Ancient philosophy a new history of western philosophy volume 1 (new history of western philosophy) ( PDFDrive ) 41
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PYTHAGORAS TO PLATO
Besides trustworthy truth’s unquaking heart
Learn the false Wctions of poor mortals’ art.
(KRS 288. 29–30)
There are only two possible routes of inquiry:
Two ways there are of seeking how to see
One that it is, and is not not to be—
That is the path of Truth’s companion Trust—
The other it is not, and not to be it must.
(KRS 291. 2–5)
(I must ask the reader to believe that Parmenides’ Greek is as clumsy and as
baZing as this English text.) Parmenides’ Way of Truth, thus riddlingly
introduced, marks an epoch in philosophy. It is the founding charter of a
new discipline: ontology or metaphysics, the science of Being.
Whatever there is, whatever can be thought of, is for Parmenides
nothing other than Being. Being is one and indivisible: it has no beginning
and no end, and it is not subject to temporal change. When a kettle of
water boils away, this may be, in Heraclitus’ words, the death of water and
the birth of air; but for Parmenides it is not the death or birth of Being.
Whatever changes may take place, they are not changes from being to nonbeing; they are all changes within Being. But for Parmenides there are not,
in fact, any real changes at all. Being is everlastingly the same, and time is
unreal because past, present, and future are all one.10
The everyday world of apparent change is described in the second part of
Parmenides’ poem, the Way of Seeming, which his goddess introduces thus:
I bring to an end my trusty word and thought,
The tale of Truth. The rest’s another sort—
A pack of lies expounding men’s beliefs.
(KRS 300)
It is not clear why Parmenides feels obliged to reproduce the false notions
that are entertained by deluded mortals. If we took the second part of his
poem out of its context, we would see in it a cosmology very much in
the tradition of the Ionian thinkers. To the normal pairs of opposites
Parmenides adds light and darkness, and he is given credit by Aristotle
for introducing Love as the eYcient cause of everything (Metaph. A 3.
984b27). The Way of Seeming in fact includes two truths not hitherto
10 A detailed examination of Parmenides’ ontology will be found in Ch. 6 below.
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