Parmenides | Richard D. McKirahan, Jr. (essay date 1994)
Richard D. McKirahan, Jr. (essay date 1994)
SOURCE: Richard D. McKirahan, Jr., "Parmenides and Elea," in Philosophy before Socrates: An Introduction with Texts and Commentary, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1994, pp. 151-78.
[In the following excerpt, McKirahan clarifies some of the more difficult passages in Parmenides 's work and answers objections to the poem.]
Fragments
Significance and Life
Parmenides' philosophy marks a turning point in the history of thought. Neither his style of argument nor his astonishing conclusions could be overlooked even by those who strongly disagreed with him. Like Heraclitus, Parmenides pushed the limits of his thinking beyond the range of subjects found in the early Ionian philosophers, though his ideas, like those of Heraclitus, have implications for the entities and cosmic processes which his predecessors proposed. If Heraclitus was the first person to approach...
[The entire page is 11230 words long]
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