What is the proper subject of the Republic, the definition of justice or the construction
of a state? How are love and rhetoric connected in the Phaedrus? Why are the
Theaetetus Sophistes and Politicus so closely associated by their author? There is
nothing in the sequence of parts in the Parmenides which need cause more embarrass-
ment than any of these problems.
Certainly the second part is an exercise in dialectical inquiry, and as such its
point seems to be twofold: (1) to show that the very simplest of all conceptions
has many aspects from which it may be viewed; (2) to embody a type of inquiry
more subtle and abstract than any with which Plato had been familiarized in the
practice of Socrates. But everyone must feel that if it be this it is likewise
something more. Plato had begun, as we have said, to realize that the Ethical
inquiries and definitions of his master stood in the midst of nebulous surroundings.
He had tried to render everything clear by the expedient of ideas ‘set up in
nature’: but his first efforts in that direction would not bear criticism. Could any
regulative or unifying principal be found which might bind all firmly and harmoniously
together, and remove complications? That question seems to represent his present
frame of mind. We know from the Phaedo that he had turned to Anaxagoras in
search of such a principle, not with perfect satisfaction. Here we find him approaching
the problem through the dogma of Parmenides. The former had said ws dpa vois
éoTW 6 dtakoouaeyv Te Kat TavTwy airiog: the latter declares twirov 6 éoTi voeiv Te Kal
otvecév éatt vonua, and ov mor éyv ovd éorat, éret viv éotw Omov may ev Cuvexés.
