This section analyses Deductive Consequence C of Fr. In the first case, the trick is to show how motionlessness can be gotten from denial of coming to be and passing away. Here the trick is to show how remaining the same has a kinetic rather than a qualitative reading. Keywords: immobility , remaining the same , start—stop argument. Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service.
Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter. Please, subscribe or login to access full text content. To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us. All Rights Reserved. OSO version 0. Parmenides of Elea, active in the earlier part of the 5th c. His philosophical stance has typically been understood as at once extremely paradoxical and yet crucial for the broader development of Greek natural philosophy and metaphysics.
The difficulties involved in the interpretation of his poem have resulted in disagreement about many fundamental questions concerning his philosophical views, such as: whether he actually was a monist and, if so, what kind of monist he was; whether his system reflects a critical attitude toward earlier thinkers such as the Milesians, Pythagoreans, and Heraclitus, or whether he was motivated simply by more strictly logical concerns, such as the paradox of negative existentials that Bertrand Russell detected at the heart of his thought; whether he considered the world of our everyday awareness, with its vast population of entities changing and affecting one another in all manner of ways, to be simply an illusion, and thus whether the lengthy cosmological portion of his poem represented a genuine attempt to understand this world at all.
It concludes by suggesting that understanding his thought and his place in the development of early Greek philosophy requires taking due account of the fundamental modal distinctions that he was the first to articulate and explore with any precision.
He would thus appear to have been active during the early to mid-fifth century BCE. The ancient historiographic tradition naturally associates Parmenides with thinkers such as Xenophanes and the Pythagoreans active in Magna Graecia, the Greek-speaking regions of southern Italy, whom he may well have encountered.
A 1st c. According to Diogenes Laertius, Parmenides composed only a single work D. This was a metaphysical and cosmological poem in the traditional epic medium of hexameter verse. That any portion of his poem survives is due entirely to the fact that later ancient authors, beginning with Plato, for one reason or another felt the need to quote some portion of it in the course of their own writings.
Sextus Empiricus quotes thirty of the thirty-two verses of fragment 1 the opening Proem of the poem , though apparently from some sort of Hellenistic digest rather than from an actual manuscript copy, for his quotation of fr. The Alexandrian Neoplatonist Simplicius 6th c. He introduces his lengthy quotation of fr. We are much less well informed about the cosmology Parmenides expounded in the latter part of the poem and so must supplement the primary evidence of the fragments with testimonia , that is, with various reports or paraphrases of his theories that we also find in later authors.
A more comprehensive collection of testimonia , with English translations, is to be found in Coxon , 99— Many of these testimonia are presented and translated together with the verbatim fragments in the D section of Laks and Most Certainly the partial and imperfect preservation of his poem is one factor that complicates understanding of his thought. The maidens gently persuade Justice, guardian of these gates, to open them so that Parmenides himself may pass through to the abode within.
Parmenides thus describes how the goddess who dwells there welcomed him upon his arrival:. In the proem, then, Parmenides casts himself in the role of an initiate into the kind of mysteries that were during his day part of the religious milieu of Magna Graecia. The goddess Night serves as counselor to Zeus in some of the major Orphic cosmologies, including the Derveni cosmology col. In the closely related Orphic Rhapsodies , Night instructs Zeus on how to preserve the unity produced by his absorption of all things into himself as he sets about initiating a new cosmogonic phase.
Immediately after welcoming Parmenides to her abode, the goddess describes as follows the content of the revelation he is about to receive:. She then follows this first phase of her revelation with what in the originally complete poem was a much longer account of the principles, origins, and operation of the cosmos and its constituents, from the heavens and the sun, moon, and stars right down to the earth and its population of living creatures, including humans themselves.
The second way of inquiry is here set aside virtually as soon as it is introduced. The goddess goes on to refer back to the first way of inquiry and then speaks of another way as characteristic of mortal inquiry:. Here the goddess again articulates the division of her revelation into the two major phases first announced at the end of fragment 1. Some have thought the cosmology proceeds along the second way of inquiry introduced at fr.
She in fact appears to be indicating that her harsh criticism of the inapprehension of ordinary humans, resulting from their exclusive reliance on the senses, has been designed to keep Parmenides firmly planted on the first way of inquiry. These now include the programmatic description here in fr. The arguments here proceed methodically in accordance with the program announced at fr.
The goddess begins by arguing, in fr. Continuing on, in fr. Finally, at fr. The direct evidence provided by the last lines of fragment 8 50—64 and by the other fragments plausibly assigned to this portion of the poem frs.
Since a number of these fragments are programmatic, we still have a good idea of some of the major subjects it treated. Witness the programmatic remarks of fragments 10 and A few fragments, including one known only via Latin translation, show that Parmenides also dealt with the physiology of reproduction frs. Fortunately, the sketchy picture of the cosmology furnished by the fragments is significantly improved by the testimonia.
The impression given by the fragments of the range of subjects is confirmed by both Simplicius, who comments after quoting fr.
The ancient testimonia tend to confirm that Parmenides sought to explain an incredibly wide range of natural phenomena, including especially the origins and specific behaviors of both the heavenly bodies and the terrestrial population. While Parmenides is generally recognized as having played a major role in the development of ancient Greek natural philosophy and metaphysics, fundamental disagreement persists about the upshot of his philosophy and thus about the precise nature of his influence.
Sections 3. These sections do not purport to present a comprehensive taxonomy of modern interpretations, nor do they make any attempt to reference all the representatives and variants of the principal types of interpretation here described.
They are not meant to be a history of modern Parmenides interpretation, as worthy and fascinating a topic as that is. Since some advocates of the interpretations outlined in sections 3. After doing so in section 3. A successful interpretation should attend to the fr. To this end, it should avoid attributing to Parmenides views that are patently anachronistic or, worse, views that cannot be coherently asserted or maintained.
On this view, Parmenides considers the world of our ordinary experience non-existent and our normal beliefs in the existence of change, plurality, and even, it seems, our own selves to be entirely deceptive. Although less common than it once was, this type of view still has its adherents and is probably familiar to many who have only a superficial acquaintance with Parmenides. The strict monist interpretation is influentially represented in the first two volumes of W.
Finding reason and sensation to yield wildly contradictory views of reality, Parmenides presumed reason must be preferred and sensory evidence thereby rejected as altogether deceptive. It is thus illegitimate to suppose that everything came into being out of one thing Guthrie , 86—7. In addition to thus criticizing the theoretical viability of the monistic material principles of the early Milesian cosmologists, Parmenides also is supposed to have criticized the Milesian union of the material and moving cause in their principles by arguing that motion and change are impossible and inadmissible conceptions Guthrie , 5—6, Parmenides directs us to judge reality by reason and not to trust the senses.
Reason, as deployed in the intricate, multi-staged deduction of fragment 8, reveals what attributes whatever is must possess: whatever is must be ungenerated and imperishable; one, continuous and indivisible; and motionless and altogether unchanging, such that past and future are meaningless for it. There is the same type of tension in the outmoded proposals that Parmenides was targeting certain supposedly Pythagorean doctrines a view developed in Raven and ensconced in Kirk and Raven Here the watershed event was the publication of G.
The arguments of fragment 8, on this view, are then understood as showing that what can be thought and talked about is, surprisingly, without variation in time and space, that is, absolutely one and unchanging. While abandoning the idea that Parmenidean monism was a specific reaction to the theories of any of his predecessors, these two works continue to depict his impact on later Presocratic systems as decisive. On their Owenian line, the story becomes that the arguments of Parmenides and his Eleatic successors were meant to be generally destructive of all previous cosmological theorizing, in so far as they purported to show that the existence of change, time, and plurality cannot be naively presumed.
Brown , Untersteiner While this proposal has had fewer adherents among other interpreters favoring the Russell-Owen line, it has been taken up by certain advocates of the next type of interpretation.
One influential alternative to interpretations of Parmenides as a strict monist, certainly among scholars working in America, has been that developed by Alexander Mourelatos in his monograph, The Route of Parmenides. As such, it is not an account of what there is namely, one thing, the only one that exists but, rather, of whatever is in the manner required to be an ontologically fundamental entity—a thing that is F , for some F , in an essential way.
Thus Nehamas has more recently written:. To be a genuine entity, a thing must be a predicational unity, with a single account of what it is; but it need not be the case that there exists only one such thing.
Rather, the thing itself must be a unified whole. If it is, say, F , it must be all, only, and completely F. Mourelatos, Nehamas, and Curd all take Parmenides to be concerned with specifying in an abstract way what it is to be the nature or essence of a thing, rather than simply with specifying what there in fact is, as he is presumed to be doing on both the logical-dialectical and the more traditional strict monist readings.
Advocates of the meta-principle reading here face a dilemma. The cosmological principles light and night do not in fact conform to those strictures. Not only is this an unstable interpretive position, it imputes confusion to Parmenides rather than acknowledge its own difficulties. Long for a more detailed development of this interpretive line. Unfortunately, this notion has no real ancient authority.
But Aristotle mentions Parmenides nowhere in the passage, and his complaint is in fact broadly directed against all the early Greek philosophers whose views he has been surveying previously in the book. He complains that they naively adopted the view that no fundamental entity or substance comes to be or perishes, the result being that they are unable to account for, because they disavow, substantial change, which is the very phenomenon Aristotle is most interested in explaining. In the complex treatment of Parmenides in Physics 1.
According to Aristotle, Melissus held that everything is a single, i. This is only a superficial difference, given how at Physics 1. Despite the assimilation of Melissus and Parmenides under the rubric inherited from Gorgias, Aristotle recognized that grouping the two figures together under this convenient label obscured fundamental differences in their positions.
Among its species are strict monism or the position that just one thing exists. This is the position Melissus advocated, one which no serious metaphysician should want to adopt. More familiar species include both numerical and generic substance monism, according to which, respectively, there is a single substance or a single kind of substance. Aristotle attributes to both Parmenides and Plato the recognition that knowledge requires as its objects certain natures or entities not susceptible to change—to Parmenides in De Caelo 3.
This would be a rash conclusion, however, for Plato consistently represents Parmenides as a monist in later dialogues see, e. There the One is shown to have a number of properties that reflect those Parmenides himself attributed to Being in the course of fr. In the Second Deduction, all these properties prove to belong to the One in virtue of its own nature and in relation to itself. Alexander of Aphrodisias quotes him as having written the following of Parmenides in the first book of his On the Natural Philosophers :.
The passage on the whole suggests that, like Plato and Aristotle, Theophrastus understood Parmenides as furnishing dual accounts of the universe, first in its intelligible and then in its phenomenal aspects. Both Plato and Aristotle understood Parmenides as perhaps the first to have developed the idea that apprehension of what is unchanging is of a different order epistemologically than apprehension of things subject to change. More fundamentally, Plato and Aristotle both came to understand Parmenides as a type of generous monist whose conception of what is belongs more to theology or first philosophy than to natural science.
None of these broad points, in other words, involves Plato or Aristotle viewing Parmenides through the distorting lens of their own concepetual apparatus. Numerous interpreters have variously resisted the idea that Parmenides meant to deny the very existence of the world we experience. They have consequently advocated some more robust status for the cosmological portion of his poem. See, e. See also the proposal at Kahn , and n.
In this omission they are not alone, of course, since none of the types of interpretation reviewed so far recognizes that Parmenides was the first philosopher rigorously to distinguish what must be, what must not be, and what is but need not be. Empedocles fr. Comparison with fr. Each verse appears to demarcate a distinct modality or way of being.
One might find it natural to call these modalities, respectively, the modality of necessary being and the modality of necessary non-being or impossibility. Parmenides conceives of these modalities as ways of being or ways an entity might be rather than as logical properties.
The Proem opens mid-action, with a first-person account of an unnamed youth generally taken to be Parmenides himself traveling along a divine path to meet a didactic also unnamed goddess. The youth describes himself riding in a chariot with fire-blazing wheels turning on pipe-whistling axles, which seems to be traversing the heavens. The chariot is drawn by mares, steered by the Daughters of the Sun the Heliades , who began their journey at the House of Night.
The party eventually arrives at two tightly-locked, bronze-fitted gates—the Gates of Night and Day. However, it would seem that any chariot journey directed by sun goddesses is best understood as following the ecliptic path of the sun and Day also, that of the moon and Night. The journey would then continue following the ecliptic pathway upwards across the heavens to apogee, and then descend towards sunset in the West.
At some point along this route over the Earth they would collect their mortal charge. Following this circular path, the troupe would eventually arrive back in the underworld at the Gates of Night and Day. Not only are these gates traditionally located immediately in front of the House of Night, but the mention of the chasm that lies beyond them is an apt poetical description of the completely dark House of Night.
It also suggests a possible identification of the anonymous spokes-goddess—Night compare Palmer The rest of the poem consists of a narration from the perspective of the unnamed goddess, who begins by offering a programmatic outline of what she will teach and what the youth must learn 1.
And the opinions of mortals, in which there is no genuine reliability. The suspicion that these lines might help shed light on the crucial relationship between Reality and Opinion is well-warranted. However, there are numerous possible readings both in the Greek transmission and in the English translation and selecting a translation for these lines requires extensive philological considerations, as well as an interpretative lens in which to understand the overall poem—the lines themselves are simply too ambiguous to make any determination.
Thus, it is quite difficult to offer a translation or summary here that does not strongly favor one interpretation of Parmenides over another. The following is an imperfect attempt at doing so, while remaining as interpretatively uncommitted as possible. Commentators have tended to understand these lines in several general ways. Another common view is that Parmenides might be telling the youth he will learn counterfactually how the opinions of mortals or the objects of such opinions would or could have been correct even though they were not and are not now.
Alternatively, Parmenides might be pointing to some distinct, third thing for the youth to learn, beyond just Reality and Opinion. This third thing could be, but is not limited to, the relationship between the two sections, which does not seem to have been explicitly outlined in the poem at least, not in the extant fragments. In any case, these lines are probably best dealt with once one already has settled upon an interpretative stance for the overall poem given the rest of the evidence.
In any case, due to the overall relative completeness of the section and its clearly novel philosophical content—as opposed to the more mythical and cosmological content found in the other sections—these lines have received far more attention from philosophically-minded readers, in both ancient and modern times.
Here, the goddess seems to warn the youth from following the path which holds being and not-being or becoming and not-becoming to be both the same and not the same. Scholars are divided as to what the exact meaning of this relationship is supposed to be, leading to numerous mutually exclusive interpretative models. Does Parmenides really mean to make an identity claim between the two—that thinking really is numerically one and the same as being, and vice-versa?
Or, is it that there is some shared property -ies between the two? Perhaps both? Most commonly, Parmenides has been understood here as anticipating Russellian concerns with language and how meaning and reference must be coextensive with, and even preceded by, ontology Owen This line of reasoning can be readily advanced to deny any sort of change at all.
Opinion has traditionally been estimated to be far longer than the previous two sections combined. This degree of precision is highly speculative, to say the least. The reason Opinion has been estimated to be so much larger is due to the fragmentary nature of the section only 44 verses, largely disjointed or incomplete, are attested and the apparently wide array of different topics treated—which would seem to require a great deal of exposition to properly flesh-out.
The belief that Opinion would have required a lengthy explication in order to adequately address its myriad of disparate topics may be overstated. As Kurfess has recently argued, there is nothing in the testimonia indicating any significant additional content belonging to the Opinion beyond that which is explicitly mentioned in the extant fragments Thus, though Opinion would still be far longer than the quite limited sampling that has been transmitted, it need not have been anywhere near as extensive as has been traditionally supposed, or all that much longer than Reality.
Regardless of its original length, the incompleteness of this section allows for substantially less confidence regarding its arrangement and even less clarity concerning the overall meaning of the section. As a result, the assignment of certain fragments to this section has faced more opposition compare Cordero for a recent example. Nevertheless, the internal evidence and testimonia provide good reasons to accept the traditional assignment of fragments to this section, as well as their general arrangement.
Admittedly, the Greek is ambiguous about what exactly it is not right for mortals to do. It is common amongst scholars to read these passages as claiming it is either wrong for mortals to name both Light and Night, or that naming just one of these opposites is wrong and the other acceptable. This reading tends to suggest that Parmenides is either denying the existence of the duality completely, or accepting that only one of them properly exists.
The same holds if only Night is named. Thus, it would not seem appropriate to name only one of these forms. This problem is only doubled if both forms are named. Thus, it would seem that mortals should not name either form, and thus both Light and Night are denied as proper objects of thought. This universal denigration is first introduced at C 8.
If this is truly a concluding passage, the apparently disparate content of Opinion is unified as a treatment of mortal errors in naming, which the section uncontroversially began with. The outer ones with night, along which spews forth a portion of flame.
This is clearly the case with respect to C , as the governing goddess is explicitly said to direct male-female intercourse in C This is then followed by a more intuitive cosmogony, suffused with traditional mythopoetical elements Opinion —a world full of generation, perishing, motion, and so forth.
It is uncontroversial that Reality is positively endorsed, and it is equally clear that Opinion is negatively presented in relation to Aletheia. However, there is significant uncertainty regarding the ultimate status of Opinion , with questions remaining such as whether it is supposed to have any value at all and, if so, what sort of value. While most passages in the poem are consistent with a completely worthless Opinion , they do not necessitate that valuation; even the most obvious denigrations of Opinion itself or mortals and their views are not entirely clear regarding the exact type or extent of its failings.
Even more troubling, there are two passages which might suggest some degree of positive value for Opinion —however, the lines are notoriously difficult to understand. Thus, it is helpful to examine more closely the passages where the relationship between the sections is most directly treated. C 1: …And it is necessary for you to learn all things, 28b Both the still-heart of persuasive reality, And the opinions of mortals, in which there is no trustworthy persuasion.
From the very beginning of her speech, the goddess presents the opinions of mortals that is, Opinion negatively in relation to Reality. However, it does not necessarily follow from these lines that Opinion is entirely false or valueless. At most, all that seems entailed here is a comparative lack of epistemic certainty in relation to Reality.
Accepting that it is the content of Opinion that is deceptive, one of the most difficult interpretative questions regarding Opinion remains. Mortal beliefs are also unequivocally derided in between these bookends to Reality , though in slightly different terms. C 5 not only claims mortal views are in error, it identifies the source of their error—confusing being and non-being. Given the passages outlined so far in this section, there appears to be quite a substantial case for taking Opinion to be entirely false and lacking any value whatsoever.
Nevertheless, this may not be the entire story. Furthermore, there is at least some textual evidence that might be understood to suggest Opinion should not be treated as negatively as the passages considered so far would suggest. As noted in the summary of the Proem above, there are two particularly difficult lines C 1. At most, these lines could only soften the negative treatment of mortal views. Only one further extant passage remains which might offer some reason to think Opinion maintains some positive value, and this is the passage most commonly appealed to for this purpose.
Since mortals are incorrect in their accounts, the particular account offered in Opinion is representative of such accounts, and is presented didactically—as an example of the sorts of accounts that should not be accepted.
If the youth can learn to recognize what is fundamentally mistaken in this representative account Opinion , any alternative or derivative account offered by mortals which includes the same fundamental errors can be recognized and resisted.
Given all of this, it is undeniable that Opinion is lacking in comparison to Aletheia , and certainly treated negatively in comparison.
It should also be taken as well-founded that the Opinion is epistemically inferior. Whether Opinion is also inferior in terms of veracity seems most likely—though again, it is not certain whether this means Opinion is entirely lacking in value, and the extent of its deceptiveness all content, or its fundamental premises and assumptions is still an open question.
The purpose is to provide the reader with a head-start on how scholars have tended to think about these aspects of the poem, and some of the difficulties and objections these views have faced.
The treatment is not meant to be at all exhaustive, nor advocate any particular view in favor of another. The only ancient response to the content of the Proem is from the Pyrrhonian Skeptic Sextus Empiricus 2 nd cn. In an attempt to demonstrate how Parmenides rejected opinions based upon sensory evidence in favor of infallible reason, Sextus set forth a detailed allegorical account in which most details described in the Proem are supposed to possess a particular metaphorical meaning relating to this epistemological preference.
In his attempt to make nearly every aspect of the story fit a particular metaphorical model, Sextus clearly overreaches all evidence and falls into obvious mistakes. The metaphorical associations are often strained at best, if not far beyond any reasonable speculation, particularly when one attempts to find metaphorical representations in every minor detail.
More theoretically problematic, determining some aspects to be allegorical while other details are not would seem to require some non-arbitrary methodology, which is not readily forthcoming. Recognition of this has led some to claim that while the Proem is certainly allegorical, we are so far distant from the cultural context as to have no hope of reliably accessing its metaphorical meanings for example, Curd Finally, the allegorical accounts available tend to offer little if any substantive guidance or interpretative weight for reading the poem overall.
With the decline of allegorical treatments, an interest in parsing the Proem in terms of possible shared historical, cultural, and mythical themes has ascended. Thus, it is overly speculative to hang very much on this purported influence with any confidence. The youth does not learn about any topics Orphism itself focuses on: moral truths, the nature of the soul itself, or what the afterlife was like. A select few advocate that the reader is merely supposed to recognize that Parmenides is here indicating that his insights were the product of an actual spiritual experience he underwent.
However, there is no real evidence for this, and some against. There are very close similarities between the imagery and thematic elements in the Proem and those found throughout the rest of the poem, especially Opinion. Both the Proem and the theogonical cosmology in Opinion introduce an anonymous goddess. In fact, in contrast to Reality , both sections have extensive mythological content, which scholars have regularly overlooked.
The obvious pervasive female presence in the Proem and the rest of the poem , particularly in relation to divinity, can also hardly be a coincidence, though its importance remains unclear. Once considered at greater length, the parallels between the Proem and Opinion seem far too numerous and carefully contrived to be coincidental and unimportant. This suggests a stronger relationship between the Proem and Opinion than has commonly been recognized and the need for a much more holistic interpretative approach to the poem overall, in contrast to the more compartmentalized analyses that have been so pervasive.
Further scholarly consideration along these lines would likely prove quite fruitful. This approach provides a more universal appreciation of the A-D Paradox than taking on any selection of authors as foils, allowing the reader a broad appreciation for why various interpretative approaches to the poem have yet to yield a convincing resolution to this problem.
The most persistent approach to understanding the poem is to accept that for some reason—perhaps merely following where logic led him, no matter how counterintuitive the results—Parmenides has concluded that all of reality is really quite different than it appears to our senses.
That mortals erroneously believe otherwise is a result of relying on their fallible senses instead of reason. Thus, the account in Opinion lacks any intrinsic value and its inclusion in the poem must be explained in some practical way.
It can be explained dialectically, as an exercise in explicating opposing views Owen It can also be explained didactically, as an example of the sort of views that are mistaken and should be rejected Taran This reading is certainly understandable. The broad range of topics in Opinion seems to be intended as an exhaustive though mistaken account of the world, which the abstract and singular subject of Reality stands in corrective contrast to.
While this view is pervasive and perhaps even defensible, many have found it hard to accept given its radical and absurd entailments. Not only is the external world experienced by mortal senses denied reality, the very beings who are supposed to be misled by their senses are also denied existence, including Parmenides himself! It is also difficult to reconcile the apparent length and detailed specificity characteristic of the account offered in Opinion as well as the Proem , if it is supposed to be entirely lacking in veracity.
Providing such a detailed exposition of mortal views in a traditional cosmology just to dismiss it entirely, rather than continue to argue against mortal views by deductively demonstrating their principles to be incorrect, would be counterintuitive.
If the purpose is didactic, the latter approach would certainly be sufficient and far more succinct. The view that Parmenides went to such lengths to provide a dialectical opposition to his central thesis seems weak: a convenient ad hoc motivation which denies any substantial purpose for Opinion, implying a lack of unity to the overall poem.
Though the strict monist view remains pervasive in introductory texts, contemporary scholars have tended to abandon it on account of these worrisome entailments. Thus, alternative accounts tend to challenge one or both of these assumptions. Emphasizing the epistemic distinctions, it can be pointed out that the conclusions offered in Reality are reached through a priori, deductive reasoning—a methodology which can provide certainty of the conclusion, given the premises. Parmenides attributes this failing to the fact that mortals rely entirely upon fallible, a posteriori sense experience.
However, while mortal accounts may be fallible, as well as epistemically inferior to divine or deductive knowledge, such accounts may still be true. If it is just that Opinion is uncertain, and not completely false, then it can have intrinsic value. It is for these reasons that Parmenides provides his own, purportedly superior, cosmology.
Emphasizing the epistemological differences between these sections is not altogether wrong, as the explicit epistemic contrasts between these accounts in the poem are undeniable. However, holding the sole failing of Opinion to be its lack of epistemic certainty can hardly be the entire story.
Furthermore, other aspects of the poem are not adequately addressed at all. Attempts to resolve these issues have tended to rely upon positing an ontological hierarchy to complement the epistemic hierarchy.
The account revealed by the divine methodology of logical deduction in Reality reveals what the world, or at least Being , must fundamentally be like. However, the world as it appears also exists in some ontologically inferior manner. Though any account of it cannot be truly correct, since mortals actually live in this lower ontological level, learning the best account of reality at that level remains important.
A number of objections can be raised to this interpretative approach. It is also quite difficult to offer a convincing explanation for what possible grounds Parmenides could have for ascribing superiority to his own account of the apparent world offered in Opinion , in comparison to any other mortal offering of his time. While his cosmological claims may contain some novel truths moon gets its light from the sun, etc. Furthermore, the methodology does not appear to be superior in any way—Parmenides abandons his pioneering deduction in Reality , resorting to a traditional mythopoetic approach in Opinion.
A promising suggestion by some recent commentators is that, rather than drawing ontological conclusions about the entirety of existence, Parmenides was instead focused on more abstract metaphysical considerations. Nehamas and Curd have both developed more recent proposals along similar lines. A common upshot of Essentialist views is that, while it remains true that every fundamental entity that exists must be eternal, motionless, a unified whole, etc. Furthermore, this view can have welcome implications for the narrative of how Parmenides was received by his immediate successors that is, Anaxagoras , Empedocles , and the early Atomists.
Whatever the merits of this more limited and abstract thesis of Reality , such interpretations continue to face very similar, if not the same, problematic entailments and worries related to the value of the Opinion. First, there is substantial objection particular to such accounts. At the very least, one should expect some hint at how such an essentialist account of being could be consistent with mortal accounts.
However, there is not even a hint of such in Opinion. Furthermore, though the arguments in Reality are now consistent with a plurality of fundamental perfect beings, there seems to be no way such entirely motionless and changeless entities could be consistent with, or productive of, the contrary phenomena found in the world of mortal experience.
Thus, it remains difficult to see how Opinion could be true in any way, and the existence of mortals and Parmenides is still under threat, along with the implications that follow. The purpose of the poem is frustrated if mortals and Parmenides cannot exist.
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