Parmenides (early to mid 5th century bc)
Parmenides of Elea, a revolutionary and enigmatic Greek philosophical poet, was the earliest defender of Eleatic metaphysics. He argued for the essential homogeneity and changelessness of being, rejecting as spurious the world’s apparent variation over space and time. His one poem, whose first half largely survives, opens with the allegory of an intellectual journey by which Parmenides has succeeded in standing back from the empirical world. He learns, from the mouth of an unnamed goddess, a dramatically new perspective on being. The goddess’s disquisition, which fills the remainder of the poem, is divided into two parts; the Way of Truth and the Way of Seeming.
The Way of Truth is the earliest known passage of sustained argument in Western philosophy. First a purportedly exhaustive choice is offered between two ‘paths’ – that of being, and that of not-being. Next the not-being path is closed off: the predicate expression ‘… is not’ could never be supplied with a subject, since only that-which-is can be spoken of and thought of. Nor, on pain of self-contradiction, can a third path be entertained, one which would conflate being with not-being – despite the fact that just such a path is implicit in the ordinary human acceptance of an empirical world bearing a variety of shifting predicates. All references, open or covert, to not-being must be outlawed. Only ‘… is’ (or perhaps ‘… is… ’) can be coherently said of anything.
The next move is to seek the characteristics of that-which-is. The total exclusion of not-being leaves us with something radically unlike the empirical world. It must lack generation, destruction, change, distinct parts, movement and an asymmetric shape, all of which would require some not-being to occur. That-which-is must, in short, be a changeless and undifferentiated sphere.
In the second part of the poem the goddess offers a cosmology – a physical explanation of the very world which the first half of the poem has banished as incoherent. This is based on a pair of ultimate principles or elements, the one light and fiery, the other heavy and dark. It is presented as conveying the ‘opinions of mortals’. It is deceitful, but the goddess nevertheless recommends learning it, ‘so that no opinion of mortals may outstrip you’.
The motive for the radical split between the two halves of the poem has been much debated in modern times. In antiquity the Way of Truth was taken by some as a challenge to the notion of change, which physics must answer, by others as the statement of a profound metaphysical truth, while the Way of Seeming was widely treated as in some sense Parmenides’ own bona fide physical system.
1 Life and work
Parmenides lived and taught and, if the ancient tradition is reliable, framed legislation at Elea (modern Velia), a Greek city in southern Italy. His most eminent pupil was Zeno of Elea, author of the celebrated motion paradoxes. Plato in his Parmenides describes a visit by Parmenides and Zeno to Athens, usually thought to be around 450 bc, when he says Parmenides was aged about 65, Zeno about 40. He implies that Parmenides’ work had been published a good deal earlier, since Zeno had defended it against its critics in his youth, perhaps around 470 bc. It could in fact have appeared as early as the 490s. In any case, the visit Plato describes is probably fictional, and the chronological details are open to suspicion (see Socratic dialogues §1). The only completely safe chronological assertion is that Parmenides wrote before Zeno, Anaxagoras and Empedocles.
About 150 lines survive from his poem, which was his sole published work. Most of these (around 107) belong to its first part, the proem plus the Way of Truth, which appears largely complete. The second part, the Way of Seeming, must originally have been at least as long. The numbered ordering of the fragments, established by editors, seems mainly reliable, but the original position of a few (especially fragments 3 and 5) remains controversial.
The language, which constantly exploits echoes of Homeric epic, is opaque and densely metaphorical. It will be impossible in what follows to do justice to many important questions of nuance. A further complication is that Parmenides is compelled to borrow for his arguments the very language of negation, change and differentiation which his conclusions will ultimately outlaw.
The Way of Truth is methodically argued. Although the opening describes Parmenides’ journey to a goddess who undertakes his enlightenment, this symbolizes less a religious revelation or appeal to mere authority than his own hard-won arrival at a god’s-eye view, his intellectual odyssey of distancing himself from the familiar temporal world: he travels to the gates at which the paths of night and day meet, a mythically inspired vantage point which erases the alternation of night and day, together, we may suppose, with all the associated temporal and spatial distinctions. When the goddess proceeds to enlighten him, it is with a coordinated set of arguments. Her most favoured form of argument starts from the conclusion: c, because b, because a.
2 The three paths
An initial choice offered is between two paths. Later a third path, although not even represented as a formal possibility, has to be mentioned and blocked off because despite its incoherence it is the route which ordinary people actually try to take.
The first two paths are: ‘(It) is’ (esti) and ‘(It) is not’ (ouk esti). It turns out that you can only coherently say the former, and this in the later moves will radically restrict what can be truly said of that-which-is. But what is the status of this ‘is’? In particular, does it have a subject and/or a predicate?
Unlike English ‘is’, its Greek equivalent esti can constitute a grammatically complete sentence, ‘(It) is’, even when as here no explicit subject is supplied. At this initial stage, when we are still finding out what restrictions must be imposed on the character of whatever ‘is’, the failure to specify any subject term, even ‘it’ or ‘something’, looks deliberate. What, if anything, can stand as the subject of ‘is’ must not be in any way prejudged.
The Greek use of ‘be’ does not fall neatly into a complete or existential use (‘x is’) and an incomplete or copulative one (‘x is y’). To be is, primarily, to be something, but this may be specified (‘x is red’, ‘x is a book’) or left unspecified (‘x is’). To a Greek ear these are not distinct senses; they also tend to shade into the so-called ‘veridical’ use, where ‘being’ means ‘being the case’, since the ‘being’ in question is viewed as once again copulative, x’s being y. It has long been disputed whether Parmenides’ use of ‘be’ is existential, copulative, veridical or one ‘fused’ out of these. While some kind of fused usage looks likeliest, no confusion need arise from thinking of his poem as primarily an inquiry into what there is. At least, his description of that-which-is as ungenerated, continuous, immobile etc. suggests an object rather than (as on a narrowly veridical reading) a truth – indeed, an object which directly and successfully competes with the phenomenal world for the status of what-there-is.
There are few uncontroversial points of interpretation, but the opening argument can be paraphrased, with explanatory glosses, along the following lines.
There are two conceivable paths [that is, ways forward]: to say ‘… is’, and to say ‘… is not’ [these are actually presented as ‘… necessarily is’ and ‘… necessarily is not’; contingency is assumed to involve an illicit conflation of being with not-being, and is therefore held over as a third path, see below]. But saying ‘… is not’ is not a way forward that you could ever actually explore [that is, ‘… is not’ is a predicate which can never be successfully supplied with a subject, by either (a) thinking of the subject or (b) naming it]. This is because (a) you could not know that-which-is-not [that is, you could not know what it is, since that-which-is-not is nothing; therefore you could not pick it out in thought as a subject], (b) nor could you speak of it [the nonexistent is not available for referring to]. Besides, anything that you can speak of and think of [that is, pick out as a subject term] must be [and is therefore automatically debarred from serving as subject of ‘… is not’]. This is because it is, at least, possible for it to be [being conceivable, it at least could exist], whereas for a ‘nothing’ to be is impossible [there could never exist a non-existent thing]. In short, ‘… is not’ is a path that you could never travel [an expression with no application] (frs 2, 6.1–3).
Likewise you can discount a third path, ‘the one wandered by know-nothing two-headed mortals’ [when they place their trust in the senses and accept a world of contingency, change and diversity]. They ‘consider being and not-being the same and not the same’ [since phenomenal things possess predicates only in certain respects, at certain times, etc., every case of being is also a case of not being; this is self-contradictory – see rule 2 in §3 – and/or entails the now outlawed not-being]. It is a back-turning path. Do not out of habit follow it, relying on your senses, but judge by reason my refutation [of it] (frs 6.4–9, 7).
3 The description of that-which-is
What follows is a journey down the one path that remains negotiable, the path of ‘… is’ (fr. 8.1–49). Now that the inquiry has been focused exclusively on that-which-is, the goddess is ready to tell Parmenides what it is, and proceeds to enumerate its predicates. These, or perhaps the ensuing arguments for them, she calls the ‘signposts’ along the route.
On this path there are many signposts that it is [1] unborn and unperishing, [2] a unique whole, [3] unshaken [= unmoved], [4] perfect/complete/balanced [the text is disputed here, but §8 will tend to favour atalanton, ‘balanced’] (fr. 8.2–4).
She immediately adds, ‘Nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is now, one, continuous.’ It is controversial whether this is a fifth item on the list of signposts and, if so, where it is proved. It may be safer to regard it as her parenthetical justification of the preceding present tense ‘… it is unborn’ etc., explaining that for an altogether undifferentiated entity a past and future cannot be distinguished from its present. It has been held that the move introduces the notion of timeless being. On another interpretation, ‘now’ signals that it still occupies time, but with the passage of time abolished – possibly foreshadowing the later notion of eternity. (On time, see also §7.)
Analogous to the question of time is that of space. Some would take the goddess’s description of that-which-is to make it an altogether non-spatial entity, others a space occupier albeit without spatial distinctions. Is it an entity as innocent of spatio-temporal being as, say, the number 2, or something which occupies space and time but is nevertheless not subject to spatial and temporal distinctions? The following analysis will favour the latter, which not only is the more straightforward reading of the text but also allows the individual arguments to work better (especially those for predicates 3 and 4).
The favourite objection to a literal spatial reading has been that that-which-is will then prove to be a finite sphere, in which case it will have to be surrounded by vacuum or not-being, in contravention of Parmenides’ own ban. However, this difficulty arises only given the starting assumption that space is infinite. That assumption became standard in Ionian philosophy (see Anaximander §2; Melissus §3), but is much less evident in the western Greek tradition to which Parmenides belongs: Empedocles, like Plato and Aristotle later, regarded the universe as a finite sphere bounded by the heaven, with no space, empty or otherwise, beyond it. The very notion of space as a self-subsistent entity with its own dimensions, slow to emerge in ancient thought, was probably unknown to Parmenides. Provided Parmenides’ sphere is envisaged from within, like the familiar world with its apparently spherical sky, not from outside like an orange, the supposition of space beyond need not impose itself. Arguably, his spherical being is a radical redescription of our own spherical world, in which no feature beyond the shape itself survives.
At fragment 8.6–49 the goddess defends in turn each of the predicates of that-which-is. The arguments lean on two implicit rules.
Rule 1: no proposition is true if it implies that, for any x, ‘x is not’ is, was or will be true. This draws directly on the preceding argument (see §2).
Rule 2: there are no half-truths (that is, no proposition is both true and false; no question can be answered ‘Yes and no’). This may sound innocuous, but is used lethally to outlaw all qualified truths and ensure that nothing can possess a given predicate in one way (at one time, in one respect, etc.) but not in another, as is required by the variable world believed in by two-headed mortals. One might think that even in that world temporally or otherwise qualified propositions would obey rule 2, for example, that ‘My egg is warm at 9 am’ and ‘My egg is not warm at 2 pm’ could both be true without qualification. But Parmenides would insist that the unqualified proposition ‘My egg is warm’ is another which must obey the rule, and not come out true in a way, false in a way.
The arguments proceed as follows.
4 The denial of generation and destruction
It cannot [taken as a whole] have had a beginning, since (a) that would have been from previous not-being [rule 1], and (b) there could have been nothing, prior to its generation, to make it come into being precisely when it did, rather than sooner [a celebrated anticipation of the Principle of Sufficient Reason] (fr. 8.6–10).
Likewise it must be totally or not at all [rule 2; that is, it cannot be generated piecemeal]: no additional bits can come into being, since that too would be from previous not-being [rule 1] (fr. 8.11–14).
Thus both generation and [by parity of reasoning] destruction are excluded [In both wholesale and piecemeal destruction something comes not to be, contravening rule 1. But there is no obvious analogue to (b) above, the Principle of Sufficient Reason: in that-which-is there might well, for all we know at this stage of the argument, be sufficient reason for destruction to occur later rather than sooner, for example, progressive decay.] (fr. 8.13–21).
5 Continuity
It is also indivisible [or perhaps ‘undivided’]. This is because it is completely homogeneous, its continuity not disrupted by varying degrees of being [This would entail corresponding degrees of not-being, contrary to rule 1. Since it cannot to any extent not-be at one point what it is at another, there is nothing true of any individual part to distinguish it from any other part. So talk of ‘parts’ becomes empty.] (fr. 8.22–5).
6 Immobility
‘Motionless, in the limits of mighty bonds’, (a) ‘it is unstarting and unstopping’ [it neither starts off nor comes to a halt], because coming-to-be and perishing have already been refuted [and starting is the coming-to-be of motion, stopping is the perishing of motion]. And (b) it stays just where it is, held by Necessity ‘in the bonds of a limit which imprisons it all round’ [that is, that-which-is, taken as a whole, does not move anywhere, because it entirely fills its own spatial boundary, leaving itself no room to move]. [And it must have this boundary] ‘because it is not fitting for that-which-is to be incomplete’ [absence of a definite boundary being a form of incompleteness]. This in turn is because ‘it is not lacking: if it were, it would lack everything’ [and therefore not exist at all; by rule 2, it cannot be both lacking and not lacking] (fr. 8.26–33).
This argument is often read as one against change in general; but the language strongly suggests that motion is the target. (Nothing in it specifically excludes the perpetual rotational movement of a sphere, but would this be conceivable in an entity with no distinct parts (see §5)?) Its ‘boundary’ argument works better for motion than for other forms of change. Parmenides’ general objection to change may be located not here but in his arguments against generation (see §4), where the denial of piecemeal generation could well include that of new properties.
7 Monism
So far the goddess has defended predicates 1, 2 and 3 (see §3). The next lines, fragment 8.34–41, are difficult and controversial. They appear to interrupt the sequence of arguments, with the proof of predicate 4 not beginning till line 42. Some regard them as somehow part of that proof, others as a summary of results so far, yet others as a digression against empiricism. A still likelier explanation is that before she can embark on her final proof, concerning the shape of that-which-is, the goddess must pause to establish formally its singularity. She has already demonstrated that it itself forms an undivided whole, but she must still show that neither (a) thought, nor (b) time, nor (c) the plural objects of the phenomenal world, can be anything over and above it. The following paraphrase suggests how.
(a) Thinking is identical with that which prompts thought [that is, its object, being]. ‘For in what has been said [that is, the preceding arguments] you will not find thinking separate from being’ [It has been seen that thought and being always go together, since not-being is unthinkable. There are no grounds for distinguishing the thinking subject from the object thought. Thinking is being and being is thinking. See also fragment 3 (of uncertain location) – ‘For to think and to be are the same’ – which has often been given other, somewhat strained, translations to avoid this admittedly very difficult notion.] (fr. 8.34–8).
(b) ‘Neither is there, nor will there be, time [for the reading of the text, see Coxon (1986)] over and above being, since Fate has bound it down to be the whole [hence spatially all-inclusive, so that there can be no external measure of time] and unmoved [so that there can be no internal measure of time].’
(c) ‘Therefore [since that-which-is is all-inclusive and motionless] it [that-which-is itself] has been named all the things which mortals have posited, believing them to be real’ and to undergo changes of all kinds [That is, when ordinary people talk about empirical objects, properties etc. they are speaking, not (impossibly) of nothing, but of that-which-is, even if they are radically misdescribing it. So the fact that ordinary talk is about something does not mean that there is something over and above that-which-is for it to be about.] (fr. 8.38–41).
Whether or not posterity was right to proclaim Parmenides the champion of the One against the Many, he was undoubtedly a monist. But Monism as such was not new. All his major forerunners, from Thales to Heraclitus, had believed everything to be ultimately analysable as manifestations of one thing, namely a single underlying stuff. Parmenides was the first eliminative monist. Everything is still one, but in a way which, instead of accounting for plurality, eliminates it.
8 Symmetry
‘But since there is an outermost limit [see §6], it is bounded on all sides, like the mass of a well-rounded ball, being equally balanced on all sides from the centre [that is, it is spherical in shape; many interpreters make it resemble a sphere in some other way than shape, for example, in perfection or uniformity, which risks underplaying this geometrically precise description, and makes the grounds which follow less apposite]. For it must not be bigger or smaller here than there [it cannot be asymmetrical, as it would have to be if not a sphere]. For there is no not-being to prevent it reaching the same distance’ [if it were cut off short in one direction, that would mean its not-being beyond that point, in contravention of rule 1], nor are there degrees of being [it cannot be asymmetrical by thinning out in places], because it is, as a whole, ‘immune’ [to depletion], having precisely equal being throughout, up to its limits (fr. 8.42–9).
This ends the Way of Truth. Can the goddess really be telling Parmenides that that-which-is is literally spherical, without jeopardizing its partlessness? In a sphere you can distinguish hemispheres, segments and other parts. True, but at least the sphere is the one solid that you can think of as a whole without distinguishing parts (contrast, for example, a cube, which must be thought of with eight corners etc.). And the upshot of the poem so far, with its attack on human perspectives, has been to persuade Parmenides not to try to enforce any such distinctions. See also fragment 4 (of uncertain location): ‘Gaze in thought equally upon absent things as firmly present. For thought will not split off that-which-is from clinging to that-which-is, scattered or gathered everyhow everywhere in the world.’
9 The Way of Seeming
The goddess now turns to the ‘opinions of mortals’, and sets out, unargued, an analysis of the phenomenal world in terms of the combination of two opposite ‘forms’ or elements, one light and fiery, the other heavy and dark. The surviving fragments are scanty, but the cosmology includes the following: a role for a creative goddess, a detailed description of the heavens as a set of concentric bands, an embryology and a physiology of human thought.
The Way of Seeming has been promised by the goddess from the outset: ‘You must find out everything – both the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth, and the opinions of mortals. In them there is no true trust, but you must learn them too anyway…’ (fr. 1.28–31). At its opening she calls it ‘deceitful’, if also ‘plausible’. She adds that Parmenides must learn it ‘so that no opinion of mortals may outstrip [or overtake] you’ (fr. 8.61), apparently meaning that the cosmology will be the best of its kind, able to compete successfully with those already offered by others. And there can be no doubt that this part of the poem is, for whatever reason, making an original contribution to cosmology. It even incorporates two major astronomical discoveries: that the Morning Star is identical to the Evening Star, and that the moon’s light comes from the sun. But if all cosmology is false, what is the point of even entering such a contest?
Where Parmenides’ major predecessors had been material monists, Parmenides offers his own distinctively dualist scheme. So his analogous move from one entity in the Way of Truth to two in the Way of Seeming is anything but casual. Indeed, the arithmetical point is precisely what the goddess emphasizes: mortals ‘have made up their minds to name two forms, of which they should not name one’ (fr. 8.53–4). This, although sometimes taken to mean that they should not name so much as one, or even not merely one, is most easily read as saying that precisely one out of the two is a mistake. That itself, if correct, might be understood as purely numerical: any total of two is one too many. Or it can be taken specifically: one of these two forms is identical with that-which-is, but the other should not have been added – in which case it becomes tempting (and Aristotle among others was tempted) to assimilate the illicit second element to what in the Way of Truth was called not-being. As to which element is which, it is usually the fiery element that is assumed to correspond to that-which-is, although Popper (1992) has advocated the dark heavy one, in which the fiery one produces the mere semblance of change, just as the moon, in reality solidly spherical, was known by Parmenides to appear to wax and wane through the play of light on it.
The question remains how the cosmology relates to the Way of Truth. Some have held that it itself contains a measure of truth, others on the contrary that it is there to expose the patent falsity of any departure from strict monism. Of these, the former sits ill with the goddess’s contrast between mortal opinions and truth, while the latter conflicts with the fact that the cosmology, rather than being patently false, is highly ‘plausible’. A more attractive possibility is that she wants to show how surprisingly similar the deceptive empirical world is to the stark Way of Truth. The whole range of cosmic phenomena can be generated by allowing the intrusion of just one additional item – by starting out with two instead of one. This hypothesis makes good sense of the often noticed fact that the cosmological descriptions in the Way of Seeming pointedly echo the language of the Way of Truth. For example, the description of the ‘encircling heaven’ as ‘bound down by Necessity to hold the limits of the stars’ (fr. 10) recalls that of that-which-is as held motionless by Necessity in the bonds of a limit (see §6).
Thus interpreted, the Way of Seeming does not pretend to vindicate phenomena, but it does tackle the biggest headache faced by any convert of Parmenides: how can human experience have got things quite so catastrophically wrong? The answer is that the step from appearance to reality is much smaller than it may initially look.
This admittedly still does not begin to explain how the error of mortals ever occurred. If Parmenides is right, there are no separate thinking subjects. All thought is that-which-is thinking itself. How it could find room to misconceive itself is a question on which Parmenides leaves us to puzzle.
10 Influence
Parmenides marks a watershed in Presocratic philosophy. In the next generation he remained the senior voice of Eleaticism, perceived as champion of the One against the Many. His One was defended by Zeno of Elea and Melissus, while those who wished to vindicate cosmic plurality and change felt obliged to respond to his challenge. Empedocles, Anaxagoras (§2), Leucippus and Democritus framed their theories in terms which conceded as much as possible to his rejections of literal generation and annihilation and of division. On the other hand, in this they were swayed less by Parmenides’ own primary argument, the inadmissibility of ‘… is not’, which won few converts, than by an older and less controversial premise, the impossibility of generation ex nihilo.
Plato (§16), in his Sophist, did take up puzzles raised by Parmenides’ rejection of not-being. But it was in recognition of Parmenides’ rigorous methodology, not his doctrines, that in his later work Plato expressed a degree of allegiance to the Eleatic tradition, letting Parmenides or an unnamed follower of his eclipse Socrates as principal speaker in three major dialogues.
Plato’s own declared veneration of Parmenides is exceeded by that of the Neoplatonists, who treat his ‘one being’ as an integral part of their own metaphysical hierarchy. Among his modern admirers, perhaps the most prominent is Heidegger, for whom Parmenides was the last great thinker before the ‘forgetting of being’ which has blighted the subsequent history of metaphysics.
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