Plato on Perception According to Parmenides’ System

For a long time, Plato's thought has been affected by the interpretations of Aristotelianism or Neo-Platonism. However, some remarks which have been recently made regard the core of Plato's own thought in his dialogues. This becomes critical when we find something totally different from our traditional knowledge about Plato comparing it with, for example, what we see in Theaetetus where Plato, unlike Aristotle and Plotinus, maintains no role for perception in knowledge acquisition, and this is the issue which will be discussed in the present paper. Therefore, such an approach makes a main difference between the old (classic) and new (modern) interpretations of Plato's works and develops a central element in his epistemology, as will be indicated. In this article we emphasize on the negative aspect of Plato's epistemology, however, with doing so, the positive aspect will be demonstrated too.