Category Archives: Presocratic

I command you to ponder these things- Parmenides

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“It is necessary that saying and thinking actually are. For being exists, and
nothing does not exist. I command you to ponder these things. For I shut you out from this first inquiry; moreover since it is from this, on which mortals who know nothing wander, being two headed. For helplessness keeps straight the wandering mind in their breasts: and the dumb and likewise the blind are carried around, astounded and confused people, for whom being and non-being are considered the same thing and not the same thing, and their (i.e. of the dumb and blind) path turns back” (DK Frag. 6 :1-9).”

Χρὴ τὸ λέγειν τε νοεῖν τ΄ ἐὸν ἔμμεναι· ἔστι γὰρ εἶναι,
μηδὲν δ΄ οὐκ ἔστιν· τά σ΄ ἐγὼ φράζεσθαι ἄνωγα.
Πρώτης γάρ σ΄  φ΄ ὁδοῦ ταύτης διζήσιος <εἴργω>,
αὐτὰρ ἔπειτ΄  πὸ τῆς, ἣν δὴ βροτοὶ εἰδότες οὐδέν
πλάττονται, δίκρανοι·  μηχανίη γὰρ ἐν αὐτῶν
στήθεσιν ἰθύνει πλακτὸν νόον· οἱ δὲ φοροῦνται.
κωφοὶ ὁμῶς τυφλοί τε, τεθηπότες, ἄκριτα φῦλα,
οἷς τὸ πέλειν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶναι ταὐτὸν νενόμισται
κοὐ ταὐτόν, πάντων δὲ παλίντροπός ἐστι κέλευθος.

With the consideration that Parmenides wrote in hexameters, and that such works were often recited in public, and that Parmenides himself is portrayed by Plato as being present at such a recital of one of his own students [1], I approach this particular fragment differently than if it were merely a philosophical treatise, void of cultural context.
Saying, by existing, is a thing.  The “being-ness” of words is casually assumed by their very use, yet their use qua existence is unreflectively maintained, absent the awareness which appreciates even the possibility of the existence of words.  This “being-ness” of words is re-iterated for the uncognizant by the very fact that Parmenides is speaking words at them, at the audience.  We are incapable of thinking of non-existence.  For any thinking involves the thinking of a thought as thing, a thing which must exist to be a thing.  If it is thought, it is not a nothing, but a something, even if that something is merely a thought (i.e. a unicorn).  We can not think of non-being, for if we could, it would be a being we were thinking of, not non-being.

Therefore all is being.

 

[1] ἀναγιγνώσκειν οὖν αὐτοῖς τὸν Ζήνωνα αὐτόν (Parmenides 127c)
“Zeno himself was reading to them…”  A few lines later Parmenides comes in to hear the end of the reading.

Parmenides, expressibility and pure being

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In my previous post I translated Parmenides fragment 8. Among the most perplexing frustrations, and trust me, there are many in an ancient epic hexameter poem, was the phrase I translated as, “Thought and that thing on account of which thought exists are both the same thing. For not without being, within which thought has been expressed, will you discover thinking.

I had previously struggled to understand what the sentiment was which Parmenides was conveying.  On reflection, and perhaps with an appreciation for the midnight startle I woke up with pondering this sentence over and over again, and moreover, with the over-familiarity I have gained in having translated this sentence “into being”, I now think it rather a straightforward, but not obvious argument.

If there were no existence, nothing existing at all, we would not be able to express anything, for that very expression of something would itself be existing, (because it is something) and then something would, in fact, exist.  The fact that something is verbally expressed demonstrates that something exists, namely at least the expressed and the expresser.  In this sense they are the same thing.

Does Descartes simply steal a version of this argument away from Parmenides, or adapt it?  “I think, therefore I am”, is closely akin to “I speak, therefore I am”, or perhaps more basically, “It is expressed, therefore it exists.”

Any Cartesians out there have a thought (and who also exist)?

 

Parmenides Fragment 8 Translation

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And yet one narrative of the path remains, that it exists. And on this path are a great many signs: namely, that being had no beginning nor can it have an end because it is firmly established, unmoved and eternal. It did not exist once in the past nor will it exist, since it exists at the same time all together, (5) one and continuous. For what origin of it will you seek out? In what way and from where has it increased? I defy you to speak and to think by that which does not exist. For it is not possible that the unspeakable and unthinkable exist. And what compulsion roused it to grow, either sooner or later, even though it began from nothing? (10) Therefore, it is necessary that it exists entirely or not at all. Not once from non-being will credibility allow anything to come-to-be alongside being. On account of this, Justice did not allow being to come-into-being nor for it to pass away by loosening its shackles, but she holds it fast. The judgment concerning these things amounts to this. (15) It either exists or does not exist. It has been decided, as a logical necessity, to leave the one path unthought and unnamed (because it is not a true path), while the other path exists and is true. And how then would what exists perish?  And how could it come into being? For if it was becoming, it is not being, and if it will come-to-be at some time, it is not being. (20) Thus coming-to-be has vanished and passing away is unheard of. It is not divisible, since all is the same. Nor is anything more there, which would hinder it from being held together, and it is not lesser, but it is entirely full of being. Everything is continuous for being. For it is being that engages with being. (25) Moreover, unmoving in the limits of a great bondage, it is without a beginning and without end, since coming-to-be and passing away wandered very far off, and it is good sense which pushed it away. And it remains the same in the same thing in conformity with itself, and it is ordained and in this way it stands fast in that position. (30) For stern Fate holds it in a constrained determinancy, which binds it all around, because it is established that being is not imperfect. For being does not lack. But non-being lacks everything. Thought and that thing on account of which thought exists are both the same thing. For not without being, within which thought has been expressed, will you discover thinking. (35) For nothing else either exists or will exist except being, since Fate fettered it to be whole and unmoving. Every name will belong to being, as many names as mortals establish which they believe are true, believing that named things are coming-into-being and being destroyed, and that they are existing and not existing, (40) and that they exchange one location for another and alter their conspicuous color. But since there is a determinate limit, being is complete from all directions, resembling the body of a well-rounded globe, equally balanced in every direction from the middle. For it is necessary that being exists neither greater to an extent here, nor that it exists greater to an extent there. For neither does non-being exist, which would prevent being from attaining this unification, nor does being exist in any way whatsoever that there would be more of being here and less of being there, since in every way being is an inviolable sanctuary. For equal to itself from every direction, it equally attains itself within the limits. So at this point, I stop the trusted account and thought concerning truth; (50) instead, learn the opinions of this mortal, by listening to the cunning arrangement of my epic poem. For they have settled their mind on naming two forms; of the two, it is not right to name one— on this point they have strayed— and judged them to be opposite things in form and gave them identities apart from each other, (55) for one form there is an etherial flaming fire, it is favorable, surpassingly light weight and not dense, the same to itself from every direction and not the same as the other. But the other is opposite in comformity to itself, a dark night, a dense and heavy body. I declare to you that this arrangement is probable in every way, so that some judgment of mortals will never overtake you.