PARMENIDES

Parmenides of Elea inaugurated Western metaphysical thinking; b. probably in the middle of the latter half of the sixth century b.c. He is reported to have been introduced to philosophy by a Pythagorean named Ameinias, and his cultural background at Elea, a Phocaean colony on the west coast of Italy, was Ionian. His philosophy was expressed in a poem of which considerable fragments, as quoted by ancient writers, survive.

Content of the Poem. Although this was composed as a literary unit, it is divided by commentators into three parts: a proem or apocalyptic introduction, a section on truth, and a section on opinion (δόξα) or things as they appear. Textual difficulties and ambiguities in key passages, as well as the poetic form, often leave the meaning highly controversial.

Introduction. In the proem, in imagery found to a large extent in Hesiod (Theog. 744–761), Parmenides is borne from the dwellings of night aloft toward light on a chariot guided by sun maidens. Beyond the portals of the ways of night and day he is ushered into the presence of an unnamed goddess, there to be instructed in the knowledge of all things, first of the convincing truth, then of the unreliable "opinions of mortals," in the sense of being shown how things had to appear as they do (H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker: Griechisch und Deutsch 3 v. [10th ed. Berlin 1960–61] 28B 1).

Truth. The way of inquiry following upon truth asserts that there is being—for there not to be is not possible. The directly opposite way, namely, that there is no being and cannot be any, cannot even be entered by human thought (Frg. 2). But Parmenides is also barred by the goddess from another way, the way actually traveled by mortals. This is two-headed, reverberating, perplexed, unseeing, undiscerning; for it gives nonbeing the same status as being and yet distinguishes them, setting up for everything a way that goes simultaneously in opposite directions. It is the way of sense perception and hearsay, and has to be superseded by difficult reasoning.

The signposts identifying the legitimate way are as follows: being cannot become or perish, it is a whole, without motion or change, without end, without past or future, all together, indivisible, continuous, finite, lacking nothing, perfectly self-identical, entirely homogeneous, and unique—for, since there is no nonbeing, there is nothing that could in any way come to be or cease to be, or divide or multiply being, or cause defect or difference in it. All apparent changes in the cosmos, and distinctions between being and nonbeing, are but conventional names for the one all-embracing reality.

Opinion. From the goddess, Parmenides then learns why things appear to mortals differently from the way they are. By custom, mortals set up two basic and opposite forms, light and night, one of which it is not legitimate to posit. Each is entirely self-identical and in no way the same as the other. Given equal status by human cognition, they fill everything and differentiate things from one another according to their relative predominance in each thing (Frgs. 6–9). Even individual cognition, with all conscious identity in a man, is but an ever-varying combination of the two basic forms, light and darkness (Frg. 16). In this framework cosmogony is taught Parmenides by the goddess (Frgs. 10–15; 17–19). Complete predominance of darkness in an individual's constitution is death (Frg. A 46), while full predominance of light, as the proem makes clear, allowed Parmenides during special inspiration to see things solely under the aspect of being.

Influence and Interpretation. Parmenides's teaching had wide influence in greek philosophy. His formal (in contrast to existential) notion of being, passed on through Aristotle and Neoplatonism, deeply impregnated scholastic, classical, and neoscholastic metaphysics, with the notable exception of that of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Interpreters differ widely over Parmenides. His doctrine of being, isolated from its poetic setting, is variously regarded as an abstract dialectic, a mystical experience, a philosophical monotone, or a sediment from preceding philosophies. His way of seeming, likewise isolated, has been viewed as a report of teachings rejected by him, or as tenets impossible to reconcile with his doctrine of being. Yet the contrast between light and night in the proem seems explained in terms of being and then carried through to the concluding section. No rational link between the sections is possible. In this cast the whole poem gives a consistent and penetrating account of both the way things are and the way they appear. Aristotle (Meta. 986b 31–33; 1010a 2–3) is almost certainly right in reporting that for Parmenides beings meant sensible things only, and that the same reality known as one by reason appears multiple through sensation.

Bibliography: k. reinhardt, Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie (2d ed. Frankfurt am Main 1959). w. j. verdenius, Parmenides: Some Comments on His Poem (Groningen 1942). g. vlastos, "Parmenides' Theory of Knowledge," American Philological Association, Transactions and Proceedings 77 (1946): 66–77. j. h. m. loenen, Parmenides, Melissus, Gorgias (Assen 1959).

[j. owens]