The Heythrop Journal
Reviewed by Robin Waterfield

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Plato's Parmenides: Text, Translation and Introductory Essay. By Arnold Hermann; translation in collaboration with Sylvana Chrysakipoulou; foreword by Douglas Hedley. Pp. xxiv, 246, Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2010, $65.00/42.00. - Waterfield - 2013 - The Heythrop Journal - Wiley Online Library

Generations of scholars in the English-speaking world have been trained to think of Plato's Parmenides as consisting of exercises in logic. In the first part, a young Socrates is questioned by his formidable interlocutor, who (depending on one's point of view) either demolishes the Theory of Forms, or at least points out problems with it. In the second part, Parmenides encourages Socrates by demonstrating the application of logic to a series of premises and their antinomies, such as ‘If there is one, it cannot be many’, and ‘If there is one, it must be many.’

In addition to this view of the dialogue, however, there has always been another approach, which one might call Neoplatonic. On this view, the One that is puzzled over in the second part of the dialogue is a cipher for God, or the metaphysical unity of all things. This is the view of the dialogue urged in the preface by theologian Douglas Hedley. He sketches the history of this approach in the West, shows that it has been influential, and even suggests, contrary to all scholarship that I know of, that Plotinus might have been influenced by Vedic thought.

In his 70-page introduction, Arnold Hermann himself is somewhat more restrained. He sees the First Part of the dialogue as targeting ‘naive misreadings’ (15) of the Theory of Forms, and the Second Part as ‘a successful attempt to illuminate the difficulties raised by the First’ (17). For instance (to take an easy example), a form is ‘itself by itself’, and such simplicity or straightforwardness is explored in Argument I of the Second Part. Or again, since Forms have to interweave, they can be seen as complex, such as the ‘One Being’ of Argument II. These are not original lines of thought, but the introduction well conveys the author's enthusiasm for a dialogue that strikes many as rather dry. Throughout, Hermann corroborates his views by drawing connections with the thought of the Parmenides and Zeno, and other Platonic passages. The eight Arguments of the Second Part are subjected to a particularly close analysis (41–54), and Hermann concludes that they are primarily concerned with the interweaving and isolation of canonical Forms. Especially useful, to my mind, is the final section of the introduction, where Hermann lists the major issues and offers solutions.

The translation that follows seems fine to me; there are a couple of rival translations of Parmenides – Gill's and Scolnicov's come to mind – but Hermann's takes its place alongside them. The translation has been helpfully split up into sections with subheadings. But then the difficulty of the dialogue lies not in its Greek (which is remarkably easy, on the whole), but in its interpretation. The translation is faced by the Greek text (taken from the Loeb), with little apparatus. The bibliography is somewhat idiosyncratic. I would recommend this book primarily for its thoughtful introduction.