1
Parmenides Made Easy[1]
I. Proem
—sets the stage for everything else.
—proclaims a journey to the transcendental world of gods and goddesses.
—there we meet with a goddess. She represents “fertility” and given the epistemological context, this implies fruitful inquiry. This will be important because the conclusion that we end up with is barren of truth. That would seem to suggest that something has gone seriously wrong in this inquiry.
—this inquiry is meant to be a genuine search for the truth. This implies that our “pedagogic mentor” (our so-called teacher) does not have a set agenda that he wants to persuade us, the “listeners or followers”, of in advance. So inquiry is a joint inquiry whereby neither our “pedagogic mentor” nor “his followers” have the answers yet. We are all therefore called upon to follow with the utmost caution.
—in travelling to this transcendental world, we are expected to leave the world of sense perception (experience) behind. We are also, therefore, expected to suspend conviction in all beliefs derived from experience. We are expected to begin afresh; assuming nothing.
—reason then will be the vehicle of inquiry. The spirit or attitude we are expected to adopt as cautious “followers” is then of “critical rational minds”.
—we must not let ‘Parmenides’ get away with anything that he has not first validly ‘argued’ for.
II. Poem
The Way of Truth
—assuming nothing, Parmenides begins with thought/inquiry itself. He says that there are only 3 possible things that thought can think.
A) “what is”—(from fr. 2, p. 152) this is the “Way of Truth” (Alitheia) and it is also the way of Persuasion. Remember that we are already expected to “follow” as ‘critical rational minds’, in which case it makes sense to suppose that we should only be persuaded by the truth: that which stands the test of reason.
B) “what is not”—(from fr. 2, p. 152) this is the “No Way” because it is an impossible way for thought. It is impossible for thought because “what is not” is not available for thought to think. This introduces an important premise: Thought presupposes content. That is, thought is always of some-thing.
Objectivity requires then, that this some-thing that thought can think is only thought as the thing that it is. This is reasonable: what else do we mean by (objective) truth, than to successfully and accurately talk about the object of thought. EG1. If I intend to talk about the table, and then go on to say that “it is fuelled by petrol” (obviously it isn’t!), then I can not be said to successfully be talking about the table, so my belief is false. EG2. If I intend to talk about the chair, and then go on to say that “it looks blue to me”, I am not really talking about the chair itself, but rather about the appearance of the chair. In other words, I am talking about the image of the chair in my mind (that’s why I can claim that it is “for me”), and not the chair that I am sitting on.
**Notice that the problem evoked concerns questions of language (the means that thought employs to talk about and understand the world) and being (how things actually are or what there is for thought to think).
C) “what is and what is not”—(from fr. 6, p. 153) the Way of Mortal Opinion (Doxa) which is backward-turning (contradictory). This is so because we are ‘wanderers’ and as such we lack direction. This implies that we are arbitrary in the way we compile our beliefs. We compile our beliefs ‘unthinkingly’ through experience. This way does not live up to the stipulation of objectivity because it would involve thinking of some-thing as ‘something else’, namely as “what [it] is not”.
III. Glossary of Key Terms
1. Epistemology—theory or study of knowledge (episteme meant knowledge, know-how, science and logos meant explanation, account, study).
2. Rationalism—the view that knowledge is derived from reason alone.
3. Empiricism— the view that knowledge is, at least ultimately, derived from experience.
4. Doxa—opinion, often ‘popular opinion’.
5. Alitheia—truth.
6. A priori—beliefs that are determined to be true prior to (or independently from) experience.
7. A posteriori— beliefs that are determined to be true posterior to (or following) experience.
8. Objective—that there is an object in itself that exists and which can be grasped, so that a belief would be true if it were regarding the object itself. Since the object itself dictates what is true, everyone who is right/true would have to have the same belief.
9. Subjective—that beliefs are filtered through the subject who has the belief so that the object itself can not be grasped. For this reason, it would follow that a belief would only be true for the person who had it. Hence there would not be agreement regarding how things are.
[1] This is a supplementary handout that should be read together with the other handout on Parmenides.