Platonic Summer Seminar 2024:
Plato’s Parmenides and Henology
The 2024 Platonic Summer Seminar wlll be focused on the study of Plato’s Parmenides and its interpretations from Neoplatonism to Phenomenology. We will examine Dodds' claim on the identity of Platonic and Neoplatonic henology, and its origins in the Parmenides, which would legitimize the Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato. Schürmann's argument on the role of Neoplatonic henology in overcoming metaphysics will also be discussed, as well as the interpretation of Parmenides as an apophatic discourse. We would like to interpret the dialogue along the line of Gadamer's assumption that "the so-called self-criticism of Plato in the Parmenides, is not intended to promote the historical-genetic view of Plato's work, but on the contrary to raise awareness of the connection between the hypothesis of the Eidos and the dialectic of participation." A close reading of the text in conjunction with classical Neoplatonist commentaries (Plotinus, Proclus, Damascius) and modern studies (Hegel, Nietzsche, Natorp, Heidegger, Dodds, Colli) will be complemented with lectures by contemporary scholars of the dialogue.
Statements on Plato's Parmenides:
The Parmenides presents a great difficulty to the reader. The best Platonists differ about its meaning. The ordinary person will hard put to it to discover any meaning at all.
(Edith Hamilton, The Collected Dialogues of Plato)
From Plotinus, who was to discover in it the very basis he needed for his own metaphysics of the One, down to A. E. Taylor, who thinks that the dialogue "is very largely of the nature of a jeu d'esprit,” the Parmenides has received innumerable interpretations. In so far as our own problem [of being] is concerned, however, the ultimate meaning of the dialogue is by no means obscure.
(Étienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers)
Forty pages of arid dialectic that anticipates and beats Hegel at his own game. All types and examples of the equivocations and fallacies of all possible future systems of verbal metaphysics are classified. Plato knew what he was doing. Не was putting the principles of all future systems of bad metaphysics out of his way in cold storage instead of messing them up as Aristotle did in his Metaphysics. А great deal of ink has been spilled over this dialogue, and the profoundest mystical meanings have been discovered in its symmetrical antinomies. The Neoplatonists interpreted this dialectical exercitation as а theological treatise on the unknown and unknowable One.
(Paul Shorey, What Plato Said)
Proclus is the author of the first extensive commentary on the Parmenides. He sees mystical meaning in almost every word of the dialogue, and allegorical significance in the individual situations and characters of the dialogue. Dionysius the Areopagite based his mystical theology on the writings of Proclus and his commentaries on Plato. He interprets the famous antinomies of Parmenides as definitions of the Absolute Unity that is beyond the grasp of reason (negative theology). On the other hand, the insurmountable difficulties involved in understanding it may have been a decisive factor in establishing the skepticism of the later Academy in antiquity.
(Seweryn Blandzi, Henologia-meontologia-dialektyka)
The Parmenides, especially its second part, has had the strangest fate of any of Plato’s dialogues. That the dry antithetical arguments of the Parmenides about the One, sophistic in form at least and inseparable, one would have thought, from fifth-fourth-century controversy, should have been seen as an exposition of the sublimest truths of theology, is surely one of the oddest turns in the history of human thought. Yet the Neoplatonists claimed to see in the One their own highest, ineffable and unknowable God, and as such it passed into medieval and later Christianity and into philosophy as far as Hegel.
(W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy V)
Neoplatonists, especially Proclus, consider the dialectical argument from the Parmenides to be true theology, a true unveiling of all the mysteries of the divine essence. And indeed, it cannot be considered anything else. The absolute essence is in its simple concept a unity, a movement of the one and the many. It is an absolute, self-thinking being. It is the generality which defines itself, which is concrete in itself, as an active, living, concrete generality. The truly absolute essence is not only that which is simple and immediate in general, but it is that which is reflectively directed towards itself, for which in its opposition there is a unity of itself and of what is opposed; it is the general which resolves in itself contradictions, opposites, and thereby as that which is concrete, as that which is concrete in itself. The absolute, therefore, is that which is both finite and infinite within the framework of a single whole. The one in the other, in the many, is identical with itself in the differentiation from itself. That which is other is also the same, it is that which is identical with itself; the other, that which is not identical with itself, is also the same. In the Platonic philosophy this constitutes truth, the only truth and the only thing of interest to knowledge; if one does not know this, then one does not know the essential thing.
(G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy)
The most beautiful argument is presented by Plato in the Parmenides, where he first derives the One and the idea, and then takes everything away from it, until finally nothing remains. Then he clothes the same One in all things and indwells the One in everything, so that nothing remains in which the One is not. In this way, the One is both beyond all things and in all things, as Saint Augustine confirms in the first book of True Religion.
(Martin Luther, Heidelberg Theses, Thesis 37)
He who desires an example of the profoundest philosophy of Plato, should read not even the ancient interpreters, who misplaced a large part into turgid and bombastic discourse, but his Parmenides and Timaeus, which contain admirable reasoning about the One and Being, that is, God.
(G. W. F. Leibniz, Philosophische Schriften IV, ed. Gerhardt, p. 176)
For a long time, Parmenides was one of the most revered of Plato's writings. The Neoplatonists saw Platonic metaphysics in it, as they saw Platonic physics in the Timaeus. These are therefore the two most important dialogues for them. We know numerous ancient commentaries on the Parmenides. Renaissance Platonism held it in the same high esteem. Marsilius Ficinus speaks in exuberant words of this “coeleste opus” in the preface to his translation. And even Regel calls it "the most famous masterpiece of Platonic dialectic." But the more philosophy in the 19th century turned away from such dialectic, the more the Parmenides fell into oblivion, and even its authenticity was doubted, because one did not find in it the usual artistic power or the usual philosophical convictions of Plato. Only recently has the attention turned to it again more strongly: and one tries more seriously to follow the course of his thoughts. It is generally agreed, however, that no writing by Plato, both in itself and within the contextual framework of his philosophy, is more difficult to interpret. One need not fear that Plato will lose some of his greatness if he is brought closer to Neoplatonism. Rather, there is a danger that the true calling of the Platonic spirit will remain inaccessible if one separates it too far from Neoplatonism.
(Max Wundt, Platons Parmenides)
Interpretations of the Parmenides oscillate between extremes: on the one hand, the highest admiration for the dialectical art presented in the dialogue; on the other hand, a certain helplessness in the face of the philosophical content intended by the author. The dialogue has sometimes been read as a manual of negative theology; indeed, it was from here that the proof of the absolute transcendence of the One, that is, of the Divine, was initially derived, and then a hierarchy of hypostases was inscribed into the text of the Parmenides. Hegel's philosophical achievement led to the rediscovery of the Platonic speculative principle, as well as his dialectic in the Platonic theology of later times. He was therefore instrumental in granting a significant place to the Parmenides within the Platonic work. Neo-Kantianism (Natorp, Hartmann) only partially followed him, declaring that the true meaning of the dialogue lies not in the first, negative argument, but in the second, positive one, where Plato develops a system of all fundamental concepts. It is indeed surprising that contemporary scholars also continue attempts at a theological interpretation of the Parmenides (Jean Wahl, Max Wundt, Hardie, Speiser, Enzo Paci). We no longer see in the Parmenides simply a comedy of concepts, but we recognize the seriousness of the logical exercise.
(Hans-Georg Gadamer, Der platonische Parmenides und seine Nachwirkung)
We clearly cannot say that the purpose of Plato's Parmenides is to inquire simply about Being in the Parmenidean sense. Just as deliberation ought to be eliminated from our activity, although it is brought to perfection by deliberation, so all dialectical activity ought to be eliminated. These dialectical operations are the preparation for the strain towards the One, but are not themselves the strain. Not only they must be eliminated, but the strain as well. Finally, when it has completed its course, the soul may rightly abide with the One. Having become single and alone in itself, it will choose only the One.
(Proclus, Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides)↺