Parmenides of Elea (515 - 460) BCE
The contributions of the Ancient Greek philosopher, Parmenides, on Western
philosophy are immeasurable. His thoughts and beliefs were highly influential
in philosophical circles and helped to shape modern day thinking about matters
such as reality and existence. In this post, we give a quick overview of
Parmenides' profound philosophy.
He is particularly noted for
his contribution to the debate about reality and existence. He argued that change
is impossible and that reality exists as a single, unchanging whole. His works
included divining how experiencing this necessary oneness is possible for human
beings in their daily life.
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Parmenides philosopher |
An Overview of Parmenidean Philosophy
"Parmenides nothing comes from nothing"
Who is Parmenides in philosophy
Parmenides influence on Plato
Parmenides’ greatest influence, from the point of view of impact on the entire subsequent history of philosophy, was on Plato and the Platonists. Plato admired Parmenides greatly; he has him worsting Socrates in a late dialogue, and he derives from him the view that the senses and what they tell us about the world of appearances the familiar world around us, which seems plural and subject to time and change deceive us as to the true nature of reality. That is a theme which has underwritten an enormous amount of what philosophy and, later, science has achieved.
Diogenes says that it was also claimed that Parmenides studied with Anaximander, and that at one point in his life he associated closely with a Pythagorean called Ameinias, of whom he was very fond, as evidenced by the fact that when the latter died he built a shrine to him ‘as to a hero’. One reason suggested for this devotion was that Ameinias had persuaded Parmenides to dedicate his life to philosophy. Some in the doxographic tradition described Parmenides as a Pythagorean, and there is no reason to think he might not have been one in his earlier days, though by the time he wrote his poem he no longer was.
Parmenides claims that ''Nothing comes from nothing'' this things is common in Greece too.
Parmenides poem on nature
The doctrine of Parmenides was set forth in a poem On Nature. He considered the senses deceptive, and condemned the multitude of sensible things as mere illusion. The only true being is "the One," which is infinite and indivisible. It is not, as in Heraclitus, a union of opposites, since there are no opposites. He apparently thought, for instance, that "cold" means only "not hot," and "dark" means only "not light." "The One" is not conceived by Parmenides as we conceive God; he seems to think of it as material and extended, for he speaks of it as a sphere. But it cannot be divided, because the whole of it is present everywhere.
What is Parmenides philosophy ?
Parmenides’ philosophy heavily emphasized the use of reason and logic in uncovering knowledge about existence. He believed that reason was the path to discovering certain truths about reality, such as the fact that all things—in particular, change and motion—were illusions and instead were part of a larger unchanging singular universal truth. Therefore, by using logic and reasoning, Parmenides argued that one could uncover what he called “being” which captured his belief in an ultimate universal truth within existence.
Parmenides metaphysics
Parmenides viewed the What Is as physical. One fragment describes it as a sphere, and Aristotle stated that Parmenides did not believe in any sort of non-physical reality. Nor does he speak of a ‘god’ or ‘gods’ in connection with reality (the goddess of the poem is a literary device merely), but appears to regard What Is as the universe itself, as everything viewed in totality as one thing a plenum or complete fullness of physical reality.
Parmenides developed a two-part system of philosophy, reasoning that the
truth of existence must be either mental or physical. He argued that our minds
are able to comprehend an “unchanging Being” within which our physical and
mental realities exists. He maintained that reality, in both its physical and
mental aspects, is limited to what can be apprehended by the intellect, and is
an unchanging being composed of single substance. This philosophy became known
as Parmenidean Dualism.
Parmenides philosophy of being
The reflection of Parmenides takes its rise from observation of the transitoriness and changeableness of things. The world, as we know it, is a world of change and mutation. All things arise and pass away. Nothing is permanent, nothing stands. One moment it is, another moment it is not. It is as true to say of anything, that it is not, as that it is. The truth of things cannot lie here, for no knowledge of that which is constantly changing is possible. Hence the thought of Parmenides becomes the effort to find the eternal amid the shifting, the abiding and everlasting amid the change and mutation of things. And there arises in this way the antithesis between Being and not-being.
The absolutely real is Being. Not-being is the unreal. Not being
is not at all. And this not-being he identifies with becoming, with the world
of shifting and changing things, the world which is known to us by the senses.
The world of sense is unreal, illusory, a mere appearance. It is not being.
Only Being truly is. As Thales designated water the one reality, as the
Pythagoreans named number, so now for Parmenides the sole reality, the first
principle of things, is Being, wholly unmixed with not-being, wholly excludent
of all becoming. The character of Being he describes, for the most part, in a
series of negatives. There is in it no change, it is absolutely unbecome and
imperishable. It has neither beginning nor end, neither arising nor passing
away.
If Being began, it must have arisen either from Being or from not-being.
But for Being to arise out of Being, that is not a beginning, and for Being to
arise out of not-being is impossible, since there is then no reason why it
should arise later rather than sooner. Being cannot come out of not-being, nor
something out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil fit.
This is the fundamental thought of Parmenides. Moreover, we cannot say of
Being that it was, that it is, that it will be. There is for it no past, no
present, and no future. It is rather eternally and timelessly present. It is
undivided and indivisible. For anything to be divided it must be divided
by something other than itself. But there is nothing other than Being; there is
no not-being. Therefore there is nothing by which Being can be divided. Hence
it is indivisible. It is unmoved and undisturbed, for motion and disturbance
are forms of becoming, and all becoming is excluded from Being. It is
absolutely self-identical. It does not arise from anything other than itself.
It does not pass into anything other than itself. It has its whole being in
itself. It does not depend upon anything else for its being and reality. It
does not pass over into otherness; it remains, steadfast, and abiding in
itself. Of positive character Being has nothing. Its sole character is simply
its being. It cannot be said that it is this or that; it cannot be said that it
has this or that quality, that it is here or there, then or now. It simply is.
Its only quality is, so to speak, “isness.”
But in Parmenides there emerges for the first time a distinction of
fundamental importance in philosophy, the distinction between Sense and
Reason. The world of falsity and
appearance, of becoming, of not-being, this is, says Parmenides, the
world which is presented to us by the senses.
True and veritable Being is known to us only by reason, by thought. The senses therefore, are, for Parmenides, the sources of all illusion and error. Truth lies only in reason.
This is exceedingly important, because this, that truth lies in reason and not in the world of sense, is the fundamental position of idealism.
The doctrine of Being, just described, occupies the first part of the poem of Parmenides. The second part is the way of false opinion.
But whether Parmenides is here simply giving an account of the
false philosophies of his day, (and in doing this there
does not seem much point,) or whether he was, with total
inconsistency, attempting, in a cosmological theory of his
own, to explain the origin of that world of appearance and
illusion, whose very being he has, in the first part of the
poem, denied—this does not seem to be clear. The theory here
propounded, at any rate, is that the sense-world is composed
of the two opposites, the hot and the cold, or light and
darkness. The more hot there is, the more life, the more
reality; the more cold, the more unreality and death.
What position, now, are we to assign to Parmenides in philosophy? How are we to characterize his system? Such writers as Hegel, Erdmann, and Schwegler, have always interpreted his philosophy in an idealistic sense. Professor Burnet, however, takes the opposite view. To quote his own words: “Parmenides is not, as some have said, the father of idealism. On the contrary, all materialism depends upon his view.” Now if we cannot say
What Were the Two Parts of Parmenides' Philosophy?
Parmenides’ philosophy was based on two parts: the Way of Truth and the Way of Opinion. The Way of Truth was his inquiry into reality, while the Way of Opinion was focused on human impressions and beliefs. According to Parmenides, his endeavor with these two parts was meant to question commonly accepted notions and redefine traditional thinking by seeking a new way of looking at the world. We need not concern ourselves with the latter. What he says about the way of truth, so far as it has survived, is, in its essential points, as follows:
"Thou canst not know what is not that is impossible nor utter it; for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be."
Parmenides theory of change and Parmenides argument
Parmenides philosophy summary
Parmenidean philosophy is a system of inquiry based on the logical concept that reality exists as one. This proposition is at the core of his philosophical thought because it served to explain the contradictions in the existing worldviews. According to Parmenides, only what can be logically thought through and consistently argued for should be accepted as true. To do this, he employed a number of methods including skepticism, critical analysis and deductive reasoning. Therefore, he argued that reality is unitary and that ultimately, all things are interconnected in some fundamental way.
Parmenides’ philosophy heavily emphasized the use of reason and logic in
uncovering knowledge about existence. He believed that reason was the path to
discovering certain truths about reality, such as the fact that all things—in
particular, change and motion—were illusions and instead were part of a larger
unchanging singular universal truth. Therefore, by using logic and reasoning,
Parmenides argued that one could uncover what he called “being” which captured
his belief in an ultimate universal truth within existence.