The Dialogues of Plato, Volume 4: Plato’s Parmenides, Revised Edition - Softcover

Plato

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300077297 ISBN 13: 9780300077292

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Among Plato's later dialogues, the Parmenides is one of the most significant. Not only a document of profound philosophical importance in its own right, it also contributes to the understanding of Platonic dialogues that followed it, and it exhibits the foundations of the physics and ontology that Aristotle offered in his Physics and Metaphysics VII.

In this book, R.E. Allen provides a superb translation of the Parmenides along with a structural analysis that procedes on the assumption that formal elements, logical and dramatic, are important to its interpretation and that the argument of the Parmenides is aporetic, a statement of metaphysical perplexities. Allen's original translation of and commentary on the Parmenides were published in 1983 to great acclaim and have now been revised by the author.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

"Scolnicov’s aim is to provide a new translation of Plato’s Parmenides, with a commentary designed to show that the arguments of the second half of the dialogue, the purpose of which has long been a matter of scholarly dispute, make sense as an attempt to establish the necessary logical and epistemological conditions for Plato’s own theory of forms and participation. In particular, Scolnicov attempts to show that the otherwise bewildering concatenation of arguments and hypotheses answers to a style of argument paralleled in other dialogues. Scolnicov also argues that the dialogue is intended as a serious rebuttal of Parmenides’ monist philosophy. Scolnicov’s thesis is thus diametrically opposed to those who think that the dialogue is intended as a successful critique of Plato’s own theory in the light of arguments adapted from Parmenides."―Denis O’Brien, author of Etudes sur Parménide; Empedocles' Cosmic Cycle: A Reconstruction from the Fragments and Secondary Sources

"Scolnicov’s introduction presents a very clear account of Parmenides’ method and the contrast that Plato’s use of hypothesis presents to it as early as the Meno. Scolnicov then offers a clear account of Plato’s method and the way it establishes an idea of philosophical method in general: not a reasoning from first principles but a disclosing of the principles at the foundation of one’s prior convictions in order to test those principles. He subsequently takes up the principle of noncontradiction in particular before tackling the questions Parmenidean philosophy might raise about the doctrine of participation. An immensely clear and interesting introduction and way into the Parmenides."―Georgia Warnke, author of Justice and Interpretation: Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought

About the Author

Samuel Scolnicov is Associate Professor of Philosophy at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of Plato's Metaphysics of Education (1988).

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300077297
• ISBN 13: 9780300077292
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336