Rickless's first chapter draws upon earlier dialogues to present what he dubs 'the high theory of forms.' This is a comprehensive theory comprising two basic axioms and numerous theorems deduced from them in conjunction with certain auxiliary assumptions about opposites, causation, sensibles, and knowledge (all neatly summarized at pages 44-5 and abbreviated in a list and flow-chart at the end of the preface). The answer to the dialogue's major questions, he optimistically assures us in his Introduction, 'is, at bottom, remarkably simple' (5). Samuel Rickless's ambitious study undertakes to do nothing less than furnish a complete logical reconstruction of all the dialogue's arguments and therein to find 'the key needed to solve the enduring mystery of the Parmenides' (ix). There have been deep divisions ever since antiquity over the ultimate point of this dialectical exercise, and its bearing upon the issues raised in the dialogue's first part remains an outstanding problem. Parmenides' demonstration focuses on the One, or the form of unity, and produces a mind-boggling array of rapid and complex deductions making up more than two-thirds of the dialogue. But Parmenides shows Socrates that his hypothesis is susceptible to various difficulties, given his as yet inadequate training, and then demonstrates the method he is to employ whenever positing a form's existence. It opens with Socrates responding to a Zenonian argument by positing separate forms of similarity, plurality, unity, rest, change, and so on, and by claiming that particulars have their attributes in virtue of their participation in these entities. This volume will provide a valuable introduction and framework for understanding a dialogue that continues to generate lively discussion today.The Parmenides remains perhaps the most puzzling Platonic dialogue. In Scolnicov's analysis, the Parmenides emerges as an extension of ideas from Plato's middle dialogues and as an opening to the later dialogues.' 'This translation follows the Greek closely, and the commentary affords the Greekless reader a clear understanding of how Scolnicov's interpretation emerges from the text. In addition to providing a serious rebuttal to Parmenides, Plato here reformulates his own theory of forms and participation, arguments that are central to the whole of Platonic thought, and provides these concepts with a rigorous logical and philosophical foundation. Summary: 'This work presents an illuminating new translation of the dialogue together with an extensive introduction and running commentary, giving a unified explanation of the Parmenides and integrating it firmly within the context of Plato's metaphysics and methodology.' 'Scolnicov shows that in the Parmenides Plato addresses the most serious challenge to his own philosophy: the monism of Parmenides and the Eleatics.

Parmenides by plato