The Project Gutenberg EBook of Parmenides, by Plato

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Title: Parmenides

Author: Plato

Translator: Benjamin Jowett

Posting Date: November 3, 2008 [EBook #1687]
Release Date: March, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Sue Asscher

PARMENIDES

By Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.

The awe with which Plato regarded the character of 'the great'
Parmenides has extended to the dialogue which he calls by his name. None
of the writings of Plato have been more copiously illustrated, both in
ancient and modern times, and in none of them have the interpreters
been more at variance with one another. Nor is this surprising. For the
Parmenides is more fragmentary and isolated than any other dialogue, and
the design of the writer is not expressly stated. The date is uncertain;
the relation to the other writings of Plato is also uncertain; the
connexion between the two parts is at first sight extremely obscure;
and in the latter of the two we are left in doubt as to whether Plato is
speaking his own sentiments by the lips of Parmenides, and overthrowing
him out of his own mouth, or whether he is propounding consequences
which would have been admitted by Zeno and Parmenides themselves. The
contradictions which follow from the hypotheses of the one and many have
been regarded by some as transcendental mysteries; by others as a mere
illustration, taken at random, of a new method. They seem to have been
inspired by a sort of dialectical frenzy, such as may be supposed to
have prevailed in the Megarian School (compare Cratylus, etc.). The
criticism on his own doctrine of Ideas has also been considered, not as
a real criticism, but as an exuberance of the metaphysical imagination
which enabled Plato to go beyond himself. To the latter part of the
dialogue we may certainly apply the words in which he himself describes
the earlier philosophers in the Sophist: 'They went on their way rather
regardless of whether we understood them or not.'

The Parmenides in point of style is one of the best of the Platonic
writings; the first portion