Read the text on Toledo (Fragments by Parmenides)
Examination: Oral exam
We’ll be reading original texts that we have to figue out ourselves.
Yay!
Each text should be supplied with a short introduction (around 2 pages)
The texts we are reading are not selected in an ”anthology”, rather they are meant to be integral works, read from cover to cover.
However, we are reading only books with certain lengths, so that we can actually read about 1 book per week.
We’ll be reading Kant through Schelling.
Marianne Wolff
Lit scholar, Neuroscientist → neuroscience of reading (proust and the squid)
Activate ”Deep reading” , basically it takes a while to go into deep reading, so read for a while before you get tired of it.
→ possibly leads to a more complex memory embedding
HIW 02.02 is the professor’s office on Tuesdays at 09:00-13:00
Fragments – Parmenides
Lived in Magnia Graecia, today Velia (or Elea, ie. The Eleatics) south of Naples, and north of Salerno
(from modern-day Turkey)
Philosophy not born in Greece
However, it was born in the Greek-speaking world!
There was a Colony – Homeland Greece diametric
→ there must be a reason certain people went to the colonies and others stayed home
There were many rituals in which Oracles had to be consulted
All the Oracles existed on mainland Greece
It takes about a week to consult an oracle in mainland Greece
in the colonies however, it easily took about 6 months
Thus the colonies were de-facto independent communities
This led to many of the intitial philosophers being born outside of mainland Greece.
Parmenides wrote a poem on nature, considered one of the most early documents of the western canon.
Only fragments of the poem still exists, which is what we will read.
We know many parts of the fragments from quotations found in other philosophers’ writings.
It is interesting to see that much of earlier philosophy were not found in the kind of treatise that we have today, but rather in gazillion other kinds of forms, like the above poem.
→ Philosophy is not married to any kind of genre and can happen in a million ways.
It is important then to realise the different kinds of rhetorical rules that apply to each kind of text.
The poem is basically about Parmenides being told by a Goddess what the principle of all things are.
There is a sense that Parmenides is searching for a rational principle in the world.
Furthermore, there is an ambition to answer what the principle (arch´e) of all things generally is.
In order to ask this question generally, you need to have the notion that there is a principle, and also an everything that can spring out of that initial notion.
It seems impossible to say everything, in a way that encapsulates everything!
Negation: Thanks to negation we are able to speak of things that are not present nor known, ie. You can say something of something that might not be logically conceptualised.
In a sense, it allows one to obtain ”the world”.
eg. from: ”everything that is in any way is opposed to its negation”.
Everything that is, is originally opposed to non-being.
If I get the limit through negation, I should also be able to get everything, and the limit to everything, is to be.
The absolute nothing, nil negatium. When we think something, it is. When we are unable to think it, it is not → absolute nothing.
Non-being is not. He does not want to ontologise the Nothing.
Being cannot be nothing.
→ This is Parmenides actual first principle.
Afterwards, Parmenides derives a series of attributes to being, such as being only One.
This pattern of argument is generally called per absolutum. This means that you assume the negation of what you want to demonstrate.
He also derives that Being is ”eternal”, which means that it is outside any temporal qualification for him. Ie. It is not relevant to speak of a before, after or now, in regards to being.
Furthermore, it is unchangeable, there is no movement. All such things are considered illusions.
Now remember, Parmenides was an important magistrate in a Magnia Graecia, so maybe he wasn’t crazy.
Ie. he distinguised between what we actually experience, and how the world actually works.
”We have to learn the ways of night, the non-philosophical way of life, and the way of day, ie. Looking at the world as it actually is.”
To be, to think, and to speak, are all one.
Parmenides finds an identity between these three: Logos.
This is furthermore, the principle of reality.
”The philosopher has to be able to understand both ways, the way of night and day, in order to be properly such.”
There is a way that negation is part of being, but that is not the same as Nothing being.
Take a look at the metaphor of the chariot that is pulling Parmenides, pulled by mares, and watched by maidens.
It furthermore seems that this walkway that Parmenides travels down existed in real life.
The trees along this walkway were called the same as the goddess of the sun.
These are somehow a reference also to some Greek mythological characters.
It is important to notice how Parmenides doesn’t remove the religious dimension from his poem.
Philosophy pretends to not refuse any form of religious belief, but allows it to be checked on a common ground, ie Logos.
There is a point, absolute reason, at which divine and human reason overlap.
”The philosopher is ”philomitos”, ie. He is one that cares for stories”
We sometimes read of the school of Elea, the Eleatics, originally created by Xenophane, who we know barely anything of.
Then there were Zeno and Melissos.
This is more of a grouping of philosophers who seemed to have defended similar views, a tradition so to speak.
Zeno is famous for his paradoxes, which had the aim to show the reality of Parmenides’ philosophy.
Melissos went even further, being even more radical in attempting to prove Parmenides correct.
The poem is divided into 2 parts.
The parts which are the speech of the goddess are in italics.