Note 27 — Chapter XXVII · PARMENIDES.

Plato, Philêbus, p. 14, where the distinction taken coincides accurately enough with that which we read in Plato, Parmenid. p. 129 A-D.

Strümpell thinks that the Parmenidês was composed at a time of Plato’s life when he had become sensible of the difficulties and contradictions attaching to his doctrine of self-existent Forms or Ideas, and when he was looking about for some way of extrication from them: which way he afterwards thought that he found in that approximation to Pythagorism — that exchange of Ideas for Ideal numbers, &c. — which we find imputed to him by Aristotle (Gesch. der Griech. Phil. sect. 96, 3). This is not impossible; but I find no sufficient ground for affirming it. Nor can I see how the doctrine which Aristotle ascribes to Plato about the Ideas (that they are generated by two στοιχεῖα or elements, τὸ ἕν along with τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ μικρόν) affords any escape from the difficulties started in the Parmenidês.

Strümpell considers the dialogue Parmenidês to have been composed “ganz ausdrücklich zur dialektischen Uebung,” ib. s. 96, 2, p. 128.