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Parmenides of Elea
Bust of Parmenides discovered at Velia, possibly modeled after a bust of Metrodorus
Born	c. late 6th century BC Elea, Magna Graecia
Died	c. 5th century BC
Era	Pre-Socratic philosophy
Region	Ancient Greek philosophy
School	Eleatic school
Main interests	Epistemology, Ontology, Cosmology
Notable ideas	Monism, Truth vs Opinion

Parmenides of Elea (/pɑːrˈmɛnɪdiːz ... ˈɛliə/; Ancient Greek: Παρμενίδης ὁ Ἐλεάτης; fl. late sixth or early fifth century BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia.

Parmenides was born in the Greek colony of Elea, from a wealthy and illustrious family. His dates are uncertain; according to doxographer Diogenes Laërtius, he flourished just before 500 BC, which would put his year of birth near 540 BC, but in the dialogue Parmenides Plato has him visiting Athens at the age of 65, when Socrates was a young man, c. 450 BC, which, if true, suggests a year of birth of c. 515 BC.

Parmenides wrote only one work: a philosophical poem in dactylic hexameter verse, of which only fragments preserved in quotations from other authors have survived. The poem's original title is unknown but it is often referred to by later commentators as On Nature. Although the poem only survives in fragments, the integrity of the poem is remarkably higher than what has come down to us from the works of almost all the rest Presocratic philosophers, and therefore classicists can reconstruct the philosophical doctrines with greater precision. From what we can deduce from the surviving testimonies, Parmenides's poem presents an allegorical divine revelation on the nature of reality, divided into two parts:

• The way of "Alethia, usually translated as "truth," where he deals with "what-is" and present several arguments that demonstrate its attributes: it is impossible for it to have come into being, and therefore it is ungenerated and indestructible, it is the only thing that truly exists —thus denying the existence of nothing— it is homogeneous, immobile and perfected.
• The "way of "Doxa" translated as "the way of the opinions of mortals", where he describes the world of appearances, in which one's sensory faculties lead to conceptions which are false and deceitful, and deals with issues such as the origin or the world, the makeup of the stars, various meteorological and geographical phenomena, and the origin of humanity and differentiation of the sexes, building a complete cosmological doctrine.

While the content of the way of opinion resembles the physical speculations of earlier thinkers such as the Ionians and the Pythagoreans, the way of truth contains a completely new theory of ontology that radically modifies the course of ancient philosophy: Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos are considered to have accepted its premises and continued its thought, and Zeno's paradoxes of motion were developed to defend Parmenides' views. Later physicists, such as Empedocles, Anaxagoras and the atomists, sought alternatives to overcome the crisis in which the knowledge of the sensible had been thrown. Even the sophistry of Gorgias shows an enormous influence of Parmenides in his argumentative form.

Parmenides has been considered the founder of metaphysics and a forerunner of the development of term logic and has, through his influence on Plato's Theory of Forms and Aristotle's metaphysics, influenced the whole history of Western philosophy. In contemporary philosophy, Parmenides' work has remained relevant in debates about the philosophy of time.

Biography

Excavation site of the ancient Roman city of Velia, where Parmenides was born.

The exact details of Parmenides life are hard to determine. Like many figures from Ancient Greece, the ancient biographies and testimonies of his life contain a significant amount of hagiography, ancedotes, and miraculous legends that are intended more to encourage moral development and construct a picture of a historical figure's life than to give an accurate representation of the life that the philosopher actually lived. Tha majority of the biographical information we have is from Diogenes Laertius, a 3rd century AD biographer who wrote The Lives of the Eminent and Noble Philosophers, which was constructed from previous biographical sources.

From what can be determined with any degree of precision, Parmenides was born in Elea, a city located in Magna Graecia. Diogenes says that his father was Pires, and that he belonged to a rich and noble family. He also may have practiced medicine, as a number of the preserved fragments of his work or testimonies of his philosophy originate in medical contexts.

Many ancient biographers of philosophers liked to construct successions of philosophers, imagining that each notable or famous philosopher was taught by another famous philosopher who was imagined to have exerted a strong influence on them. The most common teacher claimed for Parmenides was Xenophanes. Eusebius, quoting Aristocles of Messene, says that Parmenides was part of a line of skeptical philosophy that culminated in Pyrrhonism. Diogenes Laertius transmits two additional divergent sources on the philosopher. One, dependent on Sotion, concurs with the rest that he was first a student of Xenophanes, but did not follow him, and later became associated with a Pythagorean, Aminias, whom he preferred as his teacher. Another tradition, dependent on Theophrastus, indicates that he was a disciple of Anaximander. However, modern scholars typically are suspicious of these claims, and it is likely that even if the work of philosophers such as Xenophanes, Anaximander, or Pythagoras influenced Parmenides, they likely never met.

As far as more dubious claims, Plutarch, Strabo and Diogenes —following the testimony of Speusippus— agree that Parmenides participated in the government of his city, organizing it and giving it a code of admirable laws. However, this sort of claim was frequently claimed of many other philosophers such as Xenophanes and scholars are highly skeptical of such claims.

Greek vase with runners at the panathenaic games, c. 530 BC. In Plato's [fictional] dialogue, Parmenides and Zeno debate a young Socrates during these games c. 450 BC

Chronology

One important detail of Parmenides' life that is highly disputed is the exact time in which he lived. When a particular philosopher lived is often important for determining the historical context of their work, as well as determining their relative influence on and from other philosophers with similar or contrasting viewpoints to them. There are two main sources for estimating the time in which Parmenides lived: Apollodorus, as quoted by Diogenes Laertius, and Plato's dialogue Parmenides, which features a young Socrates discussing the theory of forms with Parmenides and his student Zeno. Unfortunately, they contradict each other - Apollodorus suggests a date of birth of approximately 540 BC, whereas the internal evidence in Plato's dialogue suggests a later date, closer to 515 BC.

According to Apollodorus, Parmenides' flourit or age of maturity, was the 69th Olympiad (between 504 BC and 500 BC), placing his birth 40 years earlier (544 BC – 540 BC). The inaccuracy of the dating from Apollodorus is well known: he chooses the date of a historical event to make it coincide with the maturity of a philosopher, a maturity that they invariably reached at forty years of age. He also tries to always match the maturity of a philosopher with the birth of his alleged disciple. In this case Apollodorus, according to Burnet, based his date of the foundation of Elea (540 BC) to chronologically locate the maturity of Xenophanes and thus the birth of his supposed disciple, Parmenides.

In Plato's dialogue, Parmenides, 65, and Zeno, 40, travel to Athens to attend the Panathenaic Games . On that occasion they meet Socrates, who Plato says was very young, and this is interpreted to mean that he was less than twenty years old. As Socrates' year of birth is independently known to be approximately 469 BC, and the Panathenaic games were held every four years, most likely putative year the Platonic dialogue is set would be 450 BC, when Socrates was 19 years old. If Parmenides was about 65 years oldat this meeting, he would have been born around 515 BC Athenaeus of Naucratis had noted that, although the ages make a dialogue between Parmenides and Socrates hardly possible, the fact that Parmenides has sustained arguments similar to those sustained in the Platonic dialogue is something that seems impossible. Most modern classicists consider the visit to Athens and the meeting and conversation with Socrates to be fictitious, along with events in most Platonic dialogues. Other scholars directly prefer not to use the Platonic testimony and propose other dates. The fact that the meeting between Socrates and Parmenides is also mentioned in the dialogues Theaetetus and Sophist only indicates that it is referring to the same fictional event, and this is possible because both the Theaetetus and the Sophist are considered to be written after the Parmenides. In the Sophist, the dialectic procedure of Socrates is attributed to Parmenides, which would confirm that this is nothing more than a reference to the fictitious dramatic situation of the dialogue.

Heraclitus, who criticized Xenophanes and Pythagoras, had nothing to say on Parmenides. This has led many scholars to suggest that Parmenides lived after Heraclitus

Influence

Rather than attempt to estimate Parmenides' chronology from ancient testimony, some scholars have turned directly to passages in his work to determine which other presocratic philosophers he may have influenced, and which philosophers may have been reacting to his doctrines, and working backwards to get a better estimate of the time in which he lived. Although most scholars agree with ancient doxographers that Xenophanes influenced Parmenides, some scholars have also looked for Ionian doctrines of Anaximenes, or the Pythagoreans (fragment B 8, verse 24, and frag. B 4), in Parmenides' work, while pluralists such as Empedocles, Anaxagoras frequently refer to Parmenides. The Atomist doctrines of are also seen as reactions to the doctrines of the later Eleatics who followed Parmenides. However, the philosopher whose potential influence has provoked the most discussion is Heraclitus of Ephesus.(frag .B 6, vv.8–9)

The potential references to Heraclitus in Parmenides work have been debated. Bernays's thesis that Parmenides attacks Heraclitus, to which Diels, Kranz, Gomperz, Burnet and others adhered. However, at the same time Karl Reinhardt postulates his thesis of chronological inversion: Heraclitus would be posterior to Parmenides, so the passage could not have objected to the doctrine of that one. Werner Jaeger followed suit on this point: he believes that the goddess's criticism is addressed to all mortals. Although Heraclitus criticized other philosophers such as Xenophanes and Pythagoras, he does not include Parmenides in this list. Guthrie finds it surprising that Heraclitus would not have censured Parmenides if he had known him. His conclusion, however, does not arise from this consideration, but points out that, due to the importance of his thought, Parmenides splits the history of pre-Socratic philosophy in two, therefore his position with respect to other thinkers it is easy to determine. And, from this point of view, the philosophy of Heraclitus seems to him pre-Parmenidean, while those of Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Democritus are post-Parmenidean. The evidence also suggests that Parmenides could not have written much after the death of Heraclitus. Regardless of the acceptance or rejection of the chronological inversion, Guthrie also leans by this interpretation, but with important nuances: the goddess refers, effectively, to all mortals. However, Heraclitus could be exceptionally representative of the "judgmentless multitude" (ἄκριτα φῦλα v. 7), since the error that characterizes these is based on reliance on the eyes and ears (B 7, v. 4); , and Heraclitus preferred the visible to the audible (22 B 55). He adds that the Heraclitean assertions “wills and does not will” (22 B 32), “on diverging converges” (22 B 51), “on changing is at rest” (22 B 84a) “evidence of the quintessence of what Parmenides deplores here». In light of this accumulation of evidence, he points out, it is for this reason that what many have seen as the only unequivocal reference to Heraclitus (22 B 51) in verse 9 of fr. 6. “Where no isolated sentence provides conviction, the cumulative effect may be of vital importance.”

Philosophy

The knowledge of the doctrine of Parmenides, like that of all the thinkers of his time, is made difficult by its antiquity. This affects his understanding for several reasons: from the point of view of the transmission of his thought, the paleography encounters problems such as the fragmentary state of the text and the corruption of the manuscripts, which has caused gaps in particularly difficult text or passages to read. Specialists try to supply this with guesses based on what is still in good condition. But even these passages are difficult to interpret due to the difficulties in determining precise meanings of words and phrases, the task of classical philology. Nor is it easy to offer a general interpretation of the poem that places it within the literary production of its time and that links it with the earlier and later manifestations of Greek philosophy.

All this makes the work of specialists essential for a lucid reading and understanding of the text. Philology and historians of Greek philosophy have made valuable steps in the reconstruction of the text and its interpretation in the last two centuries. Its representatives have also relied on comments from classical and late antiquity, and on the knowledge of ancient works with which they have been able to establish comparisons and parallels.

Parmenides' poem begins with a symbolic proem, of which 32 lines survive. The first thirty verses have been preserved by Sextus Empiricus, who has transmitted them to us in Adversus Mathematicos VII, 111ff. At the same time, Simplicius transmits lines 28-32 in his commentary on Aristotle's de Caelo 557, 25ff. The proem appears as the first fragment in Diels' compilation (DK 28 B 1).

The introductory proem describes the narrator's journey to receive a revelation from an unnamed goddess on the nature of reality. The remainder of the work is then presented as the spoken revelation of the goddess without any accompanying narrative.

In the Way of Truth, an estimated 90% of which has survived, Parmenides distinguishes between the unity of nature and its variety, insisting in the Way of Truth upon the reality of its unity, which is therefore the object of knowledge, and upon the unreality of its variety, which is therefore the object, not of knowledge, but of opinion. This contrasts with the argument in the section called "the way of opinion," which discusses that which is illusory.

Methods of Inquiry

All the philologists who have dedicated themselves to the study of the fragments related to the paths of inquiry (B 2 – B 7 DK) have had to take a position on a series of difficulties presented by the recorded texts.

Truth and opinion

See also: Alethia and Doxa

The end of fragment 8 corresponds to an initial characterization of the opinion pathway. The goddess indicates that with the above considerations trustworthy speech ends, and a "deceitful order of words" begins: that of the opinions of mortals (vv. 50-52). These, the mortals, have given names to two forms, with which they have gone astray, because it is only lawful to name one (v. 54). They assigned these forms different properties, and considered them opposite: on the one hand, fire, soft, light and homogeneous; on the other, the night, compact and heavy (vv. 55–59). The goddess declares this speech no longer true, but plausible in appearance, and communicates it so that, in the order of opinions, the sage is not surpassed either (vv. 60-61).

From this, the revelation becomes cosmology, explicitly rivaling the physical systems of earlier thinkers. The cosmology of the way of opinion has come to us much more fragmentarily than the content of the way of truth. The fragments that belong to this part of the poem are from B 9 to B 19, of various origins, including one that we only know of in a Latin translation (28 B 19).

Simplicius, in his Commentary on Physics 30, 14, pointed out that in this passage Parmenides «transits from the objects of reason to sensible objects». The goddess calls the content of this second part βροτῶν δόξας (brotôn dóxas, "opinions of mortals", v. 51). Keep in mind that δόξα means what seems real or is presented to the senses; what seems true constituting the beliefs of all men; and what seems right to man.

The speech does not pretend to be "true", since everything that could be said reliably has already been said. On the contrary, what he will present will be a κόσμος ἀπατηλός (kósmos apatēlós, «deceitful order»), since he presents beliefs as if they were presided over by an order. There is no doubt that, with this, the goddess is going to fulfill the program that appears in fragment 1, lines 28–32.

Proclus preserves, in his commentary on Timoeus I 345, 18–20, two lines of Parmenides's poem, which together with six lines transmitted by Simplicius, in his commentary on Aristotle's Physics, 116, 28–32–117, 1, form fragment 2 (28 B 2). There the goddess speaks of two "paths of inquiry that there are for thinking (nous)". The first is named as follows: "which is, and also cannot be that it is not" (v. 3); the second: "which is not, and also, must not be" (v. 5). The first way is "of persuasion", which "accompanies the truth" (v. 4), while the second is "completely inscrutable" or "impracticable", since "what is not" cannot be known, nor expressed (vv. 6–8).

Fragment B 19, transmitted by Simplicius in his de Caelo, 558, 8-10, is located at the end of the discourse on the sensible. It reaffirms the concepts expressed before (fr. B 8, vv. 50-61): about the close link between cosmology and opinion (v. 1), about the corruptibility of the elements of the cosmos and their belonging to time (v. 1 and 2), and on the «nominal» constitution of this cosmos (v. 3).

Thinking

See also: Nous

• A fragment (B 3) preserved by Plotinus, Enneads V, 1, 8, refers to the latter: for the same thing is for thinking and being.

This fragment presents a grammatical peculiarity for which it has been interpreted, for a long time, in a wrong way. It's just a part of dactylic verse:

(...) τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἴναι.

— tò gàr autò noein estín te kaî eînai

Following the order of the words and the literal meaning of each word, it could be translated (and understood) as follows: "the same thing is to think and to be". Plotinus, who cites the text, believes he finds in it support for his idea of ​​the identification of being with thinking, afFundamental idea of ​both ​the Neoplatonism that he founded, and also of later idealism.

Guthrie explains, following Zeller and Burnet, that here, from the syntactic morphological point of view, the infinitives νοεῖν (noeîn «to think») and εἴναι (eînai, «to be») retain their original value of dative . A literal translation that he proposes is: «the same is to be thought and to be», but he finally translates it «Well, the same is what can be thought and what can be», assuming that it is a somewhat inadequate translation and that it does not there is a complete equivalence of meaning. Schofield translates: "Because it is the same to be thought and to be."

For Jaeger, the semantic value of νοεῖν is not identical to that used later by Plato, who opposes it to sensible perception. Rather this is an "awareness" of an object in what it is. The νοεῖν is not really νοεῖν if it does not know the real. Guthrie adds that the action of the verb cannot suggest the image of something that does not exist. In Homer it has a similar meaning to "see" (Il XV, 422), rather it is the act by which someone receives the full meaning of a situation (Il III, 396), not through a process of reasoning, but a sudden illumination. Subsequently, νοῦς (noûs) is conceived as a faculty that cannot be subject to error, as Aristotle will later say in Posterior Analytics, 100b5.

In fragment B 6, nine verses preserved by Simplicius, also in his Physics (86, 27-28 and 117, 4-13), he continues to speak of the ways of thought. The first three verses argue against the second way, presented in B 2, v. 5: Postulates that it is necessary to think and say that "what is" is, since it is possible that it is, while it is impossible for "nothing" to be. And this is the reason why the goddess removes the "man who knows" from the second way. Immediately, the goddess speaks of a third path that must be left aside: the one in which mortals wander, wandering since they are dragged by a wavering mind, which considers that being and not being are the same, and at the same time it is not the same. himself (vv. 4–9). It is the way of opinion, already presented in A 1, v. 30.

Fragment 6 has been interpreted by some philologists as a reference to the thought of Heraclitus. There it speaks of the "two-faced" (δίκρανοι v. 5), those who believe that "being and not being is the same and not the same" (vv. 8–9). This appears to be a criticism of the Heraclitean doctrine of the unity of opposites. Verse 9 "from all things there is a retrograde way" (πἄντων δὲ παλίντροπός ἐστι κέλευθος), seems to point directly to an idea present in a fragment of Heraclitus (22 B 60): "the up way and below is one and the same»; and to the same letter of another fragment (22 B 51): «(...) harmony of that which turns back» (παλίντροπος ἁρμονίη).

"What is" and understanding, "what is not" and names (vv. 34–41)

Lines 34 to 36 and the first half of 37 are linked to the verse that constitutes fragment 3 and its meaning. And this is revealed by the parallelism of the construction νοεῖν ἔστιν (fr. 3) / ἔστιν νοεῖν (fr.8, v. 34). The first line is interpretable in multiple ways.

First of all, the interpretation depends on the determination of the subject. Thus, Guthrie, following Zeller, Fränkel and Kranz, understands that νοῆμα is linked to the verb ἔστι, so that the subject would be «what what can be thought. The meaning of the first line would be: "What can be thought and the thought that 'is' are the same."

On the other hand, Diels, Von Fritz and Vlastos, among others, have thought that the subject is the infinitive Mood νοεῖν: that is “thinking”. Diels and Von Fritz, following the interpretation of Simplicius, they have also understood that οὐνεκέν has a causal or consecutive value (Guthrie gives it the value of a mere conjunction), so the meaning of this verse would be: "Thinking is the same as that which is the cause of thinking."

Ultimately, there are two possible interpretations:

1. the one that maintains that what is said here is that thinking and being have a relationship of identity.
2. and that the idea of ​​fragment 3 is being repeated here and that of verse 2 of fragment 2: That is, that thought only reveals itself and realizes itself in "what is".

Vlastos argues that the thought he knows can hardly be denied existence. But if it exists, it must be part of what it is. But what is has no parts, but is homogeneous. Then thinking can only be the totality of what it is. What it is is intelligence.

In this dispute, Cornford rightly points out that nowhere in the poem does Parmenides indicate that his One thinks, and that no Greek of his day would have held that 'if A exists, A thinks'. Rather he held that thought cannot exist without something existing. Owen points out that Plato, in Sophist 248d–249a, hinted that Parmenides was not faced with the problem of whether the real possesses life, soul, and understanding.

The only sure thing is that there is a close relationship between what is and knowing, which are faced by the actions of being born and perishing, being and not being, changing place or color, which strictly speaking "are mere names" which mortals have agreed to assign to things that are unreal, and then persuaded themselves of their reality. The whole of these names is the content of the way of opinion.

What-is and not-what-is

Another fragment (B 7), cited in part by Plato, Sophist 242 a (the first two lines), and in part by Sextus Empiricus, in Adversus Mathematicos, VII, 111 (the next five verses), follows this reflection and concludes it: there is no way to prove "what is what is not" (v. 1). For this reason, the goddess indicates that it is necessary to deviate from this path of inquiry, going even against custom, which leads to the "inattentive gaze" and the "rumbling ear and the tongue", that is, to the senses (vv. 2 -4). Instead, she recommends following her controversial argument with reason (vv. 5–6). Part of line 6, and what remains of line 7, connects the theme of the paths of inquiry with fragment A 8: only the path discourse dealing with 'what is' remains.

Ontology

This entire fragment is dedicated to the path of truth. Formally, we find in it a kind of program where it anticipates the signs (σήματα), signs that are found along the path that must be traveled, and that must be accepted as characters or predicates of what is being spoken of, once the sentence “which is” (ὡς ἔστιν) (vv. 1–2) has been accepted as the only guide. The program itself occupies lines 2–4. The first sign is that it is "unbegotten and indestructible" (ἀγένητον καὶ ἀνώλεθρον), whose arguments Parmenides exposes in lines 5 to 21. The second sign is that it is "whole, unique" (οὔλοε μοέον ), whose reasons are unfolded in lines 22 to 25, to make room in lines 26 to 33 for the predicate of «unshakeable» (ἀτρεμές). So far the program corresponds exactly to the development of the arguments, however, in lines 42-49 the goddess of the predicate of perfection speaks (τετελεσμένον πάντοθεν), while the program (v. 2) ends, in the edition from Diels (following the Simplicius manuscript), with an inexplicable "endless (in time)" (ἠδ᾽ ἀτέλεστον). This statement contradicts verse 5, which indicates that "what is" is foreign to both the past and the future. Owen offers the following conjecture as a solution to this difficulty: the reading is a copyist's error, seduced by the reiteration of negative prefixes in the poem (ἀγένητον... ἀνώλεθρον... ἀτρεμές) and by the influence of a Homeric «cliché» (Il IV, 26). Actually it should say ἠδὲ τελεῖον, "perfect". With this amendment a complete correspondence between the program and the arguments is achieved. Guthrie nevertheless decides on the original reading (the only one attested in the manuscripts) and rejects Owen's emendation. But only on condition of understanding this "infinity" in a new sense, different from the Homeric use of the term, which precisely means "incomplete", "unfinished" and that contradicts the ideas presented in the poem about the attributes of perfection of the entity. Raven follows the reading of Diels, but Schofield follows Owen's conjecture.

Eternal

Simplicius preserves an important fragment from Parmenides's work (B 8) , the longest surviving one, in Physics 145, 1–28 and 146, 1–24. There the goddess describes a series of "signs" about "what is", which are along the path and which come to be a set of attributes of "what is" (vv. 1-2). These are those of “unbegotten”, “indestructible”, “whole”, “unique”, “immovable” (or “still”, ἀτρεμής) and “perfect” (vv. 3–4).

Parmenides develops a lengthy argument against the generation or creation of "what is," that "what is" was not, nor will it be, since it is entirely "now."

From verse 5 to 21 a lengthy argument is developed against generation and corruption. Verse 5 posits On the other hand, if nothing can be understood or said about "what is not", then there is no possibility of finding out from where it would have been generated, nor for what reason it would have been generated "before" or "after", emerging from nothing. (verses 6–10). It is necessary that it be completely, or that it not be at all, therefore it cannot be admitted that from what is not something arises that exists together with "what is" (vv. 11-12). Generation and corruption are prohibited by Justice, by virtue of a decision: "it is or it is not", and it has been decided to abandon this last path as inscrutable, and follow the first, the only true path (vv. 14-18) . Nor can the entity, being, be born. And if he was born, he is not. Nor can it be if it is going to be. Therefore the generation is extinct, and perishing cannot be known (vv. 19–21).

The first sign that the goddess deals with is the one related to the entity's relationship with time, the generation and corruption. In verse 5 of fragment 8 she affirms that the entity was not in the past nor should it be in the future, but is entirely now (νῦν ἔστι ὁμοῦ πᾶν). The past and the future have no meaning for the entity, it is in a perpetual present, without temporal distinction of any kind.

What follows (vv. 6–11) is the argument against the birth or generation of what is. The first words (“one”, ἕν, and “continuous”, συνεχές) advance the content of another argument located later on unity and continuity (vv. 22–25). From there, she wonders what genesis would you look for? It denies the possibility that "what is" arises from "what is not", since

1. one cannot think or say “what is not” (vv. 7–9)
2. there would be no need for something "that is" to emerge from "what is not" (vv. 9-10). Schofield has interpreted Parmenides here as 'appealing to the principle of sufficient reason. He supposes that everything that comes to be must contain in itself a principle of development ("necessity", χρέος) sufficient to explain its generation. But if something does not exist, how can it contain such a principle?»

The meaning of lines 12–13 is ambiguous, due to the use of a pronoun (αὐτό) that can be interpreted as referring to the object that has been spoken of for nine lines, “what is”, or as referring to to the subject of the sentence in which it appears: «what is not». The first alternative and the final meaning of the sentence would be: from "what is not" something cannot arise that becomes together with "what is", that is, something other than "what is". This sentence would have the same content as that of verse 36–37: "nothing can exist apart from what is." This interpretation has been followed by Raven, but rejected by Guthrie, because it introduces, according to him, elements alien to the argument about generation and corruption that dominates the section as a whole. He interprets as follows: 'what is not' can only be generated from 'what is not'. In this sense, it would be one of the first versions of the phrase ex nihilo nihil fit, "from nothing nothing arises", which is also an axiom already accepted by the "philosophers of nature', as Aristotle observes (Physics 187a34).

Throughout the fragment there is no direct argument against corruption, but it can be deduced from postulating as exclusive the "is" and the "is not" (v. 16), and rejecting the "is not" (vv. 17– 18): perishing involves accepting that "what is" might "not be" in the future. Likewise, the generation implies that "what is" has not been in the past (vv. 19–20).

From the point of view of the history of thought, Parmenides achieves a true intellectual achievement by distinguishing here the enduring from the eternal. What is enduring is in time: it is the same now as it was thousands of years ago, or in the future. This is how the ancients thought of the perdurability of the cosmos or physical universe, as distinct from the eternity of what it is (Plato, Timeus 38c2, 37e–38a). While eternity was posited by the Ionians—Anaximander said that their ἄπειρον was immortal, eternal, and ageless—they had also thought that their respective principles were starting points of the world. Parmenides, on the other hand, shows that if it is accepted that what is is eternal, it must be one, and cannot be the beginning of a multiform world, of an order of plural elements. Much less of a world subject to becoming, as Aristotle also expresses as the opinion of the ancient philosophers: "what is does not become, because it already is, and nothing could come to be from what it is not" ('Physics' ' 191a30).

Parmenides describes "what is" as a rounded ball, with its entire surface equidistant from the center.

Infinite

From verse 22 to 25, the poem deals with the condition of integrity of "what is". No parts can be distinguished in it, since it is uniform: there is no more and less in it, it is simply full of "what is", and is alone with itself.

In this passage Parmenides denies two ideas present in the cosmogonies and in the speculations of thinkers before him: the gradation of being and the emptiness. Anaximenes had spoken of the condensation and rarefaction of his principle (13 A 7), actions that, in addition to generating movement (which has already been rejected by Parmenides), supposes assuming certain degrees of density, but strictly adhering to "what is" prevents this type of gradual differences of existence. In this cosmogony, for the cosmos to emerge from the beginning, it must have some unevenness of texture, lack of cohesion or balance.

It also prevents differentiating things according to their nature, as Heraclitus had intended (22 B 1). Guthrie rejects the reference to Anaximenes exposed above. But above all he seems to reject here the idea of ​​emptiness, which the Pythagoreans considered as necessary to separate the units, physical and arithmetical at the same time, from the the world was composed.

Apart from these historical considerations, the passage has generated some controversy regarding the dimension that Parmenides mentioned when referring to continuity. Owen interpreted this continuity of being to refer exclusively to time, but Guthrie understands that the beginning of the passage ("neither differentiable is...", οὐδε διαρετόν ἐστιν, v. 22) introduces a new and independent argument from the previous one, and that the predicate of the homogeneous ("is a uniform whole", πᾶν ἔστιν ὁμοῖον, same verse), even based on what is said in verse 11: "it must be completely, or not be at all", that is, in a part of the argument against the generation, has a further consequence: in the present continuous of "what is," he exists fully, and not in varying degrees. Schofield indicates that Parmenides thinks of a continuity of what is, in whatever dimension he occupies, and this quote also refers to a temporal continuity.

Immobility is treated from verses 26 to 33. This is understood first as a denial of transit, as generation and corruption, which have already been repelled by true conviction (vv. 26-28). Then he says that "what is" remains in its place, in itself and by itself, compelled by necessity, which holds it "with strong ties" (vv. 29-31). An additional reason for his immobility is that he lacks nothing (v. 32), since, lacking something, he would lack everything (v. 33).

The content of lines 34 to 36 is deeply related to fragment B3: it postulates that what must be intellectively known is that by which intellection is: intellective knowing itself (noein) is revealed in "what is"; in fact, there is nothing more than "what is"

The Moirai keeps the entity whole and motionless (vv. 37–38); This forces us to think that everything that mortals have thought to be true is nothing more than a network of mere names that designate changes: to be born and to perish, to be and not to be, to vary in place and color (vv. 39–41).

In verse 42, the discourse deals with the attribute of perfection, deduced from the fact that the entity adheres to the limit. Perfection motivates Parmenides to introduce a metaphor here: it is similar to the mass of a well-rounded sphere, because its entire surface is equidistant from the center (vv. 43–44). It cannot be less somewhere, because there is no "non-entity" that allows it, nor is there an entity that allows it to be, somewhere, more entity than elsewhere. Remaining identical to it, it is well within its own limits (vv. 45–49).

Odysseus and the sirens. Detail of an Attic stamnos of red-figure from Vulci, 480–470 BCE, British Museum. Illustrates the passage from Odyssey. XII where the hero is immobile, constrained by the bonds that hold him to the mast of his ship.

These entity attributes are of special importance in the poem. Interpreters have oscillated between an interpretation of the terms as signifying temporal-spatial relationships, and a conception of the passage as a metaphor to indicate purely metaphysical notes.

Guthrie notes that, in this passage, Parmenides elevates his diction to epic and religious solemnity. Two of the verse endings are taken directly from Homer (ἀμφὶς ἐέργει, v. 33 = Il. XIII, 706; Μοῖρ᾽ἐπέδησεν, v. 37 = Il. XXII, 5), and gives an important role to the divinities Moiras and Ananke. These goddesses are the ones who maintain the limit of "what is" with bonds, in such a way that he remains immobile (v. 30 and 37). The use of the word refers to the scene of Hector who, chained to his Destiny, has remained outside the walls of Troy ( Il . XXII, 1– 6).

Guthrie understands that Parmenides' reason for holding the idea of ​​immobility is that "what is" is continuous and indistinguishable in parts, which prevents it from moving as a whole or changing internally. Already Plato had understood that the Eleatic denied movement because the One lacked a place where he could move ( Theaetetus 180 d–e). But Kirk and Strokes later showed that the idea of ​​the absence of a void was first expressed by Melissus of Samos.

In this attribute of what is, the idea of ​​limit (πεῖρας) plays a fundamental role. It is associated with bonds or chains, such as those with which Odysseus was tied by his companions in Od. XII, 179. These uses maintain the idea of ​​a certain deprivation of spatial mobility.

Other types of considerations also go against the idea of ​​the Parmenidean entity as material. The idea of ​​limit is related to "what is established by the gods." Because, in the poem, one of the arguments in favor of immobility is the fact that “what is” cannot be incomplete, this would be “illicit”: οὐκ ἀτελεύτητον τό ἐόν θἔμις εἶναι (v. 32). The term ἀτελεύτητον is used in Il., I, 527: there Zeus says that what he assents to «does not remain unfulfilled». This is equivalent to Parmenides' "is perfect" (τετελεσμένον ἔστι v. 42). The use of «limit» linked to the sense of «perfection» or «consummation» is also attested in Il. XVIII, 501 and Od V, 289.

The "limit" is, moreover, one of the fundamental principles of the Pythagoreans, and heads the left column of their Table of Opposites (58 B 4–5 = Met. 986a23), column in which were also, among others, the One, the Still and the Good.

Schofield indicates that, if the notion of limit were taken in its spatial sense, it would not be understood why the argument starts from a conception that leaves generation and corruption aside. He accepts, with reservations, the possibility of a metaphorical sense of the πείρας πύματον ("extreme limit", v. 42), which Parmenides would use to speak of "determination": what is has no potentiality to be different from what it is, in any respect. As far as sphericity is concerned, he hesitates to opt for a literal or metaphorical interpretation of the terms, because the idea of ​​limit, interpreted spatially, would imply that beyond the sphere there would be empty space, and that this idea has already been rejected, so here too it leaves open a possibility to think that Parmenides did not conceive of reality as spherical. However, he blames Parmenides for leading us to such an interpretation, for using the limit metaphor uncritically.

Illustration of the game scene of Nausicaa and her handmaidens with a ball (σφαίρα), by John Flaxman.

Lines 42 to 49 of fragment 8 constitute a specific problem. Because there Parmenides says that the object of his investigation is “similar to the mass of a very round ball” (εὐκύκλου σφαίρης v. 43). The word σφαίρης means in classical Greek "that which has a spherical shape". That is why in late antiquity commentators assumed that Parmenides held the idea of ​​a "spherical universe", as Hippolytus, or even that of a "spherical god", as postulated by Aetius, only to later confuse the assertion with a statement about the roundness of the Earth. This understanding of the passage "infected" even Xenophanes's interpretation of the god, which which came to form a false proof of the link of this thinker with the Eleatic school.

A group of specialists, following these testimonies, have interpreted the research object of Parmenides as really spherical, as is the case of Cornford. We can see a reason for the inclusion of this image in the poem in the value that antiquity attributed to the figure of the sphere, attested in the Timoeus, 33b: there the Demiurge makes the world spherical, because the sphere is that figure that contains all the others, the most perfect and similar to itself.

Guided by him, Using this lexicon of spatial resonances, Burnet has come to conceive of Parmenides as the "father of materialism." Its entity would be a finite and circular corporeal plenum , primary substance on which later cosmology was based. The characteristics of this entity were not completely lost, neither in the elements of Empedocles, nor in the homeometry of Anaxagoras, nor in the atoms of Leucippus and Democritus. Werner Jaeger then warned that this view of Burnet's represents an ancient convention of seeing the Presocratics as as cultivators of natural science and in unilaterally emphasizing the empirical side of their philosophical contributions. Burnet's (and Gomperz's) interpretation ultimately depends on nineteenth-century positivism and its horror of any development of natural theology. Burnet accurately points out that at the time of Parmenides the incorporeal was not yet known. But Raven indicates that it does not follow from this that Parmenides wanted to describe a body, and that his thought was oriented to discovering a language for the incorporeal Guthrie reflects in the same sense: Plato was the one who coined the words σωματικόν (sōmatikón, «corporeal») and ἀσῶματον (asômaton, «incorporeal»); however, they remained rare, compared to the couplet αἰσθητόν (aisthētón, «perceptible») / νοητόν (noētón, «intelligible»), and, wherever they are found, these terms are comparable to "corporeal" and "incorporeal". But it was Parmenides who established the distinction αἰσθητόν / νοητόν, establishing the former as unreal and the latter as real, and as something that cannot be seen or heard, but rather inferred. For Plato, moreover, the incorporeal is also more real than the corporeal, and accessible to dialectics. Against Burnet, Parmenides can be seen as the initiator of his idealism.

Today it is also known —and is taken into account— that, in the Homeric language used by Parmenides, σφαίρα is nothing more than a ball, like the one they played with Nausicaa and her female servants upon reaching them Odysseus (Od. VI, 100). Philologists definitely see a metaphor here, and even when they accept that the comparison legitimately leads one to suspect, at least, that the Parmenidean entity could be thought of as a sphere, it is ultimately neither spherical nor spatial, taking into account that it is a reality not perceptible by the senses, it is timeless, it does not change its quality and it is immobile. The "boundaries" are not spatial, but a sign of invariance. The limits are also not temporary, since this would involve accepting generation and corruption. The comparison with the sphere is required because it represents a reality in which every point is the same distance from the center, and therefore no point is more "true" than another. It is an image of the continuity and uniformity of the entity.

The cosmology of Parmenides gave a theogony, a story of the origin of the gods.

Cosmology

In the significantly longer, but far worse preserved latter section of the poem, Way of Opinion, Parmenides propounds a theory of the world of seeming and its development, pointing out, however, that, in accordance with the principles already laid down, these cosmological speculations do not pretend to anything more than mere appearance. The structure of the cosmos is a fundamental binary principle that governs the manifestations of all the particulars: "the aether fire of flame" (B 8.56), which is gentle, mild, soft, thin and clear, and self-identical, and the other is "ignorant night", body thick and heavy. Cosmology originally comprised the greater part of his poem, explaining the world's origins and operations. Some idea of the sphericity of the Earth also seems to have been known to Parmenides.

Fragment 9 mentions again what was described in the final part of Fragment 8 as what mortals have conceived as the dual foundation of the world of appearance: the opposing principles "light" and "night", and says that everything is full of these opposites, and that nothing belongs exclusively to one of the two.

Fragments 10 and 11 are introductory to cosmology. It is about knowledge about the Aether and its signs (or constellations), the work of the Sun and the Moon, the nature of the sky, and the origin of these meteorological phenomena (B 10) , but also of the Earth, the Milky Way and Mount Olympus (B 11).

In the astronomical-meteorological fragments, the existence of concentric rings of a diverse nature is postulated as the structure of the cosmos: Aetius says that some are composed of the rare and others of the dense, and others are composed of light and night. The latter can be confirmed in the same fr. 12, vs. 1–2, from which it can be inferred that the rings closer to the center participated more in fire, while those further from the center were more filled with night. Both passages present, in the midst of this cosmos, a goddess who governs all things, but above all the mixture and attraction of the sexes, and the "abhorrent" birth (B 12, 3-6). Aetius says that this goddess is both Dikē and Ananke.

Although the second half of the poem is less well preserved, a rough outline of Parmenides' cosmology can still be tentatively reconstructed on the basis of the surviving fragments along with testimony of his philosophical theories from ancient doxographers, especially Aetius and Plutarch.

Plutarch says in adv. Colotem 1114b (B10) that, from the original opposites, Parmenides elaborates an order in which the Earth, the heaven, the Sun, the Moon , the origin of man, and that he "did not fail to discuss any of the important questions." Simplicius, in de Caelo 559, 26 (B11), says that Parmenides also dealt with the parts of animals. Plato places him alongside Hesiod as the creator of a theogony (Banquet 195c), and Cicero reports that the poem contained certain Hesiodic abstract divinities (Theogony 223– 232), such as Love, War and Discord (de Natura Deorum I, 11, 28 = A37).

The milky way features in Parmenides' cosmology

Astronomy, meteorology and cosmogony

The Parmenidean goddess presents a cosmic order that is extremely difficult to reconstruct —in this, fr. B 12 bequeathed by Simplicius in his Physics, 39, 14 and 31, 13, and the summary of Aetius II, 7, 1 = fr. A 37—, due to the scarcity and obscurity of the fragments, as recognized by specialists. Raven indicates that this astronomical system is of little importance, and that it is "virtually impossible" to reconstruct it. Guthrie directly says that it is impossible. M. Schofield thinks exactly the same.

Fragments 10 and 11 confirm what is expressed by the testimonies, at least with regard to the Sun, the Moon, and the sky, although it also includes the aether, the stars, the constellations (n.b.: the word σήματα used by Parmenides can mean both "constellations" and "signs") and the Milky Way, and mythical elements such as Mount Olympus. Fragment 10 gives a predominant role to Ananke(Ἀνάγκη, Anánkē), the personification of Necessity, which obliges Heaven to keep the stars within its limits (πεῖρατα), a passage in which Schofield sees reminiscences of earlier verses: p. eg in the fr. 8, v. 26, where the "limits" of the entity are mentioned, or in lines 30-31 of the same fragment, in which the same Necessity chains the entity to be perfect, and in the same fragment and with the same meaning lines 42 and 49. It seems to him that, in an attempt to save opinions, he approximates them to the description of reality in the first part.

The identity of this goddess who maintains the limits is not univocal. She reappears in two other contexts: in fragment 12, quoted by Simplicius, she is given the indeterminate name of δαίμων ("dáimōn", "goddess" or "demon") and the role of presiding over the birth and attraction of the sexes. Plutarch ( Amat. 756e–f) calls her Aphrodite, before citing fragment 13 of her, which marks her as the mother of Eros.

The beginning of fragment 12 and the news of Aetius (II, 7, 1 = A37) introduce into cosmology certain στεφάναι (stephánai, which should be translated by «rings» and not by «crowns», as does Cicero in De nat. deor. I 11, 28 = A37) and coordinate all the cosmological elements, both sensible opposites and Necessity. He places the latter at the center of the system, and Aetius identifies it with Dice, Δίκη, present in the proem, here presiding over movement and birth. Some rings were of pure fire and others of a mixture of fire and darkness, and there are also rare or subtle and dense ones. Surrounding everything is a solid wall. The doctrine of the rings seems to be the influence of Anaximander (12 A 11 and Aetius, II, 20, 1; 21, 1 and 16, 5) and of Hesiod, Theogony 382, where he speaks of the "crowned" sky and the stars.

Modern illustration of Ananke, the personification of Necessity, above the Moirai, the Fates in the Myth of Er of Plato's Republic

The role of Necessity in the system is compared by specialists to the one Plato gives it in the myth of Er (Republic 616b–621d). There Plato places it in the center of certain concentrically arranged turrets, each one representing the celestial spheres that support the fixed stars, the nearby heavenly bodies, the planets, the Moon and the Sun. Guthrie also points out that this cosmology and that of the myth of Er are of Pythagorean roots. In Pythagorean cosmology, the center of the universe was generally identified with Hestia (in non-geocentric Pythagorean systems such as Philolaus) and with Mother Earth (in geocentric Pythagorean systems).

Various reconstructions of the concentric annular strata and their identification with the substantial elements of the cosmos have been attempted, based on the interpretation of the Aetius fragment (A 37) and other doxographic evidence.

1. The solid wall that surrounds everything has sometimes been identified with the ether, but generally thought of as distinct from all other elements.
2. An igneous ring, where the morning star is (Aetius indicates that Parmenides identified it with the evening star, fragment A40a). Some specialists indicate that this ring is ethereal, but they differ from each other in terms of the location of other stars: the Sun and the stars are located here, or it is understood that they are really found in lower rings mixed in nature.
3. Rings of mixed nature. The upper ring of these is the sky proper where the Sun is, and a little lower down, the Milky Way and, closer to the dense, the Moon.
4. The «dense» rings, whose substance is «night». Many specialists identify this ring with Earth.
5. An underground ring of fire.
6. A solid center, sometimes identified with the Earth, conception that other studies have widely criticized.

Diogenes Laertius attributes to Parmenides the fact that he was the first to sustain the idea that the Earth has a spherical shape and that it is located in the center (Vidas, IX 21), but he also cites testimonies that affirm that it was [ [Pythagoras]] and not Parmenides who held these ideas (Lives, VIII, 48) and also that it was Anaximander (Lives II, 1). Beyond the evident doubts that these contradictory affirmations generate, Guthrie believes that in this Parmenides followed Pythagoras in the general lines of the description of the physical world. He also interprets the word in Fragment 15a ὑδατόριζον (hydatórizon, "rooted in water"), referring to the Earth, to be understood not in the sense of Thales of Miletus's view that the Earth floated on water, but rather as an allusion to the Homeric world, which located various rivers in Hades (v. Od. X, 513).

Fragments 14 and 15 refer to the Moon: «alien light (ἀλλότριον φώς) shining around the Earth» and «always looking at the Sun». The ancient testimonies believed to see effectively here the observation that the Moon reflects the rays of the Sun. Aetius attributes the assertion to Parmenides (II, 26, 2 = A 42), but not as its author: he had already said Miletus|Thales]], and later Parmenides and Pythagoras added to this (II, 28, 5 = A42). On the other hand, Plato attributes the idea to Anaxagoras. Some modern scholars also believe that the Moon is said to reflect the sun's rays here, but Guthrie indicates that ἀλλότριος φώς is a Homeric turn meaning simply "foreigner", without reference to light (Il. V, 214; Od. XVIII, 219), so fragment 14 contains no such idea. In addition, there is no possibility of confirming that any of these astronomical statements are really made by Parmenides: not only do the testimonies contradict themselves in the news of the authorship of the discovery, Aetius himself says elsewhere that Parmenides thought that the Moon was made of fire (A 43) —implying that he thought he had his own light—.

In fragment 15a there is only one word: ὑδατόριζον: “rooted in water”, an adjective referring, according to its transmitter (Basil of Caesarea), to Earth. It refers, for some specialists, to the Homeric tradition that conceived of Ocean as the origin of all things (Iliad XIV, 246), for others, to the roots of the Earth mentioned by Hesiod (Theogony, 728) and Xenophanes (21 A 41), or to the idea of ​​Milesian tales according to which the Earth floats on water.

Primordial Elements

In fragment 8, the elements that make up the opposition to which the world of appearance can be reduced have been presented: φλογός αἰθέριον πῦρ (phlogós aitherion pŷr, «ethereal fire of the flame», v. 56) and νύξ (nýx, «night», v. 59).

Mortals have distinguished two forms, πῦρ (pŷr, "fire", v. 56) and νῦξ (nŷx, "night", v. 59). In relation to these opposites, the goddess says that "the mortals have erred", however line 54, which contains the reason for the error, presents three possibilities of translation. She literally says τῶν μίαν οὐ χρεών ἐστιv. These three interpretations exhaust the possibilities of the text, and all have been supported by specialists.

1. The first interpretation consists in indicating that the error is to name the two forms, since only one must be named.
   1. Aristotle understood that, once Parmenides considered that outside of what is nothing there is, he was forced to take phenomena into account, and to explain them he postulated opposites: cold and hot, or fire and earth , and that hot is «what is» and cold «what is not» (Met I 5, 986b30 = A 24).
   2. Zeller translated the passage as "one of which should not be named". This means that the other exists and can be named.
   3. Burnet followed this interpretation, adding that these forms can be identified with the Pythagorean principles of limit and limitlessness.
   4. Schofield reflects this interpretation by translating the passage "of which they must not necessarily name more than one".
2. In contrast to this, another interpretation indicates that none of the forms should be named.
3. The most accepted interpretation indicates that the error is not to consider these two forms at the same time, but to name only one.
   1. Simplicius, who transmits the quote, thought that the error consists in not naming both contraries in the description of the physical world. The sentence would then say "of which it is not proper to name a single one." Modern philology has followed this interpretation in some of its exponents, such as Coxon and John Raven.
   2. The first indicates that Parmenides knows that starting from a single form necessarily leads to uniformity, since only one element can originate itself. He begins in two ways, deliberately, in order to explain not only the multiplicity, but the contradiction in the world.

Fränkel, even deciding on an intertextual interpretation that corresponds to the first exposed here: «only one should be named», does so without this implying that one of the two forms is more real than the other. The Light must not be identified with the first way. Men name two forms, light and night, and this is the mistake, since one should be named, "what is". Guthrie, who makes a critical compilation of all the positions on the matter, does not find Cornford and Diels' objection to Zeller's translation convincing, since Parmenides' expression is irregular. Cornford's translation would also be better represented by the textual presence of a οὐδὲ μίαν (udé mían, «none») and that of Simplicius and Raven by a μίαν μόνην (mían mónēn, «only one» ). Guthrie argues that Parmenides thinks that it is illogical to accept, on the one hand, that the world contains a plurality of things, and on the other, that this plurality can arise from a single principle.

The passage from the way of truth to the deceptive words of mortal opinions is a real problem for specialists. Even when the goddess tells the "man who knows" that she reveals this order to him as plausible, so that no mortal can outdo him (vv. 60–61), this reason has been interpreted in various ways. In antiquity, Aristotle conceived the first part of the poem as the consideration of the One κατὰ τὸν λόγον (katá tón lógon, «regarding the concept» or "as to definition" or "as to reason"), and the second as the consideration of the world according to the senses (Met 986b31 = A 24). Theophrastus followed him at this point, and Simplicius adds that, although the goddess calls the speech of the second part "conjectural" and "misleading", she does not consider it completely false (Physics 39, 10–12 = A 34).

Jaeger, following Reinhardt, he thought that Parmenides was presented with the need to explain the origin of the deceptive appearance. And he had no other means than to narrate the origin of the world constituted by appearances, that is, to compose a cosmogony. Owen argues that the content of the second part is merely a dialectical device, and does not imply an ontological claim.

In Fragment 9, Parmenides goes a step further. He keeps the name "Night", but introduces a new name for the first opposite. He calls it φάος ( pháos , "Light", v. 1). The whole world of the sensible can be reduced to this pair, and both penetrate the whole of reality equally. Things can be reduced to manifestations of these opposites. These forms can be considered to head a list of opposites, which serve as qualities to sensible things. Relying on Parmenides' own fragments, the table would be as follows:

Already for Simplicius it was clear that assigning fire the attribute of agent (which Alexander of Aphrodisias had done, in his Commentary on Aristotle's Meteorology, 31, 7 = A 7) was a mistake (Physics 38, 18–28). The reliability of all such evidence dependent on Aristotle is now highly doubted, even when they reflect previous cosmogonic beliefs and it is not too risky to consider fire as active and earth as passive.

The fact that the goddess indicates (B 9) that everything (πᾶν, pân) is full (πλέον ἐστίν, pléon estín) of both equally (ἴσων ἀμφοτέρων, ísōn amphotérōn) has generated certain reflections to take into account. The value of ἴσων is not unanimous: Fränkel interprets it as "of equal rank", and excludes the possibility that it has a quantitative value, and in this he is followed by Coxon (equal in status) and Schofield, who adds that this attribute of equality contradicts Aristotle's interpretation, according to which one form "is" and the other "is not" (Met. 986b31). Guthrie, on the other hand, maintains that this ἴσων can also refer to an equality in quantity or extension, relying on a Pythagorean expression (quoted by Diogenes Laertius, in Lives VIII, 26) where it is postulated the equality of extension (ἰσόμοιρα), in the cosmos, of light and darkness; and in another by Sophocles (Electra 87): «O air, which equally covers (ἰσόμοιρ') the earth!».

The idea of ​​grouping under the fundamental opposite pair all the attributes of it has its parallel in the table of opposites of Pythagoras (58 B 4–5 = Met. 986a23). Of course, in the Parmenidean table, oppositions that are not sensible must be excluded.

Fragment 17 associates the masculine with the right and the feminine with the left, but not these opposites with the rest of the scheme. Some testimonies even indicate that for Parmenides the feminine was associated with the hot, and that the masculine was linked with the dense (Aetius V, 7, 1–7 = A53). This would place the feminine on the side of fire, but also, contrary to expectations for a Greek mentality (especially when comparing this result with the Pythagorean table), the right with the light and the left with the dark. Guthrie concludes that masculine/feminine were surely not pure opposites, and that they did not serve the same function as opposites in cosmogony and in embryology, where observation and empirical guidance allowed for a greater variety of opinions on the role of males. opposites.

The comparison with the Pythagorean opposites led Burnet to postulate that Parmenides, in this second part, probably carried out an outline of Pythagorean cosmology. Raven objects to this interpretation, arguing that in Parmenides we find neither limit/unlimited opposites, nor allusions to the equation of things with numbers, nor do we find ancient commentators saying that there are traces of Pythagorean doctrine in his poem. On the other hand, there are elements completely unrelated to Pythagoreanism, such as the "rings" in fragment 12. Lastly, all ancient commentators considered the Way of Opinion to be Parmenides' own invention.

Embryology

Parmenides cosmology also included medical theories, as a number of preserved testimony and fragments are from medical contexts. A series of testimonies (Aetius, Censorinus and Lactantius in A 53 and A 54) indicate that Parmenides was interested in embryology. This fact is confirmed by two fragments, one original, transmitted by Galen (B 17), and the other metrically translated into Latin by Caelius Aurelianus (B 18). The interpretive difficulties of these fragments are not hidden from specialists. Already Guthrie pointed out that there were certain contradictions between fragment B 16 and the testimony of Aristotle (A 52) and Aetius (A 53), who attribute to Parmenides the view that the masculine is associated with the cold and the dense, and the feminine with the warm and subtle. This would inevitably upset the general Greek conception, which associates right with light and warm, and left with dark and cold. Tudela does not fail to indicate that the testimonies are ambiguous, an ambiguity to which must be added that one of the fragments it is a translation of doubtful fidelity.

Parmenides' theory of embryology claims that each of the sexes is conceived on a different side in the mother's womb: the sex of the embryo depends, on the one hand, on the side from which it is conceived in the womb, and on the other, on the side from which the father's seed comes. But the character and traits of the begotten being depend on the mixture of masculine and feminine potencies (B 17). So that:

1. If the semen comes from the right side and lodges in the right side of the womb, the embryo will be a well-built and masculine man.
2. If the semen comes from the left side and lodges in the left side of the womb, the result is a female with feminine features.
3. When the semen comes from the left, and lodges to the right of the uterus, it gives rise to a man, but with feminine traits such as outstanding beauty, whiteness, small stature, etc.
4. If the semen originates on the right and descends to the left of the uterus, this time it forms a woman, but with markedly masculine traits: virility, excessive height, etc.

This medical theory has been compared to that to Alcmaeon of Croton and his doctrine of health, which was conceived as "equal distribution" (ἰσονομία) of forces (24 B 4). and contrasted with the later one of Anaxagoras, who according to Aristotle (de Generatione animalium, IV, I 763b 30) held that only male seed determines sex.

Detail of the pedestal found in Velia. The inscription reads ΠΑ[ ]ΜΕΝΕΙΔΗΣ ΠΥΡΗΤΟΣ ΟΥΛΙΑΔΗΣ ΦΥΣΙΚΟΣ

In 1969, the plinth of a statue dated to the 1st century AD was excavated in Velia. On the plinth were four words: ΠΑ[Ρ]ΜΕΝΕΙΔΗΣ ΠΥΡΗΤΟΣ ΟΥΛΙΑΔΗΣ ΦΥΣΙΚΟΣ. The first two clearly say «Parmenides, son of Pires». The fourth word φυσικός (fysikós, "physicist") was commonly used to designate philosophers who devoted themselves to the observation of nature. On the other hand, there is no agreement on the meaning of the third (οὐλιάδης, ouliadēs): it can simply mean "a native of Elea" (the name "Velia" is in Greek Οὐέλια), or "belonging to the Οὐλιος" (Ulios), that is, to a medical school (whose patron was Apollo Ulius). If this last hypothesis were true, then Parmenides would be, in addition to being a legislator, a doctor. The hypothesis is reinforced by the ideas contained in fragment 18 of his poem, which contains anatomical and physiological observations. However, other specialists believe that the only certainty we can extract from the discovery is that of the social importance of Parmenides in the life of his city, already indicated by the testimonies that indicate his activity as a legislator.

Sense perception

Parmenides also provided a theory of knowledge through sense perception, a description of which is preserved by Theophrastus. Theophrastus, in recording Parmenides' opinion on sensation, indicates that Parmenides holds that sense perception proceeds by resemblance between what feels and the thing felt. He reports Parmenides as saying that everything is composed of two elements, hot and cold, and their intelligence depends on this mixture, present in the limbs of humans. In fact, the nature of each limb or organ, what is preponderant in them, is what is perceived. That is why corpses, which have been abandoned by fire, light and heat, can only perceive the opposite, cold and silence. Everything that exists, he concludes, contains some knowledge. Just as Empedocles later said that "we see earth with earth, water with water" , he held, in accordance with his doctrine of sensible opposites, that mortal perception depends on the admixture of these opposites in the different parts of the body (μέλεα). But, following his teacher's interpretation of the Parmenidean opposites, he says that the thought that arises from the hot is purer. Fränkel therefore thought that this theory of knowledge was valid not only for sensory perception, but also for the thought of "what is". Vlastos maintains that the identity of the subject and the object of thought is valid both for the knowledge of what is (B3) and for sensible knowledge, although he accepts that «what is" is "everything identical" (B8, v. 22), while the structure of the body is a mixture of different elements, and that the preponderance of light does not physically justify the knowledge of "what is". The way to conceive a pure knowledge is not by imagining a situation in which the body has more light, but that it is made of pure light, and this is what Parmenides does in the journey recounted in the proem. Other commentators disagree with transposing this "physical" explanation to the plane of the path of truth. Guthrie and Schofield emphasize the exclusive belonging of this theory to the field of the sensible, of mortal opinion.

Work

Since antiquity, it has been believed Parmenides wrote only one work, titled On Nature., a didactic poem written in hexameter verse. The language in which it was written is archaic, the same format in which the epic was expressed, the Homeric dialect. This form has several uses: it facilitates the mnemonics and recitation of the poem; allows games of poetic form, such as chiastic structure and the Ritournelkomposition.

Parmenides' sole work, which has only survived in fragments, is a poem in dactylic hexameter, later titled On Nature.

Approximately 160 verses remain today from an original total that was probably near 800. The poem was originally divided into three parts: An introductory proem that contains an allegorical narrative which explains the purpose of the work, a former section known as "The Way of Truth" (aletheia, ἀλήθεια), and a latter section known as "The Way of Appearance/Opinion" (doxa, δόξα). Despite the poem's fragmentary nature, the general plan of both the proem and the first part, "The Way of Truth" have been ascertained by modern scholars, thanks to large excerpts made by Sextus Empiricus and Simplicius of Cilicia.. Unfortunately, the second part, "The Way of Opinion," which is supposed to have been much longer than the first, only survives in small fragments and prose paraphrases.

Dating, style, and transmission

In the introduction to the poem, the goddess speaks to the recipient of the message, presumably Parmenides himself, calling him κοῦρε (koûre, "young man"). It has been suggested that because this word refers to a man no older than thirty years and, taking into account Parmenides' date of birth, we can place the creation of the poem between 490 BC and the 475 BC But it has been objected that the word must be understood in its religious context: it indicates the relation of superiority of the goddess with respect to the man who receives the revelation from her. Guthrie supports this idea, supporting it with a quote (Aristophanes, The Birds 977) where the word precisely indicates not the age of a man (which otherwise he is not young), but rather his situation with respect to the interpreter of oracles by whom he is being questioned. His conclusion is that it is impossible to say at what age Parmenides wrote the poem.>

The didactic epic poem form

Much has been said about the poetic form of his writing. Plutarch considered it to be just a way of avoiding prose, and criticized its versification. Proclus said that despite using metaphors and tropes, forced by the poetic form, his writing is more like prose than poetry. Simplicius, to whom we owe the preservation of most of the text that has come down to us, holds a similar opinion: one should not be surprised at the appearance of mythical motifs in his writing, due to the poetic form he uses.

For Werner Jaeger, Parmenides' choice of the didactic epic poem form is a highly significant innovation. It involves, on the one hand, the rejection of the prose form introduced by Anaximander. On the other hand, it means a link with the form of the Theogony of Hesiod. But the link affects not only the form, but also certain elements of the content: in the second part of Parmenides' poem (fragments B 12 and 13) Hesiod's cosmogonic Eros appears (Theogony 120) along with a large number of allegorical deities such as War, Discord, Desire, whose origin in the Theogony cannot be doubted. However, it should be noted that putting these cosmogonic elements in the second part, dedicated to the world of appearance, also involves the rejection of this way of understanding the world, a way alien to the Truth for Parmenides.

Hesiod had presented his theogonic poem as a revelation from divine beings. He had made the invocation of the muses —already an epic convention— the story of a personal experience of initiation into a unique mission, that of revealing the origin of the gods. Parmenides in his poem presents his thought on the One and Immobile Entity as a divine revelation, as if to defeat Hesiod at his own game.

Allegory

Specialized criticism agrees in accepting that the proem is, by intent, an allegory; that is to say that for Parmenides, the superficial meaning, the story of the journey, is a means to express a deep meaning, which is the essential one. It is composed from a rich symbology, which draws mainly from the epic tradition (both Homer and Hesiod), but also from Orphic symbology and other legends.

It narrates an experience of a mystical-religious nature, but on the nature of this experience the specialists do not agree.

Diels suggested that the journey narrated in the proem bears some resemblance to that of the shamans, men with the power to travel with their soul while their body remains in a certain ecstasy, and Guthrie links him to semi-legendary figures such as Etalides (Pherecydes, fragment 8 DK), Aristeas, Hermothymus and Epimenides. The latter ran into the goddesses Truth and Justice while his body was sleeping, which is very close to the story of the proem.

Whatever the origin of the symbology and the nature of the narrated religious experience, Parmenides uses all these elements as a resource to express something completely new in the Greek world: the experience of a transition from Night to Light means the transit of the ignorance to knowledge. This is held by various interpreters.

However, Schofield indicates that this interpretation, which originated in Sextus Empiricus, is incorrect, because the sage begins his journey in a flash of light, as is typical of one who "knows".

It is certain that the author's intention is to give his work the character of a divine revelation, since the content is placed in the mouth of the goddess, analogous to the epic muse. And it is a revelation not available to ordinary men.

It represents the abandonment of the world of everyday experience, where night and day alternate, a world replaced by a path of transcendent knowledge.

Instead, Jaeger understood this path as a way of salvation that Parmenides would have heard about in the mystery religions, a straight path that leads to knowledge. Jaeger distinguishes the meaning of this «path» (ὁδός, hodós) from the later word μέθοδος (méthodos), which is also a path that leads to a goal, but this is a "purely methodical" path. , therefore empty, compared to that of Parmenides. Consistent with this, he offers a new emendation of the corrupted text of verse 3: there he would say that the path leads to the "man who knows" not "through the cities" (ἄστη, ástē), but "unscathed" (ἀσινῆ, asinê), as is typical of a path of salvation.

Access to the truth is not, however, the merit of the "man who knows", since he is dragged by superior forces, the mares and the Heliades, his passage through the formidable barrier described in the poem is allowed by Dike and his journey he has from the first been in favor with Themis. Transit is in accordance with law.

Greek Charioteer. Bas-relief from the last quarter of the 6th century BC, Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

The mares and the cart (B1.1-10)

The narrative of the poet's journey includes a variety of allegorical symbols, such as a speeding chariot with glowing axles, horses, the House of Night, Gates of the paths of Night and Day, and maidens who are "the daughters of the Sun" who escort the poet from the ordinary daytime world to a strange destination, outside our human paths. The path on which he is led,is the path of night and day, a path that is interrupted by an immense stone gate, whose guardian is Dike. The daughters of the Sun persuade her, and she opens the door for the chariot to pass through (vv. 11–21). The narrator is greeted by a goddess, whose speech, beginning at line 24, is the content of the rest of the poem. She tells him, in the first place, that he has not been sent by an evil destiny, but by law and justice (vv. 26-28). By virtue of this, he continues, it is necessary that he know all things, both "the unshakable heart of persuasive truth" and "the opinions of mortals", because, although in these "there is no true conviction", without yet they have enjoyed prestige (vv. 28–32).

The allegorical themes in the poem have attracted a variety of different interpretations, including comparisons to Homer and Hesiod, and attempts to relate the journey towards either enlightenment or darkness, but there is little scholarly consensus about any interpretation, and the surviving evidence from the poem itself, as well as any other literary use of allegory from the same time period, may be too sparse to ever determine any of the intended symbolism with certainty.

The proem, full of Homeric and Hesiodic reminiscences, begins with the description of a trip in a two-wheeled chariot (v. 7), pulled by a pair of mares, described as πολύφραστοι (polýphrastoi, v. 4), "attentive" or "knowledgeable". The image recalls the divine steeds of Achilles, sometimes even endowed with a voice. Pindar also gives us a similar image of draft beasts "leading" along a "pure path" or "luminous" ( ἐν καθαρᾷ κελεύθῷ, en katharâ keleuthô, Olímpica VI, vv. 22–26). There are so many common elements between the compositions that Bowra considers that either Pindar's mimics Parmenides's—it is later, from 468 BC—, or, what he considers more likely, that they have a common source from which they are both influenced. Everything seems to suggest that the chariot is directed by superior powers, and we must rule out, as Jaeger says, the platonizing interpretation of Sextus Empiricus, inspired by the myth of the «winged chariot» narrated in the Phaedrus (246 d 3 – 248 d), in which the chariot symbolizes the human soul. Surely the composition has a closer relationship with the myth of the death of Phaethon, since both this and the charioteers of this Parmenidean chariot are children of the Sun, and the path that is traveled is that of Night and Day (v. 11). It is the same "solar chariot."

Helios and the Night. Lekythos from black-figure pottery from 4th century BC Depicts Helios, ascending in his chariot, Night, receding to the left and Eos to the right.

The path and the gate

The first qualifier that the path of the proem receives, πολύφημον (polýphemon), is of disputed interpretation.

Fraenkel denies that it means «famous» and links the meaning of φήμη (phémê) to «news», «word of active meaning».

On the other hand, Liddell–Scott–Jones presents a passage from Pindar, Isthmians VIII, 64, where the word has semantic equivalence with πολύφραστος (polýphrastos, "famous").

Guthrie thinks that both translations are possible.

Instead, it is certain that the poem presents this path as "the path of a divinity" or "goddess" (v. 3). In this same verse, there are discrepancies in the reading of a complement of the verb φέρει (pherei, «to carry», in the 3rd person). Since in 1909 a scholar (H. Mutschmann) thought he read, in the manuscript he handled, the words κατὰ πάντ᾽ ἄστη (katà pánt 'ástē: «through all the cities»), a large number of scholars followed: Diels, Burnet (who even says, based on this reading, that Parmenides was a kind of itinerant sophist), Guthrie,and Schofield for example. Jaeger had already criticized this reading, and proposed an amendment: replace ἄστη by ἀσινῆ (asinê". , "uncolumn"), when Coxon in 1968 ends up confirming, in a new collation, that the reading «ἄστη» is not backed up by any manuscript, and that the one handled by Mutschmann brings «ἄτη», which is a reading corrupt. The corrupt state of this codex forces specialists to amend the text with conjecture. Barnabas follows it in his latest edition.

This path leads from the “dwelling of Night” to the light (vv. 9–10). In verse 11 it is said that the way is "of Night and Day." Hesiod had spoken of the «house of Night» in Theogony, vv. 748ss, house in which both Night and Day dwell, only that in an alternate way, for never does the mansion accommodate both at the same time. The ancient view of the alternation of Night and Day can be characterized as a transit performed by both along the same path, but in ever different positions. The path of Night and Day is, therefore, a unique path. Hesiod geographically locates the abode of Night at the center of the Earth, in the immediate vicinity of Tartarus. Instead, Parmenides situates his scene, according to the material of the opening of the gates (they are "ethereal," v. 13), in the sky.

Themis and Aegeus

Dike Moira, Themis

As in Homer the gates of Olympus are guarded by the Horae, daughters of Zeus and Themis (Iliad V, 749) , the gate of the Parmenidean poem is curated by Dike, one of them. He says it represents the sentence which, attending to what is sanctioned, works in redressing an injustice. This is why she is adjectiveized as πολύποινος (polýpoinos, "rich in punishments" or "avenger," v. 14). Some commentators claimed that in the poem this goddess is identified with Ananke, Necessity, which would be the deity (δαίμων, dáimōn) that appears in fr. B 12, v. 3, of the «Way of opinion» as one who governs the visible universe, the mingling and alternation of day and night. The Heliades persuade, with soft words, to the goddess to run the bolt, and Says finally opens the door.

The expression Δίκη πολύποινος (Dike polýpoinos) is present in an Orphic poem (fr. 158 Kern). This, plus the fact that Dike possesses the keys "of alternate uses" or "of double use" (ἀμοιβἤ, amoibê, v. 14), another possible ritual element, made one think of a close relationship between Parmenides and the Orphic cults, so abundant in southern Italy. The turn εἰδότα φῶτα (eidóta phōta, "man who knows"), opposed to mortals and their ignorance, does no more than reinforce this link (see Orpheus, fr. 233 Kern).

Once the chariot passes the threshold, the “knowing man” is received by a goddess—whose identity is not revealed—with a typical gesture of welcome. It is not, says the goddess, this fate that has led the protagonist along the route of Night and Day: the author seems to oppose here the fate of the "man who knows" and that of Phaethon, whose disastrous journey in the chariot of the Sol only ended with his death. "Moira" belongs to the set of divinities related to divine justice, such as Themis and Dike, who are the ones that have allowed the transit of a mortal through the route of the Sun. Themis personifies customary law; in the epic, it is the set of norms of social behavior , not formulated, but that no mortal can ignore.

The good disposition shown by the goddesses associated with law means that the trip has been permitted or approved by the divinity.

The Goddess and the Muses

Muse playing the zither. Lekythos Atticus, Achilles Painter, 440 BC – 430 BC The rock on which she sits reads Hēlikon, thus representing one of the muses who inspired the Theogony of Hesiod.

See also: Muses

The reading of the attribute of the "heart of truth" presents differences in the manuscripts. Some specialists prefer the εὐκυκλέος (eukykléos, «well round») lesson, comparing this word with the idea of ​​fragment B 5, bequeathed by Proclus: there the goddess says, regarding the truth, that it is the same from where it begins, since it will return there: the chain of its reasoning is circular. Others read εὐπειθέος (eupeithéos, "persuasive"), traditional reading, better attested and also defendable on appeal to the context, since then, by contrast, one speaks of the opinions of mortals, where there is no true πίστις ἀληθές (pístis alēthés), «conviction» or «persuasion».

The verses that indicate the reason why it is necessary for the narrator to also know the opinions of mortals (vv. 31–32) are difficult to read and interpret. It seems to indicate that the reason is that what is a matter of opinion (τὰ δοκοῦντα, tà dokoûnta) has been recognized as all-encompassing (πάντα περῶντα, panta perônta, «all encompassing»), or it is a whole (πάντα περ ὄντα, panta per ónta, "being everything"). Which means that opinions are all that mortals could know without considering the revelation of the Parmenidean goddess. They have necessarily enjoyed prestige and that is why they must be known. The passage is closely related to the end of Fragment 8, v. 60ss, where the goddess says that she expounds the probable discourse on the cosmic order so that no mortal opinion outweighs the receiver of the revelation.

Most specialists agree in showing the very close relationship between this nameless goddess (θεά, theá) and the Muses of the epic: Homer invokes her with the same word in the first verse from the Iliad: «Sing, goddess...»; the divinity is the one she sings about, by virtue of the fact that she knows "all things" (Il. II, 485). The Muses of Hesiod even specify something similar to what the Parmenidean goddess said about true and apparent speech: «We know how to tell many lies with appearances of truth; and we know, when we want, to proclaim the truth» (Thegony, vv. 27ff).

The subject in fr. 2, vs. 3 and 5

The absence of an express subject in lines 3 and 5 of fragment 2 has given rise to talk, precisely those lines where the goddess presents the opposite paths. The opposition of both paths is later expressed, in a reduced way, as ἔστιν ἢ οὐκ ἔστιν (éstin e oúk éstin, "it is or it is not") in Fr. 8 (v. 16). But this verb (ἔστιν, third person singular of the present tense of the verb εἶναι, "to be") can have a predicative value ("is [something]") or existential ("it exists" or "there is"), and this same ambivalence It makes difficult not only its translation, but also the determination of its subject.

Verdenius postulated as the subject of this construction, first, "the totality of things", but later revised his position and held that the subject was "the true nature of things" Guthrie rejects both Burnet's and Verdenius' positions as premature. Following Owen, sees that Raven's indeterminacy of the subject is also deficient, because Parmenides manages to demonstrate many characteristics of the subject of ἔστι, and this subject is not expressed in this fragment, but in B 6, v. 1. A prudent choice oscillates between "what is" and "that about which one can speak and think" (fr. 3), which Parmenides considers identical. Owen says that ἐόν would be a correct description of the subject, but he hesitates to accept it as the subject because he turns Parmenides' expression into a tautology. Guthrie, however, thinks that this is not decisive, and that something that seems trivial to us is a necessary affirmation from the historical point of view: in the midst of theories about the change or transformation of substances in shaping the cosmos, such as those held by the milesians, he vindicates the ultimate implications of accepting that "what is" is.

Regarding the value of "is", Raven says that Parmenides' rejection of the "is not" path is due to his own confusion between the predicative and existential value of the verb. If it is correct to say that an apple is red, it is just as correct to say that it is not green, but Parmenides objects (wrongly) that one cannot conceive of what does not exist. Schofield points out, against Raven, that it is also impossible to know what has no predicates. After examining the uses of the verb form in the poem, he concludes that a confusion between the predicative and the existential value cannot be attributed to Parmenides: rather, in the text, both values ​​are preserved without mixing.

Number of routes and their nature

Gate of Lions, Mycenae

One of the most important topics of the poem is that of the "ways" or "roads." In the proem, a path, hodós, is mentioned at least twice (B 1, v. 2 and 27), a path identified as the divine or celestial route that the Sun travels. This allegorical presentation gives way, in the Fragment 2, to a characterization stripped of symbolism. There he presents two paths of inquiry, δίζησις (dizēsis , v. 2), mutually exclusive: one must be followed and the other is inscrutable. In fragment 6, however, a third path appears from which one must turn away (v. 4ff). The characterization of these paths has initiated a discussion about the amount of paths presented and on the nature of these.

Werner Jaeger, constantly seeking to relate Parmenidean thought to religious manifestations, says that throughout the writing the meaning of «path» is that of «salvation path». That is why he compares this disjunction of the paths with those of the religious symbolism of later Pythagoreanism, which presented a straight path and a path of error, in the sense of morally good and bad paths. The choice of one of them is made by man as a moral agent. He also offers as background a passage from Works and Days (286ff) where Hesiod presents a flat path, that of wickedness, and a steep one, that of virtue. Either way, he accepts that there is in the poem a transfer from religious symbolism to intellectual processes. In this sense, compared to the two exclusionary paths of fragment 2 (he calls them that of "being" and that of "not being"), the third path of fragment 6 is not a different path, but rather an inadmissible combination of these two , followed by those who have not noticed their mutual exclusion.

In general, subsequent interpretations follow this course. Raven points out that the third way is that of mortals, who wander "two-headed" (δίκρανοι, díkranoi), because they combine opposites, as Simplicius had noted. Schofield argues that this third way had not been shown in fr. 2, since there were coherent alternatives between which a researcher must decide, while this is a path that anyone who does not make this decision and does not use his critical faculties finds himself on (fr. 6, vv. 6 –7), following both contradictory paths at the same time. For Guthrie there are effectively three ways, the second is discarded and the third, which arises from the use of the senses and habit, includes the belief that "things that are not are" and "that being and not being are the same and not the same” (fr. 6, v. 8).

Text transmission

Parmenides's poem, as a complete work, is considered irretrievably lost. From its composition, it was copied many times, but the last reference to the complete work is made by Simplicius, in the 6th century: he writes that it had already become rare by then ('Physics' ', 144). What comes to us from the poem are fragmentary quotes, present in the works of various authors. In this Parmenides does not differ from the majority of the Pre-Socratic philosophers. The first one who cites it is Plato, then Aristotle, Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus and Simplicius, among others. Sometimes the same group of verses is cited by several of these authors, and although the text of the citations often coincide, other times they present differences. This gives rise to arguments and speculations about which quote is the most faithful to the original. There are also cases in which the citation is unique. The reconstruction of the text, starting from the reunion of all existing citations, began in the Renaissance and culminated in the work of Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker' ', in 1903, which established the texts of most of the philosophers prior to Plato. This work contains a total of 19 presumably original "fragments" of Parmenides, of which 18 are in Greek and one consists of a rhythmic translation in Latin. 160 verses of the poem have been preserved. According to Diels' estimates, these lines represent about nine-tenths of the first part (the "way of truth"), plus one-tenth of the second (the "way of opinion"). Diels' work was republished and modified by Walther Kranz in 1934. The edition had such an influence on studies that today Parmenides (as well as the other pre-Socratics) is cited according to the order of the authors and fragments of it. Parmenides occupies chapter 28 there, so he is usually cited with the abbreviation DK 28, then adding the type of fragment (A = ancient commentaries on life and doctrine; B = the fragments of the original poem) and finally the number. snippet (for example, "DK 28 B 1"). Even though this edition is considered canonical by philologists, numerous reissues have appeared that have proposed a new order of the fragments, and some specialists, such as Allan Hartley Coxon, have made collations on the manuscripts in which some of the quotations are preserved, and have questioned the reliability of the reading and establishment of Diels's text.

Legacy

Parmenides. Detail of The School of Athens by Raphael.

As the first of the Eleatics, Parmenides is generally credited with being the philosopher who first defined ontology as a separate discipline distinct from theology.

Ancient reception

His most important pupil was Zeno, who appears alongside him in Plato's Parmenides where they debate dialectic with Socrates. The pluralist theories of Empedocles and Anaxagoras and the atomist Leucippus, and Democritus have also been seen as a potential response to Parmenides' arguments and conclusions.}} Parmenides is also mentioned in Plato's Sophist and Theaetetus.

Plato

• Plato, by means of the characters in his dialogues, calls him «the great» (Sophist 237 a), «father» (241 d), makes Socrates say that Parmenides he is "venerable and fearsome at the same time (...) a magnificent and very rare depth of spirit was revealed to me in him" (Theaetetus 183e). He even honestly admits that he does not fully understand it, for he promptly makes her also say (184 a): "I am afraid that we are not familiar with his words, and that what he thinks without saying it completely overwhelms us."

Aristotle

• Aristotle recognizes that Parmenides has a special position among the first philosophers, and distinguishes him from the «physiologists» or philosophers of nature, since his thought makes it impossible to know about nature (de Caelo 298b 14-24; Physics 184b15). At the same time, he distinguishes it from the group of monists, for manifesting a deeper vision of the One, according to the concept, and not according to matter ( Metaphysics , 986b10-30). Aristotle responds to the Eleatic challenge of Parmenides with his ontological pluralism ("the expression 'something that is' is said in many senses"; Metaphysics, 1003a33) and his distinction between potentiality and actuality(Metaphysics, 1045b-1052a).

Neoplatonism

Parmenides' proto-monism of the One also influenced Plotinus and Neoplatonism.

Modern influence

• Jeremy C. DeLong points to Parmenides along with Aristotle as the father of logic. He also points out the similarity of Heraclitus when he describes the Logos just as Parmenides describes "what is", divine, eternal and immutable.
• In the philosophy of time, John McTaggart conception of the A series and B series has been seen as an analogous application to the time of the views of Heraclitus and Parmenides respectively.

Contemporary interpretation

Among the historians of philosophy and philologists:

• William Keith Chambers Guthrie observes that the figure of Parmenides is a fundamental milestone that divides the course of Pre-Socratic philosophy in two, because it stopped the inquiry into the origin and constitution of the universe and reoriented the course of archaic thought.
• Coxon argues that Parmenides was the first genuine philosopher of the Greek world, the founder of European philosophy, and the first proper metaphysician, unlike the other pre-Socratics who discovered the principles of what is now known as science. said.

See also

• Nothing comes from nothing

Bibliography

Ancient testimony

In the Diels-Kranz numbering for testimony and fragments of Pre-Socratic philosophy, Parmenides is catalogued as number 28. The most recent edition of this catalogue is:

Diels, Hermann; Kranz, Walther (1957). Plamböck, Gert (ed.). Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (in Ancient Greek and German). Rowohlt. ISBN 5875607416. Retrieved 11 April 2022..

Life and doctrines

• A1.  Laërtius, Diogenes (1925). "Others: Parmenides" . Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Vol. 2:9. Translated by Hicks, Robert Drew (Two volume ed.). Loeb Classical Library.
• A2. "Parmenides". Suda – via Suda Online.
• A3.  Laërtius, Diogenes (1925). "Socrates, with predecessors and followers: Anaximenes" . Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Vol. 1:2. Translated by Hicks, Robert Drew (Two volume ed.). Loeb Classical Library. § 3.
• A4. Iamblichus. Life of Pythagoras.
• A5. Plato (1925). Parmenides. Plato in Twelve Volumes. Vol. 9. Translated by Harold N. Fowler. 127a.
• A6. Aristotle. Metaphysics. 986b.
• A7. Alexander of Aphrodisias. Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics. 984b.
• A8. Simplicius. Commentary On Aristotle's Physics.
• A9.  Laërtius, Diogenes (1925). "Others: Protagoras" . Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Vol. 2:9. Translated by Hicks, Robert Drew (Two volume ed.). Loeb Classical Library.
• A10. Simplicius. Commentary On Aristotle's Physics.
• A11. Eusebius. Chronicon Paschale.
• A12. Strabo. Geographia. Book VI, §1.

Fragments

Diels-Kranz	Author	loc. cit.
28B1	Sextus Empiricus / Simplicius of Cilicia	Adversus Mathematicos VII 111ff / In Aristotelis De Caelo comm. 557, 28
28B2	Proclus/Simplicius	In Platonis Parmenidem comm. 1078 4-5 and In Platonis Timaeum comm. I, 345, 18-27 / In Aristotelis Physica comm. 116, 25
28B3	Clement of Alexandria/Plotinus	Stromateis VI 23 / Enneads V 1, 8 and 9, 5
28B4	Clement of Alexandria/ Proclus/Theodoret/Damascius	Stromateis V, 15 / In Platonis Parmenidem comm. 1152 37/Healing of Greek diseases I, 72 / Doubts and solutions on the first principles, 34
28B5	Proclus	In Platonis Parmenidem comm. 708, 16
28B6	simplex	In Aristotelis Physica comm. 117, 2
28B7	Plato / Aristotle / Sextus Empiricus / Simplicius	Sophist 237a / Metaphysics, XIV II 1089a2 / Adversus Mathematicos VII 111 / In Aristotelis Physica comm. 144, 29
28B8	Simplicius / Clement / Plato / Aristotle	In Aristotelis Physica comm. 145, 1-28; 146, 1-24 and 38, 31-39 / Stromateis V 113 / Theaetetus 180d, Sophist 244e / Physics III, 6,207a 15
28B9	simplex	In Aristotelis Physica comm. 180, 9-12
28B10	Clement of Alexandria	Stromatheis V, 138
28B11	simplex	In Aristotelis de Caelo comm. 559, 22-25
28B12	simplex	In Aristotelis Physica comm. 39, 14-16 and 31, 15-17
28B13	Plato / Aristotle / Plutarch / Sextus Empiricus / Simplicio	Banquet 178b / Metaphysics984b 23-26 / Amatorius XIII / Adversus Mathematicos IX 9 / In Aristotelis Physica comm. 39, 18
28B14	Plutarch	Adversus Colotem 1116a
28B15	Plutarch	De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet 16, 929b and Quaestiones romanae 76, 822b
28B15a	Anonymous	Scholium to the Homiliae in Hexaëmeron 25
28B16	Aristotle / Theophrastus	Metaphysics 1009b 22-25 / De sensu III
28B17	Galen	in Hippocratis livros Epidemiarum VI, comm. two
28B18	Celius Aurelianus	Morb. Chron. IV, 9
28B19	Simplicius	In Aristotelis de Caelo comm. 558, 9-11

• Empiricus, Sextus (1933). Sextus Empiricus in four volumes: Against the logicians. Vol. 2. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-99321-1. Retrieved 13 April 2022.
• Simplicius (22 April 2014). Commentary On Aristotle Physics. Vol. 1.3-4. A&C Black. p. 55-56. ISBN 978-1-4725-1531-5. Retrieved 13 April 2022.

Translations

• Freeman, Kathleen (1946). The Pre-Socratic Philosophers. Great Britain in the City Of Oxford at the Alden Press: Oxford Basil Blackwell. p. 140.
• Coxon A. H. (2009), The Fragments of Parmenides: A Critical Text With Introduction and Translation, the Ancient Testimonia and a Commentary. Las Vegas, Parmenides Publishing (new edition of Coxon 1986), ISBN 978-1-930972-67-4
• Curd, Patricia (2011), A Presocratics Reader: Selected Fragments and Testimonia, Hackett Publishing, ISBN 978-1603843058 (Second edition Indianapolis/Cambridge 2011)

Modern scholarship

• Austin, Scott (1986). Parmenides: Being, Bounds, and Logic. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-03559-9.
• Austin, Scott (15 July 2007). Parmenides and The History of Dialectic. Parmenides Publishing. ISBN 978-1-930972-53-7.
• Bakalis Nikolaos (2005), Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics Analysis and Fragments, Trafford Publishing, ISBN 1-4120-4843-5
• Bowra, «The proem of Parmenides», in : Classical Philology, vol. 32, no. 2 (1937), p. 102.
• Burnet, John (1892). Early Greek Philosophy.
• Barnes, Jonathan (1982). "Parmenides and the Objects of Inquiry". The Presocratic Philosophers. Routledge and Kegan Paul. pp. 155–175.
• Cordero, Nestor-Luis (2004), By Being, It Is: The Thesis of Parmenides. Parmenides Publishing, ISBN 978-1-930972-03-2
• Cordero Néstor-Luis (ed.), Parmenides, Venerable and Awesome (Plato, Theaetetus 183e) Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing 2011. Proceedings of the International Symposium (Buenos Aires, 2007), ISBN 978-1-930972-33-9
• Curd, Patricia (2004). The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic Monism and Later Presocratic Thought. Parmenides Pub. ISBN 978-1-930972-15-5. Retrieved 12 April 2022.
• Fränkel (1955). Wege und Formen Frühgriechischen Denkens. p. 158.
• Furley, D.J. (1973). Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy presented to Gregory Vlastos.
• Guthrie, W. K. C. (1979). A History of Greek Philosophy – The Presocratic tradition from Parmenides to Democritus. Cambridge University Press.
• Hermann, Arnold (2005), To Think Like God: Pythagoras and Parmenides-The Origins of Philosophy, Fully Annotated Edition, Parmenides Publishing, ISBN 978-1-930972-00-1
• Hermann, Arnold (2010), Plato's Parmenides: Text, Translation & Introductory Essay, Parmenides Publishing, ISBN 978-1-930972-71-1
• Werner Jaeger, The theology of the first Greek philosophers
• Kirk, G. S.; Raven, J. E.; Schofield, M. (1983). The presocratic philosophers : a critical history with a selection of texts (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 243. ISBN 978-0-521-27455-5. Retrieved 12 April 2022.
• Jeremy C. DeLong. "Parmenides of Elea". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Mourelatos, Alexander P. D. (2008). The Route of Parmenides: A Study of Word, Image, and Argument in the Fragments. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing. ISBN 978-1-930972-11-7 (First edition Yale University Press 1970)
• Nussbaum, Martha (1979). "Eleatic Conventionalism and Philoaus on the Conditions of Thought". Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. 83: 63–108. doi:10.2307/311096. JSTOR 311096.
• Palmer, John. (2009). Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Palmer, John (2020). "Parmenides". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Sedley, David Sedley (1998). "Parmenides". In Craig, Edward (ed.). Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415169165.

Further reading

• ISBN 950-557-175-5
• ISBN 84-249-3511-X
• ISBN 84-934625-7-8
• http://www.jstor.org/stable/294688
• http://www.jstor.org/stable/2183487

External links

{{wikisource|lang=el|Περί φύσεως (Παρμενίδης)}

• Extensive bibliography (up to 2004) by Nestor Luis Cordero; and annotated bibliography by Raul Corazzon
• "Lecture Notes: Parmenides", S. Marc Cohen, University of Washington
• Parmenides in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
• Parmenides and the Question of Being in Greek Thought with a selection of critical judgments
• Parmenides of Elea: Critical Editions and Translations – annotated list of the critical editions and of the English, German, French, Italian and Spanish translations
• Fragments of Parmenides – parallel Greek with links to Perseus, French, and English (Burnet) includes Parmenides article from Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition
• Error in Template:Internet Archive author: Carchasm/sandbox/Parmenides doesn't exist.
• Works by Carchasm/sandbox/Parmenides at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)