From: cash@convex.com (Peter Cash)
Subject: Re: Metaphysics of Plato and Parmenides
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 18:21:47 GMT
Organization: The Instrumentality
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In article <1992Sep2.042209.17664@ucsu.Colorado.EDU> hooplet@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (HOOPLE TOM) writes:

>     I am often struck by how many philosophers misunderstand the 
>metaphysics of Plato and Parmenides.  For instance, in Bertrand Russell's
>"History of Philosophy," Russell gives a completely false account of how
>Parmenides tries to show the immutability of all being.  Russell tries to

Well, I'm not familiar enough with Parmenides to judge for myself, but
I wouldn't be surprised if you're correct. Russell's book is superficial,
and was obviously written to turn a quick buck. 

[ Summary of Parmenides' argument deleted]

Your exposition sounds very sensible, and agrees with what little I do
remember about Parmenides. Hmm, this makes some things clear--for example
why Greek philosophers were forever asking "What persists through change?".
To me, it was always difficult to understand the urgency of this question.
However, if you start out with the preconceptions you attribute to
Parmenides, then the question does assume a certain urgency: if nothing
persists from one state of an object to the next (e.g., when an apple
ripens), then the red apple is not the same thing as the green apple at
all. And thus it becomes reasonable to say that things like apples (and
oranges and chairs and rocks...) aren't "real". After all, if things keep
popping in and out of existence, what kind of reality is that?

I've always been intrigued by the possible connections between ancient
Greek philosophy and far Eastern (Hindu and Buddhist) philosophy. Given the
historical background, there must have been quite a bit of communication
between the Indian subcontient and the Eastern Mediterranean, and this must
have lead to an interchange of ideas. Certainly, the notion that the world
is not real because it is in a state of constant change (sangsara) sounds a
great deal like the thinking you ascribe to Parmenides. And the
similarities between the Eastern view of metempsychosis and Plato's views
on the same subject are surely obvious. Not that drawing this kind of
parallell helps us to better understand Plato--but it _is_ interesting. 

It may be that there is no direct connection at all--that the conviction of
the universe's essential unreality is so inherently seductive that many
different thinkers have arrived at it independently. Certainly, there is
more than one philosophical path to this "insight"--you can go by way of
metaphysics (a la Parmenides), or you can get there via skepticism of the
senses (a la Descartes or, better, Hume). 
...

>     The misunderstanding of Parmenides always leads to a misunderstanding
>of Plato.  For instance, one of the more modern philosophers, Nietzsche,
>accuses Plato of fabricating the "Appearance" and "Reality" distinction.
>Nietzsche tries to counter Plato by saying that we perceive not "Appearance,"
>but "Reality."  We perceive being directly says Nietzsche.  How else
>should we perceive a thing?  However, Nietzsche completely misses the
>point when he attributes this distinction to Plato.  If one reads the
>Republic, one will see quite clearly that Plato does not speak of
>"Appearance" and "Reality", but rather of "Images" and "Reality."
>We perceive a world of "Images" through our five senses, because this
>world is in a state of Heraclitean flux; the world we perceive through
>our five senses is always in a state of generation, destruction, or
>change.  The world of "Images" simply must be unreal, and it has to
>"borrow" its reality from an ideal world that does not change in any
>way, the world of the Platonic "Idea-Forms."

You know, I do wish you gave me some references here to look up. Some
Stephanus numbers in the Republic would do wonders to sharpen our discourse
here. It's not at all clear to me that Plato makes the distinction between
"images", "appearances" and "reality" that you delineate. Why aren't
"images" the same as "appearances"? Is the unreality of images due to the
"flux" of the world, or due to the unreliability of the senses? In what
sense are "images" unreal?

As I recall, the treatment of "images" and "reflections" in the Republic is
most interesting (I even think I wrote a paper on that once). If you'll
give me some Stephanus numbers, I'll go look up those sections, and I'd be
happy to talk about it.

>     What is the importance of all this?  All this relates directly to
>the metaphysical nature of God, since he is the supremely real being, and
>to the immortality of the soul, since anything which really exists cannot
>be destroyed or really changed in any significant way.

Hmmm. Sounds like you know a great deal about what it means to be "real",
and that you have some pretty set ideas on what it means to "really exist". 


-- 
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             |      Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist.     |
Peter Cash   |       (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein)      |cash@convex.com
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