Parmenides (Plato)
Encyclopedia
Parmenides is one of the dialogue
s of Plato
. It is widely considered to be one of the more, if not the most, challenging and enigmatic of Plato
's dialogues.
The Parmenides purports to be an account of a meeting between the two great philosophers of the Eleatic school, Parmenides
and Zeno of Elea
, and a young Socrates
. The occasion of the meeting was the reading by Zeno of his treatise defending Parmenidean monism
against those partisans of plurality who asserted that Parmenides' supposition that there is a one gives rise to intolerable absurdities and contradictions.
, Zeno has argued that if as the pluralists say things are many, then they will be both like and unlike; but this is an impossible situation, for unlike things cannot be like, nor like things unlike. But this difficulty vanishes, says Socrates, if we are prepared to make the distinction between sensibles
on the one hand and Forms
, in which sensibles participate, on the other. Thus one and the same thing can be both like and unlike, or one and many, by participating in the Forms of Likeness and Unlikeness, of Unity and Plurality; I am one man, and as such partake of the Form of Unity, but I also have many parts and in this respect I partake of the Form of Plural
ity. There is no problem in demonstrating that sensible things may have opposite attributes; what would cause consternation, and earn the admiration of Socrates, would be if someone were to show that the Forms themselves were capable of admitting contrary predicates.
At this point, Parmenides takes over as Socrates' interlocutor and dominates the remainder of the dialogue. After establishing that Socrates himself has made the distinction between Forms and sensibles, Parmenides asks him what sorts of Form he is prepared to recognize. Socrates replies that he has no doubt about the existence of mathematical, ethical and aesthetic Forms (e.g., Unity, Plurality, Goodness, Beauty
), but is unsure of Forms of Man
, Fire
and Water
; he is almost certain, though admits to some reservations, that undignified objects like hair
, mud
and dirt
do not have Forms. Parmenides suggests that when he is older and more committed to philosophy, he will consider all the consequences of his theory, even regarding seemingly insignificant objects like hair and mud.
For the remainder of the first part of the dialogue, Parmenides draws Socrates out on certain aspects of the Theory of Forms and in the process brings to bear five argument
s against the theory.
Argument 1. (130e-131e) If particular things come to partake of the Form of Beauty or Likeness or Largeness they thereby become beautiful or like or large. Parmenides presses Socrates on how precisely many particulars can participate in a single Form. On the one hand, if the Form as a whole is present in each of its many instances, then it would as a whole be in numerically different places, and thus separate from itself. Socrates suggests that the Form might be like a day, and thus present in many things at one. Parmenides counters that this would be little different from a single sail covering a number of people, wherein different parts touch different individuals; consequently, the Form is many.
Argument 2. (132a-b) Socrates' reason for believing in the existence of a single Form in each case is that when he views a number of (say) large things, there appears to be a single character which they all share, viz. the character of Largeness. But consider the series of large things: x,y,z, Largeness itself. But the Large itself is also in some sense considered to be large, and if all members of this series partake of a single Form, then there must another Large in which large things and the first Form of Large partake. But if this second Form of Large is also large, then there should be a third Form of Large over the large things and the first two Forms, and so on ad infinitum. Hence, instead of there being one Form in every case, we are confronted with an indefinite number. This is Largeness regress is commonly known under the name given to it by Aristotle, the famous Third Man Argument
(TMA).
Argument 3. (132b-c) To the suggestion that each Form is a thought
existing in a soul
, thus maintaining the unity of the Form, Parmenides replies that a thought must be a thought of something that is a Form. Thus we still have to explain the participation relation. Further, if things share in Forms which are no more than thoughts, then either things consist of thoughts and think, or else they are thoughts, yet do not think.
Argument 4. (132c-133a) Socrates now suggests that the Forms are patterns in nature (paradeigmata - paradigms) of which the many instances are copies or likenesses. Parmenides argues that if the many instances are like the Forms, then the Forms are like their instances. Yet if things are like, then they come to be like by participating in Likeness; therefore Likeness is like the likeness in concrete things, and another regress is generated.
Argument 5. (133a-134e) Called the "greatest difficulty" (133a) by Parmenides, the theory of Forms arises as a consequence of the assertion of the separate existence of the Forms. Forms do not exist in our world but have their being with reference to one another in their own world. Similarly, things of our world are related among themselves, but not to Forms. Just as Mastership has its being relative to Slavery, so mastership in our world has its being relative to slavery in our world. No terrestrial master is master of Slave itself, and no terrestrial master-slave relation has any relationship to the ideal Master-Slave relation. And so it is with knowledge
. All our knowledge is such with respect to our world, not to the world of the Forms, while ideal Knowledge is knowledge of the things not of our world but of the world of the Forms. Hence, we cannot know the Forms. What is more, the gods who dwell in the divine world, can have no knowledge of us, and nor can their ideal mastership rule us.
In spite of Socrates' inability to defend the theory against Parmenides' arguments, in the following transitional section of the dialogue Parmenides himself appears to advocate the theory. He insists that without Forms there can be no possibility of dialectic, and that Socrates was unable to uphold the theory because he has been insufficiently exercised. There follows a description of the kind of exercise, or training, that Parmenides recommends. The remainder of the dialogue is taken up with an actual performance of such an exercise, where a young Aristoteles (later a member of the Thirty Tyrants
, not to be confused with Plato's eventual student Aristotle
) takes the place of Socrates as Parmenides' interlocutor.
The long, austere second half of the dialogue is organized as a series of eight (or alternatively, nine) deductions about the relation of the one to the many
. The reasoning is often, as are Parmenides' arguments in the first section of the work, obscure, and at times appears to be blatantly fallacious. Further, the deductions appear to be set up in a way to deliberately produce antinomies, or mutually contradictory conclusions. A bare outline of the deductions runs as follows:
A satisfactory characterisation of this part of the dialogue has eluded scholars since antiquity. Many thinkers have tried, among them Cornford
, Russell
, Ryle
, and Owen; but few would accept without hesitation any of their characterisations as having got to the heart of the matter. Recent interpretations of the second part have been provided by Miller (1986), Meinwald (1991), Sayre (1996), Allen (1997), Turnbull (1998), Scolnicov (2003), and Rickless (2007). It is difficult to offer even a preliminary characterisation, since commentators disagree even on some of the more rudimentary features of any interpretation. The discussion, at the very least, concerns itself with topics close to Plato's heart in many of the later dialogues, such as Being, Sameness, Difference, and Unity; but any attempt to extract a moral from these passages invites contention.
and of Damascius
, and an anonymous 3rd or 4th commentary possibly due to Porphyry
. The 13th century translation of Proclus' commentary by Dominican friar William of Moerbeke
stirred subsequent medieval interest (Klibansky, 1941). In the 15th century, Proclus' commentary influenced the philosophy of Nicolas of Cusa, and Neoplatonists Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
and Marsilio Ficino
penned a major commentaries. According to Ficino:
Dialogue
Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....
s of Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
. It is widely considered to be one of the more, if not the most, challenging and enigmatic of Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
's dialogues.
The Parmenides purports to be an account of a meeting between the two great philosophers of the Eleatic school, Parmenides
Parmenides
Parmenides of Elea was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides...
and Zeno of Elea
Zeno of Elea
Zeno of Elea was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of southern Italy and a member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides. Aristotle called him the inventor of the dialectic. He is best known for his paradoxes, which Bertrand Russell has described as "immeasurably subtle and profound".- Life...
, and a young Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
. The occasion of the meeting was the reading by Zeno of his treatise defending Parmenidean monism
Monism
Monism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry. Accordingly, some philosophers may hold that the universe is one rather than dualistic or pluralistic...
against those partisans of plurality who asserted that Parmenides' supposition that there is a one gives rise to intolerable absurdities and contradictions.
Discussion with Socrates
The heart of the dialogue opens with a challenge by Socrates to the elder and revered Parmenides and Zeno. Employing his customary method of attack, the reductio ad absurdumReductio ad absurdum
In logic, proof by contradiction is a form of proof that establishes the truth or validity of a proposition by showing that the proposition's being false would imply a contradiction...
, Zeno has argued that if as the pluralists say things are many, then they will be both like and unlike; but this is an impossible situation, for unlike things cannot be like, nor like things unlike. But this difficulty vanishes, says Socrates, if we are prepared to make the distinction between sensibles
Sense
Senses are physiological capacities of organisms that provide inputs for perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology , and philosophy of perception...
on the one hand and Forms
Theory of Forms
Plato's theory of Forms or theory of Ideas asserts that non-material abstract forms , and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. When used in this sense, the word form is often capitalized...
, in which sensibles participate, on the other. Thus one and the same thing can be both like and unlike, or one and many, by participating in the Forms of Likeness and Unlikeness, of Unity and Plurality; I am one man, and as such partake of the Form of Unity, but I also have many parts and in this respect I partake of the Form of Plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...
ity. There is no problem in demonstrating that sensible things may have opposite attributes; what would cause consternation, and earn the admiration of Socrates, would be if someone were to show that the Forms themselves were capable of admitting contrary predicates.
At this point, Parmenides takes over as Socrates' interlocutor and dominates the remainder of the dialogue. After establishing that Socrates himself has made the distinction between Forms and sensibles, Parmenides asks him what sorts of Form he is prepared to recognize. Socrates replies that he has no doubt about the existence of mathematical, ethical and aesthetic Forms (e.g., Unity, Plurality, Goodness, Beauty
Beauty
Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology, and culture...
), but is unsure of Forms of Man
Man
The term man is used for an adult human male . However, man is sometimes used to refer to humanity as a whole...
, Fire
Fire
Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. Slower oxidative processes like rusting or digestion are not included by this definition....
and Water
Water
Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...
; he is almost certain, though admits to some reservations, that undignified objects like hair
Hair
Hair is a filamentous biomaterial, that grows from follicles found in the dermis. Found exclusively in mammals, hair is one of the defining characteristics of the mammalian class....
, mud
Mud
Mud is a mixture of water and some combination of soil, silt, and clay. Ancient mud deposits harden over geological time to form sedimentary rock such as shale or mudstone . When geological deposits of mud are formed in estuaries the resultant layers are termed bay muds...
and dirt
Soil
Soil is a natural body consisting of layers of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics...
do not have Forms. Parmenides suggests that when he is older and more committed to philosophy, he will consider all the consequences of his theory, even regarding seemingly insignificant objects like hair and mud.
For the remainder of the first part of the dialogue, Parmenides draws Socrates out on certain aspects of the Theory of Forms and in the process brings to bear five argument
Argument
In philosophy and logic, an argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, or give evidence or reasons for accepting a particular conclusion.Argument may also refer to:-Mathematics and computer science:...
s against the theory.
Argument 1. (130e-131e) If particular things come to partake of the Form of Beauty or Likeness or Largeness they thereby become beautiful or like or large. Parmenides presses Socrates on how precisely many particulars can participate in a single Form. On the one hand, if the Form as a whole is present in each of its many instances, then it would as a whole be in numerically different places, and thus separate from itself. Socrates suggests that the Form might be like a day, and thus present in many things at one. Parmenides counters that this would be little different from a single sail covering a number of people, wherein different parts touch different individuals; consequently, the Form is many.
Argument 2. (132a-b) Socrates' reason for believing in the existence of a single Form in each case is that when he views a number of (say) large things, there appears to be a single character which they all share, viz. the character of Largeness. But consider the series of large things: x,y,z, Largeness itself. But the Large itself is also in some sense considered to be large, and if all members of this series partake of a single Form, then there must another Large in which large things and the first Form of Large partake. But if this second Form of Large is also large, then there should be a third Form of Large over the large things and the first two Forms, and so on ad infinitum. Hence, instead of there being one Form in every case, we are confronted with an indefinite number. This is Largeness regress is commonly known under the name given to it by Aristotle, the famous Third Man Argument
Third Man Argument
The third man argument , first offered by Plato in his dialogue Parmenides, is a philosophical criticism of Plato's own theory of Forms...
(TMA).
Argument 3. (132b-c) To the suggestion that each Form is a thought
Thought
"Thought" generally refers to any mental or intellectual activity involving an individual's subjective consciousness. It can refer either to the act of thinking or the resulting ideas or arrangements of ideas. Similar concepts include cognition, sentience, consciousness, and imagination...
existing in a soul
Soul
A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...
, thus maintaining the unity of the Form, Parmenides replies that a thought must be a thought of something that is a Form. Thus we still have to explain the participation relation. Further, if things share in Forms which are no more than thoughts, then either things consist of thoughts and think, or else they are thoughts, yet do not think.
Argument 4. (132c-133a) Socrates now suggests that the Forms are patterns in nature (paradeigmata - paradigms) of which the many instances are copies or likenesses. Parmenides argues that if the many instances are like the Forms, then the Forms are like their instances. Yet if things are like, then they come to be like by participating in Likeness; therefore Likeness is like the likeness in concrete things, and another regress is generated.
Argument 5. (133a-134e) Called the "greatest difficulty" (133a) by Parmenides, the theory of Forms arises as a consequence of the assertion of the separate existence of the Forms. Forms do not exist in our world but have their being with reference to one another in their own world. Similarly, things of our world are related among themselves, but not to Forms. Just as Mastership has its being relative to Slavery, so mastership in our world has its being relative to slavery in our world. No terrestrial master is master of Slave itself, and no terrestrial master-slave relation has any relationship to the ideal Master-Slave relation. And so it is with knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
. All our knowledge is such with respect to our world, not to the world of the Forms, while ideal Knowledge is knowledge of the things not of our world but of the world of the Forms. Hence, we cannot know the Forms. What is more, the gods who dwell in the divine world, can have no knowledge of us, and nor can their ideal mastership rule us.
In spite of Socrates' inability to defend the theory against Parmenides' arguments, in the following transitional section of the dialogue Parmenides himself appears to advocate the theory. He insists that without Forms there can be no possibility of dialectic, and that Socrates was unable to uphold the theory because he has been insufficiently exercised. There follows a description of the kind of exercise, or training, that Parmenides recommends. The remainder of the dialogue is taken up with an actual performance of such an exercise, where a young Aristoteles (later a member of the Thirty Tyrants
Thirty Tyrants
The Thirty Tyrants were a pro-Spartan oligarchy installed in Athens after its defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC. Contemporary Athenians referred to them simply as "the oligarchy" or "the Thirty" ; the expression "Thirty Tyrants" is due to later historians...
, not to be confused with Plato's eventual student Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
) takes the place of Socrates as Parmenides' interlocutor.
Discussion with Aristoteles
This difficult second part of the dialogue is generally agreed to be one of the most challenging, and sometimes bizarre, pieces in the whole of the Platonic corpus. It consists of an unrelenting series of difficult and subtle arguments, where the exchange is stripped of all but the bare essentials of the arguments involved. Gone are the drama and colour we are accustomed to from earlier dialogues.The long, austere second half of the dialogue is organized as a series of eight (or alternatively, nine) deductions about the relation of the one to the many
Mereology
In philosophy and mathematical logic, mereology treats parts and the wholes they form...
. The reasoning is often, as are Parmenides' arguments in the first section of the work, obscure, and at times appears to be blatantly fallacious. Further, the deductions appear to be set up in a way to deliberately produce antinomies, or mutually contradictory conclusions. A bare outline of the deductions runs as follows:
- Deduction 1 - Hypothesis: If it is one. Conclusion: The one is nothing, does not exist, and is not the object of perception, knowledge or opinion.
- Deduction 2 - Hypothesis: If the one is. Conclusion: The one is everything and is the object of perception, knowledge and opinion.
- Appendix to Deductions 1 and 2 - Hypothesis: If the one is one and many, neither one nor many, and in time. Conclusion: The one comes to be and passes away in an instant outside of time.
- Deduction 3 - Hypothesis: If the one is. Conclusion: The many have contrary properties.
- Deduction 4 - Hypothesis: If the one is. Conclusion: The one is not in the many and the many not in the one; the many have no properties.
- Deduction 5 - Hypothesis: If the one is not. Conclusion: The one comes to be and passes away and neither comes to be nor passes away.
- Deduction 6 - Hypothesis: If the one is not. Conclusion: The one is nothing and in no state.
- Deduction 7 - Hypothesis: If the one is not. Conclusion: The many have contrary properties.
- Deduction 8 - Hypothesis: If the one is not. Conclusion: Nothing exists.
A satisfactory characterisation of this part of the dialogue has eluded scholars since antiquity. Many thinkers have tried, among them Cornford
F. M. Cornford
Francis Macdonald Cornford was an English classical scholar and poet.He was educated at St Paul's School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a Fellow from 1899 and held a university teaching post from 1902...
, Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, Ryle
Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle , was a British philosopher, a representative of the generation of British ordinary language philosophers that shared Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems, and is principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "the ghost in the...
, and Owen; but few would accept without hesitation any of their characterisations as having got to the heart of the matter. Recent interpretations of the second part have been provided by Miller (1986), Meinwald (1991), Sayre (1996), Allen (1997), Turnbull (1998), Scolnicov (2003), and Rickless (2007). It is difficult to offer even a preliminary characterisation, since commentators disagree even on some of the more rudimentary features of any interpretation. The discussion, at the very least, concerns itself with topics close to Plato's heart in many of the later dialogues, such as Being, Sameness, Difference, and Unity; but any attempt to extract a moral from these passages invites contention.
Ancient Commentaries
The Parmenides was the frequent subject of commentaries by Platonists and Neoplatonists. Important examples include those of ProclusProclus
Proclus Lycaeus , called "The Successor" or "Diadochos" , was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major Classical philosophers . He set forth one of the most elaborate and fully developed systems of Neoplatonism...
and of Damascius
Damascius
Damascius , known as "the last of the Neoplatonists," was the last scholarch of the School of Athens. He was one of the pagan philosophers persecuted by Justinian in the early 6th century, and was forced for a time to seek refuge in the Persian court, before being allowed back into the empire...
, and an anonymous 3rd or 4th commentary possibly due to Porphyry
Porphyry (philosopher)
Porphyry of Tyre , Porphyrios, AD 234–c. 305) was a Neoplatonic philosopher who was born in Tyre. He edited and published the Enneads, the only collection of the work of his teacher Plotinus. He also wrote many works himself on a wide variety of topics...
. The 13th century translation of Proclus' commentary by Dominican friar William of Moerbeke
William of Moerbeke
Willem van Moerbeke, O.P., known in the English speaking world as William of Moerbeke was a prolific medieval translator of philosophical, medical, and scientific texts from Greek into Latin...
stirred subsequent medieval interest (Klibansky, 1941). In the 15th century, Proclus' commentary influenced the philosophy of Nicolas of Cusa, and Neoplatonists Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was an Italian Renaissance philosopher. He is famed for the events of 1486, when at the age of 23, he proposed to defend 900 theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy and magic against all comers, for which he wrote the famous Oration on the Dignity of...
and Marsilio Ficino
Marsilio Ficino
Marsilio Ficino was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance, an astrologer, a reviver of Neoplatonism who was in touch with every major academic thinker and writer of his day, and the first translator of Plato's complete extant works into Latin...
penned a major commentaries. According to Ficino:
- "While Plato sprinkled the seeds of all wisdom throughout all his dialogues, yet he collected the precepts of moral philosophy in the books on the Republic, the whole of science in the Timaeus, and he comprehended the whole of theology in the Parmenides. And whereas in the other works he rises far above all other philosophers, in this one he seems to surpass even himself and to bring forth this work miraculously from the adytum of the divine mind and from the innermost sanctum of philosophy. Whosoever undertakes the reading of this sacred book shall first prepare himself in a sober mind and detached spirit, before he makes bold to tackle the mysteries of this heavenly work. For here Plato discusses his own thoughts most subtly: how the One itself is the principle of all things, which is above all things and from which all things are, and in what manner it is outside everything and in everything, and how everything is from it, through it, and toward it." (Klibansky, 1941)
See also
- "Collection and division" in the Phaedrus
- TheaetetusTheaetetus (dialogue)The Theaetetus is one of Plato's dialogues concerning the nature of knowledge. The framing of the dialogue begins when Euclides tells his friend Terpsion that he had written a book many years ago based on what Socrates had told him of a conversation he'd had with Theaetetus when Theaetetus was...
- SophistSophist (dialogue)The Sophist is a Platonic dialogue from the philosopher's late period, most likely written in 360 BCE. Having criticized his Theory of Forms in the Parmenides, Plato presents a new conception of the forms in the Sophist, more mundane and down-to-earth than its predecessor...
- PhilebusPhilebusThe Philebus , composed between 360 and 347 BC, is among the last of the late Socratic dialogues of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. Socrates is the primary speaker in Philebus, unlike in the other late dialogues...
Texts and Translations
- Burnet, J.John Burnet (classicist)John Burnet was a Scottish classicist.-Education, Life and Work:Burnet was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, the University of Edinburgh, and Balliol College, Oxford, receiving his M.A. degree in 1887...
, Plato Opera Vol. II (Oxford University Press, 1903). ISBN 9780198145417 (Greek with critical apparatus). - Fowler, H. N., Plato Vol. IV (Harvard University Press, 1926). ISBN 9780674991859 (Greek and English)
- Zekl, H. G., Platon Parmenides (Meiner Verlag, 1972). ISBN 9783787302802 (Greek and German)
- Allen, R. E., Plato's Parmenides, Revised Edition (Yale University Press, 1997). ISBN 9780300077292 (English with commentary)
- Cornford, F. M.F. M. CornfordFrancis Macdonald Cornford was an English classical scholar and poet.He was educated at St Paul's School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a Fellow from 1899 and held a university teaching post from 1902...
, Plato and Parmenides (Routledge, 1939). ISBN 9780415225175 (English with commentary) - Gill, M. L. and Ryan, P., Plato: Parmenides (Hackett Publishing, 1996). ISBN 9780872203297 (English with notes)
- Scolnicov, S., Plato's Parmenides (University of California Press, 2003). ISBN 9780520224032 (English with commentary)
- Turnbull, R., The Parmenides and Plato's Late Philosophy (University of Toronto Press, 1998). ISBN 9780802042361 (English with commentary)
External links
- Plato: Parmenides @ MIT Internet Classics Archive
- Plato: Parmenides @ Project Gutenberg
- Plato's Parmenides and the Dilemma of Participation with an annotated bibliography
- Plato's Parmenides by Domenic Barbaniang