Eleatic school

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. | 2011 | 700+ words | Copyright

Eleatic school , Greek pre-Socratic philosophical school at Elea, a Greek colony in Lucania, Italy. The group was founded in the early 5th cent. BC by Parmenides , its greatest thinker. He denied the reality of change on the ground that things either exist or do not. Hence, there are no in-between stages, as the concept of change, or "becoming," ordinarily implies. His disciples were Zeno of Elea , who used a series of paradoxes to show the indefensibility of common-sense notions of reality, and Melissus of Samos, who systematized Eleatic views. The ultimate reality for the Eleatics was an undifferentiated "being," in contrast to the illusory testimony of the senses.

Bibliography: See J. E. Raven, Pythagoreans and Eleatics (1966, repr. 1981).

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