Parmenides

Introduction

The young Socrates presents his theory of Forms to the aged Parmenides and his disciple Zeno, and meets a series of sharp objections, among them the famous puzzle later called the Third Man. Parmenides then shows him a rigorous dialectical exercise, drawing a dizzying sequence of conclusions from the hypotheses that the One is and that the One is not. It is Plato's most difficult and most provocative dialogue; philosophers have read it in endlessly different ways, and the Neoplatonists took it for the highest theology.