Plato against a certain platonism: the criticism of the hypothesis of Ideas in the “Parmenides”

Abstract

I present in this text a reading of the first part (127a-135c) of the Parmenides dialogue. My purpose is to demonstrate the possibility that the criticisms objected by the old Parmenides to the Platonic hypothesis of Ideas, exposed and defended by the young Socrates, are not lethal to the same hypothesis, since they are based on two presuppositions that are extraneous and unnecessary to it. First, Parmenides' assumption that the "distinction" (diéiresai) between Ideas and things that participate of them is equivalent to a total "separation" (choris) of both (Prm. 130b). Second, the fact that the Eleatic, in constructing his arguments, treats the Ideas as if they were material things, that is, such as the things that are objects of our sensory perception. I intend to show how these two assumptions support the theoretical difficulties arising from the questions addressed by Parmenides to Socrates, which the latter cannot answer. In the end, my suggestion is that Plato put into the mouth of the old Eleatic an erroneous interpretation of his own hypothesis of Ideas. In this sense, our Philosopher, in the Parmenides dialogue, would be fighting a certain platonism.