves, one. According to this line of thought, the Many is one many, and the One is many ones, there's not the asymmetry you thought there was.
However, that's not what's in question in the dialogue, it is far more exact than that. If you refer to Many as One off the bat, as you just did, you have already defeated the purpose of the dialogue. The presumption of the dialogue is this: that there is One, and there is Many. They are two diametrically opposed ideas (in the Platonic sense), allegedly (Aristotle does make a fair point on purely semantic grounds, however, when he notes that "few" is strictly the opposite of "many", not "one"). Plotinus argues that the One precedes the Many, but the ordering of these two ideas is not even touched on explicitly in the Parmenides dialogue.
>We're also describing it terms by which it doesn't have Being. One of the hypotheses of the dialogue is, "if The One is not, then..."
>According to this line of thought, the Many is one many, and the One is many ones, there's not the asymmetry you thought there was.
What came first, the One or the Many? What *had* to have come first?
>Plotinus argues that the One precedes the Many, but the ordering of these two ideas is not even touched on explicitly in the Parmenides dialogue.
What do you think the point of Parmenides was? Plato embracing TPD?
>What came first, the One or the Many? What *had* to have come first?
Neither, they are coeternal, at least in the sense of real succession.
>What do you think the point of Parmenides was?
It's what Parmenides says it is in the dialogue: It's a kind of game or play. He says the exercise can be performed with any pure ideas, like Likeness and Difference, Same and Other, not just One and Many. While it is a play (and play is ideally used for honing a skill), it also provides a deeper insight into the nature of ideas in the pure sense, in terms of how they relate to each other and how they can be properly reasoned about (for example, when we find that the One cannot be the same as itself, because then it would either have to be Sameness itself, or it would have to part-ake of Sameness, both of which are contradictions of Oneness). It is of course also shown, using a much cruder argument, that the One must be the same as itself (the rationale is basically, "because it just has to be", which is how mathematicians would argue the principle of identity). But it's clear that either "same as itself" is meant in two different senses, or that the second argument (which is that the One is not selfsame), which is much more rigorous in argumentation, is meant to supercede the first. In the first case, we might think of "same as itself" as not implying that it either is Sameness nor partakes of Sameness, but that it just means that we refer to that which we refer. And so "same as itself" cannot apply to one thing (because there would have to be exactly two which are considered exactly one - a contradiction), but only between two really different things. This is one way modern logicians have resolved the third man argument: by rejecting the self-identity of a form, the third man argument is invalidated (and thus you can see exactly how this play relates back to the beginning of the dialogue). So when we say that X and Y partake of Z (the form), we don't say that Z is Z-ness in an ontological sense, because Z is purely one and therefore cannot be the "same" as "itself", which would introduce two separate beings if taken ontologically. Therefore we cannot go the further step and say that X, Y, and Z must partake of A, and A is A-ness, and thus that X, Y, Z, and A must partake of B, and B is B-ness, etc.
In Diogenes's collection, the dialogue was subtitled as "On Ideas", whereas others like Sophist and Theaetetus were subtitled "On Logic." That provides another hint.
> but what challenge does this thread posit to the Eleatics?
No challenge, because the Eleatics haven't said anything Platonists or anyone else specifically disagree with. What the Eleatics have done is pose problems which other philosophers solved (if the Eleatics solved them themselves, then we are not aware of it, as Plato notes in later dialogues when he mentions the secret intent of Parmenides, which was never written down).
>Neither, they are coeternal, at least in the sense of real succession.
What about ordinal succession?
Mulamadhyamakakarika is deeper and even more profound
>Mulamadhyamakakarika is deeper and even more profound
When annihilationism is mistaken for profundity.
I felt so sure that you made that name up
you don't need to quote an entire post
W thread
>and Parmenides literally outlines his method of making a hypotheses then checking it after which he does throughout.
it's hotly contested that there's a "method" going on by scholars
So what are the exercises Parmenides gives to Socrates?
It’s 5gAyM wake up b***hes
Nice 16 yr old take.
what the frick do I have to read to understand this thread? I read like half the dialogues in college and like 3 of aristotle's books lol. Is this Timaeus territory or something? Maybe I should read a SEP article and make up a random opinion based on that
All the dialogues, then the entirety of Eastern and Western philosophy, then all the dialogues again.