Plato's Parmenides and Its Heritage

Plato s Parmenides and Its Heritage presents in two volumes ground-breaking results in the history of interpretation of Plato s Parmenides the culmination of six years of international collaboration by the SBL Annual Meeting seminar Rethinking Plato s Parmenides and Its Platonic Gnostic and Patristic Reception (2001 2007). The theme of Volume 1 is the dissolution of firm boundaries for thinking about the tradition of Parmenides interpretation from the Old Academy through Middle Platonism and Gnosticism. The volume suggests a radically different interpretation of the history of thought from Plato to Proclus than is customary by arguing against Proclus s generally accepted view that there was no metaphysical interpretation of the Parmenides before Plotinus in the third century C.E. Instead this volume traces such metaphysical interpretations first to Speusippus and the early Platonic Academy; second to the Platonism of the first and second centuries C.E. in figures like Moderatus and Numenius; third to the emergence of an exegetical tradition that read Aristotle s categories in relation to the Parmenides; and fourth to important Middle Platonic figures and texts. The contributors to Volume 1 are Kevin Corrigan Gerald Bechtle Luc Brisson John Dillon Thomas Szlezk Zlatko Ple e Noel Hubler John D. Turner Johanna Brankaer Volker Henning Drecoll and Alain Lernould.