notebook on liberalism and obsolesence

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### Plato And Divine Order
Plato's dialogue The Parmenides is an account of an dialogue between Socrates' and the great Greek master, Parmenides. Socrates was in his early career at the time, and sought to impress the elder with his theory of The Forms. Parmenides, of course, handed Socrates a big basket of embarrassing failures and sent him on his way. The point here, is not to re-adjudicate the Theory of Forms, but to posit an answer as to why this dialogue was written in the first place.
Plato's dialogue The Parmenides is an account of an exchange between Socrates' and the great Greek master, Parmenides. Socrates was in his early career at the time, and sought to impress the elder with his theory of The Forms. Parmenides, of course, handed Socrates a big basket of embarrassing failures and sent him on his way. The point here, is not to re-adjudicate the Theory of Forms, but to posit an answer as to why this dialogue was written in the first place.
Some scholars will tell you it is because Plato was beginning to question the doctrine of the Forms. Others, that he wanted to demonstrate that the dialectic could go in both directions. I think, however, that Plato spent his life grappling with the puzzle that Parmenides had left behind, and the Theory of Forms was just his way of trying to come to terms with the problem. Dialogues like the Timaeus are obvious examples of his speculative romps in search of a metaphysics that reconciled The One with The Many.