John Palmer

Prodicus of Ceos was a major figure of the sophistic movement in Greece during the latter part of the fifth century bc. He features in a number of Platonic dialogues in ways that suggest he was regarded by Socrates more sympathetically than the other sophists. Robert Mayhew has undertaken to present and discuss all the extant textual evidence for Prodicus’ life and thought. The presentation consists of ninety pieces of mostly Greek and some Latin texts, ranging from a few lines to a few pages, accompanied by facing English translation and organized topically under four main headings—Life and Character ; Language ; Natural Philosophy, Cosmology, and Religion ; and Ethics.

This study aims to provide a historically accurate assessment of Plato's crucial engagement with Parmenides. It proceeds by establishing the recoverable features of Plato's middle and later period reception and developing interpretations of the relevant portions of Parmenides' poem in accordance with the parameters determined by this reception, only at which point is it possible to assess Parmenides' influence on Plato. Part I surveys certain Parmenidean elements in Plato's middle period eschatology and epistemology before focusing on the relation between Parmenides B2, B3, B6, B8.34-36 and the argument at Republic 5.467e4-477b11 and developing readings that support Aristotle's attribution to each thinker of an "argument from the possibility of knowledge" . Next I demonstrate the close relation between Plato's description of the sight-lovers and Parmenides' criticisms of mortals, discussing along the way Antisthenes, Hippias, and Gorgias as thinkers whom Plato would class as sight-lovers for refusing the key assumptions of his version of APK. Part I concludes with an interpretation of Parmenides' conception of doxa and its objects in accordance with the Platonic appropriation. Part II considers Plato's later view of Parmenides, particularly in the Sophist, in light of the results of Part I. I begin by discussing the representation of the Parmenidean thesis in the Theaetetus and the opening exchanges of the Parmenides. I then show how the Sophist brings Plato's own understanding of Parmenides into direct conflict with several recognizably sophistic appropriations, from which Plato is concerned to recover the Parmenidean legacy. Consideration of the doxography of views on the number of onta at 242cff. suggests that the association of Parmenides with Xenophanes is one key to Plato's later view of Parmenides. This suggestion finds confirmation in the Parmenidean/Xenophanean description of the world soul in the Timaeus. I thus attempt to reconstruct the view of Xenophanes' God in the fourth century before proceeding to develop an interpretation of Parmenides in accordance with the later Platonic reception. The result is a reading according to which Parmenides' principal thesis is that the universe is One qua Being

John Palmer develops and defends a modal interpretation of Parmenides, according to which he was the first philosopher to distinguish in a rigorous manner the fundamental modalities of necessary being, necessary non-being or impossibility, and non-necessary or contingent being. This book accordingly reconsiders his place in the historical development of Presocratic philosophy in light of this new interpretation. Careful treatment of Parmenides' specification of the ways of inquiry that define his metaphysical and epistemological outlook paves the way for detailed analyses of his arguments demonstrating the temporal and spatial attributes of what is and cannot not be. An appendix presents a Greek text of the fragments of Parmenides' poem with English translation and textual notes.

In this ambitious and highly original study, McCabe presents an intricately structured argument designed to demonstrate Plato’s concern with fundamental issues of rationality and personhood. In doing so, she pursues themes announced in her Plato’s Individuals and in Form and Argument in Late Plato, a collection she co-edited with Christopher Gill. The development of her position via consideration of the philosophical importance of characterization and the dialogue form in the Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, and Philebus leads her to focus in particular on Plato’s depiction of his predecessors. These include, firstly, the Theaetetus’s Protagoras and Heraclitean flux theorists and the Sophist’s Parmenides and materialist giants, all “mean-minded opponents” whose views threaten the very possibility of rational inquiry. Refutation of them, accordingly, is Plato’s means of establishing certain basic principles of reason.

Anyone interested in the influence of Presocratic thought may be tempted to begin with Plato and Aristotle. There is, however, sufficient evidence of Presocratic influence among the sophists to make it clear that this temptation should be resisted. Some traces of this earlier influence may be found in Plato and Aristotle themselves, and this fact should serve as a reminder that their own involvement with Presocratic philosophy did not take place in a vacuum but will have been conditioned or mediated by previous developments. This article deals with classical thinkers who interpreted, wrote about, and preserved the Presocratics, pointing out that just as one must read the Presocratics through the filters of Plato and Aristotle and their successors and commentators, Plato and Aristotle were influenced by the already burgeoning tradition of historiography that developed in the late fifth and fourth centuries.

Members of the New Academy presented their sceptical position as the culmination of a progressive development in the history of philosophy, which began when certain Presocratics started to reflect on the epistemic status of their theoretical claims concerning the natures of things. The Academics' dogmatic opponents accused them of misrepresenting the early philosophers in an illegitimate attempt to claim respectable precedents for their dangerous position. The ensuing debate over the extent to which some form of scepticism might properly be attributed to the Presocratics is reflected in various passages in Cicero's "Academica." In this essay, we try to get clearer about the precise nature of the Academics' historical claim and their view of the general lesson to be learned from reflection on the history of philosophy down to their own time. The Academics saw the Presocratics as providing some kind of support for the thesis that things are non-cognitive, or, more specifically, that neither the senses nor reason furnishes a criterion of truth. As this view is susceptible to both 'dialectical' and non-dialectical readings, we consider the prospects for each. We also examine the evidence for the varied functions both of the Academics' specific appeals to individual Presocratics and of their collections of the Presocratics' divergent opinions. What emerges is a better understanding of why the Academics were concerned with claiming the Presocratics as sceptical ancestors and of the precise manner in which they advanced this claim