Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  [c] “Of something that is, or of something that is not?”

  “Of something that is.”

  “Isn’t it of some one thing, which that thought thinks is over all the instances, being some one character?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then won’t this thing that is thought to be one, being always the same over all the instances, be a form?”

  “That, too, appears necessary.”

  “And what about this?” said Parmenides. “Given your claim that other things partake of forms, won’t you necessarily think either that each thing is composed of thoughts and all things think, or that, although they are thoughts, they are unthinking?”10

  “That isn’t reasonable either, Parmenides,” he said. “No, what appears [d] most likely to me is this: these forms are like patterns set in nature, and other things resemble them and are likenesses; and this partaking of the forms is, for the other things, simply being modeled on them.”

  “If something resembles the form,” he said, “can that form not be like what has been modeled on it, to the extent that the thing has been made like it? Or is there any way for something like to be like what is not like it?”

  “There is not.”

  “And isn’t there a compelling necessity for that which is like to partake of the same one form as what is like it?”11 [e]

  “There is.”

  “But if like things are like by partaking of something, won’t that be the form itself?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “Therefore nothing can be like the form, nor can the form be like anything else. Otherwise, alongside the form another form will always make its appearance, and if that form is like anything, yet another; and if the form [133] proves to be like what partakes of it, a fresh form will never cease emerging.”

  “That’s very true.”

  “So other things don’t get a share of the forms by likeness; we must seek some other means by which they get a share.”

  “So it seems.”

  “Then do you see, Socrates,” he said, “how great the difficulty is if one marks things off as forms, themselves by themselves?”

  “Quite clearly.”

  “I assure you,” he said, “that you do not yet, if I may put it so, have an inkling of how great the difficulty is if you are going to posit one form [b] in each case every time you make a distinction among things.”

  “How so?” he asked.

  “There are many other reasons,” Parmenides said, “but the main one is this: suppose someone were to say that if the forms are such as we claim they must be, they cannot even be known. If anyone should raise that objection, you wouldn’t be able to show him that he is wrong, unless the objector happened to be widely experienced and not ungifted, and consented to pay attention while in your effort to show him you dealt with many distant considerations. Otherwise, the person who insists that they are necessarily unknowable would remain unconvinced.” [c]

  “Why is that, Parmenides?” Socrates asked.

  “Because I think that you, Socrates, and anyone else who posits that there is for each thing some being, itself by itself, would agree, to begin with, that none of those beings is in us.”

  “Yes – how could it still be itself by itself?” replied Socrates.

  “Very good,” said Parmenides. “And so all the characters that are what they are in relation to each other have their being in relation to themselves but not in relation to things that belong to us. And whether one posits the [d] latter as likenesses or in some other way, it is by partaking of them that we come to be called by their various names. These things that belong to us, although they have the same names as the forms, are in their turn what they are in relation to themselves but not in relation to the forms; and all the things named in this way are of themselves but not of the forms.”

  “What do you mean?” Socrates asked.

  “Take an example,” said Parmenides. “If one of us is somebody’s master or somebody’s slave, he is surely not a slave of master itself – of what a [e] master is – nor is the master a master of slave itself – of what a slave is. On the contrary, being a human being, he is a master or slave of a human being. Mastery itself, on the other hand, is what it is of slavery itself; and, in the same way, slavery itself is slavery of mastery itself. Things in us do not have their power in relation to forms, nor do they have theirs in relation to us; but, I repeat, forms are what they are of themselves and in relation [134] to themselves, and things that belong to us are, in the same way, what they are in relation to themselves. You do understand what I mean?”

  “Certainly,” Socrates said, “I understand.”

  “So too,” he said, “knowledge itself, what knowledge is, would be knowledge of that truth itself, which is what truth is?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Furthermore, each particular knowledge, what it is, would be knowledge of some particular thing, of what that thing is. Isn’t that so?”

  “Yes.”

  “But wouldn’t knowledge that belongs to us be of the truth that belongs to our world? And wouldn’t it follow that each particular knowledge that [b] belongs to us is in turn knowledge of some particular thing in our world?”

  “Necessarily.”

  “But, as you agree, we neither have the forms themselves nor can they belong to us.”

  “Yes, you’re quite right.”

  “And surely the kinds themselves, what each of them is, are known by the form of knowledge itself?”

  “Yes.”

  “The very thing that we don’t have.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “So none of the forms is known by us, because we don’t partake of knowledge itself.”

  “It seems not.”

  “Then the beautiful itself, what it is, cannot be known by us, nor can the [c] good, nor, indeed, can any of the things we take to be characters themselves.”

  “It looks that way.”

  “Here’s something even more shocking than that.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Surely you would say that if in fact there is knowledge – a kind itself – it is much more precise than is knowledge that belongs to us. And the same goes for beauty and all the others.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, whatever else partakes of knowledge itself, wouldn’t you say that god more than anyone else has this most precise knowledge?”

  “Necessarily.”

  “Tell me, will god, having knowledge itself, then be able to know things [d] that belong to our world?”

  “Yes, why not?”

  “Because we have agreed, Socrates,” Parmenides said, “that those forms do not have their power in relation to things in our world, and things in our world do not have theirs in relation to forms, but that things in each group have their power in relation to themselves.”

  “Yes, we did agree on that.”

  “Well then, if this most precise mastery and this most precise knowledge belong to the divine, the gods’ mastery could never master us, nor could their knowledge know us or anything that belongs to us. No, just as we [e] do not govern them by our governance and know nothing of the divine by our knowledge, so they in their turn are, for the same reason, neither our masters nor, being gods, do they know human affairs.”

  “If god is to be stripped of knowing,” he said, “our argument may be getting too bizarre.”

  “And yet, Socrates,” said Parmenides, “the forms inevitably involve these objections and a host of others besides – if there are those characters [135] for things, and a person is to mark off each form as ‘something itself.’ As a result, whoever hears about them is doubtful and objects that they do not exist, and that, even if they do, they must by strict necessity be unknowable to human nature; and in saying this he seems to have a point; and, as we said, he is extraordinarily hard to win over. Only a very gifted man can come to know that for each thing there is some kind, a being itself by [b] itself; but only a prodigy more re
markable still will discover that and be able to teach someone else who has sifted all these difficulties thoroughly and critically for himself.”

  “I agree with you, Parmenides,” Socrates said. “That’s very much what I think too.”

  “Yet on the other hand, Socrates,” said Parmenides, “if someone, having an eye on all the difficulties we have just brought up and others of the same sort, won’t allow that there are forms for things and won’t mark off a form for each one, he won’t have anywhere to turn his thought, since he doesn’t allow that for each thing there is a character that is always the [c] same. In this way he will destroy the power of dialectic12 entirely. But I think you are only too well aware of that.”

  “What you say is true,” Socrates said.

  “What then will you do about philosophy? Where will you turn, while these difficulties remain unresolved?”

  “I don’t think I have anything clearly in view, at least not at present.”

  “Socrates, that’s because you are trying to mark off something beautiful, and just, and good, and each one of the forms, too soon,” he said, “before [d] you have been properly trained. I noticed that the other day too, as I listened to you conversing with Aristotle here. The impulse you bring to argument is noble and divine, make no mistake about it. But while you are still young, put your back into it and get more training through something people think useless – what the crowd call idle talk. Otherwise, the truth will escape you.”

  “What manner of training is that, Parmenides?” he asked.

  “The manner is just what you heard from Zeno,” he said. “Except I was [e] also impressed by something you had to say to him: you didn’t allow him to remain among visible things and observe their wandering between opposites. You asked him to observe it instead among those things that one might above all grasp by means of reason and might think to be forms.”

  “I did that,” he said, “because I think that here, among visible things, it’s not at all hard to show that things are both like and unlike and anything else you please.”

  “And you are quite right,” he said. “But you must do the following in addition to that: if you want to be trained more thoroughly, you must not [136] only hypothesize, if each thing is, and examine the consequences of that hypothesis; you must also hypothesize, if that same thing is not.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “If you like,” said Parmenides, “take as an example this hypothesis that Zeno entertained: if many are,13 what must the consequences be both for the many themselves in relation to themselves and in relation to the one, and for the one in relation to itself and in relation to the many? And, in turn, on the hypothesis, if many are not, you must again examine what the consequences will be both for the one and for the many in relation [b] to themselves and in relation to each other. And again, in turn, if you hypothesize, if likeness is or if it is not, you must examine what the consequences will be on each hypothesis, both for the things hypothesized themselves and for the others, both in relation to themselves and in relation to each other. And the same method applies to unlike, to motion, to rest, to generation and destruction, and to being itself and not-being. And, in a word, concerning whatever you might ever hypothesize as being or as not being or as having any other property, you must examine the [c] consequences for the thing you hypothesize in relation to itself and in relation to each one of the others, whichever you select, and in relation to several of them and to all of them in the same way; and, in turn, you must examine the others, both in relation to themselves and in relation to whatever other thing you select on each occasion, whether what you hypothesize you hypothesize as being or as not being. All this you must do if, after completing your training, you are to achieve a full view of the truth.”

  “Scarcely manageable, Parmenides, this task you describe! And besides, I don’t quite understand,” he said. “To help me understand more fully, why don’t you hypothesize something and go through the exercise for me yourself?”

  “For a man my age that’s a big assignment, Socrates,” he said. [d]

  “Well then,” said Socrates, “you, Zeno – why don’t you go through it for us?”

  And Antiphon said that Zeno laughed and said, “Let’s beg Parmenides to do it himself, Socrates. What he’s proposing won’t be easy, I’m afraid. Or don’t you recognize what a big assignment it is? Indeed, if there were more of us here, it wouldn’t be right to ask him – it’s not fitting, especially for a man his age, to engage in such a discussion in front of a crowd. Ordinary people don’t know that without this comprehensive and circuitous [e] treatment we cannot hit upon the truth and gain insight. And so, Parmenides, I join with Socrates in begging you, so that I too may become your pupil again after all this time.”

  When Zeno had finished speaking, Antiphon said that Pythodorus said that he too, along with Aristotle and the others, begged Parmenides not to refuse, but to give a demonstration of what he was recommending. In the end Parmenides said: “I am obliged to go along with you. And yet I feel like the horse in the poem of Ibycus.14 Ibycus compares himself to a horse – a champion but no longer young, on the point of drawing a chariot [137] in a race and trembling at what experience tells him is about to happen – and says that he himself, old man that he is, is being forced against his will to compete in Love’s game. I too, when I think back, feel a good deal of anxiety as to how at my age I am to make my way across such a vast and formidable sea of words. Even so, I’ll do it, since it is right for me to oblige you; and besides, we are, as Zeno says, by ourselves.

  “Well then, at what point shall we start? What shall we hypothesize [b] first? I know: since we have in fact decided to play this strenuous game, is it all right with you if I begin with myself and my own hypothesis? Shall I hypothesize about the one itself and consider what the consequences must be, if it is one or if it is not one?”

  “By all means,” said Zeno.

  “Then who will answer my questions?” he asked. “The youngest, surely? For he would give the least trouble and would be the most likely to say what he thinks. At the same time his answer would allow me a breathing space.”

  “I’m ready to play this role for you, Parmenides,” Aristotle said. “Because [c] you mean me when you say the youngest. Ask away – you can count on me to answer.”

  “Very good,” he said. “If it is one,15 the one would not be many, would it?“—”No, how could it?“—”Then there cannot be a part of it nor can it be a whole.”—“Why?”—“A part is surely part of a whole.”—“Yes.”—“But what is the whole? Wouldn’t that from which no part is missing be a whole?”—“Certainly.”—“In both cases, then, the one would be composed of parts, both if it is a whole and if it has parts.”—“Necessarily.”—“So in [d] both cases the one would thus be many rather than one.”—“True.”—“Yet it must be not many but one.”—“It must.”—“Therefore, if the one is to be one, it will neither be a whole nor have parts.”—“No, it won’t.”

  “Well, then, if it doesn’t have a part, it could have neither a beginning nor an end nor a middle; for those would in fact be parts of it.”—“That’s right.”—“Furthermore, end and beginning are limits of each thing.”—“Doubtless.”—“So the one is unlimited if it has neither beginning nor end.”—“Unlimited.”—“So it is also without shape; for it partakes of neither [e] round nor straight.”—“How so?”—“Round is surely that whose extremities are equidistant in every direction from the middle.”—“Yes.”—“Furthermore, straight is that whose middle stands in the way of the two extremities.”—“Just so.”—“So the one would have parts and be many if it partook of either a straight or a curved shape.”—“Of course.”—“Therefore [138] it is neither straight nor curved, since in fact it doesn’t have parts.”—“That’s right.”

  “Furthermore, being like that, it would be nowhere, because it could be neither in another nor in itself.”—“How is that?”—“If it were in another, it would surely b
e contained all around by the thing it was in and would touch it in many places with many parts; but since it is one and without parts and does not partake of circularity, it cannot possibly touch in many places all around.”—“It can’t.”—“Yet, on the other hand, if it were in itself, its container would be none other than itself, if in fact it were in itself; for [b] a thing can’t be in something that doesn’t contain it.”—“No, it can’t.”—“So the container itself would be one thing, and the thing contained something else, since the same thing will not, as a whole at any rate, undergo and do both at once. And in that case the one would be no longer one but two.”—“Yes, you’re quite right.”—“Therefore, the one is not anywhere, if it is neither in itself nor in another.”—“It isn’t.”

  “Then consider whether, since it is as we have said, it can be at rest or in motion.”—“Yes, why not?”—“Because if it moves, it would either move [c] spatially or be altered, since these are the only motions.”—“Yes.”—“But the one surely can’t be altered from itself and still be one.”—“It can’t.”—“Then it doesn’t move by alteration at least.”—“Apparently not.”—“But by moving spatially?”—“Perhaps.”—“And if the one moved spatially, it surely would either spin in a circle in the same location or change from one place to another.”—“Necessarily.”—“Well then, if it spins in a circle, it must be poised on its middle and have other parts of itself that move round the middle. But how will a thing that has nothing to do with middle or parts manage to be moved in a circle round its middle?”—“Not at [d] all.”—“But by changing places does it come to be here at one time, there at another, and move in this way?”—“If in fact it moves at all.”—“Wasn’t it shown that it cannot be anywhere in anything?”—“Yes.”—“Then is it not even more impossible for it to come to be?”—“I don’t see why.”—“If something comes to be in something, isn’t it necessary that it not yet be in that thing – since it is still coming to be in it – and that it no longer be entirely outside it, if in fact it is already coming to be in it?”—“Necessarily.”—“So if anything is to undergo this, only that which has parts could [e] do so, because some of it would already be in that thing, while some, at the same time, would be outside. But a thing that doesn’t have parts will not by any means be able to be, at the same time, neither wholly inside nor wholly outside something.”—“True.”—“But isn’t it much more impossible still for a thing that has no parts and is not a whole to come to be in something somewhere, if it does so neither part by part nor as a whole?”—“Apparently.”—“Therefore it doesn’t change places by going somewhere and coming to be in something, nor does it move by spinning in the same [139] location or by being altered.”—“It seems not.”—“The one, therefore, is unmoved by every sort of motion.”—“Unmoved.”