|
According
to Antiphon, then, this was Pythodorus' account. Zeno and Parmenides once
came to Athens for the Great Panathenaea, Parmenides was a man of
distinguished appearance. By that time he was well advanced in years, with
hair almost white; he may have been sixty-five. Zeno was nearing forty, a
tall and attractive figure. It was said that he had been Parmenides'
favorite. They were staying with Pythodorus outside the walls in the
Ceramicus. Socrates and a few others came there, anxious to hear a reading
of Zeno's treatise, which the two visitors had brought for the first time
to Athens. Socrates was then quite young. Zeno himself read it to them;
Parmenides at the moment had gone out. The reading of the arguments was
very nearly over when Pythodorus himself came in, accompanied by
Parmenides and Aristoteles, the man who was afterwards one of the Thirty;
so they heard only a small part of the treatise. Pythodorus himself,
however, had heard it read by Zeno before.
When Zeno had finished,
Socrates asked him to read once more the first hypothesis of the first
argument. He did so, and Socrates asked:
'What does
this statement mean, Zeno? If things are many, you say, they must be both like and
unlike. But that this is impossible; unlike things cannot be like, nor
like things unlike. That is what you say isn't it?'
'Yes,' replied
Zeno.
'And so, if unlike things cannot be like, or like things
unlike, it is also impossible that things should be a plurality; if many
things did exist, they would have impossible attributes. Is this the
precise purpose of your arguments - to maintain, against everything that
is commonly said, that things are not a plurality? Do you regard every one
of your arguments as evidence of exactly that conclusion, and so hold
that, in each argument of your treatise, you are giving just one more
proof that a plurality does not exist? Is that what you mean, or am I
understanding you wrongly?'
'No,' said Zeno, 'you have quite
rightly understood the purpose of the whole treatise.'
'I see,
Parmenides,' said Socrates, 'that Zeno's intention is to associate himself
with you by means of his treatise no less intimately than by his personal
attachment. In a way, his book states the same position as your own; only
by varying the form he tries to delude us into thinking that his thesis is
a different one. You assert, in your poem, that the all is one, and for
this you advance admirable proofs, Zeno, for his part, asserts that it is
not a plurality, and he too has many weighty proofs to bring forward. You
assert unity; he asserts no plurality; each expresses himself in such a
way that your arguments seem to have nothing in common, though really they
come to very much the same thing. That is why your exposition and his seem
to be rather over the heads of outsiders like ourselves.'
'Yes,
Socrates,' Zeno replied, 'but you have not quite seen the real character
of my book. True, you are as quick as a Spartan hound to pick up the scent
and follow the trail of the argument, but there is a point you have missed
at the outset. The book makes no pretense of disguising from the public
the fact that it was written with the purpose you describe, as if such
deception was something to be proud of. What you have pointed out is only
incidental; the book is in fact a sort of defense of Parmenides' argument
against those who try to make fun of it by showing that his supposition,
that there is a one, leads to many absurdities and contradictions. This
book, then, is a retort against those who assert a plurality. It pays them
back in the same coin with something to spare, and aims at showing that,
on a thorough examination, their own suppositions that there is a
plurality leads to even more absurd consequences than the hypothesis of
the one. It was written in that controversial spirit in my young days, and
someone copied it surreptitiously, so that I had not even the chance to
consider whether it should see the light or not. That is where you are
mistaken, Socrates; you imagine it was inspired, not by a youthful
eagerness for controversy, but by the more dispassionate aims of an older
man, though, as I said, your description of it was not far wrong.'
'I
accept that,' said Socrates, 'and I have no doubt it is as you
say.'
© Plato, The Collected
Dialogues - Bollingen Series LXX1 - Princeton, pp. 921 - 923;
Editors:
Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns.
All rights reserved. You may read and browse this material
at this website. However, no further copying, downloading, or linking is
permitted. No part of this material may be further reproduced in any form
by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording,
or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from
the publisher. Users are not permitted to mount this file on any network
servers. For permission requests and to search our online catalog, please
see our website at www.pup.princeton.edu
|
