Parmenides

Parmenides#

Revised

12 Apr 2023

Parmenides of Elea#

a philosopher of constitutive forces

the origin of geometry, Husserl: Jacob Klein

reified symbols in modern mathematics

abstraction

phenomenological project, connect the manipulation of symbols

physis, ontology, structure of nature

physei onta, natural beings

Aristotle asserted Parmenides wasn’t talking about nature

standard narrative

  • Heraclitus, dualism, philosopher of tension and opposition

  • Parmenides proposes monism in response

Heraclitus, things seem dualistic, but really a monism

Heraclitus and Parmenides are usually played off of each other

  • Heraclitus uses language artfully

  • Parmenides, the ultimate monist, the logician

these are problematic assumptions, trumped up by the history of philosophy

two ways she makes her argument

  • posing questions that can’t be answered; by posing these questions, she leads the listener to make certain kinds of conclusions which she undermines later on

  • the kind of insight she’s communicating, beyond the words to the phenomenon, only a god can have that kind of experience

two paths

  • the persuasive way

  • the mortal way

aleitheia, the way of truth 2-8

the way of the pinions of mortals

mythos, story, for the purpose of persuasion

Parmenides

  • characterization of being

  • opinion

  • his impact on early greek thinking, in the form of Democritus

nothing is non existent

  • Stephen Hawking

  • Hegel: being is nothing, saying something about being presupposes something

  • foundational in some ways

  • being is an empty concept bc it applies to everything, almost exchangeable with non being

  • Hegel’s philosophy of logic: being turns over into non being: dialectical

  • Hegel, Sartre, continentalism: negation is particular

Parmenides’ nonbeing is probably Aristotle’s, from Plato

  • Aristotle: all negation is specific

  • has to negate being as a whole, therefore there can’t be negation

  • Aristotle: no, negation is always particular

Parmenides: not is, is not

  • substantive: there is no being that is not

Heidegger tries to verbalize Parmenides’ account of being and non being and turn it into a dynamic

Heraclitus

  • how different elements turn into each other, a flow

  • fragment 34, dynamism

  • the ever livingness, not to the fire being lit, but to the dynamism of fire

  • focus on something specific, see the broader context

the question of form vs matter

  • Aristotle: look at the proximate material, the next level down that is explanatory

Timaeus

  • world soul

what constitutes an organized whole

persuasion through myth/story

is vs is not

is not is not

  • there are no features which we can attribute to is not

when it comes to being, there is no such thing as an opposite; opposition doesn’t function

no concept can go higher than being and introduce this notion of opposition to being

Plato’s to agethon, there is no opposite of the good

either being is fundamnetal or concepts are fundamental

concept of opposition above, prior to being

if the framework for all that is is a concept, then it would make sense that we have this opposition

by ruling out non being, no opposite to being, rule out the possibility that concepts are more basic than being

concepts are not even equiprimordial to being

Parmenides: being is not a concept, not mediated by concepts: being is

  • my concepts can coincide with it in some way

Plato’s forms, on the level of being and the good is higher than being

no concepts apply to being, so can only say being is; everything else is doxa

logic/concepts/relations are fundamental

  • affirm or deny a thing, this is the same, this is different

  • being follows the structure of logic, there can be opposites

not discursive knowledge, intuition, unification of subject and object

i am a particular, i am in a network of relations, difference, opposition; concepts for me include these categories

Parmenides: do not apply these concepts to being

i distinguish between the trees and the wind, but the trees and the wind don’t distinguish between the trees and the wind

fragment 3 “the same is thinking and being”

20th century anglosaxon tradition

  • existential is, out of Fregean logic

  • predicative is, x is y

interpretation of Parmenides in which Parmenides employing predication being

  • no trace in Parmenides of attributes and subjects, essential things and contingent things

a predicative is introduces a difference, means x and y are different in some way and the same in another way

radical identification: there is nothing else to think other than being

  • all thinking is of being

  • it’s impossible to have something that is not being

  • but it still subjectivizes thinking, that belongs to the individual

whenever I think, I’m thinking about being

when Parmenides is talking about thinking, he’s not talking about individual thinking

when I ascend to the level of being, then thinking is being

not a genuine thought to think/say unicorn, square circle, etc.

discursive thinking

  • logical, linear, sequential, dialectical

non discursive thinking

  • intuition, not logical

  • unification of subject of thinking and object thinking

Parmenides: not asserting an identity between thinking on the one hand and being on the other hand

thinking just is being

sameness is

there is no difference between x and y, x is just y

being and sameness: Heidegger’s identity and difference

Plato: ascend upward toward first principles

argument and the direction of thinking

  • synthesis

  • analysis

Fragment 8

  • Parmenides making arguments for the essential features of being

concept of generation, genesis, coming into being, necessarily includes a concept of non being

to get necessity out of the failure to move something as an interesting rhetorical move

difference > negation > non being

Aristotle: yellow is not pink, but not essential to what pink is

Parmenides: turning difference into negation

forms of difference; difference a category bigger than any of these forms

  • otherness

  • likeness

  • negation

  • opposition

negation is the paradigm for all difference, all other forms under negation

  • sameness and identity and being go together

difference goes with non being

Heraclitus

  • differences are generative

  • differences ARE

  • differences are the sources of being

difference implies negation, nonbeing

whatever is associated with non being, then being has to have the opposite properties

  • if non being is change, coming to be passing away, then being can’t change, can’t come to be pass away

being is not actually these things; look for ways that things are not changing and then you’ll find your way back to being

otherwise there is a logical incoherence

Karl Popper’s falsification, ideas come Parmenides

Xenophanes, let these things be believed as if they were the truth

ways of opinion

  • ways of understanding natural phenomena using concepts of opposites

way of truth

  • opposites aren’t fundamental, they don’t work on the level of being, don’t posit them as the basis of things

Aristotle: Parmenides made things one (being), but in some ways two (the causes that generate things)

Parmenides may’ve caught sight of the origin of motion, even though he rejects the existence of motion on the level of being

Democritus, Leucippus

atoms “uncuttable”

  • do they have a spatial, material quality?

  • ultimate parts, too small to be grasped by the senses, many shapes

  • infinite in quantity

  • as atoms, they do not change; if they were cuttable, they would change

  • according to Parmenides, things do not change

Aritotle adduces the following arguments from Democritus

  • presume that a body is divisible, to points -> nothing

  • therefore there must be basic things with extensions, so atoms

Aristotle disagrees with this, it’s not possible to divide things, doesn’t make sense

Democritus, parts and their relation to one another

  • figure, schema

  • order, taxin (organized in relation to one another)

  • oriented, thesin

putting these together, we get a chemical description of things, a robust account

Parmenides, Heraclitus

  • body without reducing it to parts

Heraclitus: tensors, lines of tension, balance, constitutes a unity

  • focused on unity

Parmenides: wholes, not parts

  • focused on unity

Democritus: things are constituted by parts

  • negating the unity of things

  • parts don’t constitute a unity, nothing emerges from that

Democritus

  • unity has no being, parts have being

the problem of emergence

Democritus moves out of necessity (Heraclitus, Parmenides)

  • relations are contingent, accidental

προοιμιον proem

το εον What Is αληθεια true reality

Alcmaeon of Croton#

limited epistemic status of humans vs divine certainty

Empedocles of Akragas#

  • ριζωματα element, root

    • πυρ fire

    • αηρ air

    • υδωρ water

    • γη earth

Xenophanes of Colophon#

rejects divine authority

opens up the possibility of inquiry into the sources of human knowledge

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