Parmenides used to be considered a philosopher who only replied to Heraclitus
Became especially interesting in the early 20:th century by Karl Reiner. He showed that Parmenides was then considred to be someone developing his own original thought. Since then, people have considered him monumental.
He was associated with a member of the Pythagorean school (according to Laertius), Pythagoras was in Crotone, quite close to Parmenides.
The eleatics were first based in foccea, which was later conquered by Cyrus the Great. Cyrus was relatively kind towards the people he conquered, he only asked for taxes and to have a say in city-decisions.
- most greeks accepted this condition and became greeks within in the persian empire.
Parmenides and friends renounced Cyrus and moved to Corsica, and later to the south of Italy.
The notion of freedom and indepence was very important in the colony cities.
Fr. 17 stands out as being way too short to really carry with it any meaning.
(and other short fragments too)
Georg Gadamer: was a disciple of Heidegger, wrote a series of texts on Parmenides which the teacher likes.
What we are doing when we read Parmenides is always violent, because we are reading these fragments extrapolated from the context. Different authors gives us different parts of Parmenides, but we can’t really read Parmenides as a whole.
”The most complete way to understand Parmenides, would be to read all his passages in which they were actually taken out of.”
Fr.17 comes from a work on biology and ”the human generation”, might be a work that attempts to establish the sex of a baby when still in the womb.
The second part of the poem has also to do with generational themes, ”the sun which is the principle of generation”
Hans Georg Gadamer: ”The Beginning of Philosophy”
- Final two lectures on Parmenides.
Fr.13 First of all gods she deviced Eros: the father of all Gods, the origin of all other gods.
Fr. 12 He speaks of of an unnamed daimon, a spirit. This spirit is a sort of all governing spirit.
He governs ”birth and conjunction (sex)”. It explains that humans and animals are deviced as distinct sexes.
He makes references to Olympos and celestial sphere at fr. 11. In fragment 18 he gives references to the goddess Venus.
Fr. 18: He speaks of the opinions of man, they are not the true, but still something philosophy has to deal with. Philosophy compares not only what is true but also what is not true, philosophy must be about both.
fr.1 It has the impression of an opening scene, mares conduct a chariot with a clear direction, from night to day.
They talk about the journey, the maidens have something covering their face which goes away the closer to light they come.
This is tied to the greek Orphic tradition. Peter Kingsley considers Parmenides a normal representative of the Greek Orphic philosophy, rather than his own tradition.
It centers on rational argument. The goddess invites Parmenides to follow her Logos.
They arrive at a gate, still extant today. On this gate we have retributive (redistributive) justice (diche) and Themis. Diche is the justice in relation between human and god. The justice between people.
The two together form the idea of right and justice.
Then we have a goddess who remain unnamed; the philosopher likes two interpretations on this:
Mario Untersteiner: All the gods are different names that still refer to the same general principle
Poliese Caratelli: It might refer to an eleatic goddess Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, who makes at your disposal all possible knowledge.
Parmenides arrives at where the goddess resides, and he is allowed and welcomed to their home.
The way of truth is open to the human but is not human (superhuman).
”You should learn everything as well as the unshaken art of the well rounded truth but in no conviction of the opinions of mortals.”
Episteme: means a sort of net that I can use to keep everything in control so that I can actually walk on it. It’s about the things that keep reality together in bits of stable knowledge.
”Nevertheless you should learn also that it is necessary to believe that all things must be.”
There is a journey that clearly leads to ”episteme”.
Aletheia, truth is the negation of remaining hidden or forgot: manifestation, emergance.
Husserl revives the idea of noesis because he wants ”an immediate ’reaction’ to what ’it is’”.
-ie. It’s good to know it here already.
Eric Havelock, classicist and historian. -Insisted on the gap with early philosophy, such as parmenides, which is ultimately an oral way of thinking, whilst postplatonic thoguht is mainly written.
The speech is divine, but parmenides is invited to realise the strength of the Goddess argument, to have the same Noema. But when we think the same concept, our noemata coincide. Similar to Convincire, together-grasping.
Hegel on fr. 5: there is no progress in philosophy, but always to go back and look for a better foundation at which to stand.
Fr. 7: similar to Hume. Parmenides uses contradictions to underline that a lot of our ”knowledge” is shaped by custom and not really knowledge.
Fr. 8: to be finite is a mark of perfection. To be infinite is a mark of imperfection because it can never be nicely grasped. The world is a finite sphere without crooks.
Hegel distinguishes bad and good infinity from this way of thought.
Being born and dying makes no sense to a philosopher, because what is is.
There is a notion of birth that makes sense within the world of darkness but makes no sense in the world of light.
Thought is always thinking-of. Each time you think there is something you think of; however, in Parmenides, both structural parts of thinking-of, are the same. Ie. The ’thinking’ and the ’of’.
Fundamental truth
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Truth Non-Truth
Emile Benveniste: one of the great linguist from College de France; able to speak fluently 70 languages, specialised in Farsi and Greek; published two volumes toward the end of his career called ”the vocabulary of the indo-european institutions”. In the second book, the first two chapters are dedicated to Themis and Dike. He shows that they are the fundamental of the indo-european conception of the order of society and of religion.
Irad Kimhi: thinking and being, 2018.
Pierre Hadot: specialist on Plotinus. Wrote a famous book: ”Philosophy as a way of life”; in antiquity, philosophy is not just a theory but primarily a way for a person to live. We act upon ourselves and we train our mind in order to achieve a certain goal. Typical idea really. In Parmenides you see this ”way of life” very clearly. Philosophy for Parmenides is very much a journey one must undertake.
Pay attention in fr. 8 to how he argues to establish the different attributes to Being. There you have a sort of argumentation that uses the principle of non-contradiction.
Gorgia: from Lentini, some 60km south of Catagna in Siciliy. He was a rector and a public speaker and an adviser for governors. Like Parmenides, he is an eponymous character of one of Plato’s dialogue; this one deals with Language, one of the middle-early dialogues. In which Socrates defends socratic intellectualism: the theory according to which human beings always look for the good even if what they find ends up being Evil; it is out of error or ignorance if we pursue something evil but naturally we always look for the good.
It is a dialogue that takes place in a court of sophists. Plato always speaks negatively of these people. They are described as philosophers who always bring people astray. However, Gorgias is credited as a very insightful thinker. Though the others are seen as radical nihilists.
”What is the most important skill?”
- Gorgias thinks the ability to convince is the most important. It doesn’t matter what those opinions are. Ie. The content.
Is it more important to be a good physician or to be a skillful speaker?
”Well even if you are a good physician you might not be able to convince the patient of the cure.”
We are reading everything that has survived from Gorgias’ writing.
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Loose fragments from lost works.
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A poem about Helen of Troy. Almost a feminist document, because here Gorgias defends Helen, who is often denounced as the reason for the homeric wars. He says to blame Paris, or even further, to blame seduction – language – which actually makes the homeric wars come to be.
Gorgia thinks that language constitutes by itself a reality with its own power and intrinsic force, it cannot be dominated but dominates. ”We are an instrument of language”.
Heidegger formulates Gorgia’s thoughts indirectly: When we speak, we do not speak, but are spoken. (Similar to Derrida’s idea of colonial language).
Language is not an instrument, but something we need in order to structure our world. Language uses us to structure the world however, and not us.
We will be reading a direct critcism of Parmenides by a disciple of Parmenides, Melissos.
Melissos writes a similar treatise that bring out the acosmic or antiphenomenal aspects of Parmenides’ writing. We have to only argue on the basis of logic. Melissos denies many aspects that Parmenides affirms, such as the way of darkness having any logic to it at all.
Gorgia writes a text ”on Melissos”, we are using the version by Simplicius.
”Nothing exists!”;
”If anything existed, it would be possible to grasp it with our mind!”;
”Even if it were conceivable, it wouldn’t be possible to communicate it or speak of it!”
Napoloen lost a campaign in Poland, the general explained the reasons as being three; we have no more cannonballs. This is where we should generally stop.
It is basically a way to break fr. 3 of Parmenides – there is always a gap between ’what it is’ and ’what I am able to understand’, so being, thinking and speaking to some extent represent autonomous spheres with their own rules that cannot be dictated by the others.
Gorgias brings attention to the ability of language to communicate.
Gorgia refers to theatre, as something where the most wise is the one who is deceived rather than the deciever.
This is because the one who is decieved takes the world of language as that which is directly true, whilst the deceiver ”knows this not to be true” and so cannot be able to properly, authentically enjoy the world as it unfolds before oneself, much like theatre.
Nobody can hope to know reality as it is because it is ungraspable.
It seems that Gorgias might be rapt with certain ”viscious circles” the professor calls them.
He uses the lack of identity between language and thought to escalate how nothing is.