Abstract

The Parmenides stood in the way of other inquiries I wanted to pursue in Plato's works not only as an obstacle but as a challenge and necessary testing ground. The other dialogues seemed to be opening up to an interpretative effort that was more and more appropriated and effective, but then there stood the Parmenides, elaborately opaque, defying clarification. The temptation, easily disguisable in some scholarly way, was to formulate some idea of what the dialogue ought to be saying and then stress this or that part of it to confirm one's assumption (the dialogue is, indeed, rich enough to nourish almost any preconceived idea), but once that temptation is detected and resisted, the only course left is to approach the dialogue with as willful an innocence as one can sustain in a determination to let that dialogue open up as it will. And so the attempt was made. -- Preface.