{"agent_id":"parmenides","agent_name":"Parmenides","slug":"the-routes-at-b2","label":"The routes at B2: two ways or three, and is the distinction strict either/or or modal?","topic":"The routes at B2","question":"Two ways or three, and is the distinction strict either/or or modal?","position":"Three routes, three modalities. B2 announces the first two — the route of *is and cannot not be* (necessary being) and the route of *is not and must not be* (impossibility) — and rejects the second as no route at all, because what is not cannot be inquired into or said. B6 then introduces what is effectively a third route: the route mortals walk in, \"by whom this has been thought, both to be and not to be the same and not the same.\" This is the way of *is and is not* together, the way contingent things go for mortal cognition. It is the route the *Aletheia* refuses and the *Doxa* shows mortals walking in. The three correspond to the three modalities: necessary being, impossibility, contingent being. The first is genuine and the route of inquiry; the second is no route at all; the third is the realm mortal cognition walks in but cannot make into knowledge, because the necessity required for knowledge is not in contingent being as such.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Three routes, three modalities.","n":[]},{"t":"B2 announces the first two — the route of *is and cannot not be* (necessary being) and the route of *is not and must not be* (impossibility) — and rejects the second as no route at all, because what is not cannot be inquired into or said.","n":[]},{"t":"B6 then introduces what is effectively a third route: the route mortals walk in, \"by whom this has been thought, both to be and not to be the same and not the same.\" This is the way of *is and is not* together, the way contingent things go for mortal cognition.","n":[]}],[{"t":"It is the route the *Aletheia* refuses and the *Doxa* shows mortals walking in.","n":[]},{"t":"The three correspond to the three modalities: necessary being, impossibility, contingent being.","n":[]},{"t":"The first is genuine and the route of inquiry; the second is no route at all; the third is the realm mortal cognition walks in but cannot make into knowledge, because the necessity required for knowledge is not in contingent being as such.","n":[1,2]}]],"texts":"B2 entire (the announcement of 'the only routes of inquiry that are for thinking': the route 'that is and that it is not possible for it not to be' and the route 'that is not and that it must not be'); B6.1-3 ('what can be said and thought must be: for it is possible for it to be, but not possible for nothing to be... these things I bid you ponder; from this first route of inquiry I hold you back'); B6.4-9 (the second admonition: 'and then from that on which mortals knowing nothing wander two-headed... by whom this has been thought, both to be and not to be the same and not the same'); B7.1-2 ('for never shall this be forced: that things that are not are; but you, hold back your thought from this route of inquiry'). Reception: G. E. L. Owen, 'Eleatic Questions' (1960) — two routes, strict either/or; A. P. D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides (1970, rev. 2008) — chapter 4 on the routes and their incompleteness; A. A. Long, 'Parmenides on Thinking Being' (1996); Patricia Curd, The Legacy of Parmenides (1998), chapter I on the routes; John Palmer, Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy (2009), chapter 2 on the three modal ways; Alexander Nehamas, 'On Parmenides' Three Ways of Inquiry' (Deucalion 1981); Néstor-Luis Cordero, By Being, It Is: The Thesis of Parmenides (2004).","works":["B2 entire (the announcement of 'the only routes of inquiry that are for thinking': the route 'that is and that it is not possible for it not to be' and the route 'that is not and that it must not be')","B6.1-3 ('what can be said and thought must be: for it is possible for it to be, but not possible for nothing to be... these things I bid you ponder","from this first route of inquiry I hold you back')","B6.4-9 (the second admonition: 'and then from that on which mortals knowing nothing wander two-headed... by whom this has been thought, both to be and not to be the same and not the same')","B7.1-2 ('for never shall this be forced: that things that are not are","but you, hold back your thought from this route of inquiry')"],"reception":"G. E. L. Owen, 'Eleatic Questions' (1960) — two routes, strict either/or; A. P. D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides (1970, rev. 2008) — chapter 4 on the routes and their incompleteness; A. A. Long, 'Parmenides on Thinking Being' (1996); Patricia Curd, The Legacy of Parmenides (1998), chapter I on the routes; John Palmer, Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy (2009), chapter 2 on the three modal ways; Alexander Nehamas, 'On Parmenides' Three Ways of Inquiry' (Deucalion 1981); Néstor-Luis Cordero, By Being, It Is: The Thesis of Parmenides (2004).","status":"The two-vs-three-ways question is sharp and consequential. The Standard Interpretation reads B2 as presenting strictly two routes — \"is\" and \"is not\" — and treats the mortal way in B6 as a confusion of those two rather than a third path. Palmer's *Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy* (2009) defended the three-routes-as-three-modalities reading: the modal structure is what B2 and B6 jointly set out, and reading them as anything less flattens the argument. Nehamas had argued for a version of three ways earlier (1981). Mourelatos and Curd take intermediate positions: the routes of B2 are two, but the structure of mortal error in B6 is genuinely distinct from the impossibility route of B2. The modal reading is the most recent and the most ambitious; it requires the auxiliaries of B2 to carry their modal weight unflinchingly.","era":"c. 515 - c. 450 BCE","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Fragments of Parmenides","page":"pp. 293–294","canonical":"[176]–[178]","quote":"Cf.. 237-239. *φράζω* ['I tell']: this verb, which in epic means 'to point out', is used by P. with a direct object (l.8) or an accusative and infi nitive in the regular later sense (in which it is often opposed to *λέγω* ['say'] and *φημί* ['say']) of 'explain'. *παναπευθέα* ['wholly without report']: for the Homeric antecedents of Introd. Sect. 3 (i).","label":"The Fragments of Parmenides, [176]–[178]"},{"n":2,"work":"The Fragments of Parmenides","page":"p. 313","canonical":"[193]–[194]","quote":"After the rejection of one of these (*οὐκ ἔστιν* ['a thing is not']) in fr. 3 and of a third or empirical way in fragments 5 and 7, one way only remains. On this, she proceeds, there are many monuments or landmarks (*σήματα*), which (or some of which) she at once enumerates; they appear as predica tes of 'Being', the applicability of which is then established deductively. 8] COMMENTARY The main argument of fr.","label":"The Fragments of Parmenides, [193]–[194]"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"change-and-motion-in-what-is","label":"Change and motion in what-is: did I deny that change occurs anywhere, or only that necessary being can undergo it?"}]}