PLATO’S DIFFERENT DEVICEstresses that only “a man of wide experience and natural ability” will-
ing to work through “a long and remote train of argument” could real-
ize the intelligibility and relevance of the forms, and only a “still more
remarkable” person could lead someone else to this view (135b). Yet
without the stable being of the forms, there is no language or thought:
as Parmenides explains, someone who has “nothing on which to fi x his
thought” will in the end “completely destroy the signifi cance of all dis-
course” (135c). When confronted with the question, “What are you go-
ing to do about philosophy then?” the baffl ed Socrates can only say: “I
can see no way out at the present moment” (135c).
This moment of ajporiva results from both too many and too few
repetitions: too many broad oppositions made quickly, and too few pre-
cise distinctions made carefully. The more theoretical, abstract side
of this problem and the more concrete, discursive side reinforce each
other: one does not know what to think because one lacks the terms, and
one does not know what to say because one lacks the concepts. The dis-
course rushes on at a bewildering pace. To borrow the language of the
Philebus, we could describe this dialogue as an unhappy, ill-harmonized
mixture. The Parmenides differentiates the one and the many at fi rst
insuffi ciently, so that the forms become things, then too extremely, so
that the world splits in two. The distinctions here range between the
determinant or the limited (pevra`~) and the indeterminate or the un-
limited (a[peirovn), but they do not show any middle path between them:
they are distinct enough to show the problem but too vague to show its
solution. Just as we do not know the metaphysical status of the one and
the many, so too we do not know their discursive status: How should
we bring these many confl icting, ill-defi ned terms into an intelligible
harmony, a real dialogue? At this point we may feel some of Socrates’
confusion at the relation of the one and the many, and thus his “fear of
tumbling into a bottomless pit of nonsense.”
Parmenides, noting something “noble and inspired” in Socrates’
love of argument, advises him to submit himself “to a severer training in
what the world calls idle talk and condemns as useless” (135d). The lan-
guage of ontology is necessarily diffi cult and unconventional, and not
meant for everyone.^19 Parmenides then recommends Zeno’s example of
supposing that everything that is equally is not. In our supposing, for in-
stance, fi rst that there is, then that there is not, a plurality, the language
itself takes on the most basic plurality, that of being and non-being, and
then considers the consequences. But this method does not stop to con-
sider a middle way between being and non-being (that is, becoming),
or to examine the different senses of “is” and “is not.”^20 This language,