Parmenides

c. 515 - c. 450 BCE · Greek (Elean) · Presocratic metaphysics

The same thing is for conceiving as is for being.

Around 475 BCE, in the Greek colony of Elea, a man wrote a hexameter poem that stopped Western philosophy in its tracks. Parmenides was reacting against the Milesian tradition — Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes — who explained the cosmos as a process of change and becoming. His answer: genuine becoming is impossible, and the routes of inquiry are few, perhaps only one.

Topics Parmenides addresses

• the way of truth
• the way of opinion
• what-is (to eon)
• the meaning of esti
• the routes of inquiry
• the semata of being
• ungenerated and imperishable
• whole and of a single kind
• immovable and complete
• the well-rounded sphere
• monism
• numerical monism
• predicational monism
• the modal interpretation
• thinking and being
• the proem and the chariot journey
• the goddess and the kouros
• the doxa
• light and night
• mortal opinion and error
• the cosmology of mortals
• change and motion
• the denial of becoming
• the eleatic school

Questions to put to Parmenides

The Routes of Inquiry

• What do you mean by the route of 'is' and the route of 'is not'?
• Why can't we inquire into what is not?
• Are there two routes or three, and how do they differ?
• What's the mistake mortals make when they say things both are and are not?
• How does the route of 'is' lead to genuine knowledge?

The Semata of What-Is

• What are the semata, and why do they matter?
• How do you argue that what-is must be ungenerated?
• Why must what-is be indivisible and immobile?
• What does it mean for what-is to be complete?
• Why do you compare what-is to a well-rounded sphere?

Being, Thinking, and Saying

• What do you mean when you say it's the same thing to think and to be?
• How can we think or speak about what-is if it has no parts or change?
• What does 'esti' actually mean in your route formula?
• Why does the route of conviction follow the route of being?
• How do you distinguish genuine saying from mortal naming?

The Question of Monism

• Are you saying only one thing exists in the whole cosmos?
• What makes something count as genuinely 'one' for you?
• Can there be many things that each satisfy your semata?
• How should I understand the difference between necessary being and contingent things?
• Did the later pluralists like Empedocles and Anaxagoras betray your teaching or apply it?

Change, Motion, and the Phenomenal World

• Are you denying that motion and change happen at all?
• Why can't what-is come to be or perish?
• How do you account for the world of becoming we experience every day?
• What's wrong with the mortal practice of naming coming-to-be and passing-away?
• Can we have any knowledge of things that change?

The Doxa and Mortal Cosmology

• Why did you include a cosmology if it's deceptive?
• What are Light and Night, and why do mortals posit them as opposites?
• Is the Doxa completely false or does it capture something real?
• How does the cosmology of the Doxa relate to the truth you've revealed?
• What's at stake for you in showing mortals the best cosmology they can build from their error?

Converse with Parmenides on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in the surviving fragments and reports of Parmenides, cited to the page.