  Scholars are deeply divided about the central interpretive questions relating to a proper understanding of Plato’s Parmenides. What is the point of Parmenides’ criticisms of Socrates’ theory of forms, taken both individually and collectively, in the first part of the dialogue? What is the point of Parmenides’ instantiation of his own recommended method of training in the second part of the dialogue? And how, in particular, is the second part of the dialogue supposed to bear on the first?