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Introduction

Parmenides and Plato, in their respective arguments, have joined together a minimum of two enterprises of knowledge in one setting. For in each case, the attempt to establish the relationship between ordinary opinion and scientific knowledge is an effort to establish a political relationship between ordinary opinion and scientific authority. The debate over the reality of cominginto-being, in both Parmenides poem and in Platos dialogue Parmenides, is a part of this battleground. For Parmenides, the substance of the ordinary opinions is an issue that he regards as a corollary of his more famous argument: that the only true object in nature must be ungenerated, and imperishable. But changeless within the limits of great bonds it exists without beginning or ceasing, since coming to be and passing away have wandered very far away, and true conviction has thrust them off (8:2629). Parmenides, when he advances proofs as to the impossibility of coming-into-being, set the stage for a very extreme disjunction between philosophic authority and ordinary ways of knowing. In our departments of political philosophy, Plato is almost exclusively studied for the political regime idealized in the Republic. In that ideal regime, no one would liken Plato to a democrat. A select group of guardians are cultivated for the authority of governing in the Republic, and thus the reputation of Plato that has dominated our scholarship is that of an elitist. If one considers the role of Plato in the debate over coming-into-being described previously, one can contemplate a very different, and indeed democratic aspect of his philosophy. For Plato fights, tooth and nail, against the most formidable philosophical rivals, to attempt to ensure that the objects of discourse are common. The perishable objects are the only eligible candidates for this role, and it is therefore impossible to have discourse, in Platos view, if the perishable objects are not accepted as commonly observable and binding facts. In order to preserve the foundations of discourse, therefore, not to mention his own theory of forms, Plato has no alternative but to engage Parmenides arguments, which he does in the dialogue Parmenides. It is important to make a couple of points here. For the purposes of this work, the relevant epistemological issue is the status of sense perception as knowledge of truth of fact, and the premise upon which this contention rests, in the case of the debate between Parmenides and Plato, is their respective resolution of the problems posed by the inquiry into the reality of cominginto-being. In the case of Plato, we will examine works from both the early and late periods: from both the Laches and the Euthyphro on the one hand, as well as from the Parmenides and the Theaetetus, to establish Platos position on the status of the ordinary opinions and the scope of their competence and political dignity. We will explain, within the structure of the study, the role of perceptual knowledge in Platos more exacting science of definition, and the attempt to reach it. It will not be possible, however, to proceed to examine in

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