Form and Good in Plato's Eleatic Dialogues Preface
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Kenneth Dorter

Form and Good in Plato’s Eleatic Dialogues

The Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman

Preface

Preface

The four dialogues examined here form a natural group with sequential concerns. Since the aim of the present study is to try to understand the group as a whole, I have sacrificed the advantage of greater detail that book-length commentaries would provide, in order to present a more synoptic picture. But although the treatment of individual dialogues will not be as extensively detailed as in book-length studies, I have tried to pay careful attention both to the conceptual arguments and to the dramatic and literary events, and have tried to ensure that the lessening of detail would not mean a lessening of attentiveness.

I call this group of dialogues Eleatic, as a convenient inclusive term, even though the term is only indirectly applicable to the Theaetetus .

Unlike the other three dialogues, the Theaetetus is conducted neither by Parmenides nor the Eleatic stranger, and its subject matter is Heracleitean and its dramatic context Megarian (owing to the choice of Eucleides and Terpsion as the introductory speakers). Nevertheless, Parmenides is mentioned at an important juncture as someone whose views ought to be considered as an alternative to the philosophy of becoming that Theaetetus defends without success (180d-181a), and the failure to discuss the Eleatic philosopher is ascribed only to the fact that he is too important to be considered in the available time (183c-184a). He is thus the only alternative indicated to the theories that founder in the Theaetetus , and their collapse may amount to an indirect endorsement of the Eleatic. Nothing is presupposed philosophically by desig-

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nating the dialogues in this way. My intention is rather to avoid the presuppositions involved in calling them Plato’s “critical” dialogues, as is often done on the assumption that they are partial repudiations of the theory of forms. The latter designation is in any case misleading with regard to the Statesman .

Some of the material has been derived from the previously published studies listed below, and is used with the permission of the editor or publisher. “Justice and Method in Plato’s Statesman ” (S. Panagiotou, ed., Justice, Law and Philosophy in Classical Athens [Edmonton: Academic Printing and Publishing, 1987] 105-22); “The Theory of Forms and Parmenides I” (J. Anton and A. Preus, eds., Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy , III: Plato [Albany: SUNY Press, 1989] 183-202); “Diairesis and the Tripartite Soul in the Sophist ” (Ancient Philosophy 10 [1990]

41-61); “Levels of Knowledge in the Theaetetus ” (Review of Metaphysics 44

[1990] 343-73).

I would like to thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for a one-year research grant, and the University of Guelph for a sabbatical year, both of which helped immeasurably in the preparation of this book. I would also like to thank Thomas Chance, G. R. F. Ferrari, Mitchell Miller, and the late Robert Brumbaugh for their generosity in reading through the work, in whole or part, and for their valuable comments and criticisms; and my students and colleagues, at Guelph and at other departments and conferences where I gave papers on this material, who have often made helpful comments and suggestions.

KENNETH DORTER

UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH

Preface