Annotated bibliography on Plato's Parmenides: Part One

"Special Issue: Plato’s Parmenides, Origins and Aporias of a Dialogue on the One / Numéro spécial. Le Parménide de Platon, les origines et les impasses d’un dialogue sur l’Un." 2014. Dialogue. Canadian Philosophical Review no. 53:381–574.

Contents of the studies in English: Sylvana Chrysakapoulou, Benoît Castelnérac: Introduction [English] 381; Constance Meinwald: How Does Plato’s Exercise Work? 465; Mary Louise Gill: Select Design of the Exercise in Plato’s Parmenides 495; Spyridon Rangos: Plato on the Nature of the Sudden Moment, and the Asymmetry of the Second Part of the Parmenides 538-574.

Abaci, Uygar. 2021. "The Greatest Aporia in the Parmenides (133b-134e) and the Reciprocity of Pros Relations." Dialogue. Canadian Philosophical Review no. 60:169–192.

Abstract: "The extant attempts in the literature to refute the greatest difficulty argument in the Parmenides have focused on denying the parallelism between the pros relations among Forms and those among particulars. However, these attempts are unsatisfactory, for the argument can reach its conclusion that we cannot know any Forms without relying on this parallelism. I argue that a more effective strategy is to deny the more essential premise that the knowledge-object relation is a pros relation. This premise is false because pros relations require definitional and ontological codependence between the relata, and the knowledge-object relation does not satisfy this reciprocity condition."

Acerbi, Fabio. 2000. "Plato: Parmenides 149a7-c3. A Proof by Complete Induction?" Archive for History of Exact Sciences no. 55:57–76.

"It is a generally accepted opinion that the first instance of conscious use of Complete Induction (henceforth CI) as a proof method is contained in the Traité du triangle arithmétique by Blaise Pascal (1623–1662).

(...)

A very different question is to establish whether, before Pascal, convincing examples of use of CI as a proof technique are attested, disconnected from the perception of the fact that it happened to be a particular instance of a general demonstrative scheme." (p. 57)

(...)

"In fact, I suggest to regard a Platonic passage, i.e. Parmenides 149a7-c3, as a full-fledged example of proof by CI.

A comparison with an extremely similar text by Aristotle (An. pr. 42b6-16) will allow me to put forward a conjecture about the sources of the Platonic text.

The paper is organized as follows: in Sect. 2 I discuss the meaning and structure of a proof by CI, extracting from its “ritual structure” the characteristics I regard as essential.

In Sect. 3 the Platonic passage is presented and analysed. On the basis of the discussion of Sect. 2, I propose to regard it as the only extant example of proof by CI in the ancient mathematical corpus.(4) In Sect. 4 I briefly discuss other alleged examples of CI in ancient mathematical and philosophical works." (p. 58)

(4) prefer not to use the term “ancient Greek mathematics”. I intend to refer to a very concrete, tangible object, not to a conceptual framework or to a specific way of doing mathematics. I agree with O. Neugebauer that “a concept as “Greek mathematics” [. . .] seems to me more misleading than helpful.” (Neugebauer 1969, p. 190.)

References

Neugebauer O. 1969, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity. New York, Dover.

Ahbel-Rappe, Sara. 2010. "Damascius on the Third Hypothesis of the Parmenides." In Plato's Parmenides and Its Heritage. Vol. 2: Reception in Patristic, Gnostic, and Christian Neoplatonic Texts, edited by Turner, John D. and Corrigan, Kevin, 143–156. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

"In what follows, I will be discussing how Damascius’s treatment of the third hypothesis of the Parmenides correlates to the Neoplatonic interpretation of the Parmenides as accounting for the devolution of reality: the soul and its multiply realized configurations are the foundation of a “way of seeming” that is the ultimate subject of Damascius’s Commentary on the Parmenides." (p. 143)

(...)

"Again, Damascius offers this solution to the problem of embodiment by suggesting that the individual soul is best understood as a function of the intelligible domain, as a modality of its seeing. But in the Commentary on the Parmenides, Damascius is much more concerned with the devolution of reality from the realm of Being into the realm of Non-Being. In this respect of course, he relies on the central Neoplatonic interpretation of the hypotheses of the Parmenides, since the Neoplatonists essentially took this to be Plato’s explanation for Non-Being, or Plato’s own “way of seeming.”." (p. 156)

Allan, Donald J. 1960. "Aristotle and the Parmenides." In Aristotle and Plato in the Mid-Fourth Century: Papers of the Symposium Aristotelicum held at Oxford in August, 1857, edited by Düring, Ingemar and Owen, G.E.L., 133–144. Göteborg: Elanders Bokrtyckeri Aktiebolag.

"'The old problem why Aristotle in his treatises, when explaining and criticizing Plato's doctrine of Ideas, does not mention the Parmenides, or indicate what he understood to be its purpose, is one which does not seem to admit of a simple solution. Some scholars in the past have fallen back on the hypothesis that in the De Ideis, or some other writing now lost, his position may have been fully explained. But recent research does not confirm this, and it seems worth while to examine with care any passages in the treatises which can plausibly be regarded as allusions to the Parmenides, in the hope of bringing to light his view of the dialogue. This road was followed with interesting results by A. E. Taylor in an Appendix to his translation of the Parmenides (Oxford, 1934). What I here offer is a small contribution of the same kind." (p. 133)

(...)

"I have tried to show that contemporary readers thought that Plato was not speaking ironically, but issuing a serious challenge, when he makes 'Parmenides' say to Socrates (13S a): the difficulties are very serious: well-endowed, indeed, is the man who has first perceived that the generic form must exist in its own right, and still more admirable will he be, who can dispose of all the problems and teach others what he has discovered. The difficulty is not all on one side, for if the unchanging Idea is not assumed, there remains no object on which the intellect can fasten."

Allen, Reginald Edgar. 1964. "The Interpretation of Plato's Parmenides: Zeno's Paradox and the Theory of Forms." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 2:143–155.

"I propose here to examine the first part of the dialogue, the interchange between Zeno and Socrates, and to examine it with special attention to the bearing which questions of dialectical structure and dramatic characterization may have upon its interpretation." (p. 143)

(,,,)

"Let me now summarize my argument. I have been concerned to examine the relationship between Zeno's paradox and Socrates' proposed solution to it, the Theory of Forms. That relationship has been found complex. The Theory of Forms solves the paradox by distinguishing what the paradox, and Eleatic logic generally, identifies: things characterized and characteristics. For the Theory, this distinction is the distinction between exemplars and exemplifications.

Yet in solving the paradox, the Theory falls prey to it. The required distinction, as Plato draws it, works well enough when restricted terms are in question. But it does not work at all when applied to unrestricted terms--the terms that Zeno, and Parmenides before him, had had mainly in view. To the degree that the Theory of Forms cannot explain joint qualification by unrestricted opposites, to that degree Plato's defense of plurality fails, and with it his attempt to reconcile the Parmenidean requirements of Being with the existence of the sensible world. When thought through, Plato's middle ontology faced crisis.

The Theory of Forms, then, was an instrument for the laying of a ghost in Elea. But the ghost rose, and walked abroad in Athens. In the Parmenides, it speaks." (pp. 154-155)

———. 1970. "The Generation of Numbers in Plato's Parmenides." Classical Philology no. 65:30–34.

"At Parmenides 143A-B, Unity (or "the One") is distinguished from being (or its own being) and difference. At 143C-D, it is shown that these items are numberable; for if we pick out being and difference, or being and unity, or unity and difference, in each case we pick out both of two things; each of two is one; and when any one whatever is added to any pair whatever, the sum is three.

(...)

Parmenides' account has often been taken as a generation or derivation of number, an interpretation that appears to be as old as Aristotle.(1) I propose here to argue, however, that in either of the two senses of number relevant to the discussion-number as a plurality of units, or as a property of such pluralities-this interpretation is mistaken." (p. 30)

(...)

"The effect of Parmenides' argument is simply to establish the implication that Proclus claims for it: "If One exists, number will exist, from which it follows that (infinite) plurality exists." 19 If it is true that unity, being, and difference exist if anything exists, the effect is still broader; Parmenides' argument provides an explanation of the Eleatic Stranger's remark in the Sophist (238A-B) that number must exist if anything exists, and it helps to explain why, in the Theaetetus (185D), numbers are listed along with unity, existence and nonexistence, likeness and unlikeness, and sameness and difference, as Common Terms which the mind is capable of contemplating through its own activity apart from the organs of sense." (pp. 33-34)

(1) 1. See Metaph. 1. 987b32-34; (...)

(19) Schol. in Parm. 1261. 18-21, Cousin.

———. 1974. "Unity and Infinity: Parmenides 142b-145a." The Review of Metaphysics no. 27:697–725.

"At Parmenides 142b-145a, Parmenides attempts to prove that Unity, if it is and thus partakes of Being, is one and many, whole and parts, limited and unlimited in multitude." (p.697)

(...)

"I shall argue that Parmenides is dealing, not with one but with two kinds of infinity: a dense infinite allied to that of continuity, typical of extensive magnitudes, and the infinity of succession, typical of number.

These two types of infinity were distinct in Greek mathematics in a way in which they are not in our own, since the Greeks, identifying number with the positive integers greater than 1, and thus lacking both reals and rationals, had no concept of number as either continuous or dense, and no notion of isomorphism between numbers and (say) lines. In the Parmenides, Unity is proved to have infinitely many dense parts, and infinitely many successive parts, and its simultaneous possession of these different kinds of parts explains the apparent redundancy of the argument. If this account is correct, the Parmenides anticipates important features of Aristotle's analysis of infinity and continuity in the Physics, though there are also important differences. Still, this is evidence that Aristotle drew on a tradition of physical speculation inherited from the Academy, and that the Physics may therefore be looked to as an important source of understanding for given arguments in the Parmenides, especially those involving place, time, and motion." (pp. 698-699, a note omitted)

———. 1980. "Ideas as Thoughts: Parmenides 132 b-c." Ancient Philosophy no. 1:29–38.

Altman, William H. F. 2020. "In Defense of Plato’s Intermediates." Plato Journal no. 20:151–166.

Abstract: "Once we realize that the indivisible and infinitely repeatable One of the arithmetic lesson in Republic 7 is generated by διάνοια at Parmenides 143a6-9, it becomes possible to revisit the Divided Line’s Second Part and see that Aristotle’s error was not to claim that Plato placed Intermediates between the Ideas and sensible things but to restrict that class to the mathematical objects Socrates used to explain it. All of the One-Over-Many Forms of Republic 10 that Aristotle, following Plato, attacked with the Third Man, are equally dependent on Images and above all on the Hypothesis of the One (Republic 510b4-8)."

Ambuel, David. 2005. "On What Is Not: Eleatic Paradox in the Parmenides and the Sophist." In Plato's Parmenides: Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlícek, Ales and Karfík, Filip, 200–215. Prague: Oikoymenh.

"The following argument undertakes to show one positive thesis implied by the thicket of interrelated contradictions that is the Parmenides. There may well be others. In particular, it is proposed here that, as a consequence of the multiply contradictory conclusions and the methods that lead to them, any analysis of the kind of unity that we find in the world - namely, that of composites, of wholes of parts - demands that being is not a form, but form the principle of being.

To accomplish this, the following thoughts look into parallels linking the Sophist with the Parmenides. Emphasis is directed especially to the concept of not-being as it appears in the second part of Parmenides and in the Sophist, 237a-244d. Both dialogues reveal inadequacies of Parmenides’ metaphysics by employing the logic of Eleatic metaphysics to examine form - being is and is intelligible (like the ideas), not-being is its opposite, their opposition is that of simple contradictories, i.e. between being and not-being lies nothing - with the result that the real is either empty, transcendent and inaccessible, or that being, all of reality, is reduced to the manner of existence of sensibles (i.e. having the being of wholes and parts), which, subsequently, upon analysis, leads to contradiction and unintelligibility." (p. 200)

Anderson, Daniel E. 1963. "The Paradox of Parmenides." Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 1:20–29.

"There are a number of difficulties involved in any attempt to regard the Platonic Parmenides and the historical Parmenides as mutually illuminating. On the other hand, the most casual glance at the scholarship will indicate that there are still more difficulties involved in an effort to ignore or reject such a relationship. I feel that a case can be built that the Platonic Parmenides is, in some rather subtle ways, much closer to the historical Parmenides than most contemporary scholars will admit. (I do not however, mean by this that he is closer to Plato, as Verdenius suggests.(1) In order to clarify this similarity I shall first attempt to set forth, in terms o! the dialogue, Parmenides, what I believe to be Plato’s view of Parmenides.

Then I shall attempt to elicit from the fragments what I believe to be a similar position." (p. 20)

(1) Parmenides, W. J. Verdenius, J. B. Wolters, Groningen, Batavia, 1942.

Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margareth. 1966. "The New Theory of Forms." The Monist no. 50:403–420.

Reprinted in The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, Volume One: From Parmenides to Wittgesnstein, Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1981, pp. 21-33.

"I want to suggest that Plato arrived at a revised theory of forms in the later dialogues. Or perhaps I might rather say that he constructed a new underpinning for the theory. This can be discerned, I believe, in the Sophist, taken together with certain parts of the dialectic of the Parmenides which use the same language as the Sophist." (p. 21 of the reprint)

(...)

"This passage [Sophist 253d] is obscure and of disputed interpretation. I believe it is usually taken that (i) gives the relation species - individual, (ii) genus - species, (iii) transcendentals - other forms, (iv) perfectly specific forms considered in themselves. This interpretation is indeed rather closer to the text than others; yet I think it does not weigh every word sufficiently, together with the arguments which we have considered as so important in the Parmenides and the Sophist.

I suggest:

(i) and (ii) make the contrast between a form φ such that if a lot of things are φ each is one single distinct φ, and such forms as 'one', 'whole', 'being', which do not function so, and are conceived to contain other forms in an external fashion. (See 250b where rest and motion are said to be comprised by being; and for other relevant verbal and doctrinal echoes, Parmenides, 142e, 145c). Thus genera in relation to individuals belong to (i) no less than species do. (iii), on the other hand, appears to me to concern the genus-species division though more obscurely: possibly we get (iii) wherever one could find many wholes gathered together in some sort of unity, as: many species in a genus, or many elements in a complex, i.e. letters in a word or particular characteristics in a man (cf. Theaetetus, 109c). (iv) Finally, the many forms that are wholly separate and distinct apparently are so much so as not to provide any sort of one-many contrast like the other three. It appears to me that nothing discussed in the Sophist corresponds to this, but something which I have already mentioned from the Parmenides does: the series of natural numbers is there treated as a series of such forms." (p. 33 of the reprint)

Apolloni, David. 2011. The Self-Predication Assumption in Plato. Lanham: Lexington Books.

"The term “Self-Predication” is ours, not Plato’s. What Self-Predication precisely is is itself an important issue in Plato scholarship, and is the focus of this book. One way to begin to understand it, however, is to note that this term “Self-Predication” contains the word “predication,” another word not contained in Plato’s vocabulary. Predication is the function of a predicate in a sentence, and it so functions in conjunction with a subject, which is, in a simple kind of sentence, a name. A name refers, i.e., it stands for, identifies, picks out, indicates, designates, or mentions some object x; and a predicate describes, characterizes, ascribes, predicates, says something about, attributes a property to x; it says what x is like; it is true oft his x." (Introduction, p. X)

"The book is divided into two parts, the first consisting of three chapters, the second part consisting of four. Part I demonstrates what the Self-Predication Assumption in Plato is, and shows that it is philosophically reasonable when correctly understood, but that it leads to no infinite regress.

Part Il concerns the Parmenides itself. Following a major trend in current scholarship, I argue that the first part of the dialogue misses Plato’s own Theory of Forms, but that the second part of the dialogue—Parmenides’ “Exercise”—does point to considerations Plato raises in the Theaetetus and the Sophist, even if we take the character Parmenides not to have resolved the final contradiction at the end oft he dialogue." (Introduction, p. XIX)

Araújo, Carolina. 2022. "Ousia and dunamis in the greatest aporia (Prm. 133b4-135b4)." In Plato's Parmenides: Selected Papers of the Twelfth Symposium Platonicum, edited by Brisson, Luc, Macé, Arnaud and Renault, Olivier, 279–286. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

Abstract: "The “greatest aporia” results from an argument Parmenides presents against Socrates’s theory of forms in Plato’s Parmenides intending to prove that these forms are unknowable. This paper disputes contemporary interpretations that defend it as a sound and serious objection to Socrates. I first indicate (I) that Parmenides introduces a concept of ousia incompatible with the one proposed by Socrates, and is therefore unable to pose him a real challenge.

Then I show (II) that Parmenides actually champions a relativist theory, which he discloses gradually in replacing ousia with dunamis as a prior explanatory principle. I offer three arguments for the inconsistency of his thesis. I conclude (III) that Parmenides is aware of the flaws in his theory and honest in declaring that not to postulate Socratic forms would result in destroying our thought and our capacity for dialogue (135b5-c2). The whole point of the greatest aporia is that a philosopher must refute relativism."

Assaturian, Sosseh. 2020. "What the forms are not: Plato on conceptualism in Parmenides 132b-c." Philosophical Studies no. 177:353–368.

Abstract: "Conceptualism-the view that universals are mental entities without an external, independent, or substantial reality-has enjoyed popularity at various points throughout the history of philosophy. While Plato's Theory of Forms is not a conceptualist theory of universals, we find at Parmenides 132b-c the startling conceptualist suggestion from a young Socrates that each Form might be a noema, or a mental entity. This suggestion and Parmenides' cryptic objections to it have been overshadowed by their placement directly after the notoriously difficult Third Man Argument (132a-b), and before the Likeness Regress (132c-133a). However, in the background of 132b-c, we find illuminating assumptions behind Parmenides' arguments against the Theory of Forms in the first half of the dialogue. We also find in this text a set of implied criteria for Platonic concepthood. While in the Platonic corpus, Forms are explanantia for many of the phenomena explained by concepts in contemporary philosophy, concepts do seem to have an important epistemic role in Plato's philosophy. An account of Platonic concepthood therefore opens the door for new ways of understanding the Platonic corpus as a whole. My focus in this paper is to uncover these assumptions and criteria through a close reading of Socrates' conceptualist suggestion and Parmenides' truncated objections to it at Parmenides 132b-c."

Augustin, Michael J. 2021. "Self-Instantiation and Self-Participation." Plato Journal no. 22:11–17.

Abstract: "While each Form is what it is to be F, some Forms also instantiate F (or “self-instantiate”). Here I consider whether the explanation for a Form’s instantiating F should be the Form’s participating in itself. First, I motivate the need for an explanation of self-instantiation. Second, I consider the advantages and disadvantages of self-participation alongside an alternative explanation—that the Form’s being what it is to be F is a sufficient explanation of its instantiation of F. The result is not a conclusive case for self-participation, but only some initial considerations in favor of it."

Backman, Jussi. 2007. "All of a Sudden: Heidegger and Plato’s Parmenides." Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 11:393–408.

Abstract: "The paper studies a transcript of notes from Heidegger's 1930–31 seminar on Plato’s Parmenides. It shows that in spite of his much-criticized habit of dismissing Plato as the progenitor of “idealist” metaphysics, Heidegger was quite aware of the radical potential of Plato's later dialogues. Through a temporal account of the notion of oneness (to hen), the Parmenides attempts to reconcile the plurality of beings with the unity of being. In Heidegger’s reading, the dialogue culminates in the notion of the “instant” (to exaiphnes, Augenblick) in which the temporal plurality of presence and nonpresence converges into a unified disclosure."

[N.B. Since the publication of this paper, Heidegger’s notes for the winter semester 1930–31 seminar on Plato’s Parmenides have been published in Gesamtausgabe, vol. 83: Seminare: Platon—Aristoteles—Augustinus, ed. Mark Michalski (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2012), 23–37. However, the Gesamtausgabe edition does not incorporate the transcript of seminar notes in the Herbert Marcuse Archive discussed in this paper, and does not even mention its existence; the editor even conjectures that the announced continuation of the seminar in the summer semester of 1931, documented in the transcript, did not take place (see Mark Michalski, editor’s epilogue, GA 83, 667–68). Apparently, no authorized student protocol of the seminar was made, probably due to the unofficial and “private” character of the seminar.]

Ballard, Edward G. 1962. "On parsing the Parmenides." The Review of Metaphysics no. 15:434–449.

"Professor Brumbaugh seeks to avoid the specialist's isolation by uniting the two functions in his Plato on the One.* The result is the unusual combination of the soundest and most elaborate work on the text of the second part of the Parmenides, so far as I can determine, yet done in this country, and in addition some very imaginative and varied philosophical interpretations. Parts II and IV of his book present a translation with commentary of the second part of this dialogue and a scholarly apparatus which includes the textual variants from about forty-five manuscripts. Parts I and III discuss the context of the hypotheses and their character and value as metaphysics. This interpretative writing, being Platonic, not only allows, but rather invites comment and criticism. The extremely wide variety of topics upon which the author touches forbids anything like a complete set of comments. This study will be confined to setting forth the main line of the argument in parts I and III and adding certain remarks or criticisms; then it will contrast the author's interpretation with another one intended to indicate a direction in which the author's interpretation might be supplemented." (pp. 434-435, a note omitted)

* Robert S. Brumbaugh, Plato on the One (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960).

Barmore, Steven. 2020. "The Silence of Socrates: The One and the Many in Plato’s Parmenides." Studia Gilsoniana no. 9:209–236.

"For still other reasons the Parmenides tends to strike nobody as funny. Instead, it tends to strike even seasoned metaphysicians as long-winded and convoluted. Close to the whole truth in some ways, it is far off in others. And, while no serious metaphysician might want publicly to admit that it is boring, it is tedious and technical, yet unequipped with the precise, technical language that we depend upon to make metaphysical distinctions, discussions, and instruction possible. To make matters worse, to those who expected him to put his opponents in their place, Socrates’ strange silence is discouraging. Finally, the dozens of dead ends garnishing each of the Eighth antinomies inspire flashes of remorse at having taken up the challenge of seeing this dialogue all the way through.

In this article, I will take the Eighth antinomies of Plato’s Parmenides as though they were Eighth difficulties raised at the beginning of a Scholastic treatment of a question, and the question—which is the chief question of this paper—is whether reality must be a One (not a Many). To make the case that the difficulties posed by the One and the Many are not solvable without a sound metaphysics, I will rely upon Aristotle and St. Thomas and their progeny to offer inroads to the solution of each of the difficulties." (pp. 210-211)

Bartoccci, Barbara. 2019. "Plato’s Parmenides as Serious Game: Contarini and the Renaissance Reception of Proclus." In Reading Proclus and the Book of Causes Vol. 1: Western Scholarly Networks and Debates, edited by Calma, Dragos, 466–481. Leiden: Brill.

"Ancient and Renaissance interpreters of the Parmenides, engaged themselves in the very laborious and serious game of philosophizing. The Ancient and Renaissance Neoplatonic conceptions of the progressive unveiling of truth in the history of philosophy made perfectly legitimate the theological interpretation of the Parmenides. In this unifying historical perspective, Parmenides and Plato were representative of a linear chain of wisdom and Plato was credited to have perfected that which his predecessor Parmenides had begun. Accordingly, Plotinus, Proclus and Ficino were allowed to merge into one coherent picture the historical figure of Parmenides of Elea with the character of the actual dialogue the Parmenides." (p. 479)

Bechtle, Gerald. 1999. The Anonymous Commentary on Plato's Parmenides. Bern: P. Haupt.

"As many before me in similar circumstances have probably experienced, so I, too, became more and more aware of the limits that are set to such a study as the present one. The ends 1 seek to pursue in this work are thus confined to what seems for the time being reasonable, feasible and, above all, indispensable. intention is to make a contribution to the - quite literal - understanding of the linguistically and philosophically difficult fourteen Greek palimpsest pages that form part of a commentary on Plato's Parmenides and that were conserved and unearthed in a Latin evangelistary from a North Italian monastery.

This task seemed to be important since the amount of scholarly criticism devoted to the Parmenides Commentary was by no means generous. One (and the only, by the way) milestone in the research on the extant text is contained in P. Hadot's two great and unparalleled volumes on Porphyre et Victorinus with which he instigated a new approach to the discussion of the present fragments. Before P. Hadot the only major publication was the serious critical edition of the text with notes by W. Kroll in 1892, twelve years before the destruction of the manuscript. In the intervening years R. Beutler and W. Theiler made reference to the Parmenides Commentary. Since P. Hadot in 1968 only dispersed remarks and notes have appeared in several articles. To my knowledge not a single article with the Parmenides Commentary as its unique subject has been published in this time. This is all the more astonishing since everybody agrees in general (at least since P. Hadot's far-reaching conclusions) that the text is an important one.

In view of this situation it first of all seemed necessary to attempt to understand the actual text as well as possible and to make it, in spite of its considerable difficulties, accessible to the reader. This is why I give a reading text which is not meant to replace P. Hadot's edition of the text which, for its apparatus criticus, remains indispensable. I feel no necessity for the reproduction of the apparatus - in any case we no longer possess the manuscript. I include a translation of the text whose notes are supposed to be at the same time critical and also explanatory. I preface the translation of each fragment with a succinct summary of its content. My own comments attempt a philosophical understanding of the text's doctrines, their (often chronological) implications and background. And since the Middle Platonic philosophers, with whom it seems most appropriate to compare the anonymous commentator, are, in several respects, not well known, I shall present them in introductory essays insofar as they are relevant to our context. I believe also that a commentator of a commentary should take account of the text of reference since an appreciation or even mere comprehension of a commentary has to explain the essentials of the original text commented on, and all the more so, if this text is as demanding as the Platonic Parmenides. In trying to approach the passages of the Parmenides relevant for the anonymous commentator I shall be concerned mainly with the uncovering of the logical structure of the dialogue; for the task of an interpretation is attempted by our anonymous author." (Preface)

———. 2000. "The Question of Being and the Dating of the Anonymous Parmenides Commentary." Ancient Philosophy no. 20:393–414.

"This article was originally intended to precede the publication of my book (Bechtle 1999a) devoted to the extant fragments of the anonymous commentary on Plato's Parmenides, also known as Anonymus Taurinensis.' The aim of this article was then-and it still is now-to make the scholarly world acquainted with some of the main reasons, i.e., my view of `the question of being', for my novel thesis of a pre-Plotinian date for this Commentary which has almost unanimously been ascribed to Porphyry. Since the thesis of the Porphyrian authorship goes back to the great French scholar P. Hadot (see in particular Hadot 1961, 1965, 1968a, and 1968b), one can say that his thesis has been generally accepted for some thirty years or, at least, it has not been seriously challenged. This fact is easily explained since neither before nor after Hadot has there been a thorough and critical examination of the evidence. Hadot's thesis concerning the identity of the author being the only serious one in more than a century since research on the Commentary first started, my idea was that probably a lot of questions had not been answered. Reconsidering all of Hadot's evidence and adding some new elements, I determined that the Commentary is very likely of pre-Plotinian date. Additional work on lamblichus and post-Plotinian Platonism negatively confirms this thesis since one can virtually exclude Iamblichus and any of the major Platonists following him as possible authors of the Commentary." (p. 393)

———. 2002. "Speusippus and the anonymous commentary on Plato's Parmenides: how can the One be a mininum?" In Il Parmenide di Platone e la sua tradizione, edited by Barbanti, Maria and Romano, Francesco, 281–306. Catania: CUECM.

———. 2010. "Speusippus’s Neutral Conception of the One and Plato’s Parmenides." In Plato's Parmenides and Its Heritage. Vol. 1: History and Interpretation from the Old Academy to Later Platonism and Gnosticism, edited by Turner, John D. and Corrigan, Kevin, 37–58. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

"It is easy to see now why Speusippus’s second principle (in its absolute aspect) has often been compared—rightly I think—to the Platonic indefinite dyad. But it has to be said that the Parmenides is usually much less discussed in this context than the Philebus or Aristotle’s testimonies about the Platonic material principle. In contrast, I hope to have shown how the Parmenides and the third deduction in particular can reasonably be said to be about the same philosophical topic as Speusippus’s πλῆθος-principle and that therefore a detailed comparison of all the texts relevant to the second principle would make sense.

Of course, such an enterprise would have to take account of much more material than presented here concerning the Old Academy, and of all our evidence on Plato (the dialogues and the indirect testimonies). But for the time being, it may suffice to realize that, according to what has been set forth, on the one hand, the first and the third Parmenidean deduction (about the One in relation to itself and the others in relation to the One, on the hypothesis that the One is), and on the other, Speusippus’s theory of principles, are comparable and even concern the same topic. For they explore possibilities of how to conceive of, and render functional, the philosophical items, that is, principles, that are needed to explain the coming about of reality." (p. 58)

———. 2010. "The Anonymous Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides and Aristotle’s Categories: Some Preliminary Remarks." In Plato's Parmenides and Its Heritage. Vol. 1: History and Interpretation from the Old Academy to Later Platonism and Gnosticism, edited by Turner, John D. and Corrigan, Kevin, 243–256. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

"Despite its inconsistencies, it is Hadot’s argument’s great merit to spotlight an important aspect of the Parmenides Commentary, namely the relation existing between the extant fragments of this text and the exegetical tradition regarding the Categories, and therefore eventually also that between Plato’s Parmenides and Aristotle’s Categories. Quite independently from Hadot, we must ask ourselves the following questions: first, at which point exactly in the Categories-related exegetical tradition can the surviving bits of the Parmenides Commentary be situated? Second, can any consequences, in particular chronological ones, be drawn from the Parmenides Commentary’s position within this exegetical tradition, on which our sources are much richer than on the Parmenides-related tradition? To answer these two questions is a task I cannot even start to tackle in this context. Above all, a full analysis of each of the relevant passages from the Parmenides Commentary would be needed, together with a close examination of all the parallels—not only the Porphyrian ones adduced by Hadot—and their context.

Instead I wish to concentrate on something more feasible, i.e., on an important preliminary to these questions. For I merely wish to show that the combination and even intertwinement of the two exegetical traditions, i.e., the ones related to the Categories and the Parmenides, is well established by the end of the second century c.e. In other words, reading the Aristotelian treatise into the Parmenides, adducing the Categories and its related tradition when dealing with the Parmenides, is so standard, even before Plotinus, that one can find it mentioned almost casually in, among other texts, Alcinous’ Handbook. This, one may argue, is due precisely to the fact that more detailed exegeses of the Parmenides such as our Parmenides Commentary have traditionally exploited the connection between Plato’s dialogue and this important Aristotelian treatise. We may be astonished that the ancients found Aristotle’s categories in Plato’s dialogue Parmenides. But there are, I hope, some real and not only perceived points of contact between the two texts. In what follows I will first mention these points of contact between Plato and Aristotle, and then comment cursorily on texts that testify to the relatively early existence of a joint Parmenides/Categories tradition." (pp. 247-248)

———. 2010. "Metaphysicizing the Aristotelian Categories: Two References to the Parmenides in Simplicius’s Commentary on the Categories (75,6 and 291,2 Kalbfleisch)." In Plato's Parmenides and Its Heritage. Vol. 2: Reception in Patristic, Gnostic, and Christian Neoplatonic Texts, edited by Turner, John D. and Corrigan, Kevin, 157–172. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

"From a systematic point of view, this paper is situated in the wider context of the metaphysization of the Aristotelian categories. What does it mean to metaphysicize the Aristotelian categories? To cut a very long story short, the treatise Κατηγορίαι—an ancient title that may well not be its original title—commonly ascribed to the authorship of Aristotle, covers a complex thematic context between language and reality. The categories are attributions of a predicate to a subject; such predications are for Aristotle attributions of reality (of being/τὸ ὄν) to a subject: being is thus attributed to or predicated of a subject in many different ways. But they can be reduced to ten general modes. These are the ten categories. Often they simply correspond to the ten most general classes of being, the genera generalissima. That the theory of categories also implies an ontological classification—a classification of beings—is supported by the realist context of the Categories. For Aristotle’s reflections start from things/realities, and all else seems secondary." (p. 157)

(...)

"In Simplicius’s Categories commentary there are two explicit references to Plato’s Parmenides, namely at In cat. 75,6 and 291,2." (p. 160)

(...)

"Hence one may say that there is indeed a κοινωνία between the two passages: for there is a strong parallel between the One of the Parmenides—which expresses or represents the community and continuity of the genera/categories—and similarity (and dissimilarity)—which is quality’s manifestation of κοινωνία in the same way that equality is for quantity and identity for substance (and in the case of quality at least it is the Parmenides that corroborates the definition of its specific feature [ἴδιον, ἰδιότης], i.e., similarity).

The Parmenides, it seems, is used by the later exegetes in the context of categorial κοινωνία, whether this applies to all categories (i.e., vertically), or only to one (i.e., horizontally)." (p. 172)

———. 2013. "“Harmonizing” Aristotle’s Categories and Plato’s Parmenides before the Background of Natural Philosophy." In Gnosticism, Platonism and the Late Ancient World: Essays in Honour of John D. Turner, edited by Corrigan, Kevin, Rasimus, Tuomas, Burns, Dylan M., Jenott, Lance and Mazur, Zeke, 543–568. Leiden: Brill.

"This essay is about the relation between—or harmonization of—two crucial texts, one by Aristotle and one by Plato, respectively the Categories and the Parmenides, neither of which is normally associated with natural philosophy. Instead, each of these two texts has a strong connection with logic.(1) Natural philosophy, the science of natural things, i.e., φυσική, i.e., physic(s) in a more traditional sense, is treated in texts such as Aristotle’s Physics, Heavens, Generation and Corruption, Meteorology, Soul, or Plato’s Sophist, Politicus, or Timaeus. Nevertheless, physical science is also relevant with regard to the Categories and the Parmenides. For physics plays a pivotal role between the logical and the metaphysical sciences—and both the Parmenides and the Categories can be considered as logical texts. Hence, it is not astonishing that the Categories and the Parmenides can be read with reference to each other and therefore also be related to each other. For both of them are logical and, as such, require a reference back to physical science.

Furthermore, as generally referring back to real (physical) objects, both texts are at some point developed in a meta-physical direction." (pp. 543-544, two notes omitted)

(1) It should not be forgotten that the Parmenides is a logical dialogue according to the Thrasyllan division (Diogenes Laërtius, Vit. phil. 3.58 Marcovich: Παρμενίδης ἢ περὶ ἰδεῶν, λογικός), a fact remaining influential ever after.

Beck, Maximilian. 1947. "Plato's Problem in the Parmenides." Journal of the History of Ideas no. 8:232–236.

"The suggestion I wish to make is that Plato set himself the following problem in his dialogue: The theory of Methexis-the assertion that many particular things can partake of one idea-encounters great difficulties, which cease as soon as the difference between an idea and its realization in many species and individuals is no longer considered from the point of view of the numerical differentiation of the one and the many. In other words, ideas not only exist beyond space and time, rest and motion, divisibility and in- divisibility, mental subjectivity and physical objectivity, but they have an existence of their own, an ideal existence, which is also beyond number and even beyond the number one." (p. 233)

(...)

"It is the ambiguity of the word one which renders a sober understanding of the dialogue extremely difficult, for Plato uses this word here in different meanings. Although he distinguishes in his thought very clearly between unity and sameness or identity (139), he uses the word one in one place to signify the sameness of universals (159), and in another place to signify the singularity of the particular or the "ineffable" individual (142). An opportunity was here given to the Neo-Platonists to outdo the sublimity of the Jewish-Christian monotheism by isolating these phrases from their context and by substituting a metaphysical Being and a theological One for the merely formalistic being and one of the text. In addition, they hypostasized the not of the negative copula in a sentence like "the one is not" into an existing Nothing-and a most violent irrationalism was established." (p. 236)

Beets, Muus Gerrit Jan. 1995. Genesis: A Companion to Plato's Parmenides. Hilversum.

Behuniak, James. 2009. "Li in East Asian Buddhism: One Approach from Plato's Parmenides." Asian Philosophy no. 19:31–49.

Abstract: "In Plato's Parmenides, Socrates proposes a ‘Day’ analogy to express one possible model of part/whole relations. His analogy is swiftly rejected and replaced with another analogy, that of the ‘Sail’. In this paper, it is argued that there is a profound difference between these two analogies and that the ‘Day’ represents a distinct way to think about part/whole relations. This way of thinking, I argue, is the standard way of thinking in East Asian Buddhism. Plato's ‘Day’ analogy can then be used to illuminate the meaning of an opaque but very important concept in East Asian Buddhism: li, which in this paper is developed as a modal concept of ‘Wholeness’."

Benardete, Seth. 2012. "Plato’s Parmenides: A Sketch " In The Archaeology of the Soul: Platonic Readings of Ancient Poetry and Philosophy, 229–243. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press.

"Plato's Parmenides divides into two unequal parts: the second is more than twice as long as the first. The first is narrated, the second is not. The first goes back to the beginning of Socrates' philosophic life, the second dispenses with the occasion that initiated it, and runs on to the end without a return to Socrates, for whom it was performed, and who, one might have expected, would express either his gratitude for the favor or bafflement at the riddle of Parmenides' gymnastic. The abruptness of the end recalls the Statesman, whose end too one would likewise expect Socrates, to whom the Eleatic Stranger is speaking throughout over the heads of Theaetetus, young Socrates, and Theodorus, to acknowledge the debt he owes him. He might there of of course have been waiting impatiently for the Philosopher. The Sophist and the Statesman end Socrates' philosophic life with Socrates almost completely silent; the Parmenides begins Socrates' philosophic life, and it too ends with his silence. Parmenides is the envelope of Socrates' second sailing, with Parrnenides himself demolishing the possibility of any turn to the "ideas," and the Stranger pulling apart Socrates' maieutic art into two inconsistent arts, the first of which can elicit from the soul the speeches appropriate to it, and the second can prove their falseness." (p. 229)

Bestor, Thomas Wheaton. 1980. "Plato's Semantics and Plato's "Parmenides"." Phronesis. A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 25:38–75.

"Plato's self-criticism in the Parmenides has long been a source of perplexity and rage to philosophers.

(...)

The perplexity is a simple one to resolve, I believe, as soon as we pay a bit of attention to Plato's theory of Forms as a piece of semantics. In this guise the theory tells us that a general word "f" is predicated of sensible particulars in a distinctively derivative way (marked by saying they must be related to the Form F in order to be f) while the Form F itself has "f" predicated of it in a primary way (marked by saying that the Forms are directly f, f without reference to anything else). We have two different orders of nominata and corresponding to them we have two different modes of predication." (p. 38)

(...)

"If such is the proper setting for Plato's Parmenides, it is clear that he did not mean us to come away from the dialogue abandoning the theory of Forms. Plato himself certainly never abandoned that theory.21 And the whole question whether the theory should be abandoned because of the objections there is beside the point if they are expressly due to textbook "wrong admissions" being made. Indeed, if Plato meant us general readers to get anything from the dialogue (which is doubtful in view of his intended audience), it is probably only that we should be wary of making "wrong admissions" about Forms ourselves." (p. 72)

(21) Post-Parmenides references to Forms include: Soph, 240a, 247a-b, 248e-249d, 254a, Tim. 29b, 48e, 50c-d, 51a, Pol. 285e-286a, Phil. I5a-b, 59a-c, 61d-62b, Epist. VII 342a-d, 343b-c, 344b, Laws 859e, 965c-d.

Bisbee, Eleanor. 1933. "The Parmenides in the Light of the Propositional Function." The Philosophical Review no. 42:612–617.

"The propositional function appears to have come to stay. Quite likely it is destined, like the axiom, to change its role very markedly before its course is run. At present, while it still offers the challenge of novelty, there is the temptation to see if it, in turn, cannot shed new light on old problems. Moreover, ever since Plato (or Socrates), dissatisfied with his understanding of "the reason why one or anything else is either generated or destroyed or is at all", confessed in the Phaedo (97) that he "had in mind some confused notion of a new method" it has been a temptation to review his problems in the light of any promising new method. In view of this double temptation, I venture to experiment with the propositional function in that dialogue which most completely displays all sides of the major problem of the One and the Many, namely the Parmenides." (p. 612)

Blachowicz, James. 2012. Essential Difference: Toward a Metaphysics of Emergence. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Chapter 3: Plato's Response [to Parmenides]; The Form of Difference, pp. 41-59.

"In Plato’s early and middle dialogues, we find his early view of the Forms, their independent existence, the participation of specific things and properties in them, and the knowledge of them through recollection.

In all this, he sought to provide an idealist alternative to physicalist reductionism. The full story of Plato’s attempt to save philosophy from the twin dangers posed by Parmenides and the sophists, however, is played out in two later dialogues, named, appropriately, the Parmenides and the Sophist, where it is idealist reductionism that poses the threat.

The Theaetetus, which dates from the same time, also addresses the danger that sophism poses, but is directed more to epistemological than to metaphysical issues.

I offer the following framework as a means for approaching these metaphysical issues." (p. 41, a note omitted)

Block, Irving. 1964. "Plato, Parmenides, Ryle and Exemplification." Mind no. 73:417–422.

"In 1939, Gilbert Ryle wrote an important article on the Parmenides.(1)

One of the things he said about the dialogue was that the notion of a particular exemplifying a form is logically vicious and no interpretation could avoid Parmenides' regress arguments against it (pp. 137-140). Ryle's analysis and Parmenides' regress arguments are valid only if the forms are conceived as self-predicating.(2) Most of the criticisms of Parmenides and Ryle in recent literature deny that Plato's forms can be characterized in this way and Ryle's analysis and Parmenides' arguments are misplaced. Without attempting to be contentious, I shall try to state reasons why I think Parmenides and Ryle have a true hold on Plato and that it is the criticisms against them that are misplaced." (p. 417)

(1) " Plato's Parmenides ", I and II, Mind, xlviii (1939), 129-151, 302-326.

(2) « See G. Vlastos, "The Third Man Argument", Philosophical Review, liiii (1954), 319 ff.

Bluck, Richard Stanley. 1957. "Forms as Standards." Phronesis. A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 2:115–127.

"Plato called his Forms παράδειγματα, nd he is taken to mean that they were patterns or standards of which objects and acts in the sensible world are copies. But in what sense were they 'standards'?

My purpose is to offer a few remarks on this question." (p. 115)

———. 1959. "Plato's Form of Equal." Phronesis. A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 4:5–11.

"In Phronesis iii (19S8) pp. 40 sq. Mr. K. W. Mills criticizes the view which I expressed in Phronesis ii (1957) pp. 117 sq., that Plato is unlikely to have thought of the Form of Equal as consisting of two or more equal things, and I should like to make a brief reply." (p. 5)

References

Mill, K. W. Plato's Phaedo 74b7-c6, part 2, Phronesis, III, 1958, pp. 40-58.

Blyth, Dougal. 2000. "Platonic number in the Parmenides and Metaphysics 13." International Journal of Philosophical Studies, England no. 8:23–45.

Abstract: "I argue here that a properly Platonic theory of the nature of number is still viable today. By properly Platonic, I mean one consistent with Plato's own theory, with appropriate extensions to take into account subsequent developments in mathematics. At Parmenides 143a-4a the existence of numbers is proven from our capacity to count, whereby I establish as Plato's the theory that numbers are originally ordinal, a sequence of forms differentiated by position. I defend and interpret Aristotle's report of a Platonic distinction between form and mathematical numbers, arguing that mathematical numbers alone are cardinals, by reference to certain non-technical features of a set-theoretical approach and other considerations in philosophy of mathematics. Finally I respond to the objections that such a conception of number was unavailable in antiquity and that this theory is contradicted by Aristotle's report in Metaph. XIII that Platonic numbers are collections of units. I argue that Aristotle reveals his own misinterpretation of the terms in which Plato's theory was expressed."

———. 2022. "Dialectic and Forms in Prm. 137c-144e." In Plato's Parmenides: Selected Papers of the Twelfth Symposium Platonicum, edited by Brisson, Luc, Macé, Arnaud and Renault, Olivier, 339–345. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

Abstract: "Here a dynamic, dialectical analysis of a sequence within the first and second deductions of Plato’s Parmenides is presented (rather than a proposal for structural interpretation, or detection of references to his own or other philosophers’ systems). I treat the manifest contradictions and paradoxes as evidence of cognitive errors that the reader needs to correct in order to think properly about forms. The focus is on the treatment of the One in relation to Being. By analysing the argumentation, the assumptions it depends upon, and the alternative implications if those assumptions about forms are rejected, I seek to show how Parmenides stimulates Socrates, as a listener, to reflect further on what such forms are nd are not. The conclusions reached are that (i) the treatment of the One as a form in the first deduction (as identical exclusively with the meaning of its name, and so conceived solely on a linguistic basis), continues in the first two arguments of the second deduction, despite the admission that the One must somehow join with Being (treated implicitly as another form); (ii) as a result, no adequate account of the natures of, and relations between, the One and Being is achieved in these arguments; (iii) the premises from which the self-contradiction results in each argument (that the One becomes an infinite multitude) are identified and reconsidered, so as to distinguish the alternative possibilities from among which an adequate account of these forms would need to be sought; while (iv) the key insight is into the equiprimordiality of the ontological linkage between these forms with what it is in the nature of each that makes it distinct, and the consequent need, not satisfied in the Parmenides, for an account of how this is possible."

Booth, N. B. . 1957. "Were Zeno's Arguments a Reply to Attacks upon Parmenides?" Phronesis:1–9.

"One of the mysteries about Zeno of Elea' s arguments is that, whereas we learn from all the available evidence that Zeno was particularly concerned to defend the One of Parmenides(1), yet we find him, in his arguments about plurality, doing all that he can to refute the "ones" of a plurality.(2) This would be reasonable if we could be sure that his arguments were valid only against the "ones" of a plurality, not against Parmenides's One; but it is by no means certain that this is true, as we shall see in the course of my discussion. The difficulty was already felt by the ancient commentators(3), and perhaps by Plato as well(4) ; it may be a "pseudo-problem", but if so, it is a pseudo-problem of some antiquity." (p. 1)

(1) This is suggested by Plato Parmenides 128 c, stated by the ancient commentators, and further proved by Zeno's arguments themselves. As regards "Parmenides's One", it would be more accurate to speak of his "single Being", since he began his deduction from Being rather than from Unity.

(2) See Diels 29 (Zeno) and H. D. P. Lee, Zeno of Elea (1936).

(3) See Simplicius Phys. 138. 18 ff.

(4) Parmenides 1 28 C; note J. E. Raven's remark on p. 73 Pytha9oreans and Eleatics ( 1948), "It seems, incidentally, not impossible that Plato also felt there was something unexplained about Zeno."

———. 1957. "Were Zeno's Arguments Directed against the Pythagoreans?" Phronesis:90–103.

"It is not my purpose to examine in detail all the aberrations of predecessors; such a procedure would involve too much diversion from my main subject of inquiry. I hope that some of these errors will be duly corrected as I examine the evidence; but my real aim is, not so much to expose the false views of earlier scholars, as to show, first, that an anti-Pythagorean theory, if it is held at all, must be held within certain very strict limits; and secondly that, although past views may have outrun the evidence, there is still a fairly sound core of evidence for supposing that Zeno's arguments had at least some connection with the Pythagorean theories, even if they were not directed specifically against them. All this labour of past scholars may not have been entirely in vain." (pp. 90-91)

Boscarino, Giuseppe. 2017. "An Interpretation of Platoʼs Ideas and Criticism of Parmenides according to Peanoʼs Ideography." Athens Journal of Humanities & Arts no. 5:13–28.

Abstract: "Anyone who studies the Platonic work finds great difficulty in interpreting the precise meaning of his ontological terms, which are most often enveloped in an obscure and mystical language. Aristotle already emphasized the allegorical and poetic meaning of the platonic terms "imitation" and "participation," related to the sensible things, "copies" of the "ideas." I have asked myself then the following question: Is there a rational and logical nucleus within the mystical and mythological shell of Platonism? Studying the mathematical ideography of Peano, a great logician, mathematician and contemporary linguist, elicited the following question: can we make an ideographic translation of Platoʼs ontological terms in the same way Peano did for aspects of Euclidʼs work? We demonstrate a possible valid, rational, and logical nucleus of certain Platonic nomenclature beyond the mists of certain metaphysical interpretation, while also showing Platoʼs criticism of Parmenides to be invalid in the light of Peanoʼs ideography."

Bossi, Beatriz. 2005. "Is Socrates really defending conceptualism in Parmenides 132b3-d4?" In Plato's Parmenides. Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlícek, Ales and Karfík, Filip, 58–74. Prague: Oikoymenh.

———. 2022. "Why is the ‘greatest’ difficulty neither great nor consistent? (Prm. 133b-134e)." In Plato's Parmenides: Selected Papers of the Twelfth Symposium Platonicum, edited by Brisson, Luc, Macé, Arnaud and Renault, Olivier, 253–259. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

Abstract: "In this paper I attempt to show that the ‘greatest difficulty’ is inconsistent because, although it assumes that self-subsistence precludes knowability (because, ‘being in itself’, a Form cannot be ‘in other’), it allows an exception, namely, the case of God, who knows the Forms because he would ‘have’ the Form of Knowledge. This implies that ‘being in themselves’ does not preclude them from being ‘in other’."

Bostock, David. 1978. "Plato on Change and Time in the Parmenides." Phronesis. A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 23:229–242.

"So far as that is concerned the points I have wanted to make by way of preliminary are (i) that Plato's discussion of change and temporal relations in this dialogue is largely independent of any special features of 'the One', and Plato shows that he is himself quite aware of this; and (ii) that in fact the discussion is largely independent of any views one might hold about forms vis-a-vis their relations to particulars, for forms do not enter the discussion at all in any interesting way. The exception to this rather general claim is that the Parmenides does in fact contradict the middle-period doctrine that γένεσις excludes οὐσία, but I do not think that this point has much significance. The main thrust of the treatment of change concerns 'whatever is in time', and though Plato may perhaps have held that some things (the forms) were not in time, this has practically no bearing on the interesting puzzle he develops about things that are in time. This puzzle can be summed up as one that relies on these six premises:

(1) At any one time, x is not both F and not F.

(2) If at one time x is F, and at another time x is not F, then there must be a time during (or at) which x changes from one to the other.

(3) While x is changing from being not F to being F, i.e. while x is becoming F, x is not (yet) F.

(4) While x is changing from being not F to being F, i.e. while x is becoming F, x is not (still) not F.

(5) At any 'present moment' x is either F or not F.

(6) If xis in time, x is always at a 'present moment'.

It is almost true to say that these six premises are asserted one after the other in the 'Appendix' on change to the first two movements (i.e. 155 e - 157 b, beginning ἔτι δὴ τὸ τρίτον λέγωμεν), and this is our main text. But first let us observe how these six premises - or rather, a judicious selection from them - enter into the other arguments on change and temporal relations." (pp. 230-231)

Braga da Silva, André Luiz. 2022. "The “Ideas as thoughts” hypothesis of Parmenides 132b-c: a historical approach." In Plato's Parmenides: Selected Papers of the Twelfth Symposium Platonicum, edited by Brisson, Luc, Macé, Arnaud and Renault, Olivier, 59–66. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

Abstract: "Using a historical approach, this paper assesses the “Ideas as thoughts” hypothesis of Parmenides 132b-c. The investigation focuses on three topics: i) the meaning of the hypothesis within the dialogue; ii) the historicity of the hypothesis, in view of possible identification with existing doctrines; and iii) the validity of the refutation of the hypothesis, with special regards to the role of “participation” in this. The results suggest an extradialogical intention on Plato’s part."

Brankaer, Johanna. 2010. "Is There a Gnostic “Henological” Speculation?" In Plato's Parmenides and Its Heritage. Vol. 1: History and Interpretation from the Old Academy to Later Platonism and Gnosticism, edited by Turner, John D. and Corrigan, Kevin, 173–194. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

"In the (Neo-) Platonic Parmenides reception, the One is a central philosophical theme; it has acquired a status that transcends even Being. Ultimate source of reality, it is placed so far above Being that it has barely any relation to it at all. Whether or not this is a valid interpretation of Plato and Parmenides(1) is not directly relevant to the scope of this paper, which is primarily concerned with Gnostic thought. Even though the Gnostics did not necessarily seek to interpret philosophical antecedents, like the Parmenides, they were confronted with similar questions. In Gnosticism (and especially in the more Platonizing texts), we find a way of exploring answers to the question of the derivation of multiplicity from initial unity. This unity, however, is only rarely described in the “henological” language of the Neoplatonists—even if it sometimes tends to seem so, especially in English translations where substantivized adjectives are often translated with the indefinite “one.” The treatises we deal with rather seem to conceive of the one—which is not necessarily identified with the highest principle—on a purely “ontological” level, being in that way maybe even closer to the historical Parmenides and Plato than the philosophical “schools” of later antiquity." (p. 173)

(1) See, e.g., the excellent study by Narbonne (2001). This work presents Plotinus’s henological interpretation of Plato more as a deviant interpretation of the Parmenides, contrary to thinkers like Origen (the Pagan) and others that were still active at the time of Proclus.

References

Narbonne, J.-M. 2001. The Origin, Significance and Bearing of the ἐπέκεινα Motif in Plotinus and the Neoplatonic Tradition. Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 17:185–97.

Brémond, Mathilde. 2022. "Gorgias and Antilogic in Plato’s Parmenides." In Plato's Parmenides: Selected Papers of the Twelfth Symposium Platonicum, edited by Brisson, Luc, Macé, Arnaud and Renault, Olivier, 101–114. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

Abstract: "This paper focuses on the influence of Gorgias and his antilogic method on the second part of the Parmenides. I will show that Plato was directly inspired by Gorgias’ treatise On Not-Being, not only in specific passages but also and more importantly in his whole approach and reasoning. This use of the sophist can shed light, as I will show, on one of the most disputed questions in Platonic studies, namely the aim of the second part of the Parmenides. I will finally highlight the similarities between the Gorgian method Plato uses in the Parmenides and a practice he otherwise condemns, namely antilogic.."

Brisson, Luc. 2002. "'Is the World One?' A New Interpretation of Plato's Parmenides." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 22:1–20.

Abstract: "Of all Plato’s dialogues, the Parmenides remains the most fascinating and the most controversial. This twofold characteristic has a lengthy tradition, reaching back to the birth of Neoplatonism, which replaced the Middle Platonist dialogue of reference, the Timaeus, with its own, the Parmenides. From the third century AD on, this dialogue became the laboratory for the production of a new interpretation of Plato. The reading of the Parmenides which is proposed in this paper breaks with the grand tradition that sees the second part of the dialogue as a description of the degrees of being, which flow like divinities from the One. Paradoxically, my rejection of this interpretation is the result of prolonged study of Proclus and Damascius, whose exegetical skills I came to admire; the subtlety and scope of their arguments justify the influence they have had in the history of ‘Western thought, particularly through authors such as Marsilio Ficino. The present reading also eschews a formal interpretation, already evident in antiquity, that considers the Parmenides an exercise in logic, aimed at refuting Zeno in his own field, and providing an example of Platonic logic."

———. 2008. "The Reception of the Parmenides before Proclus." Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum no. 12:99–113.

"As far as the interpretation of the Parmenides is concerned, the commentary by Proclus, only a part of which remains, but whose substance can be reconstituted from Damascius, remains a monument that cannot be neglected. Through the intermediary of Marsilio Ficino, this interpretation was the only one known in Europe, practically until the 20th century; even today, any reading of the Parmenides must take a stance with regard to it.

Here, I shall attempt to detach myself from this interpretation, and above all to keep my distance from the history of the exegesis of the Parmenides which, as part of an appropriative strategy, Proclus recounts at the beginning of the 6th book of his commentary (In Parmenidem VI). My intention is to show that, at the beginning of the first half of the 3rd century CE, the dominant interpretation of this dialogue was an ontological one. It was then challenged by a different interpretation in which the One beyond being plays the primary role, taken up and developed by Plotinus, which was in turn defended and utilized by all Neoplatonists up to Proclus and Damascius. With this goal in view, I will discuss the interpretations of Longinus and Origen the Platonist, both of whom, like Plotinus, attended the School of Ammonius at Alexandria." (p. 99, notes omitted)

———. 2010. "The Fragment of Speusippus in Column I of the Anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides." In Plato's Parmenides and Its Heritage. Vol. 1: History and Interpretation from the Old Academy to Later Platonism and Gnosticism, edited by Turner, John D. and Corrigan, Kevin, 59–65. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

"After a translation of the first column of the Anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides, where some lines mention a doctrine attributed to Speusippus, I will propose a commentary on these few lines which, following C. Steel, I will try to show to be a later fabrication.(1) If this is right, it means that the commentator is criticizing a Neopythagorizing interpretation of the second part of Plato’s Parmenides, proposed in the first two centuries C.E." (p. 59)

(1) This article is a critical response to Bechtle 2002.

References

Bechtle, Gerald. 2002. Speusippus and the Anonymous Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides: How Can the One be a Minimum? Pages 281–306 in Il Parmenide di Platone e la sua tradizione. Atti del III Colloquio Internazionale del Centro di Ricerca sul Neoplatonismo. Università degli Studi di Catania, 31 maggio–4 giugno 2001. Edited by M. Barbanti and F. Romano. Symbolon 24. Catania: CUECM.

Steel, Carlos. 2002. A Neoplatonic Speusippus? Pages 469–76 in Hénosis kaì philía = Unione e amicizia: omaggio a Francesco Romano. Edited by M. Barbanti, G. R. Giardina and P. Manganaro. Introduced by E. Berti. Catania: CUECM.

———. 2010. "A Criticism of the Chaldaean Oracles and of the Gnostics in Columns IX and X of the Anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides." In Plato's Parmenides and Its Heritage. Vol. 1: History and Interpretation from the Old Academy to Later Platonism and Gnosticism, edited by Turner, John D. and Corrigan, Kevin, 233–241. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

"At the beginning of the fourth fragment, which includes columns IX and X, the commentator has apparently just set forth an objection: how can it be said that the One cannot be named, defined, or known, while sacred traditions like the Chaldaean Oracles seem to contradict themselves, because, while saying the Father himself snatched himself away, they reveal to us a positive teaching about him?(1)" (p 233)

(1) This article is intended as a response to the one by Bechtle 2006a, 563–81.

References

Bechtle Gerald. 2006. Neglected Testimonium on the Chaldaean Oracles. Classical Quarterly 56: 563–81

———. 2010. "A Criticism of Numenius in the Last Columns (XI–XIV) of the Anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides." In Plato's Parmenides and Its Heritage. Vol. 1: History and Interpretation from the Old Academy to Later Platonism and Gnosticism, edited by Turner, John D. and Corrigan, Kevin, 275–282. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

"The fifth fragment (col. XI–XII) comments on the beginning of the second hypothesis of Plato’s Parmenides: “If the one is, can it be although it does not participate in reality?” (142b5–6). At first sight, this formula seems strange (ἄτοπον) to a Neoplatonist. Indeed, the reasoning of Parmenides (Parm. 142b5–6) allows us to suppose that reality (οὐσία) exists prior to the second one, the one-that-is, which participates in it; yet for a Neoplatonist, reality (ἡ οὐσία), considered as being (τὸ ὄν), is on the same level as the second one, which corresponds to the domain of the intellect and the intelligible. To escape this deadlock, the commentator will investigate the meaning of “to participate"," (p. 275)

———. 2010. "The Reception of the Parmenides before Proclus." In Plato's Parmenides and Its Heritage. Vol. 2: Reception in Patristic, Gnostic, and Christian Neoplatonic Texts, edited by Turner, John D. and Corrigan, Kevin, 49–63. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

"As far as the ontological interpretation of the Parmenides is concerned, the commentary by Proclus, only a part of which remains, but whose substance can be reconstituted from Damascius,(2) remains a monument that cannot be neglected.

Through the intermediary of Marsilio Ficino, this interpretation was the only one known in Europe, practically until the twentieth century; even today, any reading of the Parmenides must take a stance with regard to it. Here, I will attempt to detach myself from this interpretation, and above all to keep my distance from the history of the exegesis of the Parmenides which, as part of an appropriative strategy, Proclus recounts at the beginning of the sixth book of his Commentary (col. 1051.34–1014.12 = 1051.26–1064.10).(3)" (p. 49)

Translated from the French by Michael Chase and reprinted by permission from Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum / Journal of ancient Christianity 12 (2008), 99–113.

(2) On Damascius, see Hoffmann 1994, 541–593.

(3) The text is analyzed by Saffrey and Westerink in their Introduction to Proclus (1968, 1:lxxix–lxxxix). References to Proclus, In Parm. are from Cousin² first, then by Steel.

References

Cousin, V. 1864. Pages 617–1244 in Procli commentarium in Platonis Parmenidem. Procli Philosophi Platonici. Opera inedita, pars 3. Paris: Durand. Repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1961.

Hoffmann, Philippe. 1994. Damascius. Pages 540–93 in Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, 2.

Saffrey, H. D., and L. G. Westerink 1968–1997. Proclus, Théologie Platonicienne. Texte etabli et traduit par H.D. Saffrey and L.G. Westerink. 6 Vols. Collection des universités de France. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Steel Carlos ed. 2007–2009. Procli In Platonis Parmenidem Commentaria. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3 vols.

———. 2010. "Columns VII–VIII of the Anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides: Vestiges of a Logical Interpretation." In Plato's Parmenides and Its Heritage. Vol. 2: Reception in Patristic, Gnostic, and Christian Neoplatonic Texts, edited by Turner, John D. and Corrigan, Kevin, 111–117. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

"The third fragment, dealing with the One in time, may inform us about the form that the interpretation of the Parmenides may have assumed before Plotinus. The tenth deduction of the first series is first cited in its entirety (141a5–d6) in column VII. The logical structure of the argumentation is then analyzed (column VIII, 1–21), and the commentary ends with objections to the proposed interpretation (column VIII, 21–35). Columns VII and VIII follow one another, since they are written on the recto and verso of the same folio." (p. 111)

———. 2023. "The Instant (ἐξαίφνης) in Plato’s Parmenides 155e4–157b5." In Plato on Time and the World, edited by Ilievski, Viktor, Vázquez, Daniel and De Bianchi, Silvia, 31–45. Cham (Switzerland): Palgrave Macmillan.

"I would like to show that Parmenides, when referring to the instant (ἐξαίφνης) in Plato’s Parmenides 155e4–157b5, adopts Zeno’s assumption of the divisibility of time, which Aristotle rejects by appealing to the potential infinite, a philosophical position already adopted by Plato in the Timaeus. To reach this conclusion, however, one must re-situate oneself within the context of an interpretation of the second part of the Parmenides which, until today, I am the only one to propose." (p. 31)

———. 2024. "The ontology of Parmenides according to Plato's Parmenides." Organon no. 56:53–64.

Abstract: "For Proclus, the subject of Parmenides’ hypothesis is the One and the verb to be has an existential meaning. Modern commentators acknowledge the existential function of the verb, but propose different subjects. I try to explain why I give a predicative function to the verb to be, giving the world as its subject, one being the predicate."

"Introduction

In 1994, I published a French translation of Plato’s Parmenides that was quite different from all other modern interpretations.1 I argued that Parmenides’ character in the Parmenides was a fair representation of the historical Parmenides, for whom being in the Poem is the world,(2) that is the universe, when grasped either by reason or by the senses. I would like to show here the plausibility of this interpretation." (p. 53)

"Conclusion

The second part of the Parmenides remains an enigma. Since the Commentary by Proclus the ἐστιν of the hypothesis which is examined in Eighth series of deductions has been considered as existential. Its subject is different according to the interpreters: the ἕν beyond being for the neoplatonists, the ἕν opposed to the dyad (δυάς) for the supporters of the esoteric doctrines, the unity of the intelligible forms or the form One for the majority of scholars, or the concept one. Some believe that it is a mere dialectical exercise without any philosophical background. All these interpretations turn out to be a dead end. That is why we propose to understand that in the second part of the Parmenides, the hypothesis is Parmenides’ one, either affirmed or denied: εἴτε τὸ πᾶν ἕν ἐστιν εἴτε μὴ ἕν." (p. 63)

(2) See L. Brisson, Is the world one? A new interpretation of Plato’s Parmenides in: Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 22, 2002, pp. 1–20.

Brisson, Luc, Macé, Arnaud, and Renault, Olivier, eds. 2022. Plato's Parmenides: Selected Papers of the Twelfth Symposium Platonicum. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

Twelfth Symposium Platonicum, Paris, July 15th-20th 2019.

Contents. Introduction 5;

I. On the threshold of the Parmenides.

François Renaud: Poésie et poétique dialogique dans le prologue du Parménide 17; Nikos G. Charalabopoulos: Road to Academy. The implicit protreptics of Plato’s Parmenides 25; Lidia Palumbo: Il prologo come chiave di interpretazione del dialogo intero 33;

II. The Parmenides in context.

Mario Regali: Parmenide e il cavallo di Ibico: l’immagine dell’eros senile per la dialettica (Prm. 136e-137c) 43; Julia Pfefferkorn: Parmenides auf dem Prüfstand: Unendliche Schwierigkeiten und eine Aufgabe 51; André Luiz Braga da Silva: The “Ideas as thoughts” hypothesis of Parmenides 132b-c: a historical approach 59; D. Gregory MacIsaac: Plato’s Account of Eleaticism: A New Interpretation of Parmenides 67; Francesco Ferro: La dottrina eleatica dell’Uno-tutto nel primo λόγος di Zenone 75; Sandra Peterson: Socrates Objects to Zeno at 128e-129a in Plato’s Parmenides 83; Filippo Forcignanò: Anaxagoras in Plato’s Parmenides 91; Mathilde Brémond: Gorgias and Antilogic in Plato’s Parmenides 101; Michele Corradi: Il Parmenide di Platone fra il Περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος di Gorgia e il Περὶ τοῦ ὄντος di Protagora: l’ombra dei sofisti nella γυμνασία 115; Ivana Costa: Las huellas de Gorgias y el robo del λόγος de Zenón 123; Claudia Mársico: Intra-Socratic polemics. The Parmenides as an element of an anti-Megaric program 133;

III. Dialogue, dialectics and exercices.

Mary-Louise Gill: Exercise on Being: The ἀγών of Heraclitus and Parmenides 149; Annie Larivée: Socrate en devenir. Le développement du jeune Socrate dans le Phédon comme clé herméneutique du Parménide 163; Sergio Di Girolamo: Parmenides’ hypothesis behind Plato’s Parmenides: ‘all the things are collectively called ἓν ὄν’ (Sph. 242d6) 173; Jens Kristian Larsen: On common forms and dialectical inquiry in Plato’ Parmenides 183; Georgia Mouroutsou: A Diagnosis of Dialectic in Parmenides 142b1-144e7 193; Alessio Santoro: Eleatic training. The aim and uses of dialectic in Plato’s Parmenides and Aristotle’s Topics 201;

IV. The Theory of Forms.

Noburu Notomi: Homonymy and Similarity in Plato’s Parmenides 211; Antonino Spinelli: Sind die Ideen wirklich unteilbar? Zur zweifachen Natur der platonischen Formen (Prm. 131a-e) 221; Irina Protopopova:

The Parmenides and the Typology of eide (according to Plato’s Hippias Major, Protagoras, Republic, and Sophist) 229; Vittorio Ricci: Sul cosiddetto “argomento del terzo uomo” (TMA) nel Parmenide 239; Amber D. Carpenter: Separation Anxieties. Parmenides 133a-135c 245; Beatriz Bossi: Why is the ‘greatest’ difficulty neither great nor consistent? (Prm. 133b-134e) 253; José Antonio Giménez: La “mayor dificultad” y el poder del conocimiento en Parménides 133b-134e 261; Irmgard Männlein-Robert: Der ferne Gott – Ideen auf Distanz? Die siebte Aporie im Kontext (Prm. 133b4–135b4) 269; Carolina Araújo: Ousia and dunamis in the greatest aporia (Prm. 133b4-135b4) 279; Kezhou Liu: The Problem of Separation in Plato’s Parmenides 287;

V. Hypothesis and deductions.

Maurizio Migliori: The many meanings of the One in Plato’s Parmenides 299; Eric Sanday: The Subject and Number of Hypotheses in Plato’s Parmenides 309; Béatrice Lienemann: Prädikationen pros heauto im Parmenides als Aussagen über die Struktur von Ideen 317; Luca Pitteloud: La deuxième partie du Parménide : identité et altérité de l’intelligible ? 331; Dougal Blyth: Dialectic and Forms in Prm. 137c-144e 339; Mateo Duque: “Οὐκ ἔστιν” (141e8): The Performative Contradiction of the First Hypothesis 347; Carmen Di Lorenzo: Il numero come prototipo di pluralità unificata (Prm.147a3-6) 355; Richard Parry: The One and Time: Parmenides 151e-153a 361; Aleksei A. Pleshkov: Eternity for Plato: The Dialogue between Parmenides and Timaeus 371; Francisco J. Gonzalez: “Let us say the third”: The Meaning of τὸ τρίτον in the Deductions of Plato’s Parmenides 379; Samuel Meister: Gunk in the Third Deduction of Plato’s Parmenides 393; Claudia Luchetti: La Noesi nascosta. Sulla presenza della teoria platonica dellʼAnima nella γυμνασία del Parmenide (142a-144e, 155e-157b, 157b-159b) 401; Roberto Granieri: Riferimento, essere e partecipazione. Prm. 160b4-163b5 e il Sofista 409; Francesco Aronadio: La duplice accezione dell’espressione me esti nella V e nella VI ipotesi del Parmenide 423; Lorenzo Giovannetti: Structure and sense of the seventh deduction in Prm. 164b5-165e1 431; Jan Szaif: Pseudo-Objects in a World of Seeming (Prm. 164b–165e) 439; I-Kai Jeng: Nonbeing and the Final Four Deductions in Plato’s Parmenides 453;

VI. The Reception of the Parmenides.

Federico M. Petrucci: Una lettura stoica della “più grande difficoltà” del Parmenide 469; Harold Tarrant: Apuleian Evidence regarding Pre-Plotinian Interpretation of the Parmenides 483; Lloyd P. Gerson: Plotinus and Parmenides 491; Melina G. Mouzala: Forms as paradigms in Plato’s Parmenides 132c-d. Proclus’ response to Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias’ attacks on the Forms considered as patterns 501; Anna Motta: La peculiare solennità dell’isagoge procliana al Parmenide di Platone 509; Ivan Adriano Licciardi: Simplicio, in Cael. 556, 3-560, 10, a margine di Platone, Prm. 135b8-c1. Prolegomeni a una genealogia del parallelismo onto-epistemologico 517;

References 527; Index Locorum 549; Index Rerum 565-568.

Brownstein, Donald. 1986. "Parmenides Dilemma and Aristotle's Way Out." Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 24:1–7.

"We may, for example, adopt as part of our view on identity the principle that neither individual things nor their qualities may differ in number alone. I will call such a principle the Discernibility of Non-identicals (DNI). It will be enough for two individual things to meet the requirements of DNI if they differ in some quality-e.g., if one is square, the other round.

Again, it will be enough for two qualities to meet the requirements of DNI if they differ as qualities-e.g., in the way being round (roundness) differs from being square (squareness), or in the way two distinct shades of green may differ (though they are both greens)." (p. 1)

(...)

"Parmenides poses so formidable a threat to Plato precisely because his dilemma seems to involve a clash between DNI and Plato’s other principles. Plato sees no easy way to give up either DNI or those other principles. If what I have suggested about Aristotle is right, he gives up DNI, but without providing a way of salvaging what DNI secured. Thus as a response to Parmenides’ challenge Aristotle’s theory seems inadequate. It is not at all clear how such a theory could be made adequate." (p. 7)

Brumbaugh, Robert Sherrick. 1954. "Plato's Parmenides, A Report on New Source Material " The Review of Metaphysics no. 8:200–203.

"Western philosophy has been continuously influenced by Plato's Parmenides, with its extraordinary abstract treatment of the one and the many, though few Western philosophers have claimed that they understood the dialogue, and none have been able to give convincing defence of an asserted understanding of it.

New evidence of this continued influence, and new source material of help in interpretation, is provided by the publication of the final section of Proclus' Commentary in vol. iii of the Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi. This concluding section of Book vii of the Commentary is missing in the Greek Proclus mss., but extant in the Latin text of Moerbeke's medieval translation, which is the basis of the present edition." (p. 200)

———. 1959. "Plato's Parmenides and Positive Metaphysics." The Review of Metaphysics no. 13:271–277.

"Father William Lynch, in his recent commentary, has given us a clearly written and attractive study which construes the hypotheses of Plato's Parmenides in a "positive, metaphysical" way.(1) By this he means that, as opposed to rhetoric, myth, or poetry, this Platonic text is to be read as a didactic and literal statement of a metaphysical doctrine.(2) This approach is maintained throughout the study with a single-mindedness which, some readers will feel, tends to overlook a good many "positive metaphysical" values of other frames of reference and possible interpretation." (p 271)

(1) William F. Lynch, S.J., An Approach to the Metaphysics of Plato through the Parmenides (Georgetown University Press, 1959).

(2) Ibid., pp. 18-19, n. 48 p. 73, and, p. 73: "Over against perhaps all the other dialogues, the Eighth hypotheses of the Parmenides are pure metaphysics . . . And every myth or mythological tendency in the dialogues must, therefore, be thrown up against the philosophical accuracies of the Parmenides. ..."

———. 1960. "A Latin Translation of Plato's Parmenides." The Review of Metaphysics no. 14:91–109.

"When volume III of the Plato Latinus series of the Corpus Platonicum appeared in 1953, it was evident that this was an important contribution to the history of philosophy.(1)

(...)

The book was also of value for our understanding of Plato's Parmenides, I thought, for two rather different reasons: on the side of speculative philosophy, it sharpens our appreciation of the interpretations to which the dialogue had given rise; on the side of textual study, it has some bearing on the question of exactly what Plato's original version of the dialogue had said." p. 91)

(...)

"The end of Proclus' Commentary, for example, is an ideal reading for students of the history of philosophy; it seems to me to represent a perfect statement of the culmination of the dialectic of Neo-Platonism." (p. 92, a note omitted)

(1) R. Klibansky, ed., Corpus Platonicum M edii Aevii, Plato Latinus vol. Ill: Parmenides usque ad finem primae hypothesis, Procli Commentarium in Parmenidem pars ultima adhuc inedita interprete Guillelmo de

Moerbeka, ed. R. Klibansky and C. Labowsky, London, the Warburg Institute, 1953.

———. 1961. Plato on the One. The Hypotheses in the Parmenides. New Haven: Yale University Press.

"What I propose to do in the present study is both to answer some fundamental preliminary questions about the accuracy of our text and its internal organization and to develop a philosophic commentary that takes account of these preliminary results. Assuming that Plato’s intention is serious but granting (as the history of interpretations makes us) that his purpose has been controversial, one immediately wonders whether the difficulty is due to the author himself or to inept copyists and editors. ‘There is no point in charging Plato with error or obscurity if this might be in fact the contribution of incompetent copyists over two millennia. And a quick look at any detailed apparatus suggests that the tight, repetitive argument makes these hypotheses singularly difficult to copy without error.(34)

One thing that has helped to convince me that the text is in very good shape is its internal coherence. For another inquiry has been the seemingly factual one of the validity of Plato’s logic: given the flexibility of twentieth-century formal logic, the issue should be completely decidable. As a result of a literal translation and formalization, I think I have decided it: the logical form is valid, but some very odd concepts are introduced on occasion.

Actually, Plato seems to have been imitating a Pythagorean proof-pattern, marking off his argument into theorems, each closing with a q.e.d., and developing each theorem on the same pattern.(35) My notes on the translation, below, are concerned primarily with this architectonic and with the validity of the argument, though textual points are also treated incidentally." (p. 13)

(34) See below, pp. 240 ff.

(35) See below, pp. 47-53.

———. 1973. "The Text of Plato's Parmenides." The Review of Metaphysics no. 26:140–148.

"I myself became interested in textual work when I began checking the logical rigor of Plato's Parmenides hypotheses. To my great surprise, the proof patterns were not simply valid, but as woodenly uniform and rigorous as Euclid's Elements.(2) Such rigor was exactly what a Neo-Platonist like Proclus would have expected, admired, and possibly imposed; it is not paralleled anywhere else in Plato.(3)" (p. 140)

(...)

"My conclusion was that Dies' text, with some fifty changes, gave a text that was excellent, indeed; but my suggested changes had very weak manuscript authority, with a pedigree I could not trace.(10) A re-examination now convinces me that a re-punctuated version of the text I set up in my 1961 study would not only be excellent, but (apart from fourteen conjectural emendations, only four of them significant for the argument) perfect logically and with sound manuscript authority for all but 18 out of its 500 propositions! If this is right, the difficulties presented by the hypotheses are conceptual and metaphysical, not philological, and in almost no case explicable by copyists' errors." (p. 142, a note omitted)

(2) A point explored-and, I think, demonstrated in detail-in my Plato on the One: The Hypotheses in the Parmenides, and their Interpretation, New Haven, 1961 (hereafter cited as POTO).

(3) Proclus actually rephrases the first hypothesis as a set of second figure syllogisms in his Commentary on the Parmenides ( ed. by V. Cousin in Procli Opera, Paris 1827). His own idea of proper rigor and formal

proof is illustrated in the Elements of Theology ( ed. and trans. E. R. Dodds, Oxford, 1933).

(10) 10 POTO, pp. 262-345, n. 5, p. 259.

———. 1976. "Notes on the History of Plato's Text: with the Parmenides as a Case Study." Paideia: Journal of Foundational Studies in Education:67–79.

———. 1980. "The Purpose of Plato’s Parmenides." Ancient Philosophy no. 1:39–47.

"In short, my examination of previous interpretations leads me to an alternative view: that the Parmenides is a defense of the theory of forms via a criticism of incorrect interpretations; that it is an indirect defense, rather than a dogmatic statement of revelation; that it offers a constructive logical analysis of "participation" in examining alternative possible mediating categories between instance and form. The second of these points must not be misunderstood.

I am not simply saying that various misinterpretations are rejected; I mean to argue that the proof is meant to hold against any interpretation that identifies dialectic with hypothetical-deductive philosophic method. The final answer seems to point back to the vision of the world of science in the light of a principle of value, developing Anaxagoras' partial insight which so captivated young Socrates according to the Phaedo." (p. 46)

———. 1982. "The History and an Interpretation of the Text of Plato's Parmenides." Philosophy Research Archives no. 8:1–56.

"The present study aims at giving factual support to the thesis that the Parmenides is serious in intention, rigorous in logical demonstration, and stylistically meticulous in its original composition. While this consideration may be tedious, still it is useful. Against a past history which has claimed to find the tone hilarious, the logic fallacious, the work inauthentic, the text in need of bracketing by divination, the whole incoherent— against these eccentricities a certain firm sobriety seems called for. I hope that my conclusions find support and persist through fluctuations of philosophic and philological styles." (p. 2)

———. 1987. "Plato's Parmenides: The Text of Paris B, Vienna W, and Prague." Philosophy Research Archives no. 13:22–42.

"In. 19S3, Robert Brumbaugh published a study of Plato's Parmenides in this Archive. His crucial concern was to establish the dialogue's serious intent!on and rigorous deductive logic.

But there are enough gaps, anomal!es, and apparent fallacies in our current texts to cast some doubt on such a claim. In addition, the reported variant reading of Bekker and Stallbaum. are a complex maze that defies simple reorganization into an. intelligitle stemma, as though some unique complications attended the transmission and correction of the second family manuscripts. However, the author claims that a closer second look at the manuscripts in question support a his interpretation." (p. 22)

Bruss, Jon Steffen. 2004. "Parmenides, Plato’s Symposium, and the Narrative of Intellectual Activity." Aevum no. 4:467–485.