Theory and History of Ontology (www.ontology.co)by Raul Corazzon | e-mail: rc@
ontology.co
This part of the section History of Ontology includes the following pages:
The Thought of Heraclitus
Heraclitus and the Question of the One and the Many (under construction)
The Thought of Parmenides
Parmenides and the Question of Being in Greek Thought
Critical Notes on His Fragments (Diels Kranz fr. 1-3)
Critical Editions and translations
Annotated bibliography of studies on Parmenides in English:
Wac - Z (Current page)
Bibliographies on Parmenides in other languages:
Bibliographie des études en Français A - Cor
Bibliographie des études en Français Cou - Luc
Bibliographie des études en Français Mal - Z
Bibliografia degli studi in Italiano
Indici dei volumi della collana Eleatica
Bibliographie der Studien auf Deutsch
Bibliografía de estudios en Español
Bibliografía de estudos em Português
Index of the Section: Ancient Philosophy from the Presocratics to the Hellenistic Period
Annotated bibliography of the studies in English: Complete PDF Version on the website Academia.edu
Annotated bibliography of the studies in French: Complete PDF Version on the website Academia.edu
Wacziarg, Aude. 2008. "For a Rehabilitation of the Parmenidean doxa." In Eleatica Vol. 1: Parmenide scienziato?, edited by Rossetti, Livio and Marcacci, Flavia, 143-151. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.
"To conclude: as far as we can project the concept of ‘science’ on preclassic Greece, Parmenides did seem to have a ‘scientific’ project. His Doxa certainly presents a global vision of the world, from the macrocosm to our human realities (and down to medicine). A system comparable in its scope to that of the Milesians’ ones. But with a superior worth because it asks the question of its own validity. After establishing the very little that we can consider ‘true’, Parmenides progresses with rigorous logic to give a picture that is the ‘best lie’ we can reach. From the separation between ‘is’ and ‘is not’ and their transposition into the sensible principles of Light and Night, our world is perfectly structured. Vice-versa, from an understanding of the dual structure of the world, one can reach the understanding of‘Truth’. This is why Parmenides introduces the exposition of the world within his development on ‘is’, in fr. 8.53-61. And this is why the philosopher claims: ‘it is indifferent for me where I begin, for there I shall return again’ (fr. 5)." (p. 149)
Warren, James. 2007. Presocratics. Stocksfield: Acumen.
Chapter 5: Parmenides, 77-102; Chapter 6: Reactions to Parmenides, 103-118.
"Parmenides of Elea, a town on the west coast of southern Italy, is perhaps the most celebrated of all the early Greek philosophers. His fame and importance derive from his one known work: a poem in the hexameter metre used also by the Homeric epics, which was perhaps entitled On Nature or On What Is. There is no doubt that he was also very influential in his own time, and caused quite a stir in the Greek intellectual world. He is the first of our philosophers whose followers are themselves well-known – the paradox-monger Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos – and who can be said to constitute some sort of philosophical movement. Parmenides cast a tremendous shadow over all succeeding Greek philosophy, not only of the period before Socrates, but long after too. Plato names one of his dialogues in Parmenides’ honour, and the philosophical problems first emphasized by Parmenides exercised Plato, Aristotle, and their successors." (p. 77)
(...)
"However influential or powerful we imagine the arguments of Parmenides to have been, they were certainly not successful in discouraging entirely the practice of cosmological speculation. Indeed, if Parmenides had intended to put an end to all such accounts of the origin and composition of the cosmos, then he would surely have been very disappointed by the response to his arguments. The period after Parmenides saw no diminution in attempts to explain the universe and the processes of change and generation within it, although perhaps Parmenides would have been pleased to see that those attempts tended to be more self-conscious and precise in their claims about which things “are”, which things are fundamental to the universe and how these fundamental things compose everything else. It is also worth noticing that Parmenides had himself, arguably, already led the way by producing the first post-Parmenidean cosmology in his own “Way of Opinion”." (p. 103)
Wedin, Michael. 2011. "Parmenides' Three Ways and the Failure of the Ionian Interpretation." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 41:1-65.
"The middle part of Parmenides’ great philosophical poem, the section known as the Way of Truth (WT), opens with the divine declaration that only two paths of enquiry present themselves to the mind—the path of what is and the path of what is not. I regard these as Parmenides’ 'canonical' paths and shall refer to them as Path I and Path II, respectively. Fragment 2 emphatically warns against pursuing Path II, and fragment 6 is no less direct in advancing Path I as a necessary path of enquiry. According to some, Parmenides is merely expressing his preferences in these early fragments of WT. Of course he is doing so, but not just this. Rather, fragments 2 and 3 contain a deduction whose aim is to exclude what is not as a fit target for investigation because such a thing is flatly impossible, and fragment 6 certifies Path I, again deductively, on the grounds that what it investigates is nothing less than what is necessary. Her opening declaration notwithstanding, in fragment 6 the goddess goes on to warn against a third path, the path of what is and is not. This too is excluded on the basis of a crisp, but tricky, Eleatic deduction.
This paper offers reconstructions of these three opening deductions." (p. 1)
———. 2014. Parmenides' Grand Deduction: A Logical Reconstruction of the Way of Truth. New York: Oxford University Press.
"When I examined the arguments of the leading nouveaux interpreters, none of the contenders lived up to expectations. Each was flawed in logically telling ways.
The results of this examination surface in the monograph in two ways. On the one hand, a contending view is sometimes discussed in the course of advancing or clarifying my own argument. On the other hand, I address them in their own right in Part III of the monograph, where the views are subjected to more systematic scrutiny. The view argued in this monograph, outré or not, favors an austere reading of Fr. 8’s ‘signs’ or deductive consequences of what is." (p. 2)
"A general study of Parmenides’ poem would address many issues, from the influence of the epic tradition, and the significance of the Proem with its divine invocation, to the relation between the two substantive parts of the poem—the Way of Truth (WT) and the Way of Opinion. This monograph is less ambitious.
First, I am interested almost exclusively in WT; in particular, I am interested in the logical form of Parmenides’ arguments in WT. Second, I pursue this interest by offering reconstructions of WT’s deductions, in their entirety, and only rarely do I introduce material that does not serve this project. Nonetheless, the reconstructions have global reach because the deductions of WT are the core of Parmenides’ philosophical position." (pp. 4-5, a note omitted)
Weiss, Yale. 2018. "Commentary on Cherubin." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy no. 33:22-26.
Abstract: "This commentary examines the interpretation of Parmenides developed by Rose Cherubin in her paper, “Parmenides, Liars, and Mortal Incompleteness.” First, I discuss the tensions Cherubin identifies between the definitions and presuppositions of justice, necessity, fate, and the other requisites of inquiry. Second, I critically assess Cherubin’s attribution of a sort of liar paradox to Parmenides. Finally, I argue that Cherubin’s handling of the Doxa, the section of Parmenides’ poem that deals with mortal opinion and cosmology, is unsatisfactory. I suggest that her reading may contradict the text in denying that the Doxa contains truths."
White, Harvey. 2005. What is What-is? A Study of Parmenides' Poem. New York: Peter Lang.
"The interpretation of the poem which follows takes issue with what has long been the standard view, and which, only recently, has begun to be challenged. Because my interpretation ascribes many of the fragments which have been taken as the mortal view to the goddess' position, my arrangement of the fragments differs somewhat from the standard one provided by Diels and Kranz. Thus the numbers assigned to the fragments differs from theirs." (p. 2)
"It has long been fashionable to take the ontology (and attendant epistemology) that Parmenides set forth in his poem to be characterized by "the one", or "Being", as the all encompassing single reality, which is to be distinguished from mere sensible and pluralistic being." (p. 5, notes two notes omitted)
"Against this understanding of the Poem I will argue that:
1. "is" is used predicationally rather than purely existentially, and as a result the text is best understood as being consistent with a pluralistic ontology rather than a monistic one; i.e., Parmenides did not claim that all reality is a single ideal universal and non-sensible "Being";
2. Parmenides affirms the positive role of sense perception in apprehending reality, accepting as real what appears sensibly; most of what is traditionally termed the Doxa section of the poem is an elucidation of his own position;
3. the poem's major point is that each individual object is a unity rather than a plurality constituted of opposites, even though it may come to be out of a mixture of opposites. The erroneous position held by the mortals is that an individual object is a plurality, a view that results from a confusion of what something is with the conditions out of which it is generated;
4. the poem is critically concerned with judgement rather than perception: the error of the mortals consists of misjudgements concerning perceived reality.
The overall perspective is that historically Parmenides does not present as radical and revolutionary an ontology and epistemology as he is commonly portrayed to advocate. His importance lies within the intellectual transition occurring in the Greek world, in that his poem is an attempt to move from the past mythos ( as in Homer and Hesiod) into the emerging scientific view of the world." (p. 6)
White, Stephen. 2021. "Truth Attending Persuasion: Forms of Argumentation in Parmenides." In Essays on Argumentation in Antiquity, edited by Bjelde, Joseph Andrew, Merry, David and Roser, Christopher, 1-19. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Abstract: "Parmenides marks awatershed in the history of argumentation, presenting the earliest surviving sequence of recognizably deductive reasoning in the Greek tradition. This chapter focuses on the central section of his poem (fr. 8 DK) and examines the form of its argumentation: its use of indirect proof, the articulation of its reasoning, and the role necessity plays in it."
Whittaker, John. 1971. "God, Time, Being. Two Studies in the Transcendental Tradition in Greek Philosophy." Symbolae Osloenses no. 23:16-32.
First study: 'Parmenides, Fr. 8, 5'.
Parmenides, fr. 8, 5 as quoted by Simplicius seems to proclaim the doctrine of the Eternal Now clearly and succinctly:
ουδέ ποτ’ ήν ούδ’ έσται, έπεϊ νΰν έστιν όμοϋ παν.
Simplicius is our main authority for the surviving fragments of Parmenides and his general reliability is beyond question. Yet if we accept Parmenides as the author of the above verse and as the originator of the conception there contained, many difficulties arise, as the following considerations will indicate.
(1) The conception of non-durational eternity is not of the sort that presents itself spontaneously to the mind. Bearing in mind the abstrusity of the notion, it would seem hardly conceivable that, Stated in this bald manner, it would have been at all comprehensible to Parmenides’ contemporaries. No doubt there was much in Parmenides’ poem that his contemporaries found obscure. Yet it cannot have been Parmenides’ aim merely to mystify. If Parmenides had really formulated the notion of non-durational eternity and was teaching it in his poem, a certain degree of elaboration would have been essential. But the relevant section of the poem contains no such elaboration.
(2) The notion in question is not accepted by Melissus; cf., e.g., fr. 1 άεί ήν δ τι ήν καί άεί έσται. Yet there is nothing in the doxographi-cal evidence to suggest that Parmenides and Melissus were at variance on this point.
(3)The only reason Parmenides might have had for introducing the notion into the Way of Truth is that he felt that passage from past to present to future involves coming-to-be and passing-away, i.e., that duration as such entails change. But if Parmenides had stressed this aspect of duration, then he would have raised a problem which all subsequent philosophers would have had to face. Parmenides’ Presocratic successors accepted the validity of the Eleatic denial of change and were painfully aware of the predicament in which it placed them. If Parmenides had argued that duration is a process and therefore a form of change, then they would have had to tackle this problem too. Yet no post-Parmenidean Presocratic seems to have been aware that bare duration could be held to involve change. Empedocles’ philosophy, for example, is a conscientious attempt to solve the difficulties raised by Parmenides. Yet there is nothing to suggest that Empedocles was acquainted with this particular problem. The same is true of other post-Parmenidean philosophers - including, as I shall argue, Plato and Aristotle.
Such considerations as these render it obvious that, in spite of fr. 8, 5 as cited by Simplicius, Parmenides cannot possibly have propounded the doctrine of non-durational eternity. Once this point has been established there are two courses open to the student of Parmenides: (a) he may search for another and more plausible interpretation of the text quoted by Simplicius, or (b) he may call into question the reliability of the text which Simplicius has preserved." (pp. 16-17)
(...)
"Because of their faith in the text presented by Simplicius, students of Parmenides have not usually considered it necessary to devote attention to a rival version of fr. 8,533 preserved by Ammonius (In Interpr. 136, 24 f. Busse), Asclepius’ (In Metaph. 42, 30 f. Hayduck), Philoponus (In Phys. 65, 9 Vitelli), and Olympiodorus (In Phd. 75, 9 Norvin).
I do not believe that this alternative version is necessarily correct as it stands, but must draw attention to one fact which speaks strongly in its favour. In Simplicius’ version fr. 8, 6 opens with the words έν, συνεχές syntactically linked to v. 5 but nevertheless left somewhat in the air, whilst Asclepius (loc. cit.) quotes the opening of v. 6 in conjunction with v. 5 as follows:
ού γάρ έην ούκ έσται όμοΰ παν έστι δέ μοϋνον ούλοφυές.
It can, in my opinion, hardly be doubted that Simplicius’ έν, συνεχές was originally a gloss on ούλοφυές and has supplanted that reading in Simplicius’ exemplar. Since the latter term was used by Empedocles there is no reason why it should not also have been employed by Parmenides. However, it was not current in Neoplatonic terminology and might well have provoked a textual gloss." (p. 21)
(...)
"However, my own conviction is that one cannot feel assured that either version is close enough to the original text of Parmenides to permit of more than highly conjectural interpretation. We have already seen that fr. 8, 4 was universally corrupt by the time of Plutarch" (p. 24).
(...)
"I would conclude that no knowledge of the teaching of the historical Parmenides can be safely derived from the versions of fr. 8, 5 which have survived. One can, however, assert with complete conviction, as was shown at the outset, that the doctrine of non-durational eternity, which Neoplatonists associated with both versions of the line, was not taught by the historical Parmenides." (p. 24, notes omitted)
Wilkinson, Lisa Atwood. 2009. Parmenides and to eon. Reconsidering Muthos and Logos. London: Continuum.
Contents: Acknowledgments IX; Introduction 1; 1 A Route to Homer 10; 2 Homeric or “Sung Speech” 27; 3 Reconsidering Xenophanes 40; 4 Reconsidering Speech 56; 5 Parmenides’ Poem 69; 6 The Way It Seems . . . 104; Notes 118; Bibliography 147; Index 153-156.
"I suggest that we might be able to begin to “hear” anew the wisdom of hour first philosophical texts. Hence, I take a historical-philosophical route to Parmenides. This route begins with an analysis of the significance of “Homer” in ancient Greek culture that challenges some of our common knowledge about “Homer” and how oral poetry works (Chapter 1). These challenges are supplemented by an overview of Homeric or “sung speech” (Chapter 2) that is brought to bear on assumptions about Xenophanes’ fragments (Chapter 3) and contemporary accounts of speech (Chapter 4). Having reconsidered Homer, Xenophanes, and basic assumptions about speech, the final chapters offer an interpretation of Parmenides’ poem (Chapter 5) that differs from some of our general accounts (Chapter 6)." (p. 7)
Wilson, John R. 1970. "Parmenides, B 8. 4." The Classical Quarterly no. 20:32-34.
"The text of Parmenides 8. 4 is unusually corrupt. Most recent critics, however, agree that Plutarch's ἐστι γὰρ οὐλομελές printed in the later editions of Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, should be excluded in favour of ουλον μουνογενες." (p. 32)
(...)
"The corruptions in the first half of the line are fairly easily explained.
Plutarch's οὐλομελές could be the result of a conflation of the preceding ουλον with μουνο-. This parallels the corruption of ουλον itself into μουνον in Eusebius, Theodoretus, and Ps.-Plut. Strom. The corruption μουνογενες in Simplicius and other testimonia, the earliest of which is Clement, can best be explained as the substitution of the familiar Christian epithet 'only begotten' for that strange and perhaps puzzling 'single-limbed.(2)" (p. 34)
(2) Cf. Karl Meister, Die homerische Kunstsprache (Leipzig, 1921; repr. Darmstadt, 1966), 207.
Wolfe, C. J. 2012. "Plato's and Aristotle's answers to the Parmenides problem." The Review of Metaphysics no. 65:747-764.
"The questions raised by the great pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides were perhaps the main challenge for Plato and Aristotle, two of the greatest post-Socratic philosophers." (p. 747)
"No philosopher was able to accurately interpret and refute the Parmenides problem until Plato and Aristotle. Plato answered it in an important way in his dialogue the Sophist, and Aristotle followed this up with the complete answer in Physics book 1, chapter 8. My thesis is that Plato's answer would have been good enough to defeat Protagoras in extended argument, thereby remedying the political aspects of the Parmenides problem. However, Aristotle's answer is required to answer some additional philosophical and scientific aspects.
The first section of this paper will summarize the history of pre-Socratic philosophy and explain why Parmenides was a turning-point.
The second section will explain the sophist Protagoras' relation to the Parmenides problem. The third part will present Aristotle's complete answer to the Parmenides problem, and in the fourth part I will compare that approach with Plato's solution in the Sophist. Lastly, I will sum up by characterizing how I think Plato and Aristotle would have responded to Protagoras' Parmenidean sophistry in political life." (p. 748)
Wood, James L. . 2020. "Necessity and contingency in the philosophy of Parmenides." The The Review of Metaphysics no. 73:421-454.
To bring out the determinative, self-revealing nature of being in Parmenides’ poem, I will examine his account of necessary versus impossible being in the Way of Truth, followed by his treatment of contingent being in relation to necessary being in the Proem and Way of Opinion. On the basis of that examination, I will argue that we can make the best sense of Parmenides’ poem as a whole by seeing the cosmos of contingent beings as the self-manifestation of necessary being, and that the misunderstanding of “mortals” lies not in their acceptance of the reality of contingent beings, but in their failure to grasp the distinction and the connection between the modes of being. Moreover, because many interpreters of Parmenides see him as rejecting contingent beings, and a plurality of beings of any sort, in favor of a strict ontological monism, they too fail to grasp the distinction and the connection between the modes of being in his thought. Consequently, salvaging a place for contingent being in Parmenides’ philosophy will also require that we confront the problematic interpretation of Parmenides as a strict monist." (pp. 423-424, notes omitted)
Woodbury, Leonard. 1958. "Parmenides on Names." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology:145-160.
Reprinted in: J. P. Anton and George L. Kustas (eds.), Essays in Ancient Greek philosophy, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1972, pp. 145-162 and in: C. Brown, R. Fowler, E. I. Robbins, P. M. Matheson Wallace (eds.), Collected Writings of Leonard E. Woodbury, Atlanta: Scholars Press, pp. 80-95.
[The essay is a discussion of the fr. B8 34-41]
"νοεῖν has been until now translated, for convenience' sake, as "mean" or "think", but these renderings will no longer suffice, since it now appears what is implied when νοεῖν is used, as by Parmenides, not of a word or a thought, but of the name of the world. The object of νοεῖν is that-in-being, and in consequenceνοεῖν can here stand only for that knowledge which perceives the world as it is. Knowledge of being can be found only in the meaning of the name, "being". Parmenides' philosophy of names leads directly into his ontology. But we have no text that asserts the identity of knowledge with its object, of νοεῖν with το έον. The text that has so often been thought to make this assertion says in fact something quite different. It says that νοεῖν is the same as είναι, and this must mean that knowledge, like the right thought and meaning, can be found only in the use of the name. The only way is a μυθος όδοιο, ώς ἐστίν.
Werner Jaeger has taught us to take seriously the theological significance of Parmenides' proem and to see at the heart of his philosophy a " Mystery of Being".(39) What I should venture to propose to him is that the meaning of the goddess's revelation is that the world is expressed in "being", and that Parmenides' holy mystery is the reality of a name." (p. 157)
(39) Cf. W. Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford, 1947), 107.
———. 1986. "Parmenides on Naming by Mortal Men: fr. B8.53-56." Ancient Philosophy no. 6:1-13.
Reprinted in: C. Brown, R. Fowler, E. I. Robbins, P. M. Matheson Wallace (eds.), Collected Writings of Leonard E. Woodbury, Atlanta: Scholars Press, pp. 439-453.
"Concerning the text and syntax of the passage there appears to be a wide, though not a universal, agreement. But in regard to interpretation it is agreed only that severe problems proliferate and defy clear solutions." (p. 1)
"The proper choice is the one figured in the proem, the entrance upon a road that passes beyond the paths of Night and Day into light , under the guidance of the Daughters of the Sun, who quit the House of Night for this purpose, throwing back there at the veils that cover their faces.(24) The journey is one that is directed by Justice and has the effect of persuading the Necessity that controls the goings of mortal men under the direction of a bad dispensation . The choice of the road , it is plain , entails the choice of the guidance of light ." (p. 12)
(24) On the allegory of Parmenides ' journey and the vicissitudes of the sun in this world, see my "Equinox at Acragas: Pindar 0l. 2 . 61 - 62" TAPA [Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association] 97 (1966) 597 - 616 , especially 609 ff . and E . Robbins in Greek Poetry and Philosophy (Ed. D.E. Gerber (Chico , California 1984), note 20) 224 . "
Wright, Maureen Rosemary. 1998. "Philosopher poets: Parmenides and Empedocles." In Form and Content in Didactic Poetry, edited by Atherton, Catherine, 1-22. Bari: Levante.
"Parmenides and Empedocles are crucial figures in the history of philosophy, and it is important to understand why they chose hexameters instead of prose, and what they did with them. As might be expected, the style and language of the didactic epics of Hesiod are relevant, but so too are the battle epic of the Iliad and the travel and homecoming epic of the Odyssey. In the present exploration of the adaptation of traditional poetic forms to new philosophic uses it is the Homeric borrowings that become more significant and arresting." (pp. 2-3)
(...)
"Coxon's edition of Parmenides restored the epic and Ionic forms in place of the tragic and Attic ones. He showed that there are only 55 words in the surviving fragments for which a Homeric form is not found, and that most of these are related to or compounded from words in Homer.
Vocabulary, phrasing and imagery throughout Proem, Doxa and Aletheia were found to be Homeric, and there are grounds for a similar case to be made for a Homeric-based Empedocles, although he has in addition his own idiosyncrasies. Aristotle, however, in the above quotations, hesitates between finding nothing in common for Homer and Empedocles except the metre (one being a poet and the other a scientist'), and attributing positive poetic value to Empedocles' work on the grounds that he 'Homerises' with metaphors and similar devices. The inconsistency here may be due to the Aristotelian context, for in the opening of the Poetics, in which the first quotation is found, Aristotle views the poetic art as primarily imitative, comparable to ballet or playing a musical instrument. He expects a plot, a muthos, which is worked through metrically in narrative or direct involvement or a combination of the two, and on this criterion a work of philosophy in metre would not qualify as poetry. Yet where the detailed adaptation of stylistic devices is under consideration the two philosophers are indeed poets, using old forms but for new purposes." (p. 5)
Wyatt, William F.Jr. 1992. "The Root of Parmenides." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology no. 94:113-120.
"Parmenides, in looking for the roots of things and for essence, examined and pondered as well on the roots of words and their essential meaning. In so doing he found linguistic support for his notions, or for some of them. He wrote at a time and in a style which allowed root meanings to appear clearly and which saw in nouns the verbal notion underlying them, and in verbs the nominal cognates. In this he is rather in the style of the choral poets such as Pindar and Aeschyulus who, it would seem, at times cared little for parts of speech but very much for the meanings conveyed in roots. I close with a Parmenidean example.
In 7.3 he characterizes ἔθος as πολύπειρον.(19) There can be much discussion about the precise meaning of the word, but it appears to me that it contains (for Parmenides) the meaning or meanings inherent in the verb πειρασθαι "attempt," and in the noun πειρασ "limit" with its adjective ἄπειρον.(20) It will therefore have to do with mankind's tentative and uncertain steps toward truth, steps which lead to no conclusion or end. In this man is like the ανθρωποι of Heracleitus' Fr. 1." (p. 120)
(19) For so I take it. Coxon (58 & 191) construes the adjective with τουτο. Little hinges on this, I suspect, but the Greek works better my way, which is the usual translation.
20 Parmenides seems to have played as well with prefixes, particularly the negative prefix (ά- and the prefix "many" (πολυ-). They correspond to the way of non-being on the one hand, and of mortal uncertainty and searching on the other. Of the three words τροπος, ἄτροπος, πολύτροπος only the first has any real existence.
Yamakawa, Hideya. 2008. Visible and Invisible in Greek Philosophy. Lanham: University Press of America.
Chapter 5: Dual Truth, Parmenides and Nāgārjuna, pp. 67-79.
"The “ἀλήθεια” (alétheia) was, for Parmenides, nothing other than the very thing that he discovered and gave it a name “τὸ ἐὸν” (to eon) for the first time. To eon is, according to Parmenides, the alétheia.
The denomination of a novel concept like that of ‘to eon’ inevitably forces one to grapple with a traditional system of language, to which s/he is necessitated to conform and under which everything that is already known is comprised.
The language presupposes necessarily a whole of conventional things that has been traditionally established by social consensus or surroundings.(1) It is an original field where the so-called Urdoxa casts its anchor.(2) The words of a language qua language are fully charged with various preconceptions imposed by collective usage that may conceal and pervert the real state of things; the unconcealed state of the things, namely the a-/étheia as ‘un-concealed-ness’ (Unverborgenheit).(3)
In order to reveal the real state of things (alétheia), one must un-cover the veil of concealed facts." (p. 67)
(...)
"About 2500 years ago, Parmenides the Eleatic, a Western philosopher, went along this way to alétheia, and came back again to the native land of mortals (brotoi) in order to tell them the truth of to eon in human language; namely in the so-called Doxa-language.
By the way, contrasting with Parmenides’ case, it is very interesting that, in the second and third centuries A. D., Nagarjuna, another philosopher in the East, followed a very similar way of negation. He too preached to people on the doctrine of dual truth, namely truth relating to worldly convention (samvrtisatya) on the one hand and truth in terms of ultimate fruit (paramarthatya) on the other hand.
Both philosophers’ motives and ways of thinking are so strikingly similar one another that their theories of dual truth, which are originally based on a kind of divine revelation or religious experience,(5) will be worthy of comparison." (pp- 67-68)
(1) See J. O. Gasset, The Origin of Philosophy, W. W. Norton & Company Inc. New York, 1967., 60-1: “Language is precisely something not created by the individual but something that is found by him, previously established by his social environs, his tribe, polis, city, or nation.’
(2) Here I have in my mind the Husserlian conception of “Lebenswelt” as a basic and universal belief of one’s particular experiences. Cf. E. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, 32.
(3) Cf. M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 8 ed. Tubingen, Niemeyer, 1957, 33. See also Seidel, G.J., Martin Heidegger and the Pre-Socratics, An Introduction to his Thought, University of Nebraska Press/Lincoln, 1964. 45-46.
(5) For Parmenides’ religious connotations, cf. the fragment 1 and see also my book Kodai Girisia no Shisou (Ancient Greek Thought) Kodan-sha, 1993.
———. 2021. "The Bottom of Parmenides’s ΠΕΡΙ ΦΥΣΕΩΣ." In The Poetry in Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Christos C. Evangeliou, edited by Mitsis, Philip and Reid, Heather L., 57-98. Fonte Aretusa: Parnassos Press.
"I. KATA ΠANT ATH
[I1] I reject the text “κατὰ πάντ’ ἄστη” at Parmenides B1.3 in Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (the 3rd-6th Editions) as well as all other revisions so far proposed and adopt the original letters in the manuscript N as they are.
Walter Burkert left us his English version3 of the well-known article “Proömium des Parmenides und die Katabasis des Pythagoras.”4 He says in its preface that: “In the well-cultivated fields of classical philology, real progress is rare; […] one mis-spelled word in Parmenides’s proem (line 3) has not found its definitive correction, in spite of specialists’ exertions for more than a hundred years”." (p. 57)
"[I4] In order to recover the lost honor of the proposition (b) [*], let me read the lines of N afresh. Below is the original text in N:(35)
I translate the above three lines as follows:
The mares that carry me, as far as ever my yearning spirit might reach, were sending me, once they stepped and set me on the much resounding way of the goddess (ἐς ὁδὸν... πολύφημον... δαίμονος), that carries (φέρει) the man of knowledge (εἰδότα φῶτα)36 over (κατὰ) all the heads (πάντ’ <ἀνδρῶν> <κράατα> [neuter plural accusative]) blinded <ἀαθέντα> by Ate (ἄτῃ =Ἄτῃ [causal dative]).’
The corpus of extant Greek poetry from Homer to Euripides contains ‘ΑΤΗ’ 169 times besides Parmenides’s case: Homer 26, Hesiod 6, Solon 4, Alcaeus 1, Ibycus 1, Theognis 7, Pindar 5, Aeschylus 48, Sophocles 40, Euripides 31.37 While twenty cases among them employ the dative case of ‘ἄτη,’ I have detected four cases using the causal dative,38 which testify to the appropriateness of “ἄτῃ” (=Ἄτῃ) in the context of fr. 1.3." (pp. 65-66)
(3) Walter Burkert, “Parmenides’ Proem and Pythagoras’ Descent,” trans. Joydeep Bagchee, in Philosophy and Salvation in Greek Religion, ed. Vishwa Adluri (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 85-116, 85-6.
(4) Walter Burkert, "Das Proömium Des Parmenides Und Die ‘Katabasis‘ Des Pythagoras“ Phronesis 14.1 (1969): 1-30.
(5) Burkert in “Vorwort to Hermann Diels,“ Parmenides Lehrgedicht (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 2003),(...)
(35) Sextus Empiricus, Codex Laur. 85.19. f. 124v (from Coxon, The Fragments of Parmenides).
[*] (b) The text ἄτη is not meaningless, therefore it should not be revised.
Yildiz, Arif. 2020. "Hegel’s Critique of Parmenides in the Science of Logic." Arkhe-Logos. Journal of Philosophy no. 10.
Abstract: "Parmenides plays an important role in the first section of Hegel’s Science of Logic due to his definition of being as a pure thought-determination.
This article investigates, first, how Hegel conceives the Parmenidean being.
Secondly, by discussing Hegel's logical analysis of pure being and pure nothing, it aims to show why and how such conception of being, according to Hegel, provides a crucial insight into the function of the understanding."
Younesie, Mostafa. 2021. "Parmenides on the True and Right Names of Being." Open Journal for Studies in Philosophy no. 5:1-18.
Abstract: "Parmenides as a knowing mortal (F I. 3) writes a philosophical-poetic account of a travelogue in which distinctive voices (F. 2) that are a mixture of myth and logos come out of an unnamed goddess (F I. 23) who didactically speaks with an unnamed young man as her direct listener and addressee (F II. 1) in order to reveal for him different spheres and routes (F II. 2) of inquiry about a specific referent. In the hybrid and tailored account of the immortal about a specific subject-matter, such as being, we can read different approaches of the thoughtful mortals through the narration of the goddess, and the idea of the immortal herself. And exactly when thoughtful mortals want to introduce their thinking and understanding of the “referent” in human lingual terms they appeal to the act of naming and making names, though there is no explicit account by the immortal about her approach for lingual expressing of the referent. Such an account gives us some useful and distinctive hints about Parmenides’ conception as a mortal about naming/names which makes his conception in a specific position in regard to the other pertinent and close words, such as ἔπος/ἔπεα, ῥῆμα, ἔργον, καλεῖν, λόγος and Presocratic thinkers like Heraclitus, Democritus, and Empedocles. According to the immortal’s account, in relation to naming and names thoughtful mortals can be classified mainly into two groups: (1) Those who are in Aletheia are informed of the distinctive features of the referent that is a “totality” and should be able to make “true” names for it but fail (F8. 38-39). If they succeeded, then their naming and names are true/ ἀληθῆ; and (2) those who are in Doxa think to know the features of the referent that is a “dual” and accordingly thoughtful mortals make names. Though all of names that are made are not unacceptable, one set is acceptable/χρεών (F 8. 54). As a result, we can infer that if Parmenides as a thoughtful mortal wants to express his thought about eon in lingual terms, he should appeal to naming and making names for they have specific dynamis (F IX. 2—a term that appears in Plato’s Cratylus 394b) in communicating the nature of any specific referent. The first best situation or Aletheia is where on the basis of his “knowledge”, he can communicate the distinctive features of eon in names and thereby make “true” names. Besides, there is the second best or Doxa, where he can communicate his “beliefs” about the essence and essential features of eon in names and make “acceptable” names."
Young, Tyler. 2006. "Perceiving Parmenides: A Reading of Parmenides of Elea's Philosophy by Way of the Proem." Dionysius no. 24:21-44.
Abstract: "Parmenides' poem must be read as a whole, beginning with the proem and seeing it as a basis for approaching the entirety of the work. Analysis of Homer's Odyssey and Hesiod's Theogony shows that Parmenides' poem is a masterpiece of allusion, and that the proem establishes a method and imagery by which the following two sections can be read both independently and in relation to each other. Examination of the Way of Doxa in the second part of the poem provides the opportunity for an explication of Parmenides' cosmology and theology and demonstrates that the Doxa is necessary to his philosophy. The heart of his thesis lies in the juxtaposition of the two ways. The Way of Truth in the third part stands as a succinct statement of the nature of Reality and its relation to human experience."
Zeller, Eduard. 1881. A History of Greek Philosophy from the earliest Period to the time of Socrates. London: Longman, Green and Co.
With a General Introduction (pp. 1-183),
Translated by S. F. Alleyne in two volumes from the German fourth edition of: Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, Leipzig: R. Reisland, 1876-1882.
On Parmenides: vol. I, pp. 580-608.
"The great advance made by the Eleatic philosophy in Parmenides ultimately consists in this, that the unity of all Being, the fundamental idea of the Eleatics, was apprehended by him in a much more definite manner than by Xenophanes, and that it was based upon the concept of Being. Xenophanes, together with the unity of the world-forming force or deity, had also maintained the unity of the world; but he had not therefore denied either the plurality or the variability of particular existences. Parmenides shows that the All in itself can only be conceived as One, because all that exists is in its essence the same. But for this reasonhe will admit nothing besides this One to be a reality. Only Being is: non-Being can as little exist as it can be expressed or conceived; and it is the greatest mistake, the most incomprehensible error, to treat Being and non-Being, in spite of their undeniable difference, as the same. This once recognised, everything else follows by simple inference." (pp. 580-585, notes omitted)