Parmenides

Philosopher

Born: c. 515 b. c.e.; Elea (now Velia, Italy) Died: Perhaps after 436 b. c.e.; possibly Elea Also known as: Parmenides of Elea Category: Philosophy

Life Little is known of the life of Parmenides (pahr-MEHN-eh-deez) except that he created some of the laws of his native Elea and perhaps visited Athens in 450 b. c.e. Diogenes Laertius states that he was a Pythagorean in his youth and a pupil of Xenophanes. Scholars note, however, that there are no significant Pythagorean elements in Parmenides’ philosophy, and they question his relationship to Xenophanes. He wrote a poem under the traditional title, Peri physefs (fifth century b. c.e.; The Fragments of Parmenides, 1869, commonly known as On Nature), one-third of which is extant. In the conventional form of epic hexameter, Parmenides promulgates his new philosophical ideas, which led to the foundation of the Eleatic School.

In On Nature, Parmenides introduces the theme of philosophical instruction: A young charioteer, the philosopher himself, embarks on a journey in the domain of the goddess of truth, justice, and retribution in order to learn the nature of true existence. Following Xenophanes’ monotheistic understanding of the universe, Parmenides proclaims that true reality is solely “an object of thought and speech,” and if “that which exists, cannot not-exist,” then “there is not that which does not exist.” This theoretical premise is announced by the just goddess, who teaches the young philosopher about the two ways of learning. One is the way toward true knowledge, that reality is “unoriginated, imperishable, whole, indivisible, steadfast and complete”; the other is the way toward false opinion, based on sense perceptions, that reality is originated, perishable, multiple, divisible, and in constant change over time and space.

Influence Parmenides’ denial of multiplicity was criticized by the pluralists, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists but was defended by his pupils of the Eleatic School. Zeno of Elea demonstrates logistically that multiplicity does not exist, for nothing can be both definite and indefinite. Melissus of Samos, the only member of the school outside Elea, elaborates on Parmenides’ doctrine by explaining that the one, unoriginated and indivisible reality is not timeless but everlasting; that it is not limited but infinite because if it is unoriginated and imperishable, then it does not have a beginning or an end; and that void and motion do not exist. Although Melissus is the last representative of the Eleatic School, Parmenides’ philosophy lays the foundation for Plato’s theory of forms and the epistemological dichotomy between true knowledge and false perceptual opinion by interrupting the pre-Socratics’ continuous interest in natural philosophy.

Further Reading

Brunschwig, Jacques, and G. E. R. Lloyd, eds. Greek Thought: A Guide to Classical Knowledge. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000.

Cordero, Nestor-Luis. By Being, It Is: The Thesis of Parmenides. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2004.

Curd, P. K. The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic Monism and Later Preso-cratic Thought. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1998.

Gallop, D. Parmenides of Elea. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,

1984.

Guthrie, W. K. C. A History of Greek Philosophy. 6 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978-1990.

Kirk, G. S., J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield. The Presocratic Philosophers. 2d ed. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Long, A. A. The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Waterfield, Robin, ed. The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and the Sophists. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Svetla Slaveva-Griffin

See also: Anaxagoras; Empedocles; Literature; Philosophy; Pre-Socratic

Philosophers; Xenophanes; Zeno of Elea.