Memoire Online - Panmobilism and optimism in teilhardian humanism

The first half of the Parmenides is a critique of the theory of forms. The main characters of the dialogue are Socrates who was then quite young, Zeno who was nearing forty, and Parmenides who was well advanced in years. Zeno has just presented his argument that if there is a plurality of entities; they must be both like and unlike, which is impossible. The young Socrates replies that there is really nothing so absurd in the coincidence of opposites in sensible objects, for that happens all the time. What would really be amazing, Socrates suggests, is if there were such contradiction in the realm of the intelligible forms. At this point, Parmenides begins to question Socrates about the forms. The young Socrates answers that he believes that forms exist apart from the instances that share in them, and they provide unique patterns for things. This is the standard doctrine of the forms as presented in the Phaedo and the Republic.

With this admission by the young Socrates, Parmenides then begins a lengthy and thorough critique of this doctrine, showing all the various problems and contradictions that result from holding that the forms exist apart from each other and from sensible things. The last, and perhaps worst, of the problems is that if the forms exist in the realm of being apart from the changing objects of the sensible world, then there can be no intelligible relation between the two. Consequently, we cannot know the forms. In addition, even if there were supersensible gods who could know the forms, they could not know us or the world of sensible objects. Parmenides thus shows that the theory of forms, at least on the face of it, is not intelligible. Yet, he goes on to admit that the forms are necessary:

These difficulties and many more besides are inevitably involved in the forms, if these characters of things really exist and one is going to distinguish each form as a thing just by itself. The result is that the hearer is perplexed and inclined either to question their existence, or to contend that, if they do exist, they must certainly be unknowable by our human nature...But on the other hand, (Parmenides continued), if, in view of all these difficulties and others like them, a man refuses to admit that forms of things exist or to

distinguish a definite form in every case, he will have nothing on which to fix his thought, so long as he will not allow that each thing has a character which is always the same, and in so doing he will completely destroy the significance of all discourse.^'

At this point in the dialogue, the young Socrates is at a total loss. Parmenides has decisively demolished the theory of forms, or at least Socrates' understanding of it. Yet, without the forms, there is no possibility of any intelligible thought or discourse whatsoever, and our minds will become a Heraclitean flux of perpetually changing contradictions. At this point of aporia, Parmenides explains to the young Socrates where he went wrong:

You are undertaking to define `beautiful,' `just,'`good,' and other particular forms, too soon, before you have had a preliminary training...You must make an effort and submit yourself, while you are still young, to a severer training in what the world calls idle talk and condemns as useless. Otherwise, truth will escape you.^'

The young Socrates is in trouble because he has been reasoning about the forms as unquestioned axioms. In order to see the true nature of the forms, Socrates must train himself in dialectic and question the very nature of the forms themselves. Parmenides elaborates on the manner of dialectical exercise as follows:

If you want to be thoroughly exercised, you must not merely make the supposition that such and such a thing is and then consider the consequences; you must also take the supposition that that same thing is not...In a word, whenever you suppose that anything whatsoever exists or does not exist or has any other character, you ought to consider the consequences with reference to itself and to any one of the other things that you may select, or several of them, or all of them together, and again you must study these others with reference both to one another and to any one thing you may select, whether you have assumed the thing to exist or not to exist, if you are really going to make

out the truth after a complete course of discipline...Most people are unaware that you cannot hit upon truth and gain understanding without ranging in this way over the whole field.^I

With this prelude, Parmenides then proceeds with an illustration of the dialectical exercise, taking as his supposition the One.

The second half of the Parmenides is essentially a monologue by Parmenides. Based on what was stated in the first half of the dialogue, we can expect Parmenides to range over the whole field and hit upon the truth of the One. Based on the historical background, as well as the discussion of the forms in the first half, we can also expect this exercise to illuminate the nature of the forms and their relation to the sensible world.

The dialectical exercise is naturally divided into eight parts. For each of the two hypotheses, if the One is and if the One is not, we examine the consequences for the One, and the consequences for the Others. This alone would give four parts. Plato, however, adds a subtle but very important distinction to the exercise after it is started. He distinguishes between the One which has being and the bare One. There are then a total of eight hypotheses:

Hypothesis	If...	Consequences for...	Results
I	One	the One	negative
II	One is	the One	positive
III	One is	the Others	positive
IV	One	the Others	negative
V	One is not	the One	positive
VI	not One	the One	negative
VII	One is not	the Others	positive
VIII	not One	the Others	negative

The results of the hypotheses follow a general pattern. In the case of hypotheses II, III, V, VII that predicate being of the One (or of the not One), the results deduced by Parmenides are positive. In these cases, predication is possible and positive statements are made of the One or of the not One. In the case of hypotheses I, IV, VI, VIII that do not predicate being of the One or of the not One, the results deduced by Parmenides are negative. In these cases, predication is not possible and nothing may be asserted of the subject.

The One of the first Hypothesis excludes any sort of diversity. Thus, it even excludes being, since if it had being it would have multiple parts. It is not, therefore, something- on - which is one. It is just 'one' and nothing else. In no way does the one have a share of being. Moreover, there can be no name for it, no reasoning about it, no knowledge or perception of it, and no opinion of it. The bare One is thus unutterable and ineffable. Asserting even this much, however, is saying too much.

This hypothesis demonstrates that from the bare One which negates all plurality, nothing can be deduced or evolved. It is interesting to observe at this point that the historical Parmenides, who asserted the absolute unity and indivisibility of the One, was logical in so far as he deduced that there could be no 'Others', no plurality of real things, and no world of sensible appearances. But he was not justified when he gave to his One various other attributes. As Plato has here shown, the true One cannot even exist or be the object of any kind of knowledge.^I Thus, the bare One cannot give rise to the Pythagorean evolution, starting from this original One and leading to the sensible world.

In the second hypothesis, Plato shows that 'the One' admits positive statements about it if we add to its oneness some sort of bein g.² Moreover, Plato derives the existence of number from the Parmenidean hypothesis of the One, provided this hypothesis is understood as positing a One that is not just one but also has being. Plato

^I Francis Comford, Plato and Parmenides: Parmenides' Way of Truth and Plato's Parmenides, Indianapolis, I939, p.203.

thus revives the Pythagorean evolution of numbers from the One.^I Starting from this notion of a One which has being associated with it, Plato shows that such a One, just because it is not absolutely one, can have some attributes which Parmenides denied of the One, in particular, number.² Thus, the existence of a manifold and changing world is not a self-contradictory illusion of mortals, as Parmenides had said. Rather, reasoning can take us all the way from Parmenides' own hypothesis of a One which has being to the notion of the sensible body with contrary qualities. Plato thus justifies in this hypothesis the Pythagorean evolution, starting from the Monad and ending with the sensible body.³

Because the remaining Hypotheses are of less interest than the first two, we will only remark on some of them briefly. In Hypothesis III it is shown that the One Being need not be unique, as Parmenides had claimed, i.e., that there may be others with being. Hypothesis V shows that negative predication is possible.⁴ It refutes Parmenides' claim that nothing can be said about 'what is not', because we know what we are speaking of when speaking of a non-existent thing. Plato also refutes the claim that coming into existence is impossible because there can be nothing that could come into existence.⁵ In contrast with Hypothesis V, which is concerned with something that is an entity but does not exist, Hypothesis VI is concerned with a nonentity. In this hypothesis the 'One' is stripped even of all being. It is no longer a non-existent entity, but a nonentity. By distinguishing these two concepts, Plato corrects Parmenides' conflation of the two.⁶

Hypothesis VII and Hypothesis VIII are concerned with the consequences for the Others of the negative supposition that 'there is no One'. The Hypothesis 'if there is no One' can be taken to mean 'suppose that there exists nothing that can be called "one

⁴ Robert Turnbull, The Parmenides and Plato's Late Philosophy, Toronto, I998, p. I24.

thing" (en)'. We can then inquire whether there is anything that, without being 'one thing' can nevertheless have some sort of existence. Alternatively, we can understand 'if there is no One' to mean: 'suppose that no one thing has any sort of being', where we take 'one thing' as equivalent to 'an entity'. If there is no such thing as 'an entity', then there is not only no 'One' but no 'Others'; in fact, there is nothing at all.^I

Panmobilism and optimism in teilhardian humanism

1.2. The problem of the One and the Many in Plato's Parmenides