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Plato's Parmenides - Selections - Comments

Tr. F.M. Cornford. In classical times this dialog was also called "On Ideas" and was classified as a "logical" dialog (Diog. L. iii, 58). 'Ideas' = 'Forms', and synonyms are 'patterns', 'archetypes', 'ideals', 'absolutes'.

What is the meaning of a common name? Why did Plato invent his notion of Forms? Does Plato think the Forms answer the question he intended them to answer? Plato imagines a discussion between Parmenides, the originator of Rationalism, and Socrates (i.e. Plato himself).

Outline of this page ...

• Preface to Plato's Dialog
• Partaking (participation) in the Forms
  • "Largeness does not exist in our world"
  • "What are you going to do about philosophy, then?"
• W.K.C. Guthrie's view - Parmenides, Plato and the Forms
  • "The paradox of the arrow" (Zeno of Elea)
  • Metaphysics' "really real"
    • The originator of Rationalism
• Plato's search for intelligibility
  • "If we have nothing to fix our thought on"
  • The logic of language and the Socratic standard in ethics
  • Plato's unflagging love of truth (wisdom, philosophical knowledge)

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Partaking (participation) in the Forms

Aristotle dismissed Plato's notion of "partaking" as "empty words and poetical metaphors" (Metaphysics 991a, tr. A.E. Taylor). And so, if Aristotle is correct, we start off without knowing what we are talking about (because Plato did not know what he was talking about -- i.e. he was not clear about what he was saying with the word 'partake'). Also according to Aristotle (ibid. 1078a), the historical Socrates did not think of common natures as being separable from the things they defined ("general definitions"). It was Plato who separated things from their defining common natures, and called the latter the "Forms" of those things.

131e - Well then, Socrates, how are the other things going to partake of your Forms, if they can partake of them neither in part nor as wholes?

132b - But, Parmenides, said Socrates, may it not be that each of these Forms is a thought, which cannot properly exist anywhere but in a mind [The Greek psyche is rendered into English by words such as 'soul', 'mind', and 'spirit'].

132c-d - But, Parmenides, the best I can make of the matter is this -- that these Forms are as it were patterns fixed in the nature of things. The other things are made in their image and are likenesses, and this participation they come to have in the Forms is nothing but being made in their image.

133a - It follows that the other things do not partake of Forms by being like them; we must look for some other means by which they partake.

"Largeness does not exist in our world"

132a - When it seems to you that a number of things are large, there seems, I suppose, to be a certain single character which is the same when you look at them all; hence you think that largeness is a single thing.

133c - Because, Socrates, I imagine that you or anyone else who asserts that each of them has a real being "just by itself", would admit, to begin with, that no such real being exists in our world.

There is no general form (i.e. Platonic Form) of triangles or holiness wandering about (i.e. perceptible) in the world of our senses. But if the Forms do not exist in our world -- and if we therefore deny that they exist at all, then aren't we also denying that reality is intelligible -- i.e. in other words, I think, if there are no common names, then all discourse of reason becomes in so many ways impossible, and --

"What are you going to do about philosophy, then?"

134a-b - And similarly knowledge itself, the essence of knowledge, will be knowledge of that reality itself, the essentially real.... And again, any given branch of knowledge in itself will be knowledge of some department of real things as it is in itself, will it not?... Whereas knowledge in our world will be knowledge of the reality in our world, and it will follow again that each branch of knowledge in our world must be knowledge of some department of things that exists in our world.

134b - But, as you admit, we do not possess the Forms themselves, nor can they exist in our world.

135a - ... these difficulties and many more besides are inevitably involved in the Forms, if these characters of things really exist and one is going to distinguish each Form as a thing just by itself. The result is that the hearer is perplexed and inclined either to question their existence [that is, the existence of Forms], or to contend that, if they do exist, they must certainly be unknowable by our human nature.

135b-c - But on the other hand, Parmenides continued, if ... a man refuses to admit that Forms of things exist or to distinguish a definite Form in every case, he will have nothing on which to fix his thought, so long as he will not allow that each thing has a character which is always the same, and in so doing he will completely destroy the significance of all discourse.... What are you going to do about philosophy, then?

Well, this is it. If we cannot distinguish between sense and nonsense in the language we use in philosophy, then farewell to philosophy. And that is the very topic of what I have called "logic of language". (A "footnote to Plato" indeed. Of course the solutions he offered may be very different from our own -- but the problem he poses here is the same -- namely, how to make an objective distinction between sense and nonsense in the language we use in philosophy.)

[Parmenides:] But, then, what is to become of philosophy? Wither shall we turn, if the ideas [i.e. Forms] are unknown?

[Socrates:] I certainly do not see my way at present. (Parmenides 135c, tr. Jowett; Cornford has: "... at the present moment"; cf. Protagoras 360e: the conclusions of today's dialectic/dialog belong to today, but maybe not to the dialogs of days that follow.)

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Parmenides, Plato and the Forms - W.K.C. Guthrie's view

In his The Later Plato and the Academy (1978) Guthrie writes that:

... the main strength of [Parmenides'] arguments in the first part [of the dialog] lies in his historical denial of any possible connection between the sensible and intelligible worlds, precisely the dilemma which Plato's doctrine of Forms was designed to solve. (p. 36)

Plato presumes that it is impossible for there to be knowledge of a common nature if that common nature is not itself known; for example, there are many perceptible shapes in this world (Meno 74d, 72c), but there is no shape as such there (134a-b). And Plato responds with his notions of "recollection" and "Forms" (A Form would be the common nature of all individual things that bear the same common name; it would give intelligibility to the common name). Wittgenstein's response is his notion of "family likeness" (although the "family" part is, to adapt Aristotle's criticism of Plato, "empty words and pseudo-metaphor"), which notion amounts to no more -- but that "more" is important -- than remarking that there are resemblances between individuals sharing a common name despite there being in many or maybe most cases of common names no defining common feature shared by all (and, further, that the common names of objects and phenomena, e.g. 'water', 'thunder', are not learned by means of verbal definitions). Wittgenstein admits only that it is possible for man to know -- i.e. to use the language of common names -- but he does not speculate about how it is possible, but that "how" is precisely what Plato wants to know (cf. Wittgenstein and Socrates: non-responsive response). Why does Plato believe that a common name must name a common nature (an essence, an absolute) that itself has real existence? Because he is convinced (by Heraclitus: individual things are in a constant state of change, but knowledge can be only of what is unchanging) that if knowledge is possible, then it must (Plato's method of preconceived principles). Why doesn't Wittgenstein speculate about how man's knowledge of common names is possible? (Part of the difficulty would be conceiving -- i.e. inventing -- what an answer to that question would look like. Plato's notion of Forms is just such a conception -- but his Forms are not of this world, but of the world of metaphysics.)

Note that Wittgenstein's account here is more akin to the TLP's non-theoretical "propositions of natural science" -- specifically, natural history (cf. PI § 415) -- than to philosophy, although it's true that he does try to dissolve metaphysics by showing that its problems are really only conceptual muddles, which is quite different from saying that he himself simply does not want metaphysics, metaphysical speculation.

The proposition that what is visible has its origin in something invisible cannot be verified by sight, of course, but the proposition can be reasoned to. Plato does not find "intelligibility" in the visual world, in which he sees only change (and for a thing to be intelligible, he thinks, is for it not to change) or variability (Heraclitus' "All things are in flux", like cloud formations in the sky); therefore he reasons that the intelligible must lie in a non-visible world. Whatever is intelligible he calls a 'Form' (Forms are named by the words of our language, although in some cases it may be that a single Form has more than one name and in other cases it may be that there are Forms that have not been named); if there were no Forms -- i.e. no intelligibility -- there could be no discourse-discussion (or, philosophy).

[In Parmenides] we are listening to a man whose own philosophy allowed the existence of the intelligible only, and denied any connection between it and the sensible world. Judge by reason alone: human senses ["an aimless eye, an echoing ear"] ... have no validity at all. (ibid. p. 40)

"The paradox of the arrow"

An example of Zeno of Elea's paradoxes: we see the arrow move, but the arrow cannot in reality move, because between any two points there are an infinite number of other points (as e.g. between 1 and 2, there is 1.5, whence 1.75, 1.875, 1.9375, etc.) and it is impossible for anything to traverse an infinity of spaces (cf. the paradox of "Achilles and the Tortoise": if the tortoise is allowed to start first, Achilles can never catch up with or overtake it). Therefore in reality (the intelligible world) there is no movement, regardless that in the sensible world there appears to be.

[Parmenides] is the first in a long line of philosophers who have propounded theories which they must ignore in practice. (Guthrie, ibid. p. 36)

Metaphysics' "really real"

Fichte: "idealism is a speculative position": what the idealist sees when he opens his eyes is in nowise different from what the non-idealist sees (or indeed from what the radical skeptic sees [May we not at this moment be dreaming? (Theaetetus 158b-c)]). And this is the mark of metaphysics -- that it tries to say, not what is, but instead what really is. There is the paradox then that, although verification belongs only to what is, what is doesn't really exist, although that assertion can't be verified. (In metaphysics "what is" is merely what "appears to be", which is a nonsense utterance of 'appears': if all phenomena are mere appearance, then none is).

For Parmenides, who had changed the whole face of Greek philosophy, Plato had enormous respect tempered with fundamental disagreement. (ibid. p. 37)

The originator of Rationalism

Parmenides is the origin of Rationalism -- that is, of "reason alone" (cf. sola scriptura), of principles determined by reasoning as determinate despite any sensory evidence that appears to run contrary to them. Socrates' method is also thoroughgoing rationalism, but not Rationalism, because Socratic dialectic -- despite its imposition of the Rational principle that "If a man knows anything, he can give an account of what he knows to others" (which is actually a selected definition of the word 'know', a criterion Socrates set in order to keep knowledge objective, just as Wittgenstein's principles are definitions set to keep the distinction between sense and nonsense objective) (cf. Plato, Laches 190c) -- is reason examining our common experience. (If the reasonable man rejects the evidence of the senses, then what does the unreasonable man do? "Fair is foul, and foul is fair", according to Rationalism.) And the Pythagoreans also employed Rationalism in the case of their "counter-earth", but that there were nine other planets was empirical. But the rationalism of Parmenides is unadulterated Rationalism. Taking as truth the "clear and distinct ideas" Descartes finds when examining his own mind while divorced from all five senses, and his assertion, taking mathematics as his model (as had the Pythagoreans), that "there can be no extension that is extension of nothing" -- i.e. that there can be no vacuums (no void space), despite any and all experimental-experiential evidence to the contrary -- is rationalism in the manner of Parmenides.

... as [one and the same] day is in many places at [the same time] without ... becoming separated from itself [131b]. [This] provides no bad analogy for a relationship which, as Plato saw and Aristotle deplored, can only be described analogically or metaphorically. (ibid. p. 40-41)

But if it can only be described metaphorically, then it cannot be described at all. Can one say (i.e. is this nonsense?), "I make an analogy between A and B. Of course I cannot show you B, but it is like A in such-and-such ways"? In this case, one is saying that there is no possibility of verification -- but that if B exists then it must be like this. Well, why not say that -- so long as one recognizes that the "must" belongs only to metaphysical speculation, not knowledge of reality? One cannot even say that "It may be this way", if the word 'may' would indicate an hypothesis, which the statements of metaphysics are not. ("B is like A, if B, which is imperceptible, exists." Something seems missing, something deeply unclear.)

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Plato's search for intelligibility

Holding "discourse of reason" with oneself. The questions and theses of philosophy are not finally answered or refuted -- They are argued afresh whenever a philosopher looks at them. And it was this way for Plato: in his dialogs he develops the idea of Forms but also cross-questions himself about that idea. This an important lesson about "What philosophy is?".

Suppose one said in the manner of Parmenides that: Despite all appearances to the contrary, the word 'game' names a Form (a single pattern, common nature, or essence): "If the word 'game' is the name of a Form, then it must -- the "must" of Rationalist necessity -- name a common nature, despite all "the evidence of our senses" suggesting otherwise." But can one say that it is "the evidence of our senses" (cf. Parmenides 133c) that tells us that there is no essence (common nature) of games? What it might mean to say that is in nowise clear. If the word 'game' names a Form ... Well, suppose then that it doesn't ... But if the common names actually used in our language are not our guide to what is and what is not the name of a Form, then what is? This is one of Plato's dilemmas.

If we used Socrates' definition of 'know', then only words we could show to have a common nature, such as e.g. 'clay' (Theaetetus 147a-c), would truly be common names and therefore the names of Forms. But why there are comparatively few such words -- and only seldom the words that interest philosophy, such as 'piety' and 'love' -- is another dilemma.

"If we have nothing to fix our thought on"

Plato asks, How can we talk about games in general if we do not know what a game is -- i.e. if we cannot state a definition of the common name 'game' saying what all games have in common (their common nature)? If there is no common nature, man "will have nothing on which to fix his thought" (Parmenides 135c).

Which is quite true. It is indeed perplexing, our apparent ability to juggle nebulous ideas. -- What do we "fix our thought" on when we pronounce such words? Again: Wittgenstein does not say how it is possible for man to use common names that do not name common natures. That is the question Plato wants to answer. But it calls for metaphysical speculation.

How it is possible? My own response is, "God only knows! It's a question without an answer." Plato's response by contrast is that it is an question as yet unanswered, a question that it is important to investigate, one to which, if we dedicate ourselves, we may find the answer. And as with all "questions without answers", the difficulty is to imagine what form an answer would take. (The limit of philosophy is -- creative imagination.) But, again, Plato imagines one such way with his Forms; the "theory of abstraction" is a different such way. (If you ask a metaphysical question, you can only expect a metaphysical answer.)

"Everything perceptible to the senses is in constant flux" (Heraclitus), and from Heraclitus Plato derives the idea that for there to be intelligibility (i.e. knowledge, discourse of reason, philosophy) there must be something unchanging -- indeed, unchangeable -- to grasp hold of, and that knowledge, therefore, cannot be of individuals because individuals are always in flux (always changing). It is the species (i.e. the common nature named by the common name) that is unchanging, as "In the idea, now is always". But where is the species itself to be found? because it is not among perceptible things (Parmenides 134a-135a).

Both the logic of language and the Socratic standard in ethics

In Socrates' Logic of Language I wrote that "Socrates could see the "family" likenesses Wittgenstein pointed to. Indeed, that was why he sought the common nature that justified our use of a common name, for that nature is not evident." But what I wrote isn't enough, because that is only a logic-of-language question -- and for Socrates logic is only a tool for investigations in ethics. What needs to be added is that the logic-of-language justification would also serve as a standard in ethics saying what the good is for man in every particular circumstance.

And, again with Plato, logic (justification for use) was only a tool for his investigations in metaphysics. Plato wanted to know reality: knowledge of the nature of the world and of man's existence in it. And because in his view knowledge could only be of what is unchanging, and because what is unchanging is also imperceptible, the Forms could serve as an answer because they are both unchanging (eternal) and imperceptible.

"Forms could serve." -- But only if Plato's notion "makes sense". And do we call making one-sided analogies (i.e. unverifiable comparisons) making sense? But of course by 'making sense' here we do not only mean not uttering nonsense (i.e. undefined combinations of words) -- but also showing sound judgment. Does the wise man engage in metaphysical speculation? Plato: Yes. Wittgenstein: No. I would say: Only if he is clear about what he is doing, because "He only errs who thinks he knows what he does not know" (Augustine) -- and that motto must be our guide in philosophy.

Plato's unflagging love of truth (wisdom, philosophical knowledge)

Can anyone understand Plato if he is not himself driven to find the truth, but instead has become disillusioned with philosophy because he has lost hope that the truth about our life's riddles can be discovered? Well, he may understand Plato in one sense of 'understand', but not in another, deeper sense. Although Plato was to write that "so long as we keep to the body and our soul is [thus] contaminated" we cannot know ["attain satisfactorily"] that truth (Phaedo 66b), he nevertheless never stopped looking for it.

Whatever our point of view the world will remain for us an enigma. (Albert Schweitzer, Out of my Life and Thought, tr. Lemke, Chapter 18)

The difficulty is not to accept that. The difficulty is not to accept it too soon. (James Brodrick, Robert Bellarmine (1961))

The philosophers from Socrates to Plato to Wittgenstein never stopped looking for the truth. And as to the student of philosophy, "The venture is a glorious one, and he ought to comfort himself with words like these ..." (Phaedo 114d, tr. Jowett)

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Related page: The One and the Many: Parmenides versus the Appearances.

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