Plato's Parmenides: A Commentary

Méthexis, 2018

This paper examines how the exercises offered to the young Socrates in the Parmenides can be understood as an educational practice, or a gymnastic that is prior to and instrumental for defining forms. To this end, I argue that the subject of the exercises given to Socrates can be understood as an open and indeterminate 'one' , rather than a form per se. I show that the description of the gymnastic exercises, the demonstration of the hypotheses themselves, and the language concerning the 'one' , are consistent with an indeterminate subject 'one' .

哲学 Annals of the Philosophical Society of Hokkaido University, 2005

is there to be said and thought must needs be; for it is there for being, but nothing is not. I bid you ponder that, for this is the first way of enquiry from which I hold you back, but then from that on which mortals wander knowing nothing, two-headed; for helplessness guides the wandering thought in their breasts, and they are carried along, deaf and blind at once, dazed, undiscriminating hordes, who believe that to be and not to be are the same and not the same; and the path taken by them all is backward-turning." (Fr. 6,

Parmenides is commonly believed to be the father of Western logic and the first thinker of Being. However, he is not often cited as a philosopher who presents a way in which to live one's life. This paper attempts to argue that Parmenides' writing is inherently ethical by discussing the significance of the journey he takes on his path to wisdom. The paper also attempts to provide a unified vision of the fragments which remain of Parmenides' poem by reading them through a Plotinian lens. This is achieved by emphasising the significance of the notion of the 'One' in unlocking Parmenides' conception of Being.

Unisinos Journal of Philosophy, 2020

Mélanges en l’honneur du Professeur Jean-Marc Trigeaud, 2020

In this article we reconsider Parmenides' Parricide, which is notoriously thought to have been accomplished by Plato, and show that is not based on strong reasons but on the alleged undeniability of experience. Instead we think that such undeniability is only formal, being based on an extrinsic denial which requires that which is denied. Moreover we show that those who oppose the unity of being, which is its absoluteness-as Parmenides maintains-, to the multiplicity of entities do not consider that they are not disposed on the same level, so that their opposition is untenable. Since the One (Being) and the Many (non-being) are on different levels, one can understand the level of being as emerging beyond the universe of determination (finite being), which is that which Parmenides identifies with non-being.

International Plato Society (Conference Presentation), 2019

I want to address two seemingly unrelated topics: the first is the subject and formulation of the hypotheses and the second is the number of hypotheses. In the course of the presentation you’ll see how these two topics are connected. On the topic of the subject of the hypotheses, my position is that we are initially given an indefinite monad, a “one”, which is in no case “the one”, “the one itself”, or the form of unity. We are meant to read the hypotheses with the question in mind, “what one is this?” If we do so, we are confronted with strikingly different answers, which, when taken together, point us toward key insights into the nature of intelligibility. On the topic of the number of hypotheses: we are led to expect four, but we are given eight. My position is that we are meant to disarm apparent contradictions between paired hypotheses, especially H1-H2 but also H3-4, 5-6, and 7-8, because doing so will help us further determine the different types of monad Parmenides has in view. In the end, two primary types of monad emerge from the process of disambiguation, namely, form and sensible particular, and we, having differentiated these types of “one”, will have gathered resources for understanding how sensible particulars are grounded in forms.

Plato Journal, 2021

The fifth "deduction" in Plato's Parmenides (160b5-163b6) concerns the consequences that follow for a (or the) one from the hypothesis that it is not. I argue that the subject of this hypothesis is, effectively, any Form, considered just insofar as it is one Form. The hypothesis, I further argue, does not concern any essential aspect of a Form, but rather posits its contingent non-instantation ("a one is not" = "a Form is not instantiated"). The motion this deduction attributes to its one is a special type of motion: motion into and out of instantiation.

Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, 2014

In Part I of Plato’s Parmenides, Socrates introduces a theory of forms to explain opposite features compresent in ordinary things, and he claims that Forms themselves cannot have opposite features. In Part II, Parmenides relies on Socrates’ claim and derives unacceptable consequences—that the Form of Oneness does not exist, and if that is so, then nothing exists: a clearly false conclusion. To avoid it, Socrates must give up his thesis in Part I and find a way to preserve the explanatory role of Forms. This paper aims to articulate the structure of the exercise in Part II.

Studia Gilsoniana, 2020

Parmenides was not a metaphysician (he was a materialist), so there is no such thing as Parmenidean metaphysics. Plato's Parmenides, however, offers metaphysical insights otherwise overlooked by readers unfamiliar to what St. Thomas Aquinas offers concerning the One and the Many. This article highlights some of these insights and will interest students of St. Thomas. It might also acquaint students of Plato to a more perfect metaphysics, and it could even corrode the beliefs of others who maintain that there is no such thing as metaphysics. The fact that none of the sciences may dispense with the first science is brought heavily to bear upon the reader of the Parmenides, who finds it otherwise impossible to resolve any of the difficulties attendant upon reconciling the One and the Many. The many apparent contradictions between the One and the Many displayed in Plato's Parmenides really cannot be solved without sound metaphysics, and sound metaphysics cannot proceed unaided b...

Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 1983