Parmenides: The Dawn of Western Metaphysics
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- čas přidán 10. 07. 2024
- Parmenides of Elea is a pre-Socratic philosopher best known for his thesis of being. His sole work, On Nature, is composed of three sections: Proem, Reality, and Opinion. After exploring all three, this video acknowledges an apparent contradiction between sections of Reality and Opinion also known as the A-D Paradox. Four interpretations of the solution to the paradox are offered. Finally, the common viewpoint of "Heraclitus vs Parmenides" is challenged through inspecting their respective histories and thought.
Music:
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Timestamps:
00:00 || Introduction
00:56 || On Nature: Proem, Reality, Opinion
10:58 || The A-D Paradox and Four Interpretations
17:03 || Heraclitus and Parmenides
21:16 || Conclusion
Sources:
Grondin, Jean. Introduction to Metaphysics: from Parmenides to Levinas. Columbia University Press, 2012.
Curd, Patricia. A Presocratics Reader: Selected Fragments and Testimonia. Hackett Publishing, 2011.
Palmer, John. “Parmenides.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 2 Aug. 2016, plato.stanford.edu/entries/parmenides/.
DeLong, Jeremy C. "Parmenides of Elea." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. iep.utm.edu/parmenid/.
Hobbs, Angie. "Parmenides." Philosophy Overdose. • Video
Heraclitus, and Dennis Sweet. Heraclitus: Translation and Analysis. Lanham: Univ. Press of America, 1995.
The Goat
Awesome. I'd like to just point out that Heidegger wrote a lot about Parmenides, especially in his book "What is Called Thinking?" and he thought this fragment "It is necessary to think and speak that being is" one of the most crucial fragments that illumines what thinking is. He also wrote a lot about Parmenides's philosophy of truth as in his theory of truth as unconcealement. I'm currently reading these works and trying to make sense of them :)
Yes! I appreciate you bringing this up here since I'm sure others will find the connection fascinating too and I had not the time to cover it in this video with the breadth that it would deserve (maybe in a later video). If I remember correctly, Heidegger had seen the history of metaphysics as misguided since after Parmenides. Likely, Heidegger favored one of the first three interpretations but it would be interesting to understand just how he interpreted Parmenides since it is sure to have a style of its own. Good luck with your studies!
Parmenides revealed The Truth to be simple, irrefutable, and profound. It is a damn shame people throughout history continue to misunderstand and misrepresent his philosophy.
@Ian Withy-Berry There's at least two incredible seminars that Heidegger gave in the early 1940s, namely "Parmenides" (GA 54) and "Heraclitus" (GA 55). The first is very illuminating when it comes to showing how we have always understood the Greeks through Roman eyes and not through Greek eyes. The Greeks understood truth as "unconcealment" (ἀλήθεια: aléthia), as I'm sure you know, but it's important to underline that its counter-essence (Heidegger likes defining notions through their essential opposites) is ψεῡδος (pseûdos) and NOT falsum/falseness, which is a transformation that only the Romans later develop, and is the one we the moderns understand.
Pseûdos is not about correspondence or ratio (from "reor": "to take something as something"), but about the distortion (the pseûdés) that takes place over a particular true-something (the "alethés"), making it shine/appear as something other than that true-something... and yet that distortion still has its root in the original true-something, which has to mean that they (the distortion and that which is distorted) are the Same thing, but unconcealed in different ways-a distinction which must itself remain concealed: it is the ground that founds the capacity for either thing to emerge (following phúsis) and remain present.
The implications of the difference between the Greek's understanding of truth compared to the Roman's (i.e. ours) are immense, and it's impossible to summarize the 600 pages of those seminars into one youtube comment, but considering that the goddess who speaks Parmenides' proem names herself "ἀλήθεια", it's definitely worth investigating how truth operates for the pre-socratics so as to not unknowingly misread Parmenides' work completely (by reading him with Roman & modern eyes), which easily happens when we use words like "reason", "language", "logic", "concept", or phrases that came from philosophers who lived centuries or even millenia after Parmenides-something many scholars seem to do without realizing it.
I also agree with David in recommending "What is called Thinking?", as in there Heidegger illuminates the phrase "χρὴ τὸ λέγειν τε νοεῖν τ᾿ ἐὸν ἔμμεναι" to mean something like: "Necessary: to collect and to consider that presence presences [itself]." Heidegger says that ἐὸν (entity) and ἔμμεναι (an earlier form of εἶναι: "is") both come from the same ἐ- root, but the former is a "nounified" version of the verb, and the latter is a "verbified" version of the noun. Therefore, the closest translation is indeed: "being is" (i.e. "being essences itself"; Heidegger uses the verb "wesen"/"west"), but the clearest way to say this with our poor modern words is: "presence (noun) presences [itself] (verb)".
This apparent equivalence between "entity" and "is" is something Heidegger calls the "Duplicity [of είναι]", where "entity" and "to be" were unconcealed initially-with Parmenides- as equivalents. In other words, they were the Same, but this distinction was quickly lost with and after the Socratics. Heidegger discusses this Duplicity in more "modern" but no less challenging terms in Gelassenheit, On the Way to Saying, The Essence of Saying, etc. In those collections of conferences, essays and interviews it's apparent he understands "Λόγος", "Being" and "Saying" (die Sage) to all be different names for the same, which unifies everything, and allows for everything to emerge (as it already was) for human beings to articulate with it.
Didn't mean for it to turn into this huge writeup. Hope this is of some use to you!
Yo great video mate, really explained Parmenides’s Metaphysics nicely.
Great info, not enough is said about this Philosopher. Thank You for the video.
fuel for the algorithm
Wow… This is a rewatch! Thanks for the upload I am now subscribed
More of a Heraclitus guy myself lol. Great Video, another banger! Also interestingly enough Heraclitus's only work is also known as "On Nature".
Thanks! I’m not too sure of the details but I think that numerous work from the time were titled “On Nature” far after their creation by later commentators. I guess it was a bit of a trend at some point, possibly to name unnamed works as that. From Wikipedia “On Nature:”
On Nature (Περὶ Φύσεως, Peri Physeos) is the name of several works of ancient philosophy.
On Nature (Anaximander)
On Nature (Heraclitus)
On Nature (Parmenides)
On Nature (Melissus)
On Nature (Empedocles)
On Nature (Philolaus)
On Nature (Epicurus)
Good stuff man, I'm trying g to get into philosophy but this channel sums it up really well, goodjob!
Very nice work! We also believe that both presocratic philosophers complement each other in terms of being as a whole!!
Thank you so much
That statue is *not* him but your information is stellar. You have an awesome voice.
Eleatic philosophy is just the result of a limited archaic language wherein uttering "yes" and "no" involves a determination regarding the reality or unreality of the objects mentioned in the statements.
Just curious what role you think the various goddesses play in frag. 8, i.e. Dike, Ananke and Moira?
Or perhaps you don't personify them, in which case what role would these ideas play?
Great video Ian far from an easy one to cover and you did a great job. I've always found the presence of both the doxa and the aletheia in the same work to be boggling and utterly fascinating. This 4th response the A-D paradox is brilliant I've never come across that before or thought of it but it gels perfectly with Zeno's paradoxes when you think about it. Zeno knew the arrow reached its target and Achilles will inevitably overtake the tortoise but he was showing what logic shows vs what experience shows. So which is false the aletheia or the doxa? The addition of Zeno's spice into the mix really amplifies the enigma; I still don't know what they are trying to say but it looks like the AD Paradox and Zeno's paradoxes are pointing to the same proposition (whatever that ultimately is)
There was another point that you raised or at least that you sparked in me about the goddess. The fact that it's her narrating this way of truth speaks to the way of truth being truth for a higher level at the level of the gods which for me I take to be in the realm of the intellect in the spirit. Makes me think of mystics talking about the paradox of the present moment being eternal and also of Jung talking about how time does not exist in the unconscious (the realm of the archetypes i.e. the gods). All this leads me to think that the aletheia is true of the spiritual aspect of the intellectual sphere of Plato's eidos...it's true of some eternal aspect that perhaps we can connect over with the mystic side of things (as Plotinus makes out in Plato). Just thinking out loud here connecting dots that you've set off in me.
One final thought is about Heraclitus. I actually made a video on the topic of Heraclitus and Parmenides (czcams.com/video/RGqPQKcts-I/video.html) where I talk about it but that Heraclitus and Parmenides are very similar as you say; the comparison between Heraclitus's Logos and Parmenides being is fruitful I think. He says that "agreeing not with me but with the logos it is wise to agree that all is one" and this is the truth that we sleepers are all blind to even though we are awake. Heraclitus has the tension between the One in the Logos and the everchanging becoming of panta rei as we see in Parmenides (and also in Anaxagoras who I made another video about relating it to Parmenides) anyway saw your video on Reddit a few days ago and the tab's been sitting there waiting to be watched and I guess I procrastinated because I knew this was going to happen anyway really enjoyed it and looking forward to future videos.
PS love the logo and the end screen is just gorgeous as well the black and white effect is very aesthetically pleasing
Thank you for these thoughts! The connection between Parmenides and Plato is certainly one I'd like to explore further in the future because, at least on one interpretation, Plato's theory of forms was, in part, informed by Parmenides' "being." I just watched your video and I really enjoyed it. Pre-Socratic philosophy is definitely underserved in college institutions. And you talked about the connection between the Logos and Being too! It really is quite a shame that these two philosophers are pitted against each other when they seem to overlap far more than they differ. Thanks for the kind words and I'll keep an eye out for your future content!
Why is there music playing?
Do you have an instagram?
I never really understood all the contention around why he'd write the second part. I mean this one line just seems to give a pretty straight answer:
> I tell thee the whole arrangement as it seems to men,
in order that no mortal may surpass thee in knowledge.
He's doing it so that, well, he may be the best intellectual around. Not because there is any real truth to what the natural philosophers and common folk think.
I think one of the things Parmenides is arguing for is that 'non-being' literally has no denotation. As such, its only meaning is being opposed to being. But nothing can be opposed to being, for being is everything -- or, all that there is. Therefore, the only object of thought is being -- since being is everything, or all that exists. (I think this a merely logical point, not a metaphysical one that equates being with thought entirely. Instead, it simply says that thought cannot go beyond being. The immediate problem that arises is : how is false judgement possible, since we can only think being, and to think being is necessarily to think what is true ?
Though fragmentary of Heraclitus's and Parmedes',
They both are saying only the same I of each people.
Have you already know what is yourself I?
Are you possible to find out another different I of yourself in any universe?
Whatever you are yourself I, you are always the one same I of yourself, aren't you?
When people really awakened the eye of himself I, then he will see Parmenides' and Heraclitus' right now.
Well this one say people to see ,Thomas Gospel 2 and 22 for reference. !!!
Of course, if one took Parmenides 'Proem' as meant literally as being words spoken to him by the Divine -- used by Parmenides to justify his conclusion -- then he has committed a fallacy of logic by referring to authority for his ultimate justification. This would be somewhat eyebrow raising for someone described as being 'the father of logic'. However, giving him the benefit of the doubt, we can view his 'Proem' in a more positive light as simply used by Parmenides as an entertaining way to introduce his rather dry subject and logical argumentation (a useful fictional story, not unlike many, if not all, Plato's dialogues.)
the weird thing is i understand every single word he says
There were too many conflations on your part and conjectures, at the cost of mitigating Parmenides metaphysical understanding. You blunted this understanding in favor of your own personal pet view of reconciling him with Heraclitus.
Maybe only way to have a spiritual journey is to have lived.
the only thing to explain this is:
Let’s see what Advaita Vedanta says. There is only Being. Pure Being can manifest itself to itself as appearances, All the phenomena are appearances, “Appearance” is the root meaning of the word “Phenomenon”. So, the real nature of everything and every being is Being. The multiplicity is just an appearance, that is, the single seems to be multiple. Based on interpretations of what we perceive, we create divisions in life. But interpretations depend on knowledge, which is always incomplete, The senses and reason are limited. All the interpretations about “what is” are incomplete, therefore false. So, division and separativiness are false.
Perceiving this, there is quietness, silence, regarding the comprehension of the totality. The Silence is the Truth. Silence is immeasurable. It is unknowable from the point of view of the appearance named "Intellect". Silence is what I am, because Silence is the essence.
"Tat Twam Asi" (Thou art That).
HOW IS WESTERN HE WAS GREEK
Western civ is built upon greek thought DERP
The 4th interpretation is a non sequitur.
You are too fast,not everyone understands your accent.