A Study of Dialectic in Plato’s Parmenides

In this book, Eric Sanday boldly demonstrates that Plato’s theory of forms is true, easy to understand, and relatively intuitive. Sanday argues that our chief obstacle tounderstanding the theory of forms is the distorting effect of the tacit metaphysical privileging of individual things in our everyday understanding. For Plato, this privilegingof things that we can own, produce, exchange, and through which we gain mastery of our surroundings is a significant obstacle to philosophical education. The dialogue’s chief philosophical work, then, is to destabilize this false privileging and, using hypotheses 3-8 in Parmenides, to provide the initial framework for a newlyoriented account of participation. Once we do this, Sanday argues, we more easily can grasp and see the truth of the theory of forms.