Plato’s Forms in Transition: A Reading of the Parmenides

There is a mystery at the heart of Plato’s Parmenides. In the first part, Parmenides criticizes what is widely regarded as Plato’s mature theory of Forms, and in the second, he promises to explain how the Forms can be saved from these criticisms. Ever since the dialogue was written, scholars have struggled to determine how the two parts of the work fit together. Did Plato mean us to abandon, keep, or modify the theory of Forms, on the strength of Parmenides’ criticisms? Samuel Rickless offers something that has never been done before: a careful reconstruction of every argument in the dialogue. He concludes that Plato’s main aim was to argue that the theory of Forms should be modified by allowing that forms can have contrary properties. To grasp this is to solve the mystery of the Parmenides and understand its crucial role in Plato’s philosophical development.

• Provides a complete logical reconstruction of every argument in the Parmenides • Includes a pictorial representation of Plato’s theory of forms • Allows the reader to see the logical connections among Plato’s assumptions

Introduction; 1. The theory of forms; 2. The theory criticized; 3. The theory modified: methodology; 4. The first deduction; 5. The second deduction; 6. From the appendix to the fourth deduction; 7. From the fifth to the eighth deduction; Conclusion.