Parmenides of Elea [addendum]
David Furley's original entry remains an exemplary introduction to Parmenides' thought. Since its publication, philosophers have focused on the character of the routes of inquiry that the goddess lays out in the poem, suggesting different interpretations of the subjectless is (or esti), and of the nature of to eon, the subject of inquiry. In addition, scholars have continued to study the Proem (the opening lines of the poem) and the Doxa (the goddesses' statement of mortal opinion), but there is no consensus about either.
Newer studies emphasize the undoubted influences of Homer and Hesiod (fl. c. 800 BCE) as models for Parmenides' language and poetic images, while others recognize the continuity of Parmenides' thought with that of his predecessors. For example, Xenophanes of Colophon questions whether human knowledge is possible: In the absence of divine warrant or intercession, how can human beings of limited experience achieve genuine understanding? Parmenides' analysis of the unchanging nature of the object of genuine thought and inquiry, and his use of a goddess who nevertheless uses arguments and demands that her hearer evaluate her claims (DK 28 B7.5) can be seen as an attempt to defend the possibility of human knowledge and explore its limits. Some scholars suggest that this account of Parmenides is too rationalistic, but the consensus remains that he is part of a philosophical tradition that continues in Plato, Aristotle, and later Greek thought.
Reading Parmenides as exploring the nature of inquiry and the proper object of understanding and knowledge, many scholars are more willing to countenance forms of "to be" in Parmenides that are not primarily existential. Attention has been paid to predicative, veridical, and fused predicative-existential notions of being, and it is likely that some sort of hybrid account best captures Parmenides' meaning. What-is (to eon) must exist, but existence is not Parmenides' primary concern. Rather, the object of genuine thought must be or have an essence (predicative), and must be what is the case (veridical). What is not (or lacks an essence) cannot be real. As such it cannot be an object of understanding. Contrary to mortal thinkers, Parmenides denies that coming-to-be and other sorts of change are real or can be attributed to what is real. The arguments of fragment 8 show that only what is wholly of a single kind, unchangingly and perfectly what it is, can be real. Such an entity (eon) is a unity, admitting none of what is not, and so can be grasped completely by thought.
There is no doubt that Parmenides claims that what-is is one. The question is the sort of unity or monism to which Parmenides is committed. Some scholars challenge the interpretation (going back to Plato) that Parmenides advocated numerical monism in the same sense as Melissus of Samos, who asserted the reality of only one thing. On the alternative account, although whatever there is must be one, more than one thing may be real. Stronger and weaker versions of this view have been taken. It can be argued that numerical pluralism is consistent with Parmenides' views of the unified nature of what-is, although Parmenides himself does not specify how many basic entities there are.
The role of the Doxa section of the poem remains a problem, especially if one follows many scholars in rejecting the view that mortals err by positing what does not exist or by supposing that there is a plurality of real things. There is no general agreement, and some modern interpretations accept the more traditional view, found in Furley's entry, that no cosmological account can be acceptable. Another suggestion is that, although the sensible world of change and becoming described in the Doxa is not the world of genuine reality, the cosmology of the Doxa nonetheless succeeds because it gives a true account and explanation of the unreal world of appearances. Or the Doxa might be intended as a lesson, offering a model cosmological account with a problem at its heart (the commitment to genuinely real opposite forms) that shows what must be avoided in an adequate account of how things are.
A further focus of study has been the positive importance of Parmenides' arguments for later philosophers (the later pre-Socratics and Sophists as well as Plato). This has led to a new appreciation of the Parmenidean basis for pluralistic and atomistic pre-Socratic theories and for the foundations of Plato's thought. In addition, scholars explore differences of theory and argument strategy among Parmenides, Zeno of Elea and Melissus, controverting the traditional interpretation that lumps them together as maintaining a single "Eleatic position."
Aristotle; Homer; Melissus of Samos; Plato; Pre-Socratic Philosophy; Sophists; Xenophanes of Colophon; Zeno of Elea.
Bibliography
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