PARMENIDES. A Greek philosopher who lived between the second half of the sixth century BCE and the first half of the fifth century BCE, Parmenides was born in and lived in Elea, an Ionic colony on the coast of Campania, in an area then inhabited by the Lucani, who called the city Velia. He was a pupil of Xenophanes as well as a Pythagorean. Charged with the governance of the city, he gave Elea a long-lasting constitution regarded as the principal reason for its power. He also founded a philosophical school, which was monist and has become known historically as the Eleatic school. His closest followers were Zeno and Melissus. Parmenides wrote a long poem in hexameters titled On Nature, a difficult text even for his contemporaries. The work was lost in the early Middle Ages, and about twenty fragments of around 150 to 160 verses survive. Thus modern interpretation of his work is even more controversial. Parmenidean doctrine denies the real existence of diversity and change and asserts the unity of being. This doctrine has been regarded from time to time as the foundation of metaphysics, of logic, and of the theory of predication and as the methodology of scientific research based upon the principle of correspondence, that is, of "invariance."
Whatever the intention, it is a passionate espousal of l'esprit de géométrie, a radical departure from the normal manner of ethical or political discourse, despite the significant political role played by Parmenides in his native city. It is particularly revealing that, all this notwithstanding, Parmenides's discourse is set out in clear theological and religious terms from various related perspectives.
The doctrine is presented in the proem as the "revelation" of a goddess, in fact of the Goddess, probably Persephone, the titular goddess of the celebrated mystery cult of Demeter at Elea. Parmenides tells of a fantastic journey in a horse-drawn chariot, guided by the Heliades, the daughters of Helios, the Sun, who guide it to the Gate of Night and Day. When they reach there, they ask the gatekeeper, Dike, Justice, to open up and allow their charge to pass through. The poet thus manages to enter into the presence of the Goddess, who welcomes him and invites him to listen to her explain both "the unshakeable heart of well-rounded Truth" and "the opinions of mortals, in which there is no certainty at all"
In terms of the conventions particular to archaic Greece, the image of the chariot in the proem is a clear metaphor for poetry, often guided by the Muses, who steer the poet in the "right" direction. For Parmenides the chariot symbolizes poetic wisdom, sophia, encompassing as it does the tension regarding the Truth and the absolute poetic skill necessary to express this. The route here is "the way of the goddess," which takes the "wise man" in the direction of the "Ultimate Truth." The chariot is not guided by the Muses, the daughters of Memory, but by the Heliades, goddesses related to the light of the Sun, because Parmenides was not attempting to set out a mythical tale, like any other poet, but rather a scientific account. The motif of the gate is made still more complex because it is a specific gate that had always played a central part in the sphere of myth and cosmology, that is, the Gate of Day and Night, also called the Gate of the Sun, and is identified with the Gate of Hades. It towered in the extreme west, far from the region inhabited by humankind. Beyond this, just as in Parmenides, yawned the abyss, in Greek berethron, chaos, (chasma), in other words the world of the dead, the realm of Hades and Persephone, the god and goddess of the netherworld, but also, according to Hesiod, the cosmic location in which were gathered the first principles of everything, the "roots," the "sources," the "limits," that is, the elements of matter.
After the proem, throughout the poem every abstract concept, every natural entity is represented in divine terms. Physical law becomes Justice (Dike) or Themis, the goddess of justice regarded by the Greeks as older and with greater authority than Dike, or Necessity (Ananke), the goddess of Homer and Hesiod, who ruled over the most powerful gods, or Moira (Fate), the ancient goddess of birth, life, and death. The abstract luminance was Truth (Aletheia), the epic goddess of truthfulness. Being itself was represented in the likeness of an imprisoned god in shackles, a obvious allusion to Prometheus in chains. In Parmenides, in complete form, the unique union that was to be characteristic of subsequent Greek cultural development is evident, a synthesis of absolute intellectual rationalism and the religious symbolism of the polytheistic tradition.
The astronomical section of the poem, following in the footsteps of Anaximander, sets out a map of the heavens in the form of spherical concentric bands on which individual stars were set out. These, or at least some of these, were clearly divine in form. The outer surface, the farthest away, including all the bands in order nearest to the earth, which was located in the center, was called in lay terms ouranos, "heaven," but also theologically Olympus eschatos, "the final Olympus." This alludes to the mountain on the summit of which, myth said, was situated the abode of the gods. In the center band, perhaps the heaven of Hesperus-Lucifer, correctly identified by Parmenides as one and the same star, is "the goddess who controls all things," especially regarding sexual congress, the source of life, thus a supreme goddess, probably Aphrodite. Eros also plays an important role. It is clear that the doctrine of divine intelligence and astral influences has already made its appearance.
There is no doubt that the pantheon of Parmenides is predominantly feminine. In particular the two principal divinities, the inspired revelatrix of the proem and the omnipotent one in the center of the heavens, are goddesses. Being, in Greek, Eon, single unchanging matter, which has no space in which to move, is neuter gender. The masculine, theologically speaking, is of marginal importance. This causes a difficulty of interpretation that is impossible to resolve because of the scarcity of available information. Some see the survival or reemergence in Parmenides of an ancient pre-Greek Mediterranean religion with a matriarchal basis (Untersteiner, 1958).
Burkert, Walter. "Das Proömium des Parmenides und die Katabasis des Pythagoras." Phronesis 14 (1969): 1–30.
Cerri, Giovanni. "Cosmologia dell'Ade in Omero, Esiodo e Parmenide." Parola del passato 50 (1995): 437–467.
Cerri, Giovanni. Poema sulla natura, Parmenide di Elea: Introduzione, testo, traduzione, e note. Milan, 1999.
Couloubaritsis, Lambros. Mythe et philosophie chez Parménide. Brussels, 1990.
Coxon, A. H. The Fragments of Parmenides: A Critical Text with Introduction, Translation, the Ancient Testimonia, and a Commentary. Assen, Netherlands, 1986.
Diels, Hermann, and Walther Kranz. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, vol. 1. Berlin, 1951. See pp. 217–246. Reference edition.
Frère, Jean. "Aurore, Eros, et Ananke: Autour des dieux parménidiennes." Études philosophiques 60 (1985): 459–470.
Jaeger, Werner Wilhelm. Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers. Oxford, 1947. See chap. 6.
Kingsley, Peter. In the Dark Places of Wisdom. Inverness, Calif., 1999.
Pellikaan-Engel, Maja E. Hesiod and Parmenides: A New View on Their Cosmologies and on Parmenides' Proem. Amsterdam, 1974.
Pugliese Carratelli, Giovanni. "La Theà di Parmenide." Parola del passato 43 (1988): 337–346.
Tarán, Leonardo. Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Commentary, and Critical Essays. Princeton, N.J., 1965.
Untersteiner, Mario. Parmenide:, Testimonianze e frammenti: Introduzione, traduzione, e commento. Florence, 1958.
West, Martin L. Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient. Oxford, 1971.
This is the complete article, containing 1,238 words
(approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page).
