PARMENIDES OF ELEA (Velia) in Italy, Greek philos opher. According to Diogenes Laertius he was "in his prime" 504 500 B.C., and would thus seem to have been born c. 539. Plato indeed (Parmenides, 127 B) makes Socrates hear Parmenides when the latter was about sixty-five years of age, in which case he cannot have been born before 519; but in the absence of further evidence this may be regarded as one of Plato's ana chronisms. At all events Parmenides was a contemporary of Hera clitus. Parmenides attached himself for a time to the aristo cratic brotherhood which Pythagoras had established at Croton; and accordingly the physical part of his system is apparently Pythagorean. The theological speculations of Xenophanes, the founder of Eleaticism, unquestionably suggested to him the the ory of Being and Not-Being, of the One and the Many, by which he sought to reconcile Ionian "monism," or rather "henism," with Italiote dualism.
Proem.—In the "Proem" the poet describes his journey from darkness to light. Borne in a chariot, attended by the daughters of the sun, he reaches a temple sacred to an unnamed goddess (variously identified by the commentators with Nature, Wisdom or Themis), by whom the rest of the poem is spoken. He must learn all things, she tells him, both truth, which is certain, and human opinions ; for, though in human opinions there can be no "true faith," they must be studied for what they are worth.
Truth.—There are three ways of research, and three ways only. Of these, one asserts the non-existence of the existent and the existence of the non-existent ; another, pursued by "restless" per sons, whose "road returns upon itself," assumes that a thing "is and is not," "is the same and not the same." These are ways of error, because they confound existence and non-existence. In con trast to them the way of truth starts from the proposition that "what is, is ; what is not, is not." The what is is untreated. for it cannot be derived either from Ens or from Non-Ens; it is imperishable, for it cannot pass into Non-Ens; it is whole, indivisible, continuous, for nothing exists to break its continuity in space; it is unchangeable (for nothing exists to break its continuity in time) ; it is perfect, for there is nothing which it can want ; it never was, nor will be, but only is ; it is evenly extended in every direction, and therefore a sphere, exactly balanced ; it is identical with thought (i.e., it is the sole object, of thought as opposed to sensation, sensation being con cerned with variety and change).
As then the what is is one, invariable and immutable, all plurality, variety and mutation belong to the what is not. Whence it follows that all things to which men attribute reality, generation and destruction, being and not-being, change of place, alteration of colour are no more than empty words.
Opinion.—It remains in "Opinion" to describe the plurality of things, not as they are, for they are not, but as they appear. In the phenomenal world there are, it has been thought (and Parmenides accepts the theory, which appears to be of Pythago rean origin), two primary elements—namely, fire, which is gentle, thin, homogeneous, and night, which is dark, thick, heavy. Of these elements (which, according to Aristotle, were, or rather were analogous to, the what is and the what is not respectively) all things consist. The foundation for a cosmology thus being laid in dualism, the poem describes the generation of "earth and sun, and moon and air that is common to all, and the milky way, and furthest Olympus, and the glowing stars"; but the scanty frag ments which have survived only show that Parmenides regarded the universe as a series of concentric spheres composed of the two primary elements and of combinations of them, the whole system being directed by an unnamed goddess established at its centre. Next came a theory of animal development, followed by a psychology, which made thought (as well as sensation, which was conceived to differ from thought only in respect of its object) depend upon the excess of the one or the other of the two constituent elements, fire and night. "Such, opinion tells us, was the generation, such is the present existence, such will be the end, of those things to which men have given distinguishing names." In the truism "the what is, is, the what is not, is not," iSv EUTG, 1.4 ovK Parmenides breaks with the physicists of the Ionian succession. Asking themselves—What is the material universe, they had replied respectively—It is water, It is iieraV) n, It is air, It is fire. Thus, while their question meant What is the single element which underlies the apparent plurality of the material world? their answers, Parmenides conceived, by at tributing to the selected element various and varying qualities, reintroduced the plurality which the question sought to eliminate. If we would discover that which is common to all things at all times, we must exclude, he submitted, the differences of things, whether simultaneous or successive. Hence, whereas his predeces sors had confounded that which is universally existent with that which is not universally existent, he proposed to distinguish be tween that which is universally existent and that which is not universally existent. The fundamental truism is the epigrammatic assertion of this distinction.