Parmenides: The Nature of Being

Parmenidies's Poem

Parmenides was the author of a poem. The original is lost but we have extended fragments preserved by later authors, notably Simplicius in his commentaries on Aristotle, written in the sixth century AD.

The poem was divided into three parts:

1. The Prologue

2. The Way of Truth

3. The way of Opinion

The Prologue

This describes Parmenides' jounrney on a chariot to a dark place where he meets a goddess. This goddess says that he must learn both truth and opinion, reflected in the two main parts of the poem:

Both the steady heart of well-rounded truth, And the beliefs of mortals, in which there is no true trust.

Two Paths

There are, we are told, only two possible paths of enquiry:

The path of truth: that it is and it is impossible for it not to be [literally, it is not not to be].

The path of opinion: that it is not and that it must not be [literally, it is not to be].

Either it "is" or it "is not". But what is "it"? Everything? Existence in general? And what is it? It is ... a cat, a horse, red, blue, large, small? The statement is incomplete. The Greek verb 'to be' expects a predicate.

Either it "is" or it "is not". Existence cannot include non-existence, and non-existence cannot include existence. This is the first principle of Parmenides' ontology.

What "is" must necessarily be. It cannot not be, for if it was not, you would not be able to think of it. To exist, even as just an object of thought, is to exist:

????For you may not know what-is-not [...] nor may you tell of it.

????It must be that what can be spoken and thought is, for it is there for being and there is no such thing as nothing.

Compare with Descartes: 'I think, therefore I am.' Here we have: 'I think [about x], therefore [x] exists.' In both cases the existence of sth. is affirmed, independent of sensory experience.

The Way of Truth

This text is reconstructed from three fragments:

If we want to follow the path of truth we must "use reason" rather than rely on experience

In the main fragment, Parmenides sets out the positive characteristics of what "is". What "is" has the following characteristics:

????1. un-generated and indestructible: what "is" cannot come from what "is not"

????2. a whole (a unity): there is no variation in terms of its "is"ness

????3. unwavering or unchanging: no creation, no variations, so no change

????4. complete or perfect or balanced: completely uniform, perhaps spherical (the perfect shape)

????5. non-temporal (neither was nor will be, but is): a consequence of the previous points

We can know all of these things, Parmenides claims, a priori, before we experience anything. Indeed, these are the only things we can know, because our senses are deceptive.

1. Ungenerated and Unchanging

How and from what did it grow? Neither will I allow you to say or to think that it grew from what-is-not, for that it is not cannot be spoken or thought. Also, what need could have impelled it to arise later or sooner, if it sprang from an origin in nothing?

And so it should either entirely be, or not be at all.

2. A Whole (or a Unity)

Nor can it be divided, since all alike it is. Nor is there more of it here and an inferior amount of it elsewhere, which would restrain it from cohering, but it is all full of what-is.

And so it is all coherent, for what-is is in contact with what-is.

3. Unchanging (or Motionless)

It is without beginning and without end, since birth and perishing have been driven far off, and true trust has cast them away.

It stays in the same state in the same place, lying by itself, and so it stays firmly as it is

4. Complete, Perfect, Balanced

Now, since there is a last limit, what-is is complete, from every side like the body of a well-rounded sphere, everywhere of equal intensity from the centre. For it must not be somewhat greater in one part and somewhat smaller in another.

For from every direction it is equal to itself, and meets with limits.

Summary

1. it necessarily exists

2. It is neither generated nor destroyed

3. It is a unified whole

4. It is unchanging, perhaps timeless

5. It is perfectly homogeneous and balanced within itself, no internal division or differentiation

It is what we are all talking about because it is the only thing to talk about.

The Way of Opinion

This outlines a fairly traditional cosmology, describing a plurality of objects in motion.

But Parmenides has already said that this will be a false account, describing appearance, not reality.

Interpretations

Three competing interpretations:

1. A material monist: what exists is a single unchanging spherical ball of stuff, and our experiences of plurality and change are mere illusions.

2. An idealist: concerned with objects of thought rather than the material world.

3. An ontologist: interested in the status of things insofar as they exist

Which one?

The ontological interpretation is very attractive: Parmenides is interested in being qua being, in the nature of existence. It is only in terms of existence that everything is the same and unchanging. Perhaps The Way of Opinion describes the world in everyday terms, while The Way of Truth describes it in ontological terms. The two complement each other.

However, there were many in antiquity, including Parmenides' pupil Zeno, who seem to have taken?his claims quite literally, suggesting the material monist interpretation.

Looking Ahead to Plato

If Cratylus claimed that we cannot know anything for sure because the world that we experience via the senses is continually changing, Parmenides offered a way out of this by suggesting that we can gain knowledge about the way things really are via the use of reason.