or statement can ever be false then it must be possible to think
things that are not, therefore if “not-being” never “is”, no statement is ever false. Through the Eleatic ‘stranger’ Plato argues that in order to overcome this crisis of knowledge revered Parmenides’ claim that
“not-being” never “is”, must be challenged.30 Plato reiterates this in terms explicitly relevant to our concerns when he has the stranger
explain that if “reality” were either total y changeless as Parmenides holds, or ever-changing as the Heracliteans hold, in both cases
“intelligence” [i.e., rational knowledge] would be impossible.31
Plato goes about challenging Parmenides’ claim by explaining
that when we say “something is not such-and-such” the negation does not refer to non-existence but only to something in existence
other than what follows the “not”. Certainly, in this sense “what-
is-not” can still be. Through the ‘stranger’ Plato then goes on to claim that this refutes Parmenides’ statement that: “Never shall
this be proved, that what-is-not is, restrain yourself from this way of inquiry.”32 Plato interprets “that which is not” merely as the part of “that which is” that is not presently indicated in, or is bracketed off by, any given statement.33 Then he explicitly addresses the more
29 Ibid.,
Sophist: 237b–238c-d.
30 Ibid., 240–241.
31 Ibid., 249b-d.
32 Ibid., 257b–258d.
33 Ibid., 258e.
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profound interpretation of “what-is-not” (i.e. as Nothingness) by reaffirming his previous dismissal of it on the ground of its being
inconceivable:
Then let no one say that it is the contrary of the existent that we
mean by ‘what is not’, when we make bold to say that ‘what is
not’ exists. So far as any contrary of the existent is concerned,
we have long ago [in 237e–238c-d above] said good-bye to the
question whether there is such a thing or not and whether any
account can be given of it or none whatsoever.34
The dialogue then concludes with Plato’s salvation of knowledge
based upon this reinterpretation of “what-is-not”. The ‘stranger’
explains that since like forms, words can and cannot be combined in
various ways, true and false statements exist and the false statement will be something different from what presently is indicated, but
something that nevertheless has existence.35 Since thinking is just
like discourse but in silence, there can, in the same way, be false
perception and judgment.36
The answer that the Sophist gives to the problem posed in
the Parmenides must make us question Plato’s appropriation of both Heraclitus and Parmenides. Plato invents the personage
of a ‘stranger’ who belongs to Parmenides’ Eleatic school in
order to ‘authoritatively’ reinterpret what Parmenides meant by
‘Nothingness’ in The Way of Truth. In the same breath as this
superficial reinterpretation of ‘not-being’, Plato for the first time
explicitly vanquishes the contemplation of true Nothingness from
the discourse Western Philosophy. Yet the dilemma of ‘either Being
or Nothingness’ could have been resolved by understanding Being
and Nothingness to be reciprocal y necessary manifestations of
each other, whose contradiction is resolved in the realm Becoming.
The metaphysics of Heraclitus arises out of just such an abyssal
34 Ibid., 258e–259a.
35 Ibid., 261–263d.
36 Ibid., 264b.
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understanding. Is it possible that Plato did not real y understand
Heraclitus? In his Metaphysics, Aristotle tel s us the following about the young Plato’s Heraclitean teacher, Cratylus:
...they observed that all nature around us undergoes change
and held that one cannot speak the truth about that which is
undergoing change. So a fortiori nothing true could be said about what was changing at all points in all ways...This is the position
of those who appropriated the legacy of Heraclitus, notably of
Cratylus. His mature position was that speech of any kind was
radical y inappropriate and that expression should be restricted
exclusively to the movement of the finger. He was appalled that
Heraclitus had claimed that you could not step twice into the
same river. In his, Cratylus’, opinion it was already going too far
to admit stepping into the same river once.37
Could it be that Plato was misled by Cratylus’ shallow Neo-
Heracliteanism into a false interpretation of Heraclitus? Does
he fail to understand that Heraclitus concerns himself with the
contradictions of Becoming only as a manifestation of the harmony
of Being and Nothingness that lies beyond them? That many of the
Heraclitean passages in Plato’s dialogues (which were cited above)
emphasize Becoming to the detriment of Being, and that Plato
sometimes uses this as a means of discrediting the Heracliteans,
seems to suggest that he might have made such a mistake. If so, it
may be the greatest ‘mistake’ in the history of thought, one with the
most disastrous consequences. However, other of Plato’s Heraclitean
passages suggest a more profound understanding of Heraclitus
and at one point ‘Socrates’ even cautions Theodorus from making
the superficial assessment of the Heracliteans which Plato himself
sometimes seems to make.38 Passages like these, taken together with
Plato’s evident brilliance as a thinker and the fact that, though he
had Cratylus for a guide in his Heraclitean period, he must have
37 Barnes,
The Complete Works of Aristotle, Metaphysics: Gamma, 1010a.
38 Hamilton,
The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Theaetetus: 179e–180c.
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read Heraclitus for himself, would suggest that Plato intentional y
distorts or reinterprets the meaning of Becoming in Heraclitus, as
he does the meaning of Nothingness in Parmenides.
Parmenides’ idealism, reinterpreted and appropriated by Plato,
lies at the heart of the latter’s metaphysics as we find it in the
dialogue Timaeus. Here we see once again the dichotomy between an ideal realm of perfection and a chaotic realm of formless matter,
which we are left with in the Parmenides. On the one hand, there are the eternal Forms or Ideas ( eidos). Here they are presented as perfect concepts, such as that of a perfect circle, or perfect square, or perfect fast or slow or perfect heaviness, heat or cold. These
concepts are not imagined, they are not mental “images” and thus
they have no characteristics or qualities. Rather, each perfect form
is one given quality in its absolute. In other words, the perfect circle is not a round image nor is the concept of perfect heaviness heavy.
For the purposes of the Timaeus, “Perfection” means final, absolute, and thus also unchanging . Since these forms are unchanging they are constant, timeless and eternal – they have always existed.
Furthermore one must not imagine them to exist in any “place”, for
example above the physical plane. Instead, the forms exist within
themselves. On the other hand, there is the material substance:
absolute physicality with no form whatsoever. It is pure matter in a
state of total chaos and is devoid of any characteristics, or perhaps
more accurately, it represents all characteristics without giving
dominance to any one over another so that it may be individual y
distinguishable. Due to such complete consistency in this Matter we
can say that it is as absolute as the perfect forms, which would make it equal y eternal as wel .
However, this chasm between ideal and material, which we
are left with in the Parmenides, is bridged by altering the nature of the ideal from one of unity to one of plurality. Plato describes all
of his forms in the very same terms as Parmenides describes “the
One”: within-itself, simple, immaterial (non-spatial), unchanging
and timeless. Yet now there is an ideal for every quality that exists
within the material world. This preserves the Parmenidian dismissal
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of the world as il usory and corrupt, but at the same time it opens a
way between the sensual and ideal realms. Plato envisions this new
“space” between them as a “receptacle”, a metaphorical vacuum of
emptiness that may be the necessity of being. Matter cannot simply
fill this necessity on its own because due to its absolute nature it is as non-becoming as forms, yet it has or is the ultimate potential to
become. The forms alone cannot fill this void either because they
are also absolute in nature. Thus the void of “space” as a matter of
principle (or what Plato cal s a “god”) lends itself to the shaping of Matter according to the design of the Eternal Forms such that this
very crafting can serve as the Becoming, the change, that will fulfill the receptacle’s need for material existence. In this crafting, and the resulting dual realm of part-form/part-substance, there is not one
form for every entity. Rather, diverse forms to various degrees have
some stake in the composition or form-ation of each entity.
Thus in Platonism, as it has been scholastical y understood
by academics for centuries, though the ultimate reality is not our
immediate experience, it can become our experience. This follows
from the fact that our “shadow” world (the immediate data of
consciousness) is in part from, or of, the eternal forms - and thus
so too are we. The basic scholastic interpretation has it that Plato
believed that reason is put into the soul which is put into the body,
and that the “soul”, the place where our material substance meets
with the “forms”, is tainted by this contact with matter but that the
reason within the soul is always perfectly pure and of the eternal
forms. Thus we have a dual-nature in which there is a pathway to
the eternal forms through the use of the reason within us, in leading
what Plato cal s “the philosophic life”.
This enterprise consists of using our rational faculties in the
constant pursuit of the perfect forms through analysis of their
reflections in the immediate data of consciousness and through
persistent reasoning so as not to be deceived by the delusion of the
senses. To questioningly scrutinize of the objects in physical reality is possible because the reason within us is of the Logos – the prime matrix of Logic – just as the forms are, and so it is in a way at the 50
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same time to descend stage by stage to the innermost depth of what
is within oneself and is one’s own source and end.
In his Way of Truth Parmenides had demanded: “In order to
attain truth, one should not follow stupid eyes, nor with ringing
ears or the tongue, but rather one must grasp with the power of
thought.” However, his utter rejection of our world’s existence and
his insistence that there is either the One Being or Nothing, made it
difficult to find a way to an ideal reality so different from our own.
By finding a means to explain the supposed delusion of the sensuous
realm, Plato made it possible to look through the world’s shadows
and into the forms instead of simply closing one’s eyes to the world
altogether. Or so it would seem.
3. Plato’s Nausea over an Esoteric Parricide
Plato’s treatment of Parmenides’ doctrine in the Sophist is the crescendo of Jacques Derrida’s essay entitled “Plato’s Pharmacy”.39
Derrida notes that Plato regards Parmenides as an authoritative father figure, just as he does Atum in the Phaedrus myth of the invention of writing by Thoth (Hermes). However, in the Sophist Theaetetus and the Stranger agree that they must “now dare to lay unfilial hands
on that paternal pronouncement” of “father Parmenides”.40 This
“paternal pronouncement” is, of course, Parmenides’ demand, in
his Way of Truth, that anything but the pure unity of Being is to be considered total y non-existent. Derrida cal s Plato’s violation of this injunction (in order to admit a realm of shadows that partakes of
both Truth & Untruth, Being & Non-Being) a “parricide” (murder of one’s father). He writes:
...what the parricide in the Sophist establishes is not only that any full, absolute presence of what is (of the being-present that 39 Jacques Derrida, “Plato’s Pharmacy” in Dissemination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
40 Hamilton,
The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Sophist: 241d–242a.
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most truly “is”: the good or the sun that can’t be looked in the
face) is impossible; not only that any full intuition of truth, any
truth-filled intuition, is impossible; but that the very condition
of discourse – true or false – is the diacritical principle of the sumploke. If truth is the presence of the eidos, it must always, on pain of mortal blinding by the sun’s fires, come to terms with
relation, nonpresence, and thus nontruth.41
As Derrida realizes, once Plato allows the realm of pure Being in
which the forms reside to mix with base and chaotic matter in the
receptacle of space, thereby giving rise to our mediate ‘world of
presence over withdrawal, the world of forms over our sensual
world. For Plato Being needs Becoming, otherwise he would have had no need to allow the formless chaos of non-being to play a role
in explaining the transient world of human experience. He could
have simply rejected the latter altogether in one grand gesture of
transcendence, as Parmenides had done. Instead, he subjugates the
ideal Being of the world of forms to the transient Becoming of the
sensuous world, upon which it is logical y dependent. Plato could
not have been unaware of the consequences of this conflation. This
is why in the Sophist he repeatedly emphasizes the treachery involved in violating Parmenides’ injunction and why he explicitly invites the
comparison of this philosophical violation to a parricide, the most
heinous crime in Greek society. Parmenides is not the only fatality;
Plato murders Being itself in its transcendent isolation as The Father.42
The doctrine that Plato presents in his dialogues invites its own
reversal. We should not be surprised that Plato neither writes about
the moment of reversal itself, nor explains what may lie beyond it,
for in the Seventh Letter he issues this warning:
...this much at any rate I can affirm about any present or future
writers who pretend to knowledge of the matters with which I
41 Derrida, “Plato’s Pharmacy”, 166.
42 Hamilton,
The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Sophist: 241d–242a.
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concern myself, whether they claim to have been taught by me
or by a third party or to have discovered the truth for themselves;
in my judgment it is impossible that they should have any
understanding of the subject. No treatise by me concerning it
exists or ever will exist...
…If I thought that any adequate spoken or written account could
be given to the world at large, what more glorious life-work
could I have undertaken than to put into writing what would be
of great benefit to mankind and to bring the nature of reality to
light for all to see? But I do not think that the attempt to put
these matters into words would be to men’s advantage, except to
those few who can find out the truth for themselves with a little
guidance...
...That is why any student of serious realities will shrink from
making truth the helpless object of men’s ill-will by committing
it to writing. In a word, the conclusion to be drawn is this;
when one sees a written composition, whether it be on law by a
legislator or on any other subject, one can be sure, if the writer is
a serious man, that his book does not represent his most serious
thoughts; they remain stored up in the noblest region of his
personality.43
Plato reiterates this shocking revelation at the close of his Second Letter to Dionysus of Syracuse, the tyrant who he attempted to manipulate into actualizing a Neo-Pythagorean utopian political
project along the lines of Republic or the Laws. Derrida quotes this passage as the ominous conclusion of his critique in “Plato’s
Pharmacy”:
Take precautions lest this teaching ever be disclosed among
untrained people...It is impossible for what is written not to be
disclosed. That is the reason why I have never written anything
about these things, and why there is not and will not be any
43 Ibid.,
Seventh Letter: 341; 344.
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written work of Plato’s own...Farewell and believe. Read this