Parmenides was a philosopher, healer, and spiritual guide in fifth-century BC Elea, a Greek outpost on the western coast of Italy. Around 450 BC he and a young Socrates engaged in a debate on the nature of reality, later immortalized by Plato in The Parmenides, the dialogue that re-created that meeting. Richard Geldard's inspiring account brings new life and contemporary understanding to Parmenides, allowing us to understand his thought and benefit from his wisdom. Richard Geldard earned his PhD in dramatic literature and classics at Stanford University. He is the author of Remembering Heraclitus and The Traveler's Key to Ancient Greece.
Parmenides, a lecture course delivered by Martin Heidegger at the University of Freiburg in 1942-1943, presents a highly original interpretation of ancient Greek philosophy. A major contribution to Heidegger's provocative dialogue with the pre-Socratics, the book attacks some of the most firmly established conceptions of Greek thinking and of the Greek world. The central theme is the question of truth and the primordial understanding of truth to be found in Parmenides' "didactic poem." Heidegger highlights the contrast between Greek and Roman thought and the reflection of that contrast in language. He analyzes the decline in the primordial understanding of truth—and, just as importantly, of untruth—that began in later Greek philosophy and that continues, by virtue of the Latinization of the West, down to the present day. Beyond an interpretation of Greek philosophy, Parmenides (volume 54 of Heidegger's Collected Works) offers a strident critique of the contemporary world, delivered during a time that Heidegger described as "out of joint."
Of all Plato’s dialogues, the Parmenides is notoriously the most difficult to interpret. Scholars of all periods have disagreed about its aims and subject matter. The interpretations have ranged from reading the dialogue as an introduction to the whole of Platonic metaphysics to seeing it as a collection of sophisticated tricks, or even as an elaborate joke. This work presents an illuminating new translation of the dialogue together with an extensive introduction and running commentary, giving a unified explanation of the Parmenides and integrating it firmly within the context of Plato's metaphysics and methodology. Scolnicov shows that in the Parmenides Plato addresses the most serious challenge to his own philosophy: the monism of Parmenides and the Eleatics. In addition to providing a serious rebuttal to Parmenides, Plato here re-formulates his own theory of forms and participation, arguments that are central to the whole of Platonic thought, and provides these concepts with a rigorous logical and philosophical foundation. In Scolnicov's analysis, the Parmenides emerges as an extension of ideas from Plato's middle dialogues and as an opening to the later dialogues. Scolnicov’s analysis is crisp and lucid, offering a persuasive approach to a complicated dialogue. This translation follows the Greek closely, and the commentary affords the Greekless reader a clear understanding of how Scolnicov’s interpretation emerges from the text. This volume will provide a valuable introduction and framework for understanding a dialogue that continues to generate lively discussion today.
Parmenides of Elea was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia (Greater Greece, included Southern Italy). He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides describes two views of reality. In "the way of truth" (a part of the poem), he explains how reality (coined as "what-is") is one, change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, necessary, and unchanging. In "the way of opinion," he explains the world of appearances, in which one's sensory faculties lead to conceptions which are false and deceitful. He has been considered to be the founder of metaphysics or ontology. The first hero cult of a philosopher we know of was Parmenides' dedication of a heroon to his teacher Ameinias in Elea. Parmenides was the founder of the School of Elea, which also included Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos. Of his life in Elea, it was said that he had written the laws of the city. His most important pupil was Zeno, who according to Plato was 25 years his junior, and was regarded as his eromenos. Parmenides had a large influence on Plato, who not only named a dialogue, Parmenides, after him, but always wrote about him with veneration.
TO THINK LIKE GOD focuses on the emergence of philosophy as a speculative science, tracing its origins to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, from the late 6th century to mid-5th century B.C.E. Special attention is paid to the sage Pythagoras and his movement, the poet Xenophanes of Colophon, and the lawmaker Parmenides of Elea. In their own ways, each thinker held that true insight, whether as wisdom or certainty, belonged not to mortal human beings but to the gods.
In By Being, It Is, Nestor-Luis Cordero explores the richness of this Parmenidean thesis, which became the cornerstone of philosophy. Cordero''s textual analysis of the poem''s fragments reveals that Parmenides'' intention was highly didactic. His poem applied, for the first time, an explicative method that deduced consequences from a true axiom: by being, it is. To ignore this reality meant to be a victim of opinions. This volume explains how without this conceptual base, all later ontology would have been impossible. This book offers a clear and concise introduction to the Parmenidean doctrine and helps the reader appreciate the imperative value of Parmenides''s claim that "e;by being, it is."e;
John Palmer develops and defends a modal interpretation of Parmenides, according to which he was the first philosopher to distinguish in a rigorous manner the fundamental modalities of necessary being, necessary non-being or impossibility, and non-necessary or contingent being. This book accordingly reconsiders his place in the historical development of Presocratic philosophy in light of this new interpretation. Careful treatment of Parmenides' specification of the ways of inquiry that define his metaphysical and epistemological outlook paves the way for detailed analyses of his arguments demonstrating the temporal and spatial attributes of what is and cannot not be. Since the existence of this necessary being does not preclude the existence of other entities that are but need not be, Parmenides' cosmology can straightforwardly be taken as his account of the origin and operation of the world's mutable entities. Later chapters reassess the major Presocratics' relation to Parmenides in light of the modal interpretation, focusing particularly on Zeno, Melissus, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles. In the end, Parmenides' distinction among the principal modes of being, and his arguments regarding what what must be must be like, simply in virtue of its mode of being, entitle him to be seen as the founder of metaphysics or ontology as a domain of inquiry distinct from natural philosophy and theology. An appendix presents a Greek text of the fragments of Parmenides' poem with English translation and textual notes.
"The central aim of The Parmenidean Ascent is to reveal the power of an extreme monism of a Parmenidean variety in a more uncompromising manner than has been attempted for many a year. For the Parmenidean monist, there are no distinctions whatsoever, and indeed distinctions are unintelligible. The book not only defends-against the tide of much recent scholarship-the attribution of such a sweeping monism to Parmenides, it also embraces this monism in its own right and expands these monistic results to many of the most crucial areas of philosophy. The topics that come in for this rationalistic, monistic, treatment include being, action, knowledge, meaning, truth, and metaphysical explanation. There is thus no differentiated being, no differentiated action, knowledge, etc. Rather all is being, just as all is action, knowledge, etc. The motive force behind this argument is a combination of a detailed survey of the failures of leading positions (both historical and contemporary) to meet a demand for the explanation of a given phenomenon, and a powerful rationalist, Bradleyan argument against the reality of relations. The result is a rationalist rejection of all distinctions and a skeptical denial of the intelligibility of ordinary, relational notions of being, action, knowledge, etc. A further significant upshot is the rejection of any distinction between philosophy itself and the study of its history. Throughout the book, attention is paid to philosophical methods systems, including especially the method, so popular today, of relying on intuitions and common sense. The historically-minded and rationalist approach throughout this book goes a long way toward demonstrating the ultimate bankruptcy of this prevalent methodology"--
