The aporiai of the 'Parmenides': A prelude to the philosophical dialectic (Plato, Greece)

The four aporiai of Plato's Parmenides are an elenchus intended to engender skepticism in Socrates in order that he be prepared to overturn an erroneous presupposition that constrains him from realizing a fully developed theory of universals. If there are to be Forms, then singulars must be what they are not, plural. The faulty assumption that must be jettisoned is, therefore, the Parmenidean Law of Non-Contradiction, which states that things cannot be, at once, what they are and what they are not. Socrates, having modified this presupposition, will be able to transcend the merely human or 'second-best' method, outlined in such dialogues as the Phaedo, of positing the Good, the Forms and sensible particulars. In so doing, he will open the path to the realization of an authentically divine method, which deduces the Forms and the plurality from the unhypothetical first principle itself, the One or the Good.