Comments on Plato’s “Parmenides”

Abstract

This paper deals with some questions at Parmenides’ prologue that generally go unnoticed, despite their significance to understand the architecture of the Dialogue. There must be some meaning, for example, in the fact of Plato having brought into the Dialogue Cephalus of Clazomenae (in Ionia), who came to Athens to see Antiphon and hear from him Pythodorus’ report on what Parmenides and Zeno, both coming from Eleia (in Magna Greece), talked with Socrates in Athens. Clazomenae is the land of Anaxagoras, who, invitated by Pericles, founded a philosophical school in Athens. The debate between Parmenides, Zeno, and Socrates that took place at Pythodorus’ house was, for the first time, written by heart by Pythodorus himself, and then passed on to Antiphon (Plato's brother on his mother's side), who, by his turn, transmitted the report to Cephalus who ended up being the reporter of the Dialogue, in place of Plato's brother. Therefore, a flow of characters and regions makes up the Dialogue. There still is something unusual: Zeno, before Socrates and his companions at Pythodorus’ house, read his “writings”, of which, in the end, Socrates asked Zeno to re-read only “the first argument”: that one about the One and Many paradox, which is the theme of the debate and the construction of the Dialogue. This paper develops three stages: it comments the prologue of the Dialogue, outlines the treatment of the One and Many problem, and presents some possibilities of reading and interpreting the Parmenides.