about 150 verses still exist
Might be clever to have a look at some of the texts mentioned in the reading
It is interesting how many people in the beginning of the text seem to abandon “night”, normal life.
What is the meaning of a gate between night and day?
Fr. 3 To think and to be are the same?
Being = Logos?
Fr. 4 is about how either everything is some kind of infinitude or, as it supports in Fr.5, everything “gathers together unwaveringly in regular order”
fr. 7 argues that the idea that Nothing cannot exist whilst Being does exist is an immutable idea.
“Being is ungenerated"
"it is unique, unmoved and without end"
"a continuous one”
Fr. 8 argues that since being is disconnected temporally, it doesn’t spring from anything becuase it is irrelevant for it to speak of a beginning. That it is disconnected temporally can be garnered from asking “so why did being ever spring out of, tentatively, non-being at some point rather than another?”
— maybe not a super strong argument but it makes sense.
→ thus it must be entirely and be altogether (one) or be not at all.
Parmenides also argues against “Becoming”, which I guess for him means something along the lines of “modulations to Being”
A thought and the cause of a tought are the same. So Logos.
So the first part is about how things actually are, ie One.
Interesting that Parmenids recognises that Night and Day are equally valuable on an existance level (they are both technically the same thing after all) despite also thinking that Night-life is less good I guess (Fr 9)
Closing remarks on first reading of parmenides:
The last part was kind of confusing to me but I guess you can sum it up with “things in the world kind of seem to happen and we have to keep living like they do anyways even if it’s not really true in some way”
- maybe that’s a bad reading of it but oh well it’s something!