Plato’s Parmenides: Logical Groundwork of Methexis in the Dialectic of One and Many

Samsami, Amir; Mosleh, Aliasghar

doi:10.22059/jop.2025.389680.1006882

Plato’s Parmenides: Logical Groundwork of Methexis in the Dialectic of One and Many

Document Type : Scientific-research

Authors

Amir Samsami ¹ ^¶

Aliasghar Mosleh ²

¹ Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy, Allame Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran.

² Professor, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Allameh Tabatabaei University, Tehran, Iran.

10.22059/jop.2025.389680.1006882

Abstract

The Parmenides dialogue is not fundamentally intended to reject, revise, or even correct the dogmatic presuppositions regarding the hypothesis of Ideas. Rather, its aim is to bring those presuppositions closer to the level of true knowledge by means of a logical-conceptual grounding. On this basis, the author seeks in this paper to demonstrate that the problem of participation (methexis), which constitutes the focal point of the criticisms directed at the doctrine of Ideas in the first part of the Parmenides, finds its logical foundation in light of the dialectical examination of the hypothesis of the One in the second part of the dialogue, and through the consideration of its aspect in relation to its other (the Many). For the problem of the relation between the One and the Many is itself the general and logical form of the relation between the Form and the particulars that participate in it. Accordingly, we will examine how Plato, by showing the unintelligibility and contradictory nature of the One’s pure in-itselfness and absolute separation from the many particulars under its universality, deploys the dialectic of the One and the Many as a means of revealing the necessity of inner relationality within the concept of the One itself. Consequently, it is on this basis that a conceptually and logically defensible account of the presence (parousia) of the Idea in particulars, as well as the participation (methexis) of particulars in the Idea, can be achieved—and this may be regarded as Plato’s clear and determinate position in response to the criticisms levelled against the ambiguity of participation in the doctrine of Ideas.

Keywords

Parmenides

Plato

Idea

dialectic

methexis

relationality

Subjects

philosophy

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