Mourelatos, Alexander P. D. 2012. "“The Light of Day by Night”: nukti phaos, Said of the Moon in Parmenides B14." In Presocratics and Plato. Festschrift at Delphi in Honor of Charles Kahn, edited by Patterson, Richard, Karasmanis, Vassilis and Hermann, Arnold, 25-58. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

"The earliest securely attested record of the discovery that the moon gets its light from the sun is in the second part of Parmenides’ poem, the “Doxa”: in the one-line fragments B14 and B15.(1) In an earlier study, I have used the term “heliophotism” as a succinct reference to the correct explanation of lunar light;(2) and for convenience I shall use the neologism again here. Daniel W. Graham has made a strong case in favor of the claim that the two fragments present heliophotism as a discovery made by Parmenides himself.(3)

(...)

My concern in this study is not with the issue of attribution of the discovery but quite narrowly with the correct reading of the text in B14. Nonetheless, as I hope to establish, once the correct reading is determined, the deflationary position will be decisively undercut. Moreover, the correct reading will give us a statement that is semantically more nuanced, superior in astronomical accuracy, and rhetorically and poetically more expressive.

B15 will come up for supporting quotation later in the present essay. But the important amplification it provides for B14 needs to be kept in mind throughout." (pp. 25-27)

(1) See Daniel W. Graham, “La Lumière de la lune dans la pensée grecque archaïque,” in Qu’est-ce que la Philosophie Présocratique, eds. André Laks and Claire Louguet (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2002), 351–380, esp. 363–378; see also Graham’s Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 179–182.

(2) “Xenophanes’ Contribution to the Explanation of the Moon’s Light,” Philosophia (Athens), 32 (2002), 47–59. In that publication, as well as in The Route of Parmenides (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970. 2nd ed. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2008), 224–225, I had uncritically accepted the emendation nuktiphaes, which is what I dispute in the present essay.

(3) See references to Graham in note 1 above.
———. 2013. "Commentary on Graham." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy no. 28:64-73.

Commentary on Daniel W. Graham, Two Stages of Early Greek Cosmology.

Abstract: "The comment endorses and reinforces Daniel W. Graham’s highly original and attractive proposal that early Greek cosmology develops in two stages. In what Graham calls the “meteorological stage” of the sixth century BCE, celestial objects are explained as formations either from fire or from watery exhalations in a roughly planar model of the cosmos. In the “lithic stage” of the mid- and late fifth century introduced by Anaxagoras, the model is that of a central earth around which solid stone-like celestial objects revolve held aloft in a vortex.

The change to the lithic stage comes about, according to Graham, as the implications of Parmenides’ epoch-making discovery that the moon is illuminated by the sun (heliophotism) come to be understood and are then theoretically exploited. The present comment also proposes that the false explanations of lunar phases and lunar and solar eclipses in the meteorological-stage cosmologies, respectively, of Xenophanes and of Heraclitus may have played a helpful heuristic role in the theoretical breakthrough to heliophotism."
———. 2013. "Sounds, Images, Mysticism, and Logic in Parmenides." In Eleatica Vol. 3: Parmenide. Suoni, immagini, esperienza, edited by Rossetti, Livio and Pulpito, Massimo, 159-177. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"These notes are only a first and short reaction to the rich and dense text by Laura Gemelli Marciano (hereafter abbreviated ‘LGM’), which collects her lectures in Velia towards the end of 2007." (p. 149)

(...)

"In the following comments, I take for granted that our primary object is the fragmented text that tradition has kept for us under the name of Parmenides. LGM’s approach is full of interesting observations, the critical worth of which undoubtedly reaches beyond her own preferred framework. It’s outstanding the care and detail with which she deals with fragment Bl, which she seems to identify with the Proem. Since there is no reference to the internal distinction of three parts(3), one can wonder where exactly the so-called ‘Way of truth’ actually begins. If the Proem is B1 as such and the Way of Truth is the same as B8 1-50, the series B2-B7 (plagued with vexed problems of its own) doesn’t seem to belong to one on the other. On the other hand, paying attention to the three voices that the poet uses, one might want to limit the Proem stricto sensu to the first twenty-three verses, and locate the beginning of the Way of truth already in B1, 24. Verses 24-27 seem designed to look backwards, whereas verses 28-32 are programmatic and look forward. The nine verses together seem to constitute a balanced and tight exordium of the whole discourse of the goddess - so there would be, in a sense, two proems at play in B1.

About LGM’s rich approach to the Proem, I keep only a few of the themes and motifs that seem the most important to me." (p. 150)

(3) This is, of course, a construct that comes from commentators and interpreters that has become a widespread current convention, but it’s well grounded in the text itself.
———. 2014. "The conception of eoikōs/eikōs as epistemic standard in Xenophanes, Parmenides, and in Plato’s « Timaeus »." Ancient Philosophy no. 34:169-191.

"There are books on the pre-Socratics, and there are books on Plato.[*] Except in general histories of ancient Greek philosophy, the border that marks off Plato's philosophy of the cosmos and of nature from the thematic domain of corresponding accounts offered by the pre-Socratics is not crossed very often. Among exceptions to this pattern, one that is both well known and distinguished is Gregory Vlastos' 1975 book, Plato's Universe. And now Jenny Bryan's Likeness and likelihood in the Presocratics and in Plato is a welcome addition to the genre, and indeed a specially worthy complement to Plato's Universe inasmuch as Bryan deals with topics that had not been central in Vlastos' account.

The book's project is announced by Bryan ('JB' henceforth) as one of developing 'an intertextual reading of [Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Plato's] use of eoikōs/eikōs. Her narrative of intertextuality is engaging, and it is elegantly told in well-organized sections and sub-sections. Ir comprises careful and sensitive analyses of the target Greek texts; and ii reflects wide and searching reading of the relevant studies in the secondary literature. She shows herself well-trained and adroit in the deployment of the twin methods her topic calls for: the conscientious philologist's scrupulous examination of words in their context and in their history; 1he analytic philosopher's probing of concepts and the dialectical canvassing of issues and of candidates for solutions. The entire narrative involves four stages. which I summarize in what immediately follows." (p. 169 notes omitted)

[* Discussion of Jenny Bryan, Likeness and Likelihood in the Presocratics and Plato]
———. 2016. "Two Neo-Analytic Approaches to Parmenides’ Metaphysical-Cosmological Poem." Rhizomata no. 6:257-268.

Critical Discussion of John Palmer, Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); and Michael V. Wedin, Parmenides’ Grand Deduction: A Logical Reconstruction of the Way of Truth (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

"The obvious limitation of Wedin’s book comes from its unswerving concentration on the “Truth” part. There are occasional glances to the other major part, the Doxa, “Way of Opinion”, but only on secondary issues. Wedin adheres to Owen’s position, which is that Parmenides appends the Doxa only exempli gratia, so as to identify and memorialize the sort of Ionian project of natural philosophy Parmenides’ austere ontology aims to abandon or to discredit.

Over the preceding two decades, however, a consensus has been emerging among students of Parmenides that the Doxa contains important scientific discoveries, especially in astronomy. Since at least some of these discoveries are likely to have been made by Parmenides himself, it is hard to imagine that Parmenides would have cited them merely as instances of misguided belief. Accordingly, the issue of the relation between “Truth” and Doxa is one that is currently undergoing thorough re-examination. Unfortunately, Wedin does not engage at all with these more recent developments in Parmenidean scholarship." (p. 260)

(...)

"I have raised some fundamental difficulties and objections to the accounts offered in the two books. And yet there is no denying that these are works of high quality and of singular interest – arguably among the best that have been produced on any of the Eleatics in recent decades. The rigor and logical precision in Wedin’s formal reconstruction of “Truth” is totally admirable. But equally admirable is Palmer’s close-grain analysis of scores of philosophical and philological issues, and also his masterly command of the daunting volume of Parmenidean and pre-Socratic scholarship, with all the twists and turns in disputes and ephemeral resolutions over more than a century. My semantic objections notwithstanding, Palmer’s “modal reading” offers an interpretative option that is imaginative and even enthralling." (p. 268, a note omitted)
———. 2020. "Elements of Natural Science in the Second Part of Parmenides’ Poem: Comment on Livio Rossetti’s Lezione I at Eleatica 2017." In Eleatica Vol. 8: Verso la filosofia: Nuove prospettive su Parmenide, Zenone e Melisso, edited by Galgano, Nicola S., Giombini, Stefania and Marcacci, Flavia, 244-250. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlsg.

"In sum, I find that – except for the elements of astronomy – there is some hyperbole in Rossetti’s estimate of Parmenides as a “tenace e creativo investigatore della natura” (p. 56). Nonetheless, I judge Rossetti has done a major service to Parmenidean scholarship by strongly urging us to consider that in Parmenides we have “un intellettuale molto versatile, cui si devono insegnamenti diversissimi” (p. 63). The communis opinio – that in the second part of the poem we have nothing more than an exempli gratia display of wrong views of “mortals” – cannot be right.

How, then, should we think of the relation between the ontological doctrine of the first part of the poem and the natural philosophy of the second? Here too I agree with the critique Rossetti offers in sections 2.4 and 2.5 of Lezione I of recent attempts to “bridge” the difference between the two parts. And yet his own solution, viz., of “[m]era giustapposizione”, leaves us frustratingly hoping and looking for something more. Dare we hope that (as in the case of Epicurus) archaeology might some day bring to light more texts from Parmenides’ poem? I, for one, derive more comfort from Rossetti‘s suggestion, at the end of Lezione I, that “le virtualità sistemiche di questo superbo insegnamento sull’essere non si sono manifestate e non sono arrivate a prendere forma” (p. 90). Yes, a lot of science, and notably of good empirical science (witness the case of observational astronomy), can be pursued and indeed achieved within the ambit of empirical observation. But the ontology of the first part points prophetically to a future predominantly theoretical account of reality, one that will be free of the comforting anthropocentric familiarities provided by the (mainly) visual approach to things (“Light” and “Night”)." (pp. 249-250)
———. 2022. "Parmenides of Elea and Xenophanes of Colophon: the conceptually deeper connections." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 34:1-23.

Abstract: "According to the influential Plato-Aristotle account, Parmenides advocates holistic monism (‘all things are one’), and Xenophanes anticipated him by advocating some version of monotheism. Over the last half-century or so, Parmenides studies have disputed this vulgate by arguing that Parmenides’ focus is on the nature of ‘what is’ (to eon), rather than on ‘the One’. Correspondingly, there has developed a tendency to minimize the philosophical importance of Xenophanes, by viewing him primarily as a reformer of Greek religious beliefs and as social critic. I argue that a close study of Xenophanes shows that he had developed a coherent naturalist or physicalist world-view. And this also allows us to gain deeper insights into Parmenides, by viewing the latter as generalizing Xenophanes’ critique of peculiarly ‘anthropist’ (or anthropomorphist) bias in our approach to the universe."
Mourelatos, Alexander P. D., and Pulpito, Massimo. 2019. "Parmenides and the Principle of Sufficient Reason." In ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι. Ways to Think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero, edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Spangenberg, Pilar, 121-141. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

Abstract: "The subtle and well-structured argument from B8.6 to B8.10 of Parmenides’ "Trut" culminates at B8.9-10 in what has long been recognized as at least Implied recourse to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR): “Why genesis at a later rather than an earlier time?”. But the widely used translation for B8.9 of chreos as “need” and of ôrsen an as “might have driven” entail oddities that have been overlooked. The authors argue that chreos in Parmenides is essentially a nominalization of the expressions chrē and chreōn esti, which, running through Parmenides’ poem, convey the sense of ‘"right and reasonable necessity” (not necessity simpliciter). It emerges that Parmenides’ awareness of PSR is not just intuitive but rather thematized and reflective. And that is why, after PSR is first invoked with reference to alternative points in time at B8.9-10, it is redeployed at B8.44-45 (in the “sphere” passage) with reference to alternatives of extension in space."
Nehamas, Alexander. 1981. "On Parmenides Three Ways of Inquiry." Deucalion no. 33/34:97-111.

Reprinted in: A. Nehamas, Virtues of Authenticity. Essays on Plato and Socrates, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999, pp. 125-137.

"We often take Parmenides to distinguish three "ways of inquiry" in his poem: the way of being, that of not being, and the way which combines being and not being; and to hold that of these only the first is to be followed.

This approach, originating in Reinhardt, (1) is now canonical (2). G.E.L. Owen, for example, writes that Parmenides aims to rule out two wrong roads which, together with the remaining right road, make up an exhaustive set of possible answers to the question estin e ouk estin;... The right path is an unqualified yes. The first wrong path is an equally unqualified no... There is no suggestion that anyone ever takes the first wrong road... It is the second, the blind alley described in... B6, that is followed by 'mortals'. . To take this well-trodden path... is to say, very naturally, that the question estin e ouk estin; can be answered either yes or no (3).

The text of B6. 1-5 (...) can be translated as:

What is for saying and for thinking must be; (4) for it can be,

while nothing cannot; I ask you to consider this.

For, first, I hold you back from this way of inquiry,

and then again from that, on which mortals, knowing nothing, wander aimlessly, two headed...

Simplicius' manuscript, where this fragment is found, contains a lacuna after dizesis in line 3. Diels supplied eirgo and took lines 4ff. to follow directly afterwards. (5) Thus, the goddess scents to proscribe two ways of inquiring into being. This text, however, exhibits certain peculiarities which suggest that this view awes serious difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to present these peculiarities, discuss the difficulties, and to suggest, if cautiously, an alternative to the text and to the view it engenders." (pp. 97-98)

(1) Karl Reinhardt, Parmenides and die Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie, (reps. Frankfurt A.M., 1959) pp. 18-32.

(2) David J. Furley, "Notes on Parmenides", in E.M. Lee et al., Exegesis and Argument: Studies in. Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos (Assen, 1973), pp. 1 - 15; W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. II (Cambridge, 1965); G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1957); A.P.D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides (New Haven, 1970); G.E.L. Owen, "Eleatic Oiteslions", Classical Quarterly, N.S. vol. 10 (1960), pp. 85 - 102; Michael C. Stokes, One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., I 971.

(3) Owen, pp. 90-91.

(4) For this construction, see Furley, p. 11.

(5) See Diels' comment in his apparatus to the Prussian Academy edition of Simplicius' commentary on Aristotle's Physics (Berlin, 1882), p. 117.
———. 2002. "Parmenidean Being / Heraclitean Fire." In Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos, edited by Caston, Victor and Graham, Daniel W., 45-64. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"The facts are these.

Parmenides and Heraclitus lived at about the same time, at opposite ends of the Greek- speaking world. Parmenides constructed a rigorously abstract logical argument in vivid verse. Heraclitus composed a series of striking paradoxes in obscure prose. They are both difficult to understand. They are both arrogantly contemptuous of their predecessors as well as their contemporaries, to whom they usually refer as 'the many' or 'mortals.(1) They have been taken to stand at opposite philosophical extremes: Parmenides is the philosopher of unchanging stability; Heraclitus, the philosopher of unceasing change.

The rest is speculation.

That is not a criticism. Most of the speculation is not idle: it is interpretation, based partly on the texts and partly on a general sense of the development of early Greek philosophy. But interpretation it is and, as such, each of its aspects affects and is, in turn, affected by every other. One of these is the idea that, though close contemporaries, Heraclitus and Parmenides wrote successively and that whoever wrote later criticizes the other: either Heraclitus denounces Parmenides (2) or Parmenides attacks Heraclitus.(3) Testimony to the continuing influence of the ancient diadoche-writers, that assumption bears directly on the interpretation of both philosophers. In particular, if, as most people today believe, Parmenides is answering Heraclitus, we need to find in Heraclitus views that Parmenides, in turn, explicitly rejects in his poem.(4)

I want to question this assumption - not necessarily to reject it, but to show exactly how it affects our interpretation of both Parmenides and Heraclitus.(5) I would also like to outline, in barest form, an alternative understanding of their thought which takes them to write in parallel and not in reaction to one another. (6)" (pp. 45-46)

(1) Heraclitus also names some of the targets of his criticisms (for example, B 40, B 42, B 56, B 57, B 81, B 106, B 129).

(2) That is the view of Reinhardt, [Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie] 1916.

(3) A notable exception is Stokes [One and Many in the Presocratic Philosophy], 1971, pp. 109-23, who believes that each can be understood quite independently of the other. For full references to the debate, see Daniel W. Graham, 'Heraclitus and Parmenides' (in this volume, pp. 27-44). Graham offers a strong defense of Patin's thesis to the effect that Parmenides is directly concerned with criticizing Heraclitus in his poem.

(4) More cautiously, we need to assume that Heraclitus must at least have appeared to have held views which Parmenides rejects in his poem.

(5) It is an assumption that is important to two of the best recent studies of Parmenides and Heraclitus: Curd [The Legacy of Parmenides], 1998 and Graham [Heraclitus' Critcism of Ionian Philosophy], 1997, as well as to the latter's 'Heraclitus and Parmenides.' Both, not incidentally, are as deeply indebted to A. P. D. Mourelatos as I am in my own inadequate celebration of his work, which this essay constitutes.

6 My view of the relationship between Parmenides and Heraclitus is similar to that of Stokes 1971, though the implication I draw from it for my interpretation of their views differ from his in many ways.
Newell, John F. 2022. "Finding Ithaca, and sense in Parmenides B1.3 : the Homeric meaning of εἰδώς " Classical Quarterly no. 72:53-68.

Abstract: "A close reading of the contexts of several Homeric passages reveals that Homer often uses εἰδώς with ironic force. This realization sheds light on several passages discussed herein, including: 1) Homer’s description of the location of Ithaca, which is shown to be Odysseus’ strategic lie that directs the Phaeacians to the local stronghold (nearby Dulichium), and 2) the manuscript reading of Parmenides B1.3, which is shown to harbour no internal conflict even if its εἰδότα φῶτα (‘one who knows’) is in a state of confusion (ἄτῃ), because εἰδότα can signal incomplete or confused knowledge, or even a lack of it. Other literary clues in Parmenides B1 are shown to support this reading."
Northrup, Mark D. 1980. "Hesiodic personifications in Parmenides A 37." Transactions of the American Philological Association no. 110:223-232.

"At De Natura Deorum 1.11.28 (= DK 28 A 37), Cicero's speaker Velleius first describes that deity who presides over, then identifies several other divine inhabitants of, Parmenides' World of Seeming"

(...)

"Developing an idea of Karl Reinhardt, Karl Deichgraber took these words as evidence that Parmenides populated his world of doxa with personified abstracts arranged in antithetical pairs. (2)"

(....)

"In his book on Parmenides, Leonardo Tarán rejected this theory of contrary potencies, asserting that ultimately there was "no evidence" to support it.(7) That such evidence does, however, exist (although considered by neither Reinhardt nor Deichgraber) I hope to show in what follows. I hope to do so, moreover, in a way which will shed a measure of new light not only on Parmenides' poem but also on an important aspect of the Theogony, viz., Hesiod's use of personification. (pp. 223-225)

(7) L. Tarán, Parmenides (Princeton 1965) 250. The Reinhardt-Deichgraber position is supported by H. Schwabl, "Zur Theogonie bei Parmenides und Empedokles," WS [Wiener Studien] 70 (1957) 278-289.
O'Brien, Denis. 1993. "Non-Being in Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus: a Prospectus for the Study of Ancient Greek Philosophy." In Modern Thinkers and Ancient Thinkers, edited by Sharples, Robert W., 1-26. London: University College London Press.

English version of "Le non-être dans la philosophie grecque: Parménide, Platon, Plotin", in Pierre Aubenque (ed.), Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, Napoli: Bibliopolis 1991, pp. 317-364.

"Here I must omit detailed argument (which I have published elsewhere) (11) and limit myself to a simple outline of the structure of the whole.

Esti does not mean "being is" (Cornford's emendation) at the beginning of the poem. But the esti of the first path does acquire a subject in the course of the argument. For the goddess does later claim as a development of the first way the proposition eon emmenai (fr. 6.1): "it is necessary to say this, and to think this, namely that being is", or ". . . that there is being".(12)

That is not the case however for the path which is opposed to the path of persuasion, a path "from which we can learn nothing" (fr. 2.5-8). This path is expressed by the negation of esti (fr. 2.5): " 'is not' and it is necessary not to be". This path has no subject and never acquires one, for the substantivized participle, "what is not" (to me eon, fr. 2.7-8), proves to be as unknowable as the simple indicative statement: "is not".

Hence a crucial difference between the first and second way.

"Being" or "what is" (eon) can be added as a development of the first way (esti) whereas "is not" (auk esti) and "what is not" (to me eon) are never joined to form a proposition; both expressions are equally impossible and equally unknowable statements of the second way.

It is true that, in the course of the poem, the goddess does produce a composite statement where the negative participle is added to the positive verb (einai me eonta, fr. 7.1): "things that are not, are". That composite statement does not represent either of the two paths introduced at the beginning of the argument. It is, instead, an impossible combination of the two ways, a combination which is not only false, but contradictory (cf. fr. 6).

The false and contradictory combination of "is" and "is not" (fr. 7.1: "things that are not, are") represents the "opinions of mortals in which there is no true conviction" (fr. 1.30; cf. fr. 8.38-41).

Thus the whole poem turns upon the opposition between "is" and "is not" (fr. 2), on the development of "is" into "being is" (fr. 6.1-2) and the recognition which this will bring of a being that is "unborn" and "imperishable" (fr. 8.1-21), and finally on the impossible conjunction of "is" and "is not" which underlies the whole of our belief in a world where things are not unborn and are not imperishable, the world where "things that are not, are" (fr. 7.1).

An impossibly rapid survey of an unconventional interpretation of Parmenides, but one which will allow me to turn to the criticism made of Parmenides by Plato in the Sophist."

(11) Mainly in my contributions to the two volumes of the work quoted in n. 2 above. [Études sur Parménide, Paris: Vrin 1987]

(12) Fr. 6.1: khre to legein to noein t' eon emmenai. This text is not the same as that printed in Diels-Kranz (d. n. 1 above). For the repetition of the article (to), see Etudes sur Parménide, vol. I, p. 24.
———. 2000. "Parmenides and Plato on What is Not." In The Winged Chariot: Collected Essays on Plato and Platonism in Honour of L.M. de Rijk, edited by Kardaun, Maria and Spruyt, Joke, 19-104. Leiden: Brill.

"Plato, in writing the Sophist, "did not consider it beneath his dignity to return to the great Parmenides" . Any reader of Plato's dialogue must therefore do likewise. But whose Parmenides should we return to? If modern interpretations of the Sophist are legion, so too are the reconstructions that are currently on offer, from modern scholars, of the fragments of Parmenides.

Which one should we take on board?

Two names in particular stand out. Miss G. E. M. Anscombe was a close associate of Wittgenstein, and is generally acknowledged as one of the leading philosophers of her day. Professor W. K. C. Guthrie was a pupil of F. M. Cornford, and is the only historian of ancient philosophy who has had both the knowledge and the ambition to undertake a history of Greek philosophy that would rival the great work of Eduard Zeller.(2) Both scholars therefore have impeccable credentials. Both have written on Parmenides.(3)

One or other or both, one might surely think, will have been able to recover from the extant fragments ideas that will make sense of the criticisms of Parmenides that loom so large in Plato's Sophist." (p. 19)

(2) See Guthrie (1962-1981). Sadly, Guthrie did not live to complete his majestic enterprise; the last volume takes us only as far as Aristotle. Cf. Zeller (1844) and (1919-1920). Gomperz (1896-1909) is too chatty to be a serious rival.

(3) Guthrie (1965) 1-80. Anscombe (1969), reprinted in Anscombe (1981) 3-8. Cf O'Brien (1987) 206 n. 25. Miss Anscombe goes so far as to entitle the first volume of her Collected papers (1981) From Parmenides to Wittgenstein. Obviously therefore she does not consider her contribution on Parmenides to be a mere πáρπεργον."

Works cited

Anscombe, G. EM. (1969) 'Parmenides, Mystery and Contradiction', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society n.s. 69 (1968-9): 125-132.

-- (1981) The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, vol. I, From Parmenides to Wittgenstein (Minneapolis) 3-8.

Gomperz, T. (1896-1909) Griechische Denker, Eine Geschichte der Antiken Philosophie, 3 vols (Leipzig).

Guthrie, W. K. C. (1962-1981) A History of Greek Philosophy, 6 vols (Cambridge).

--- (1965) A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. ii, The Presocratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus (Cambridge).

O'Brien, D. (1987) Études sur Parménide, sous la direction de Pierre Aubenque, tome I, Le Poeme de Parménide, Texte, Traduction, Essai Critique "en collaboration avec Jean Frère pour la traduction française" (Paris).

Zeller, E. (1844) Die Philosophie der Griechen, Eine Untersuchung iiber Charackter, Gang und Hauptmomente ihrer Entwicklung. (Leipzig).

-- ( 1919-1920) Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, ed. W. Nestle, 3 Teile, 6 Abteilungen (Leipzig).
———. 2013. "Does Plato refute Parmenides?" In Plato’s Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 117-155. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"I have a couple of times ventured to suggest that in the Sophist Plato does not refute Parmenides.(2) The reaction has been, to say the least, hostile.(3) Hostile, with more than a touch of disapproval. You might have thought I had suggested that the Queen of England was a man.

The suggestion was not only false, but foolish. A mere eye-catcher. Absurd, and unseemly." (p. 117)

(...)

"Both Empedocles and Parmenides are understandably chary, though for different reasons, of the ‘names' commonly applied to the phenomena of the visible world by those who know no better. Names commonly in use do not at all match what Empedocles believes to be the true explanation of such phenomena, the explanation inspired by his ‘white-armed Muse' (cf. fr. 3.3). Still less do they match the message of Parmenides' goddess, dwelling beyond the Gates of Night and Day (fr. 1.11) and claiming to disprove the very possibility of anything whatever coming-into-being or passing-away (fr. 8.26 –28). All the many things that we mortals think to see, ‘coming into being and passing away, being and not being, changing place and altering their bright colour', so Parmenides would have us believe, are ‘no more than a name' (cf. fr. 8.38 –41)." (p. 155)

(2) O’Brien (Le Non-Être, Deux études sur le ‘Sophiste' de Platon, Sankt Augustin 1995) 87 – 88, (‘Parmenides and Plato on What is Not', in M. Kardaun and J.Spruyt (eds.), The Winged Chariot, Collected essays on Plato and Platonism in honour of L. M. de Rijk, Leiden, Boston, Köln 2000) 94-98.

(3)Monique Dixsaut, Platon et la question de la pensée, Paris (2000) 269 n. 2. Notomi, N., "Plato against Parmenides: Sophist 236D-242B", in S. Stern-Gillet and K. Corrigan (eds.), Reading Ancient Texts, vol. I: Presocratics and Plato, Essays in honour of Denis O’Brien, Leiden-Boston (2007) 167-187.
Osborne, Catherine. 1998. "Response by Catherine Osborne: Was verse the default form for Presocratic Philosophy?" In Form and Content in Didactic Poetry, edited by Atherton, Catherine, 23-35. Bari: Levante.

Response to M. R. Wright, Philosopher poets: Parmenides and Empedocles.

"In tltis short rejoinder to Professor Wright's paper I shall attempt to do two things: first, to raise two fundamental questions not directly discussed by Wright, but which nevertheless seem to me to bear on our present topic, that is the 'didactic poetry', so called, of Parmenides and Empedocles; and second, briefly to explore a theme of my own relating to the structure and content of the poems. In the course of developing these themes of my own, I shall also respond to some of the claims in Wright's paper where they bear on the same issue.

1. Poetry or prose: a real choice?

My two fundamental questions are these:

1.1. Is the notion of 'didactic poetry' appropriate or helpful in relation to this period and these tltinkers?

1.2. Was poetry the default form for the Presocratics and if so, why does not every philosopher write in verse?" (p. 23)

(...)

"In conclusion, then, I would suggest that in both Parmenides and Empedocles we find that the structure of the poem itself expresses the message conveyed in it. Parmenides' journey in verse matches the journey he describes, which in turn expresses the logical structure of the argument it represents, and reveals that the contrast between the mortal confusion and the true logic is not that one is straight and the other crooked, but that one is internally consistent and circular and the other inconsistent and wayward. Empedocles' formulaic and cyclical poetry, in which words and lines are recycled for new uses and new tellings of old tales, accurately recaptures his formulaic world in which events recur in cycles as time recycles forces and elements to create new worlds and retell old stories. Though we may not ask why they wrote in verse we may ask what form the verse takes in each case. What I hope to have shown is that in both cases form and content are so closely matched that the medium is itself indispensable to the message, and indeed, once we take that relation seriously, we can start to discover just what the message is." (pp. 34-35)
———. 2006. "Was there an Eleatic revolution in philosophy?" In Rethinking Revolutions Through Ancient Greece, edited by Goldhill, Simon and Osborne, Robin, 218-245. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"My concern in this chapter is with Parmenides' effect on the immediately subsequent generation of philosophers, the fifth-century Presocratics. Of course, there is no question that Parmenides was important for Plato. He figures prominently in the late dialogues, and arguably instigated, through Plato, a metaphysical trend that was indeed revolutionary, at least from the perspective of modern philosophy. But such delayed responses are not my focus here.(5) I am simply asking whether we should detect a radical change in the way cosmology was pursued and defended immediately after Parmenides' poem hit the public domain." (p. 219)

"On the orthodox story, Parmenides was targeting the group of sixth-century predecessors whom we classify as the first philosophers, particularly the Ionian cosmologists, Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes. Each of these, so we are told, tried to derive a plural world - the world as we know it now - from a single stuff (water for Thales, air for Anaximenes and so on). They thought that the many could be explained in terms of the one from which it was ultimately derived. By contrast, so the story goes, Parmenides was succeeded by a generation of pluralists, in particular Empedocles, Anaxagoras and the atomists (Leucippus and Democritus). Their choice of plural principles was motivated, so we are told, by their recognition of the force of Parmenides' criticisms.

Scholars differ as to whether these so-called pluralists were attacking Parmenides' conclusions or endorsing and incorporating them. Some read them as rejecting the Eleat.ic doctrines, both monism and the prohibition on change: hence the pluralists aimed to refute Parmenides or at least to reduce the significance of his claims, Others read the pluralists as warm towards Parmenides' outlook. On this view the 'Eleatic pluralists'6 adjusted their cosmology to meet Parmenidean criteria; they appealed to fundamental principles, atoms for instance, that were indeed indivisible and unchanging, as Parmenides' arguments had demanded.

Nothing hangs on which variant we prefer, The pattern is the same: anti-cosmological motives for Parmenicles' intervention, and a subsequent attempt to rehabilitate cosmology in dialogue with Parmenidean principles.

\Xlhether the later thinkers were pro- or anti- Parmenides is insignificant to the structure of this reconstruction." (p. 220)

(5) For a full treatment of Plato's reading of Parmenides see Palmer (1999).

(6) This title (originally applied to the atomists by Wardy (1988)) is adopted by Graham (1999) 176, to apply to Empedocles and Anaxagoras. Wardy challenges the reader, at page 129, to choose between ditching the traditional account of a post-Parmenidean response by the atomists, or improving on the traditional version of how atomism is a response. My chapter (unlike his) favours the former solution, though my target is not actually atomism (for which there is good evidence of a post-Parmenidean motivation).
Owen, Gwilym Ellis Lane. 1960. "Eleatic Questions." Classical Quarterly:84-102.

Reprinted with additions in: D. J. Furley and R. E. Allen, Studies in Presocratic Philosophy. Vol. II: The Eleatics and Pluralists, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975 pp. 48-81 and in: G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science, and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986 pp. 3-26.

"The following suggestions for the interpretation of Parmenides and Melissus can be grouped for convenience about one problem. This is the problem whether, as Aristotle thought and as most commentators still assume, Parmenides wrote his poem in the broad tradition of Ionian and Italian cosmology. The details of Aristotle's interpretation have been challenged over and again, but those who agree with his general assumptions take comfort from some or all of the following major arguments. First, the cosmogony which formed the last part of Parmenides' poem is expressly claimed by the goddess who expounds it to have some measure of truth or reliability in its own right, and indeed the very greatest measure possible for such an attempt. Second, the earlier arguments of the goddess prepare the ground for such a cosmogony in two ways. For in the first place these arguments themselves start from assumptions derived from earlier cosmologists, and are concerned merely to work out the implications of this traditional material. And, in the second place, they end by establishing the existence of a spherical universe: the framework of the physical world can be secured by logic even if the subsequent introduction of sensible qualities or 'powers' into this world marks some decline in logical rigour.

These views seem to me demonstrably false. As long as they are allowed to stand they obscure the structure and the originality of Parmenides' argument." (p. 84)
———. 1966. "Plato and Parmenides on the Timeless Present." The Monist:317-340.

Reprinted in: Alexander Mourelatos (ed.), The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays, Garden City: Anchor Press, 1974 and in: G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science, and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986 pp. 27-44.

Some statements couched in the present tense have no reference to time. They are, if you like, grammatically tensed but logically tenseless. Mathematical statements such as "twice two is four" or "there is a prime number between 125 and 128" are of this sort. So is the statement I have just made. To ask in good faith whether there is still the prime number there used to be between 125 and 128 would be to show that one did not understand the use of such statements, and so would any attempt to answer the question. It is tempting to take another step and talk of such timeless statements as statements about timeless entities. If the number 4 neither continues nor ceases to be twice two, this is, surely, because the number 4 has no history of any kind, not even the being a day older today than yesterday. Other timeless statements might shake our confidence in this inference: "Clocks are devices for measuring time" is a timeless statement, but it is not about a class of timeless clocks. But, given a preoccupation with a favored set of examples and a stage of thought at which men did not distinguish the properties of statements from the properties of the things they are about, we can expect timeless entities to appear as the natural proxies of timeless statements.

Now the fact that a grammatical tense can be detached from its tense-affiliations and put to a tenseless use is something that must be discovered at some time by somebody or some set of people. So far as I know it was discovered by the Greeks. It is commonly credited to one Greek in particular, a pioneer from whose arguments most subsequent Greek troubles over time were to flow: Parmenides the Eleatic. Sometimes it is suggested that Parmenides took a hint from his alleged mentors, the Pythagoreans. "We may assume" says one writer "that he knew of the timeless present in mathematical statements." 2 But what Aristotle tells us of Pythagorean mathematics is enough to undermine this assumption. According to him (esp. Metaph. 1091a12-22) they confused the construction of the series of natural numbers with the generation of the world. So Parmenides is our earliest candidate. His claim too has been disputed, and I shall try to clear up this dispute as I go, but not before I have done what I can to sharpen it and widen the issues at stake." (pp. 317-318)
Owens, Joseph. 1974. "The Physical World of Parmenides." In Essays in Honour of Anton Charles Pegis, edited by O'Donnell, Reginald J., 378-395. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.
———. 1975. "Naming in Parmenides." In Kephalaion. Studies in Greek Philosophy and Its Continuation Offered to Professor C. J. de Vogel, edited by Mansfeld, Jaap and Rijk, Lambertus Marie de, 16-25. Assen: Van Gorcum.

"Naming for Parmenides, the texts show, is basically the conventional process by which a word or expression is established to designate a thing. Metaphorically it is extended, in one reading of Fr. B 8,38, to cover the conventional establishing of perceptible things as expressions or names for the unique immobile being. It may be either right or wrong. It is right when, either by words or by perceptible constructs it designates being, the only thing positively there to be named. Accordingly the thinking out and writing and reciting of Parmenides' poem is perfectly legitimate.

Naming, however, has always to be based on a positive characteristic or distinguishing mark. It is therefore illegitimate when conventionally applied to not-being. Not-being, having no characteristics at all, cannot be known and cannot be expressed in speech. But mortals do in fact mistakenly name not-being, on the basis of the characteristics of night, darkness, ignorance, earth, thickness, heaviness. They obtain these distinguishing marks by dividing bodily appearance -- for the corporeal is the only kind of being recognized by Parmenides -- into these characteristics and their opposites. This whole process is wrong, for there is no not-being to be named, and the characteristics assigned to it, though appearing positive, are in reality negations. But with the second basic form so named and its characteristics so established, and with equal force given to both, the differentiations and changes in the perceptible universe may be explained. To understand them and treat of them as in this way human conventions, is truth. To believe that the differentiations and changes are the true situation, is the doxa.

Naming is accordingly for Parmenides a conventional process throughout which being remains sole and sovereign both in the perceptible world and in human thought and speech. Every sensible thing and every human thought and word is being. To understand that, is to be on the road of the goddess while thinking and speaking. Recognized clearly as naming the one immobile being, human thought and language and living are thoroughly legitimate. Parmenides may legitimately continue in them, even though according to doxa they and all perceptible things are differentiated and are engendered and perish, and "for they inert have established a name distinctive of each" (Fr. B 19,3). The important philosophical consequence is that for Parmenides perceptible things can retain all the reality and beauty they have in ordinary estimation, and still function as names for the one whole and unchangeable being." (pp. 23-24)
———. 1979. "Knowledge and 'Katabasis' in Parmenides." The Monist no. 62:15-29.

"The relation between imagery and philosophy in the poem of Parmenides has occasioned much discussion in recent years. One item of particular import has been the direction taken by the journey that was so inspiringly pictured in the opening section. Is the travel upwards? Or is it downwards? Or is it rather cross-country, either aloft, or on the earth's surface, or in the depths of the nether world? Further, if there is cross travel on any of these three levels, is the direction from east to west, or from west to east?

Readily acceptable is the stand that the text itself does not explicitly specify either upward or downward direction.(1)" (p. 15)

"Yet one guiding principle seems obligatory from the start. If correct historical and literary exegesis of the proem should run counter to any particular interpretation of the philosophy, the interpretation can hardly be considered acceptable. Parmenides' introduction, if even ordinary literary skill is accredited to him, has to be in harmony with what it is meant to introduce.

The effects of a katabasis norm in assessing Parmenides' conception of human knowledge could be especially devastating. A study of the problem in the global context of the various directions found in the proem by commentators is accordingly indicated. The reasons for the ascent, the descent, and the surface journey need to be probed from the viewpoints of their weight and their reciprocal exclusiveness. In a panoramic survey of this kind the salient thrusts that bear upon the philosophic interpretation of the poem should become manifest." (p. 17)

(1) For critiques of alleged indications of an ascent, see infra, nn. 11-12. Towards the end of the nineteenth century Hermann Diels, Parmenides: Lehrgedicht (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1897), p. 8, had observed: [Nor does the way to God become us vividly described. We do not even hear if it goes down or up.] This warning was approved by Walter Burkert, "Das Proomium des Parmenides und die Katabasis des Pythagoras," Phronesis, 14 (1969), p. 2, n. 3, maintaining "[It is more correct, however, to omit the vertical, the top and the bottom at all]" (p.15). Burkert, however, defends a katabasis rather than an Auffahrt. A bibliography on the topic may be found in Maja E. Pellikaan-Engel, Hesiod and Parmenides: A New View on Their Cosmologies and on Parmenides' Proem (Amsterdam: Adolph M. Hakkert, 1974), pp. 104-109.

Note: I give the English translation of the texts by Diels and Burkert, cited in the original German by Owens.
Palmer, John. 1999. Plato's Reception of Parmenides. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"Before proceeding, then, I want to say something about how I believe we must approach the question of Parmenides' influence on Plato.

I have already noted the principal error vitiating most appraisals of this influence, namely the assumption that one can base an appraisal upon an interpretation of Parmenides developed independently of the actual Platonic reception. Such attempts at assessing this specific case of intellectual influence are particularly unfortunate, since many modern treatments of Parmenides have, either implicitly or explicitly, endeavoured to avoid any interpretation of his philosophy that might appear too 'Platonic', afraid that attributing to him anything like Plato's own distinction between the sensible world of becoming and the intelligible realm of being would be anachronistic. The paradox involved in then addressing Parmenides' influence on Plato, based on a view of Parmenides that deliberately avoids seeing him as Plato might have done, should be apparent. Now, those who avoid a 'Platonic' reading of Parmenides tacitly recognize that it is indeed possible to understand Parmenides as articulating the type of epistemological and ontological categories fundamental to Platonism-as well they should, since such an understanding was fairly common among later Platonists in antiquity. Therefore, even if one were unwilling to accept an interpretation along these lines as representing a proper understanding of Parmenides himself, one would nevertheless have to admit that the 'Platonic' understanding had its historical effect and, as such, deserves attention. One might even believe that Plato himself would have subscribed to the 'Platonic' understanding of Parmenides." (p. 8)
———. 2004. "Melissus and Parmenides." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 26:19-54.

"Detailed consideration of Plato's representations and uses of Parmenides shows that he would not have subscribed to the contemporary view of Parmenides that makes it possible to see Melissus as faithfully replicating the essential features of his thought. In fact, the view

of Parmenides as a strict monist seems to have been something of a minority interpretation in antiquity."

(...)

"... I shall try to avoid presuming at the outset any particular interpretation of Parmenides. Although I do want to argue that Melissus is more original than he has previously been taken to be, it would be improper to do so by simply adopting an understanding of Parmenides that differs from those presumed by previous assessments. Instead, I shall begin by focusing on the unquestionable adaptations of Parmenides and the equally unquestionable departures from him in Melissus' conception of what is and in his argumentation for the various attributes of what is. While the majority of these departures have been recognized by others, I believe that the full impact of their collective weight has yet to be realized.

The differences between Parmenides' and Melissus' conceptions of what is and the structures of their argument are extensive enough to prompt reconsideration of the view that the 'overall structure' and the 'general intellectual nisus' of Parmenides' and Melissus' philosophy 'are one and the same'." (pp. 21-22)
———. 2009. Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: 1. Parmnides' place in Histories of Presocratic Philosophy 1; 2. Parmenides' Three Ways 51; 3. The way of the Goddess and the Way of Mortals 106; 4. What Must Be and What Is and Is Not 137; 5. Zeno, Melissus and Parmenides 189; 6. Anassagors and Parmenides 225; 7. Empedocles' Element Theory and Parmenides 260; 8. Parmenides' Place in Presocratic Philosophy 318; Appendix: The Fragments of Parmenides' Poem 350; Bibliography 388; Index locorum 405; General index 422-428.

"Parmenides of Elea is the most brilliant and controversial of the Presocratic philosophers.

This book aims to achieve a better understanding of his thought and of his place in the history of early Greek philosophy. To this end, I here develop and defend a modal interpretation of the ways of inquiry that define Parmenides’ philosophical outlook. He was, on this view, the first to have distinguished in a rigorous manner the modalities of necessary being, necessary nonbeing or impossibility, and contingent being. He himself specifies these modalities as what is and cannot not be, what is not and must not be, and what is and is not. Accompanying this fundamental ontological distinction is a set of epistemological distinctions that associates a distinct form of cognition with each mode of being. With this framework in place, Parmenides proceeds to consider what what must be will have to be like just in virtue of its mode of being and then to present an account of the origins and operation of the world’s mutable population." (Preface, VI)
———. 2016. "The early tradition on Melissus and Parmenides." In Eleatica Vol. 5: Melissus between Miletus and Elea, edited by Pulpito, Massimo, 150-156. Sank Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"Prof. Mansfeld provides a masterfully concise overview of Melissus’s argument and its ancient reception before identifying a number of outstanding problems.[*] My comments here will be concerned in the first place with gleaning more about what Prof. Mansfeld thinks we can learn about Melissus and his relation to Parmenides from some of the significant features of the earlier reception. Prof. Mansfeld adopts a sound strategy in the first of his lectures by treating Melissus himself as belonging to the early reception of Parmenides and by thus attempting to view Parmenides through the eyes of Melissus. Caution is in order, however, when it comes to assessing Melissus’s relation to Parmenides because Melissus’s neo-Eleatic argumentation unfortunately distorted understanding of Parmenides already in antiquity and has done so even more in the modem era. Thus grouping Melissus with Parmenides and Zeno as members of an ‘Eleatic school’ is problematic on a number of counts, both historiographically and philosophically. It tends to obscure the question of Melissus’s relation to Parmenides by encouraging us to see Melissus as a broadly faithful, if sometimes innovative, student developing the doctrines of his master. Both Plato and Aristotle give us good grounds for questioning this view." (p. 150)

[*] Jappa Mansfeld, Melissus between Miletus and Elea, same volume, pp. 71-112.
Panchenko, Dmitri. 2008. "Parmenides, the Nile and the Circumnavigation of Africa by the Phoenicians." In Libyae Lustrare Estrema. Realidad y literatura en la visión grecorromana de África. Homenaje al Prof. Jehan Desanges, edited by Candau Morón, José María, González Ponce, Francisco José and Chávez Reino, Antonio Luis. Sevilla: Universida de Sevilla.

"We are told that the division of the earth into zones originated with Parmenides(1), whose floruit is dated by Apollodorus to the 69ᵗʰ Olympiad (504/3-501/0 BC)(2). Moreover, according to a testimony that ultimately goes back to Theophrastus, “Parmenides was the first to locate inhabitable parts of the earth on each side of the two tropical zones”(3).

Must we suppose that Parmenides simply assumed, quite arbitrarily, a southern inhabited zone? My answer is: no. In general, we may think that Parmenides would have done his best to avoid being accused of inventing “facts”. More specifically, we have no evidence that his doctrine of zones had any explanatory function in his system, and therefore we have no reason to assume that it was advanced as ad hoc support for some thesis of his own. We should further take into consideration that Parmenides was also the first to maintain that the earth is spherical(4)."

(...)

"I conclude that Parmenides’ doctrine of an inhabited southern zone was based on some kind of actual information. Now, Herodotus specifically addresses the issue of the circumnavigation of Libya. He cites the successful circumnavigation performed by the Phoenicians, the failed attempt of Sataspes, and the problematic claim of the Carthaginians (the expedition of Hanno is apparently meant) that they too circumnavigated the continent (IV 42-43). One has the definite impression that Herodotus has mentioned all the remarkable expeditions in Libyan waters of which he was aware. There is no good reason to assume that Sataspes went as far as the southern temperate zone(5), and in all probability he is later than Parmenides(6). The preserved account of Hanno’s voyage makes it clear that Hanno, who is likely to be an older contemporary of Parmenides, did not go that far. What could be then the source of Parmenides’ awareness of the southern inhabited zone if not the reports of the Phoenician mariners who had circumnavigated Africa?" (pp. 189-190)

(1) Posidonius, fr. 49 Edelstein–Kidd = STR. II 2, 2: “Posidonius says that Parmenides was the originator of the division into five zones, but that Parmenides represents the torrid zone as almost double its real breadth” (H. L. Jones’ transl.); cf. fr. 209 Edelstein–Kidd = ACH. TAT., Intr. Arat. 31 (Parm., 28 A 44a Diels–Kranz). We need not discuss here the difficult issue of the relative size of particular zones according to Parmenides.

(2) D. L., IX 23. The chronology of Parmenides (as is the case with nearly all the Presocratics) is in fact a difficult matter. For the present purpose it is enough to assume that Apollodorus’ dating does not deviate much from the truth.

(3) Parm., 28 A 44a Diels–Kranz = Placit. (AËT. [PS.-PLU.], III 11, 4), p. 377 Diels: Παρµενίδη̋ πρῶτο̋ ἀφώρισε τῆ̋ γῆ̋ τοὺ̋ οἰκουµένου̋ τόπου̋ ὑπὸ ταῖ̋ δυσὶ ζώναι̋ ταῖ̋ τροπικαῖ̋. The phrasing is characteristic for Theophrastus.(...)

(4) So Theophrastus apud D. L., VIII 48; IX 21.

(5) His account of the voyage did not apparently remove the ground for disbelief in the claim of the Phoenicians that in sailing round Libya they had the sun on the right hand (HDT., IV 42). This claim is equivalent to an assertion that the midday sun was seen north of an observer, which is invariably the case in the “southern inhabited zone”, that is, south of the winter tropic.

(6) Sataspes was sent by Xerxes, whose reign began in 486 BC and began with troubles, while the circumnavigation of Libya was clearly not of primary concern for the king.
Papadis, Dimitris. 2005. "The Concept of Truth in Parmenides." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 23:77-96.

"In this paper I shall endeavor to define the concept of truth, which is very closely related to the βροτων δοξαι, and to the so-called δοκούντα. Truth in Parmenides manifests itself as divine revelation bestowed upon a chosen individual, namely Parmenides himself. No doubt, this revelation is no more than a poetic-mythical-religious model of teaching, which does not substantially affect the content thereof." (p. 77)

"The word ἀλήθεια occurs in three fragments, namely B 1.29, B 2.3, and B 8 .51. Its meaning is not defined in any of them. This is to say that Parmenides has not attempted a systematic theoretical approach to the problem(6)." (p. 78)

"In conclusion, we have in Parmenides a tripartite scheme, as far as the cognitive approach to things is concerned: a) doxa, true or false, b) ta dokounta = true doxai, mainly of universal reference, and c) aletheia. Doxa and dokounta refer to the perceptible aspect of the

world, whereas aletheia refers to the inner Being of the world. Access to the truth is, according to the poem, a preserve of Parmenides. Still, it is understood that this is also possible for everyone possessed of his exceptional spirituality." (p. 95)
Pelletier, Francis. 1990. Parmenides, Plato and the Semantics of Not-Being. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX; Introduction XI-XXI; 1. Methodological preliminaries 1; 2. Parmenides' problem 8; 3. Plato's problems 22; 4. Some interpretations of the symploke eidon 45; 5. The Philosopher's language 94; Works cited 149; Index locorum 155; Name index 159; Subject index 163-166.

"As the title indicates, this is a book about Plato's response to Parmenides, as put forward in Plato's dialogue, the Sophist. But it would be a mistake to think that the difficulties raised by Parmenides and Plato's response are merely of antiquarian interest, for many of the same problems emerge in modern discussions of predication and (especially) of mental representation of natural-language statements. The intricacies and difficulties involved in giving a coherent account of Plato's position will be familiar to scholars in the field of ancient Greek philosophy, as will be the general philosophic difficulty to which Plato is responding- the Parmenidean problem of not-being.

This introduction is written to show to philosophers interested more in natural-language understanding and knowledge-representation than in ancient philosophy that the issues being grappled with by Plato remain crucial to these modern enterprises, and to show classical philosophers that many of the interpretive choices they face have modern analogues in the choices that researchers in cognitive science make in giving an adequate account of the relations that must hold among language, the mind, and reality." (from the Introduction).
Pelliccia, Hayden. 1988. "The Text of Parmenides B 1,3 (D-K)." American Journal of Philology no. 109:513-522.

"With the removal (1) of all manuscript authority from ἄστη, [from the Fragment B 1.3] editors may resort to defense of the transmitted text or to conjectural restoration based upon "palaeographical likelihood." I believe they should do neither." (p. 507)

(...)

"By way of conclusion, some general remarks on το ἐον will be in order. Parmenides' use throughout the poem of the singular (το ἐον) is an innovation the purpose of which is not far to seek. In earlier writers there is found only the plural (τα ἐοντα), used, usually τα τ' εσσομενα προ τ' εοντα, to describe reality in terms of its constituent elements.(24) This tendency to use the plural to designate reality is evident in Heraclitus (whom some have thought to be a special target of Parmenides' argument (25) ), both in the famous παντα ῥει and especially B7 D-K εἰ πάντα τὰ ὄντα καπνὸς γένοιτο, ῥῖνες ἂν διαγνοῖεν: as clear an assertion of the enduring multiplicity of real entities as can be found anywhere. Parmenides, in denying multiplicity, would have been required, for the sake of logical consistency, to shun the established use of the plural παντα τὰ ὀντα and to adopt the singular παν τὸ ἐον. (26)" (p. 512)

(1) The results of Coxon's re-examination of N have been corroborated by L. Tarán, Gnomon 49 (1977) 656, n. 15, [review article of Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides] who has himself inspected the Ms.

(24) In most of these passages (for example, in all the instances of the formula listed by West on Hes. Th. 32) the plural participles designate the objects of knowledge; this point should be of interest to those who maintain that the subject of ἐστί throughout Parmenides is "the objects of discourse or inquiry" (e .g., J. Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers [London 1982) 163; G. E. L. Owen, "Eleatic Questions," CQ n.s. 10 [1960] 84-102 = D. J. Furley and R. E. Allen, Studies in Presocratic Philosophy II [London 1975] 48-8 I). If my restoration of παν τὸ ἐον is accepted at B 1.3, it can be resupplied as object of εἰδότα: 'the road which bears the man who knows [all that exists] over all that exists'.

(25) See Guthrie, Hist. Gk. Phil. I, 408, n. 2 , and II, 23f.

(26) I wish to thank Professors A. T . Cole, R. L. Fowler, D. R. Shackleton Bailey, and R. J. Tarrant for their criticisms and suggestions.
Pellikaan-Engel, Maja. 1974. Hesiod and Parmenides: A New View of Their Cosmologies and on Parmenides Proem. Amsterdam: Adolf Hakkert.

Contents: Chapter I: Why an approach to Parmenides from Hesiod 1; Chapter II: Hesiod's cosmology, Theogony 116-33 11; Chapter III: Hesiod, Theogony 736-66 19; Chapter IV: Hesiod's Truth 39; Chapter V: Some substitutions of certain Hesiodic concepts in the proem of Parmenides. The route of Parmenides 51; Chapter VI: Excursus of the other interpretations of the route of Parmenides 63; Chapter VII: Parmenides's Truth 79; Chapter VIII: Parmenides' cosmology 87; Summary 101; Bibliography 104; Curriculum vitae 110.

"Summary. Research is made into the texts of Parmenides and Hesiod. Points of comparison between the proem of Parmenides and Hesiod Theogony 736-66 lead to attach similar meanings to the similar terms "chaos" and "house of Night" (Chapt. I). An analysis of the contents of the texts leads to the conclusion that the image in Parmenides' proem with regard to the Heliades, who have left the house of Night, taking with them the poet as a chosen person, is parallel to the alternate cyclic journey of the goddesses Day and Night c.s. from the subterranean house of Night, via the East to the region above the earth and via the West down and back again to the point of departure, as is written in Hesiod Theogony 746-66; in this the taking with them of the chosen person from the earth is parallel to Theogony 765, 6, where Death, son and companion of Night, takes with him his victims of men (Chapt. III and V).

An analysis of Hesiod's cosmological views leads to the conclusion, that Hesiod imagined the sky to be a metallic and revolving sphere, the earth at its centre (Chapt. II) and that he imagined chaos in its first phase to be of unbounded extension, presumably consisting of air at rest, and later on to be the region above as well as beneath the earth, limited by the spherical sky, consisting of air in motion (Chapt. IV).

The result of Chapt. V and an analysis of Parmenides' cosmological views leads to the conclusion that Parmenides imagined the earth to be a hollow sphere (Chapt. VII) and that the problem concerning what was in the midst in his cosmological system, either the goddess or the earth, can be solved by supposing the goddess to be in the midst in the absolute sense, i.e. at the centre of his cosmos and the earth to be in the midst in the relative sense, i.e. as a hollow sphere in the midst between the centre of his cosmos, viz. the goddess, and the outer limitation of his cosmos, viz. the spherical sky (Chapt. VIII)." (p. 101)
Perl, Eric D. 2014. Thinking Being: Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition Leiden: Brill.

Chapter 1: Parmenides, pp. 11-17.

"In the fall semester of 2008 I taught a course in the graduate program at Loyola Marymount University called “Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition.”

Originally conceived primarily as an advanced survey of the most significant figures in classical metaphysics,(1) the course as it proceeded developed into something far richer and deeper: an articulation of the thematic continuity in the thinking of being from Parmenides to Thomas Aquinas, centered on the two fundamental questions, ‘What is being?’ and ‘Why are there beings, rather than nothing?’ The first of these questions is formulated by Aristotle but stated by him to have been asked “from of old” (Met. Ζ.1, 1028b3–5); the second, although not expressly formulated in antiquity,(2) is touched on by Plato in his account of the good as “beyond reality” and as the source of being itself (Rep. 509b6–10), and is central to the thought of both Plotinus and Aquinas. The result of remaining attentive to these two questions was a thematic understanding of the tradition that is liable to be lost in more specialized examinations of individual thinkers and remains altogether unthought in ‘histories of philosophy’ that are merely historical rather than truly philosophical.

The present study, aiming to set forth that understanding, is thus intended neither as a survey nor as a history but as a properly philosophical exposition of the fundamental insights of classical metaphysics." (p. 1)

(...)

"To dismiss the world as illusion does not account for the occurrence of the illusion itself. It is not being, and yet it somehow is.

As we shall see, Plato and Aristotle will grapple with this problem. But they will do so, not in simple repudiation of Parmenides but rather in continuity with him, for they will remain within the Parmenidean framework in which being is that which is intelligible, and, just insofar as it is intelligible, is timeless, changeless, “ungenerated and incorruptible, whole, of one kind and unshaken and complete” (B 8.3–4)." (p. 17)

(1) The term ‘classical’ is used here, for want of a better, to refer to ancient and medieval philosophy as a continuous tradition.

(2) This question, in the form “Why is being at all and not rather nothing?” is identified by Heidegger as the fundamental question of metaphysics: Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, 4th ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1976), 3.
Perry, Bruce Millard. 1983. Simplicius as a Source for and an Interpreter of Parmenides, Washington University.

Ph.D thesis available at ProQuest Dissertation Express, order number: 8319442.

Contents: Acknowledgments IV; Special Abbreviations V; Introduction 1; Chapter I. Plato and Parmenides 11; Chapter II. Aristotle and Parmenides 33; Chapter III. Parmenides in the Later Tradition 52; Chapter IV. Simplicius on Parmenides 87; Conclusion 257; Bibliography 271; Appendix A. Translations 278; Appendix B. Quotations from Parmenides 409; Appendix C. Verses, Variant Readings 416; Appendix D. Index Locorum 440-442.

"A systematic study of Simplicius's interpretations of all the Presocratics is not feasible here.

(...)

I have chosen to study his interpretation of Parmenides because he is perhaps the most important, if also the most problematic, of the Presocratics. Simplicius quotes 101 out of the 154 extant Greek verses of Parmenides, and devotes considerable space in his commentary on Physics I, augmented by several passages from his De Caelo commentary, to interpreting Parmenides.

There is thus considerable material for study.

Because Simplicius's interpretation does not arise ex nihilo, some consideration must be taken of the formative influences on and the possible sources for his interpretation. More specifically, Simplicius rejects the criticisms of Parmenides by Plato in the Sophist and by Aristotle in the Physics and argues that his own interpretation silences both ciiticisms. Chapter I comprises a sketch of Parmenides's influence on Plato (Republic V 476e6-480a13), and an examination of Plato's criticism in the Sophist (244b6-245e2). Similarly, Chapter II considers Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides in Metaphysics A (986b27-987a2) and Physics I (184b15-187all). The other possible influences or sources are considered in Chapter III: the doxographical tradition, Sextus Empiricus, Plutarch, and the Neoplatonists.

The large amount of material on Parmenides in Simplicius necessitates a division into manageable topics or sections. While such a division is by nature arbitrary, the nine sections I have decided upon in Chapter IV represent reasonably discrete subjects: I. Biographical Information; II. Obscurity of Doctrine, Poetry; III. Overall Discussions of Parmenides; IV. The Aletheia; V. The Doxa; VI. Parmenides's Argument for the Unity of Being; VII. Plato on Parmenides; VIII. Aristotle on Parmenides; IX. Others on Parmenides.

Each section contains at least two parts: a detailed list of the relevant passages (A), and a summary of their contents (B). For the first five sections commentary is provided (C); particularly detailed commentary is devoted to the Aletheia (IV) and the Doxa (V). A summary of Simplicius' s interpretation is found at the beginning of Chapter IV, and a set of conclusions follows Chapter IV.

Appendix A contains English translations of all the passages which bear on Parmenides in Simplicius. A detailed list of Simplicius's quotations from Parmenides forms Appendix B. The verses with variant readings from CAG [Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca] VII and IX are collected in Appendix C. Appendix D is a skeletal Index Locorum." (pp. 6-8)
———. 1989. "On the Cornford-fragment (28 B 8,38)." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 71:1-9.

"In "A New Fragment of Parmenides" CR 49 (1935) 122—123, F. M. Cornford argued for the authenticity of the verse found at Theaetetus 180e1 and in Simplicius in Ph. 29.18, 143.10:

οίον άκίνητον τελέθει τφ τταντι δνομ* είναι.

Though editors from Diels onward have rejected the verse as a misquotation of Β 8.38, Cornford has persuaded some scholars to accept it as a genuine fragment. The cogency of some of these arguments will be challenged in this article. While the fragment does not stand or fall solely with Cornford's arguments, fresh doubts as to its authenticity will be raised incidentally." (p. 1, notes omitted)

"Cornford's argument for the accuracy of Simplicius's quotation of the verse rests on the claims that he quotes the verse directly from his MS of Parmenides and that he does not explicitly mention the Theaetetus when he quotes it. Both claims are open to objection. Simplicius does not invariably quote Parmenides from his MS; in fact, he often quotes him from Plato. There is also good reason to believe that Simplieius has the Theaetetus in mind when he quotes the verse at in Phys. 143.10." (p. 5)

"It is reasonable to conclude that Simplicius did quote the verse from Plato, and not from his MS of Parmenides." (p. 9)
Perzanowski, Jerzy. 1996. "The Way of Truth." In Formal Ontology, edited by Poli, Roberto and Simons, Peter, 61-130. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Contents: Index 61; 1. Introduction 62; 2.Beings, the Being and Being 64; 3. Ontological connection 65; 4. Towards a theory of ontological connection 67; 5. Some classical ontological questions 73 ; 6. A linguistic intemezzo 76; 7. An outline of a Primitve Theory of Being - PTB 86; 8. Towards a Extended Theory of Being - ETB 102; 9. Parmenidean statements reconsidered and classical questions answered 122; 10. Summary 127; Acknowldgements 128; References 128-130.

"1.8 In what follows a very general theory of ontological connection is provided.

In spite of its generality this theory enables us, as we shall see, to reconsider the classical ontological claims of Parmenides and to refute an anti-ontological claim that the notion of being is syncategorematic.

Also certain ontological theorems will be proved, including: Being is and Nonbeing is (sic!). A being is, whereas a nonbeing is not. Also: Whatever is, is - which is shown to be equivalent to Whatever is not, is not.

1.9 The paper is organized as follows: I start with general remarks concerning ontology and different approaches to the notion of being. Next, several classical questions of traditional ontology are discussed. After making our problems clear, I will introduce a formalism enabling us to study them in their full generality. Finally, the results of the paper are discussed in a manner introducing perpectives for a subsequent theory of qualities." (p. 63)
Philip, J. A. 1958. "Parmenides' Theory of Knowledge." Phoenix.Journal of the Classical Association of Canada no. 12:63-66.

"But Parmenides is only incidentally concerned with any theory of knowledge. He is telling the tale of his journey, in search of both knowledge and true opinion. It takes him away from the paths of men, beyond the gates of day and night, into the light. There the goddess reveals to him the secrets of true being which alone is the object of knowledge; but she also reveals true opinion concerning our physical world. In his poem Parmenides is passing on that revelation, but he nowhere suggests that that revelation is accessible to intellectual

effort without revelation. For that reason it seems to me that no interpretation which makes Nous a product of physical constitution can be acceptable, and that in spite of its difficulties it is preferable to understand Nous as a harmony, in the Universe and in the mind of

man." (pp. 65-66 a note omitted)
Phillips, E.D. 1955. "Parmenides on Thought and Being." Philosophical Review no. 64:546-560.

"Professor Erwin Schrödinger, in the second chapter of his recent book, Nature and the Greeks (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1954) discusses for a few pages (ibid. 24-28) the Parmenidean doctrine of Being. The whole book is of peculiar interest because it is the work, not of a professional Hellenist or even philosopher, but of a famous physicist, who has his own reasons for studying Greek thought; and this chapter has the added piquancy of presenting a view of Parmenides which was once respectable but is now widely reprobated. I propose first to examine this view, as Schrödinger puts it, and then, having necessarily reached some conclusions of my own about Parmenides, to examine the Parmenidean doctrine itself, so determined, from the point of view of modern philosophy, at any rate in the matter of logic. The precise nature of this amalgam of logical, illogical, and nonlogical thinking may then become clearer for those who are interested in the history of philosophy and the temperaments of philosophers." (p. 546)
Picht, Georg. 2022. "The Epiphany of the Eternal Present – Truth, Being and Appearance in Parmenides (1960)." In Georg Picht. A Pioneer in Philosophy, Politics and the Arts, edited by Enno, Rudolph and Picht, Johannes, 7-42. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Originally published as: ‘Die Epiphanie der ewigen Gegenwart: Wahrheit, Sein und Erscheinung bei Parmenides’. In: H. Höfling (ed.), Beiträge zu Philosophie und Wissenschaft: Wilhelm Szilasi zum 70. Geburtstag. München: Franke 1960. Also in: G. Picht, Wahrheit – Vernunft – Verantwortung: Philosophische Studien. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag 1969, pp. 36–86.

"In the study ‘The Experience of History’[*], the assertion that truth appeared to the Greeks as the epiphany of eternal presence was reached via an interpretation of Aristotle’s definition of the human being as a z¯oon logon echon – a creature that possesses the logos. The form of knowledge in which truth discloses itself as truth, namely nous, was ‘consciously omitted’ there because it did not belong in an investigation that sought to gain access to the experience of history by following the history of the concept of experience. The result of this omission was that the origin of the Aristotelian logos remained obscure, and that in the analysis of Kant, the shared ontological foundation of the concept of time and the concept of pure reason could be hinted at, but not revealed. The ontological foundations of Kant’s thought are the ontological foundations of objective science. We cannot expect to attain the status of freedom in relation to this science and its effects on the shaping of the technological world if the foundation on which it rests remains hidden from us. That is why the question of the original sense of the ‘epiphany of eternal presence’ is one we must no longer avoid.

The following investigation does not actually seek to pose this question, only to prepare it. It will show that the epiphany of truth that determined the fate of European thought took place, in a sense that can be precisely defined, in the poem by Parmenides. In order to reach an understanding of Parmenides, the first part of the text will trace the path that leads from Homer via Hesiod to Xenophanes, whose concept of nous will be interpreted. The second part will attempt to build on this by examining some fragments from the poem. The method of our approach can only develop through a philological interpretation of difficult texts that have survived as fragments; there is no ‘royal road’ to the insights we seek. If we seriously mean to speak of the ‘history of truth’, we can no longer view the ‘historical’ as the ‘relative’ or the ‘contingent’, which indifferently circles a timeless truth. The well-worn distinction between ‘historical’ and ‘systematic’ work is then revealed as a naïve prejudice. We will only be able to explore and experience the history of truth if the great patience of philology is combined with the great patience of fundamental questioning." (p. 8)

[*] Georg Picht, Die Erfahrung der Geschichte, Frankfurt am Main, Vittorio Klostermann, 1958.
Popa, Tiberiu M. 1998-2000. "The reception of Parmenides' poetry in antiquity " Studii Clasice no. 34-36:5-27.
Popper, Karl Raimund. 1992. "How the Moon Might Throw Some of Her Light Upon the Two Ways of Parmenides." Classical Quarterly no. 86:12-19.

An improved and expanded version in: K. R. Popper, The World of Parmenides. Essays on the Presocratic Enlightenment, Essay 3, pp. 68-78.

"Parmenides was an important philosopher of nature (in the sense of Newton's philosophia naturalis). A whole series of important astronomical discoveries is credited to him: that the morning star and the evening star are one and the same; that the earth has the shape of a sphere (rather than of a column, as Anaximander thought). About equally important is his discovery that the phases of the moon are due to the changing way in which the illuminated half-sphere of the moon is seen from the earth." (p. 14)

"But a great discoverer is bound to try to generalize his discovery. Selene does not truly possess those movements that she exhibits to us. Perhaps we can generalize this?

And then came the great intellectual illumination, the revelation: in one flash Parmenides saw not only that reality was a dark sphere of dense matter (like the moon), but that he could prove it! And that movement was, indeed, impossible.

The proof was (more or less simplified):

(1) Only Being is (Only what is, is).

(2) The Nothing, the Non-Being, cannot be.

(3) The Non-Being would be Absence of Being, or Void.

(4) There can be no Void.

(5) The World is Full: a Block.

(6) Movement is impossible." (pp. 14-15)
———. 1998. The World of Parmenides: Essays on the Presocratic Enlightenment. New York: Routledge.

Contents: Preface VIII; List of abbreviations X; Introduction: Aristotle's invention of induction and the eclipse of Presocratic cosmology 1; Essay 1. Back to the Presocratics 7; Addendum 1: A historical note on verisimilitude; Addendum 2: Some further hints on verisimilitude;

Essay 2. The unknown Xenophanes: an attempt to establish his greatness 33; Essay 3. How the Moon might shed some of her light upon the Two Ways of Parmenides (I) 68; Essay 4. How the Moon might throw some of her light upon the Two Ways of Parmenides (1989) 79; Addendum with a note on a possible emendation affecting the relation between the two parts of Parmenides' poem; Essay 5. Can the Moon throw light on Parmenides' Ways? (1988); Essay 6. The world of Parmenides: notes on Parmenides' poem and its origin in early Greek cosmology 105; Essay 7. Beyond the search for invariants 146; Essay 8. Comments on the prehistoric discovery of the self and on the mind-body problem in ancient Greek philosophy 223; Essay 9. Plato and geometry 251; Essay 10. Concluding remarks on support and countersupport: how induction becomes counterinduction, and the epagoge returns to the elenchus 271; Appendix: Popper's late fragments on Greek philosophy 280; Index 307-328.

"When as a 16-year-old student I first read Parmenides' wonderful poem.

I learnt to look at Selene (the Moon) and Helios (the Sun) with new eyes - with eyes enlightened by his poetry, Parmenides opened my eyes to the poetic beauty of the Earth and the starry heavens, and he taught me to look at them with a new searching look: searching to determine, as does Selene herself, the position of Helios below the Earth's horizon, by following the direction of her 'eager look'. None of my friends whom I told about my rediscovery of Parmenides' discovery had looked for this before, and I hoped that some of them liked it as much as I did. It was, however, only some seventy years later that I realized the full significance of Parmenides' discovery, and this made me realize what it must have meant for him, the original discoverer. I have tried since to understand and explain the importance of this discovery for the world of Parmenides, for his Two Ways, and its great role in the history of science, and especially of epistemology and of theoretical physics." (Preface, VIII-IX)
Prier, Raymond. 1976. Archaic Logic: Symbol and Structure in Heraclitus, Parmenides and Empedocles. The Hague: Mouton & Co.

Contents: Preface VII; I The Archaic Configuration of Mind 1; II The Homeric Hymns and Hesiod 27; III Heraclitus 57; IV Parmenides 90; V Empedocles 120; VI Language, Time, and Form 149; Bibliography 154; Index of Ancient Passages 159-163.

"The following study represents an attempt not only to explicate in some small way a mode of thought significantly different from much of our own, but also to suggest a new criterion of judgment for Classical Philology. These two purposes merge into one insofar as both come about from my own sharp disagreement with certain prevailing critical attitudes towards the so-called pre-Socratics. These essentially ungrounded attitudes are characterized, as I see them, by strong relativistic and materialistic premises which, although hidden for the most part, result in awkward misunderstandings of the pre-Platonic corpus in general and an uneven, if not castrating, criticism of specific authors in particular. These modern critical stances did not exist in the pre-Aristotelian Greek world in any predominant form, but Classical Philology in the later half of the twentieth century maintains otherwise and has, consequently, severely limited itself and very probably its future by adopting a narrow and unnecessarily rigid criterion of judgment that largely misrepresents the literary evidence at hand. Beyond the by no means unanimous acknowledgment that Aristotle revealed little of the real worth of the pre-Socratics, modern Classical Philology has not even suggested the need of a method — let alone the method itself - that might grasp the period between

Homer and the Platonic revolution. I offer this study as an attempt to supply this critical tool." (Preface, VII)

"Three men, Carl Jung, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Ernst Cassirer have contributed greatly to the elucidation of the mode of thought whose influences we shall trace in the ensuing pages. Each, working from a different professional point of view and actually for very different

purposes, has opened the serious investigation of the archaic configuration of mind." (p. 2)

"I substantially agree with the basic comparative approach of Reinhardt, Frankel, Mansfeld, and Mourelatos, although I should not place as much emphasis on the innovative quality of Parmenides' insight as does the last. My own particular method, however, is symbolic and structural, and in these respects little has been done with the text of Parmenides with the partial exception of the vocabulary and motif study of Mourelatos. Tarán, for instance, denies a recourse to symbolism in Parmenides.(32) Havelock points to definite symbols in the proem of the work but does not develop their meaning qua symbols.(33) It was left to Jung to detect the psychological and cultural symbolism inherent in the work of Parmenides. He indicated that the στεφάνη Cicero discusses in his De Natura Deorum is in fact an archetypal representation of the divine.(34) Cicero's "unbroken ring of glowing lights encircling the sky which he [Parmenides] entitles god" is surely the phenomenon described in fragment 12. Jung also connects it with the "circular motion of the mind which everywhere returns into itself' (5).(35) The symbolic nature of Parmenidian thought represents an observable phenomenon that in my opinion should be examined thoroughly. It is in the proem to his work that this nature is most easily detected." (p. 95)

(32) Tarán, op. cit. [Parmenides (Princeton 1965)] p. 30.

(33) E.A. Havelock, "Parmenides and Odysseus", HSCP [Harvard Studies in Classical Philology] 63 (1958), p. 133. Cf. fn. 49 of the present chapter.

(34) C.G. Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, p. 325-326.

(35) Ibid. p. 325.
Prier, Raymond A. 1979. "The critics on light and Parmenides." Platon no. 31:268-274.
Priou, Alex. 2018. "Parmenides on Reason and Revelation." Epoché no. 22:177-202.

Abstract: "In this paper, the author argues that the revelatory form Parmenides gives his poem poses considerable problems for the account of being contained therein. The poem moves through a series of problems, each building on the last: the problem of particularity, the cause of human wandering that the goddess would have us ascend beyond (B1); the problem of speech, whose heterogeneity evinces its tie to experience’s particularity (B2–B7); the problem of justice, which motivates man’s ascent from his “insecure” place in being, only ultimately to undermine it (B8.1–49); and finally the question of the good, the necessary consequence of man’s place in being as being out of place in being (B8.50–B19). What emerges is a Socratic reading of Parmenides’s poem, a view that Plato appears to have shared by using Parmenides and his Eleatic stranger to frame the bulk of Socrates’s philosophic activity."
Pulpito, Massimo. 2011. "Parmenides and the Forms." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 191-210. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "Historians of Greek thought have often described the Parmenidean doctrine as a sort of philosophical exception, hostile to the prevalent naturalist interests of earlier philosophers. The structure of the Parmenidean poem itself, juxtaposing a section on Truth, concerned with an entity displaying characteristics incompatible with those of Nature, to a section on Opinion, concerned with physical theories, seems to support that interpretation. A re-examination of the relationship between these two sections, however, and their authentic internal articulation, can help to understand the Parmenidean position on physics, thus restoring him to his historical-philosophical context. The alleged tension between the two sections is contained mainly in verse B8.53. The verse is traditionally

understood as referring to the decision of mortals to name two forms (μορφάς) corresponding to Fire and Night. However, a more careful reading of the verse (as proposed by some scholars) leads us to the conclusion that the “two” are not the forms but the mortal points of view (γνώμας). So what are the forms then? A reading of verse B9.1 allows us to stipulate that, for Parmenides, the forms are all the visible things and thus the physical objects. If we identify these exterior forms with τὰ δοκοῦντα from verse B1.31 (translated as “the objects of opinion”) it becomes possible to recompose the poem’s structure. We can recognize three sections: the first, on Truth, dedicated to existence in oneness and homogeneity; the third, on physical forms, providing a description of the world from a morphological standpoint. Between these two lies the second section, dedicated to mortal Opinions which, like the cosmogonies, confuse the ontological status of Everything with the morphological and mereological status of particular objects. Nonetheless, in the section on correct physical theories (the third one) Parmenides attempts to recuperate the two principles recognized by mortals, accepting their δυνάμεις (most likely identified with Hot and Cold) as elements of which the cosmos consists. This reading allows us to place Parmenides inside the development of Pre-Socratic thought, connecting him to earlier thinkers and, more importantly, to the later ones. The idea that the physical world consists of forms both visible and mutable, as manifestations of a reality fundamentally invisible and immutable, perceivable only through reason, will become a cliché of natural philosophy after Parmenides; at least until Plato, who will go on to recognize in the invisible and immutable forms the paradigm of the world."
———. 2023. "Metaphysics of an Instant: A Dialogue with McKirahan on his “Aristotelianizing Parmenides”." In Eleatica Vol. 9: Aristotle and the Eleatics = Aristotele e gli Eleati, edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Berruecos Frank, Bernardo, 189-202. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlsg.

"Likewise, I agree with quite a few non-trivial points among those presented by RM [Richard McKirahan], sharing with him, for example, the idea that Parmenides was not at all (as a long tradition of interpretation holds) a numerical (or strict) monist, and therefore not a proponent of a single unchanging entity or that the manifold changing things we believe in do not exist. I also agree with RM that there are not ‘two worlds’ in the thought of Parmenides, that the two parts that follow the proem (there are three, in my estimation, but that is another matter) deal with different objects, and that the distinction between the parts can be placed on a level approximately analogous to that which distinguishes metaphysics from physics. It is precisely this reference – the distinction between metaphysics and physics – that induces RM to present his nterpretation as having as its object an ‘Aristotelianizing Parmenides.’ What separates me from him are the details of his interpretation – although they are important details." (p. 190)
Pulpito, Massimo, and Spangenberg, Pilar, eds. 2019. ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι. Ways to Think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

Contents of the First Section, "Parmenides":

1. Enrique Hülsz – Bernardo Berruecos: Parménides B1.3: una nueva enmienda 31; 2. Serge Mouraviev: Ersatz de vérité et de réalité? ou Comment Parménide (B 1, 28-32) a sauvé les apparences (avec la collaboration épistolaire de Scott Austin †2014) 61; 3. José Solana Dueso: Mito y logos en Parménides 87; 4. Nicola Stefano Galgano: Parmenide B 2.3: dall’esperienza immediata del non essere alla doppia negazione 101; 5. Michel Fattal: Raison critique et crise chez Parménide d’Élée 113; 6. Alexander P. D. Mourelatos – Massimo Pulpito: Parmenides and the Principle of Sufficient Reason 121; 7. Livio Rossetti: Mondo vero e mondo falso in Parmenide 143; 8. Fernando Santoro: A Lua, Vênus e as Estrelas de Parmênides 155; 9. Chiara Robbiano: Just being: un-individualized. An interpretation of Parmenides DKB16 and a glance at empirical research 167; 10. Jaap Mansfeld: Parmenides on Sense Perception in Theophrastus and Elsewhere 177; 11. Lambros Couloubaritsis: Réinterprétation de l’eon de Parménide dans l’éclairage du Papyrus de Derveni 193; 12. Giovanni Cerri: Parmenide in Lucrezio (Parm. B 12, 3-6 - Lucr. 1, 19-21) 207; 13. Manfred Kraus: William of Moerbeke’s Translation of Simplicius’ On De Caelo and the Constitution of the Text of Parmenides 213-231.
Quarantotto, Diana. 2016. "Aristotle’s Way away from Parmenides’ Way. A Case of Scientific Controversy and Ancient Humour." Elenchos no. 37:209-228.

Abstract: "In Physics Α, Aristotle introduces his science of nature and devotes a substantial part of the investigation to refuting the Eleatics' theses, and to resolving their arguments, against plurality and change. In so doing, Aristotle also dusts off Parmenides' metaphor of the routes of inquiry and uses it as one of the main schemes of his book. Aristotle's goal, I argue, is to present his own physical investigation as the only correct route, and to show that Parmenides' “way of truth” is instead both wrong and a sidetrack. By revisiting Parmenides' metaphor of the route, Aristotle twists it against him, distorts it and uses this distortion as a source of fun and of some mockery of Parmenides himself. Thereby, Physics Α gives us a taste of Aristotle's biting humour and of his practice of the “virtue” of wit (eutrapelia)."
———. 2019. "Towards the Principles—Resolving the Eleatics’ Arguments for Absolute Monism." In Aristotle’s Physics Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum, edited by Ierodiakonou, Katerina, Kalligas, Paul and Karasmanis, Vassilis, 89-123. New York: Oxford University Press.

"1. The Role of Chapter 3 in Physics I:

An Introduction

In the second and third chapters of Physics I Aristotle provides a criticism of Eleatic monism. Chapter 2 contains a refutation (ἔλεγχος) of the Eleatics’ view that ‘all things are one’, whereas chapter 3 gives a resolution (λύσις)(1) of some of their arguments, most of which concern the unity of the things that are.(2)

In the first two sections of chapter 3 (186a4–22, 22–32) Aristotle resolves some arguments by Melissus and one argument by Parmenides, which he describes as eristic: they assume some falsity and their conclusions do not follow (185a8–10, 186a6–8). In the third section (186a32–b14) Aristotle puts forward a strengthened version of Parmenides’ argument and criticizes it. Then (186b14–35), building on this criticism, he formulates an argument for the internal division of what is (conceived of as what is just being). Lastly, he tackles the view of some post-Eleatic philosophers who gave in to two Eleatic arguments. The whole criticism of Eleatic monism is concluded in chapter 3 with the following words: ‘[i]t is therefore clear that it is impossible that what is is one in this way’ (187a10–11)." (pp. 89-90)

(1) Cf. Top. VIII 10, 160b33–4, SE 16. On Aristotle’s distinction between the refutation of a thesis (ἔλεγχος) and the resolution of an argument (λύσις), cf. Rossi 2014.

(2) The focus of chapter 3 is clearly on Eleatic monism. Eleatic immobilism is dealt with in chapter 8.

However, in chapter 3 Aristotle also tackles some arguments by Melissus for the immobility of what is, arguments that he describes as lacking ἀπορία (185a10–12).

References

Rossi, G. (2014). ‘Aristotle on Untying Arguments’. In Zur modernen Deutung der aristotelischen Logik, eds N. Öffenberger and A. Vigo, Bd. XI, 105–40. Hildesheim.
R., Laceym A. 1965. "The Eleatics and Aristotle on Some Problems of Change." Journal of the History of Ideas no. 26:451-468.

"Where Parmenides demands that anything real must be eternal, Aristotle substitutes the demand that anything which changes must have an unchanging factor, which, however, turns out to be purely notional in one type of change (genesis) and rather hard to identify in another (growth). To this extent I think the hand of Parmenides can still be felt on Aristotle's shoulder. I have already agreed with King [*] that prime matter is not as prominent and explicit in Aristotle as has usually been thought, and it is probable that here as elsewhere Aristotle was making heroic efforts to free himself from his Platonic and Parmenidean heritage while only partly succeeding. Further evidence of these efforts can be seen in another feature of Aristotle's doctrine of change, his insistence that change must be between contraries, which are in the same genus (324a2, 188a35). This is not entirely adequate.

An object can become black from being white or gray, but also from being red or transparent. Aristotle allows for change from intermediate points on the scale, but sometimes only "intermediate" points are available (his attempt to say that the contraries in the case of growth are the original size and the "proper" size to which the object is growing [201a7] seems rather factitious); and sometimes, as with red and transparent, the scale itself is not very obvious. The important point is that the terms of a change must be inconsistent (hence a sweet object can only become black incidentally, not qua sweet).

But this, though necessary, is not sufficient. Nothing can be at the same time both black and prime (in the sense in which numbers can be prime), but an object cannot change from being black to being prime." (pp. 467-468)

[*] Hugh R. King, "Aristotle without Prima Materia", Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Jun., 1956), pp. 370-389.
Raven, John Earle. 1948. Pythagoreans and Eleatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

An Account of the Interaction Between the Two Opposed Schools During the Fifth and Early Fourth Centuries B.C.

Contents: Preface VII-VIII; Part I. I. Introduction 1; II. Aristotle's evidence 9; III. Parmenides 21; IV: Pythagoreanism before Parmenides 43; V. Zeno of Elea 66; VI. Melissus 78; Part II. VII. Post-Zenonian Pythagoreanism 93; VIII. The nature of matter 101; IX. The One 112; X: The One and numbers 126; XI. Cosmology (a) Analysis 146; (b) Synthesis 164; XII: Conclusion 175; Appendix 188; Index 195-196.

"As Dr C. M. Bowra has pointed out in a paper in Classical Philology (XXXII [1937], p. 106), 'it is clear that this Proem is intended to have the importance and seriousness of a religious revelation'. Not only the passage from darkness into light but many minor details throughout the poem suggest that Parmenides desired, particularly in the Proem, to arm himself in advance, by stressing the religious and ethical nature of his revelation, with an answer to his potential critics. There seems no reason to doubt Dr Bowra's assumption (loc. cit. p. 108) that these potential critics were 'his fellow-Pythagoreans'.

Parmenides is indeed, in Cornford's phrase, 'a curious blend of prophet and logician'. The Proem, though its details are of no importance to our present inquiry, at least serves the useful purpose of stressing the prophetic strain. The Way of Truth, on the other hand, is an entirely unprecedented exercise of the logical faculty, and as such it is usually and naturally taken to be devoid of any emotion. In its outward form it certainly is so; but it must be remembered that the concept on which Parmenides' logic is at work is that of unity, and there is no reason to suppose that the concept of unity is incapable of arousing emotion. If two of the conclusions that I have already reached are justified, that Parmenides was a dissident Pythagorean, and that in the Pythagoreanism from which he was seceding there was a fundamental dualism between the principle of unity and goodness and another and eternally opposed principle, then is it not permissible to imagine that Parmenides, swayed perhaps by a deeper respect for the good principle than his `fellow-Pythagoreans' revealed, may have been driven along the road from darkness into light by a basically religious desire to vindicate the good principle against the bad? Such a supposition would help to explain the fervour that almost succeeds in illuminating the uninspired poetry of the Proem; and the ultimate triumph of his logical faculty over his emotion should not blind us to the possibility that an emotional impulse underlay his unemotional reasoning.

But the only convincing test of such a hypothesis must obviously be sought in the poem itself. I propose to examine the Way of Truth in considerable detail, adopting for the purpose the method employed by Cornford in his chapter on the same subject. Indeed, on occasions I shall be merely paraphrasing that chapter; but a measure of such repetition is inevitable for the sake of continuity." (pp. 23-24).

"We are now at last, therefore, in a position to counter the only apparently grave objection that might be brought against the contention that Parmenides wrote his poem with an eye especially upon the Pythagoreanism from which he had seceded. If that contention is indeed true, then why is it, it might reasonably be asked, that neither of the two ways from which the goddess sees fit to debar Parmenides represents Pythagoreanism? Our examination of the purpose of the poem should by now have suggested a complete answer to such an apparently damaging objection. The first forbidden way, that it is NOT or NOTHING IS, is to this extent, as Parmenides claimed, άνόητον ανώνυμον, that at any rate nobody had attempted to tread it. It is introduced into the poem partly for the sake of logical completeness but especially because it was combined with the true way to form the way which foolish two-headed mortals tread, the way of custom. So far as we are entitled to judge, therefore, from our reading of the Way of Truth alone, the third way, namely that it is and it is not, will include any combination whatever of the true way and the way of falsehood, or in other words any known cosmology whatever. But Pythagoreanism, with its ultimate dualism and its consequent employment, not of the characteristics of Being only nor of those of Not-being only, but of the two simultaneously, is undeniably a particularly glaring example of such a combination— more glaring, indeed, than any other early system simply because, as Aristotle suggests in his own way, it admits more of those νοητά which Parmenides accepted as the only truth. It might, therefore, be not unreasonably expected, until we actually pass to it, that the Way of Seeming will at least bear a closer resemblance to the Pythagorean than to any other way. But fortunately, almost as soon as we come to the Way of Seeming, Parmenides himself gives us the explanation of why that need hot necessarily be so. The Way of Seeming presents the best cosmology that Parmenides was capable of inventing, ώς ού μή ποτέ τίξ σε βροτών γνώμη παρελάσση ; and in consequence, so far from imitating the Pythagorean cosmology, it is, at some points at least, in direct conflict with it. This part of the poem too, and for much the same reason as the earlier part, is in fact especially damaging to the Pythagorean system; for that system was undeniably more guilty than any other of confusing the illusory objects of perception with the eternally existent objects of thought. To look, in short, for an explicit representation of any known system whatever in either of the two forbidden ways is to demand that the poem should be rewritten in quite another form and with quite another object. But that is no valid argument against my contention that throughout the poem we can repeatedly detect a special (even if, as I have all along admitted, a secondary) anti-Pythagorean validity." (pp. 41-42)

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