Parmenides

Parmenides of Elea (5th century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the Southern coast of Italy. He is reported to have been a student of Xenophanes. He is one of the most significant of the pre-Socratic philosophers. He argued that the every-day perception of reality of the physical world (The Way of Seeming) is mistaken, and that the reality of the world is 'One Being' (the Way of Truth): an unchanging, ungenerated, indestructible whole.

Related Topics:
Elea - 5th century BC - Ancient Greek - Philosopher - Italy - Xenophanes - Pre-Socratic

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He was the founder of the Eleatic school, which also included Zeno of Elea and Melissus.

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Eleatic school - Zeno of Elea - Melissus

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When one says that Parmenides "argued" something, one cannot think about "argue" in the modern sense. Parmenides was a prophet, magician and healer (just like Pythagoras, Empedocles and many others), and his philosophy is presented in verse, through mythology and obscure mystic visions. The philosophy he argued was, he says, given to him by the Goddess of the underworld (Tartaros):

Related Topics:
Pythagoras - Empedocles - Verse - Mythology - Tartaros

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:Welcome, youth, who come attended by immortal charioteers and mares which bear you on your journey to our dwelling. For it is no evil fate that has set you to travel on this road, far from the beaten paths of men, but right and justice. It is meet that you learn all things - both the unshakable heart of well-rounded truth and the opinions of mortals in which there is not true belief.

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Under 'way of seeming', in the same work, he set out a contrasting but more conventional view of the world, thereby becoming an early exponent of the duality of appearance and reality. For him and his pupils the phenomena of movement and change are simply appearances of a static, eternal reality.

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In Plato's dialogue Parmenides the Eleatic philosopher and Socrates argue about dialectic. In the Theaetetus, Socrates says that Parmenides alone among the wise (Protagoras, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Epicharmus, and Homer) denied that everything is change and motion.

Related Topics:
Plato - Dialogue - ''Parmenides'' - Socrates - Dialectic - Theaetetus - Protagoras - Heraclitus - Empedocles - Epicharmus - Homer

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