Parmenides: it is, or it is not. If you have to make a choice, it must be a choice for that which is not.
To speak of that which is not is to walk the path of the two-headed, as speaking of that which is not is to render it existing.
5 consequences of this choice: Unchangeability (no coming to be or perishing), indivisible (that which is = one, always identical), immobility and limitedness, perfection, spherical shape.
The emphasis on a spherical shape is very revealing in how Parmenides represents reality (that which is). The sphere (to him), is how the world really is. Some argue it should be read as metaphorical, but prof. says there’s no evidence of that in the text.
Thus, Parmenides argues for an abstract structure.
If one defines everything as a sphere, then the sphere must have clear boundaries. Beyond them, it has to be that which is not (which is going back to the contradiction).
The discovery of nature is the detachment of our explanations of the world from the notion of supernatural interference.
Parmenides’ cosmology will not be asked about.
The pluralists
Parmenides tells people to choose one thing. The people to come will be trying to escape the problems he brings up.
Not pluralists in a modern sense, but accepting many principles.
Parmenides:
nothing proceeds from non-being,
there is no void,
no plurality from unity,
no motion, unless accounted for
Empedocles: philosopher, mystic, poet, god, with very loud clothing.
This guy jumped into a mountain and then a golden sandal flew out. This is how he proved he was a god.
A large number of his text fragments was found in the basement of some German university. 54, I think. They were gone through by someone from Germany and a guy from Liege.
Empedocles seems to argue for similar things to Parmenides.
He also tries to explain sense-perception. He is kind of trying to save phenomena.
Empedocles is the guy who came up with the 4 ‘elements’ (that is not the word he used for it, elements is the Greek word for letters of the alphabet). He refers to the as divinities or roots.
The characteristics of Parmenides’ ‘One’ is transferred to Empedocles’ 4 archai. ← earth, water, air, fire = stoicheia (elements) or rhizomata (roots).
The divine is once again connected to material existence. The division between the elements is the division of domains that was attributed to gods by the likes of Homer and Hesiod.
What Empedocles is saying is not something akin to what we see in Mendeleev’s table of elements. Rather than claiming that there is a quantitative combination of elements that create something, he says that the conjoining of elements creates a qualitatively new object.
The only difference between elements is qualities.
There is no void/emptiness in Empedocles. When one stretches their arm, they do not push elements away, but change the constellation of elements themselves.
Quantitative atomism comes with Democritus, a generation later.
The amount of the elements is constant.
Love and hatred are what brings things together and dissipates them. This is what causes motion.
What are love and hatred and where do they come from (presumably not made of elements).
Ancient philosophy is pure philosophical realism. No idealism or phenomenology.