SOURCE: G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, M. Schofield, "Parmenides of Elea," in The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History, second edition, Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 239-62.

[In the following excerpt, originally published in a different form in 1957, Kirk, Raven, and Schofield attempt to explicate Parmenides's poem, portions of which they deem to be of "ineradicable obscurity. " Greek words that were originally included in this essay have been omitted.]

Parmenides' Hexameter Poem

Parmenides is credited with a single 'treatise' (Diog. L. 1, 16, DK 28A 13).¹ Substantial fragments of this work, a hexameter poem, survive, thanks largely to Sextus Empiricus (who preserved the proem) and Simplicius (who transcribed further extracts into his commentaries on Aristotle's de caelo and Physics 'because of the scarceness of the treatise'). Ancients and moderns alike are agreed upon a low estimation of Parmenides' gifts as a writer. He has little facility in diction, and the struggle to force novel, difficult and highly abstract philosophical ideas into metrical form frequently results in ineradicable obscurity, especially syntactic obscurity. On the other hand, in the less argumentative passages of the poem he achieves a kind of clumsy grandeur.

After the proem, the poem falls into two parts. The first expounds 'the tremorless heart of well-rounded Truth' (288, 29).² Its argument is radical and powerful. Parmenides claims that in any enquiry there are two and only two logically coherent possibilities, which are exclusive—that the subject of the enquiry exists or that it does not exist. On epistemological grounds he rules out the second alternative as unintelligible. He then turns to abuse of ordinary mortals for showing by their beliefs that they never make the choice between the two ways 'is' and 'is not', but follow both without discrimination. In the final section of this first part he explores the one secure path, 'is', and proves in an astonishing deductive tour de force that if something exists, it cannot come to be or perish, change or move, nor be subject to any imperfection. Parmenides' arguments and his paradoxical conclusions had an enormous influence on later Greek philosophy; his method and his impact alike have rightly been compared to those of Descartes' cogito.

Parmenides' metaphysics and epistemology leave no room for cosmologies such as his Ionian predecessors had constructed nor indeed for any belief at all in the world our senses disclose to us. Nonetheless in the second (and much more scantily preserved) part of the poem he gives an account of 'the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true conviction'. The status and motive of this account are obscure….

The Proem

288 Fr. 1 (Sextus adv. math. VII, 3 (lines 1-30); Simplicius de caelo 557, 25ff. (lines 28-32))…. [translation]

The mares that carry me as far as my heart ever aspires sped me on, when they had brought and set me on the far-famed road of the god, which bears the man who knows over all cities. On that road was I borne, for that way the wise horses bore me, straining at the chariot, and maidens led the way. And the axle in the naves gave out the whistle of a pipe, blazing, for it was pressed hard on either side by the two well-turned wheels as the daughters of the Sun made haste to escort me, having left the halls of Night for the light, and having thrust the veils from their heads with their hands.

There are the gates of the paths of Night and Day, and a lintel and a stone threshold enclose them. They themselves, high in the air, are blocked with great doors, and avenging Justice holds the alternate bolts. Her the maidens beguiled with gentle words and cunningly persuaded to push back swiftly from the gates the bolted bar. And the gates created a yawning gap in the door frame when they flew open, swinging in turn in their sockets the bronze-bound pivots made fast with dowels and rivets. Straight through them, on the broad way, did the maidens keep the horses and the chariot.

And the goddess greeted me kindly, and took my right hand in hers, and addressed me with these words: 'Young man, you who come to my house in the company of immortal charioteers with the mares which bear you, greetings. No ill fate has sent you to travel this road—far indeed does it lie from the steps of men—but right and justice. It is proper that you should learn all things, both the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth, and the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true reliance. But nonetheless you shall learn these things too, how what is believed would have to be assuredly, pervading all things throughout.'

Parmenides' chief purpose in these lines is to lay claim to knowledge of a truth not attained by the ordinary run of mortals. The claim is dramatically expressed by means of motifs deriving largely from Homer and Hesiod, in matching diction and metre. It is sometimes suggested that Parmenides' journey to the goddess recalls the magical journeys of shamans. But as was observed above the evidence for a shamanistic tradition in early Greece is doubtful. Sextus, followed by many modern scholars, took the journey to be an allegory of enlightenment, a translation from the ignorance of Night to the knowledge of Light. But Parmenides already begins his journey in a blaze of light, as befits one who 'knows'. The point of the narration is suggested rather by the obstacle that has to be passed and by the destination, the two things (apart from description of the chariot and its movement) upon which the poet dwells. Parmenides seeks to leave the familiar world of ordinary experience where night and day alternate, an alternation governed—as Anaximander would have agreed (110)—by law or 'justice'. He makes instead for a path of thought ('a highway') which leads to a transcendent comprehension both of changeless truth and of mortal opinion. No less important is his message about the obstacle to achievement of this goal: the barrier to escape from mortal opinion is formidable, but it yields to 'gentle argument'.

The motifs of the gates of Day and Night and of divine revelation, modelled on materials in Hesiod's Theogony, are well chosen to convey both the immense gulf which in Parmenides' view separates rational enquiry from common human understanding and the unexpectedness of what his own reason has disclosed to him (cf. for both these points Heraclitus, e.g. 205, 206, 210). And religious revelation suggests both the high seriousness of philosophy and an appeal to authority—not, however, an authority beyond dispute: 'Judge by reason my strife-encompassed refutation' says the goddess later (294).

289 Fr. 5, Proclus in Farm. 1, p. 708, 16 Cousin… [translation]

It is a common point from which I start; for there again and again I shall return.

289 fits neatly after 288 and immediately before 291, at any rate if its point is that all the proofs of 296-9 take the choice specified in 291 as their common foundation (cf. also 294).³

Truth

(i) The choice

291 Fr. 2, Proclus in Tim. 1, 345, 18; Simplicius in Phys. 116, 28 (lines 3-8)…. [translation]

Come now, and I will tell you (and you must carry my account away with you when you have heard it) the only ways of enquiry that are to be thought of. The one, that [it] is and that it is impossible for [it] not to be, is the path of Persuasion (for she attends upon Truth); the other, that [it] is not and that it is needful that [it] not be, that I declare to you is an altogether indiscernible track: for you could not know what is not—that cannot be done—nor indicate it.

The goddess begins by specifying the only ways of enquiry which should be contemplated. They are plainly assumed to be logically exclusive: if you take the one, you thereby fail to take the other. No less plainly they are exclusive because they are contradictories (cf. 296, 16: 'the decision on these things lies in this: it is or it is not').⁴ What is the '[it]' which our translation has supplied as grammatical subject to Parmenides' verb estin? Presumably, any subject of enquiry whatever—in any enquiry you must assume either that your subject is or that it is not. Interpretation of estin itself, here rendered awkwardly but neutrally as 'is', is more difficult. The two obvious paraphrases are the existential ('exists') and the predicative ('is [something or other]'). To try to decide between them we need to consider the arguments in which estin most prominently figures, particularly the argument against the negative way of enquiry in lines 5 to 8 of 291.

Unfortunately consideration of this argument is not decisive. Certainly it appears impossible to know or point out what does not exist: nobody can be acquainted with Mr Pickwick or point him out to anyone else. But a predicative reading of Parmenides' premiss is also plausible: it seems impossible to know or point out what is not something or other, i.e. what possesses no attributes and has no predicates true of it. Clearer is 296, 5-21, where an analogous premiss—'it is not to be said nor thought that it is not', lines 8-9—is used to argue against the possibility of coming to be or perishing. The point Parmenides makes is that if something comes to be, then it must previously not have been—and at that time it would have been true to say of it 'it is not'; but the premiss forbids saying just that; so there can be no coming into being. Now 'come to be' in this context is plainly to be construed as 'come to exist'. Here, then, 'is not' means 'does not exist'.

At 296, 10, however, Parmenides goes on immediately to refer to what does not exist (hypothetically, of course) as 'the nothing' (cf. 293, 2). This suggests that he understands non-existence as being nothing at all, i.e. as having no attributes; and so that for him, to exist is in effect to be something or other. When later (e.g. 297, 22-5; 299, 46-8) he uses the participle eon, 'being', it is much easier to construe it as 'reality' or 'the real' than as barely designating existence. And what makes something real is surely that it has some predicate true of it (e.g. Occupies space'). If this line of interpretation is correct, Parmenides' use of estin is simultaneously existential and predicative (as KR [G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1957).] held), but not therefore (as KR concluded) confused.

From the unknowableness of what does not exist Parmenides concludes directly that the negative way is 'indiscernible', i.e. that no clear thought is expressed by a negative existential statement. We might put the point thus: 'Take any subject of enquiry you like (e.g. Mr Pickwick). Then the proposition "Mr Pickwick does not exist" fails to express a genuine thought at all. For if it were a genuine thought, it would have to be possible to be acquainted with its subject, Mr Pickwick. But that possibility does not obtain unless Mr Pickwick exists—which is exactly what the proposition denies.' This line of argument, in one guise or another, has exercised a powerful attraction on many philosophers, from Plato to Russell. Its conclusion is paradoxical, but like all good paradoxes it forces us to examine more deeply our grasp of the concepts it employs—notably in this case the relations between meaning, reference and existence.⁵

(ii) Mortal error

293 Fr. 6, Simplicius in Phys. 86, 27-8; 117, 4-13…. [translation]

What is there to be said and thought must needs be: for it is there for being, but nothing is not. I bid you ponder that, for this is the first way of enquiry from which I hold you back, but then from that on which mortals wander knowing nothing, two-headed; for helplessness guides the wandering thought in their breasts, and they are carried along, deaf and blind at once, dazed, undiscriminating hordes, who believe that to be and not to be are the same and not the same; and the path taken by them all is backward-turning.

Parmenides' summary of his case against the negative way (lines 1-3), which says in effect that any object of thought must be a real object, confirms despite its obscurity that his rejection of 'is not' is motivated by a concern about what is a possible content for a genuine thought. It is followed by a warning against a second mistaken way, identified as the way of enquiry pursued by mortals. No mention of this third way was made in 291, and the reason is not far to seek. The goddess was there specifying logically coherent alternatives between which rational enquirers must decide. The third way is simply the path you will find yourself following if, like the generality of mortals, you do not take that decision (293, 7) through failure to use your critical powers (293, 6-7). You will find yourself saying or implying both that a thing is and that it is not (e.g. by acknowledging change and coming into existence); and so you will wander helplessly from one of the ways distinguished in 291 to the other. Hence your steps will be 'backward-turning', i.e. contradictory. Of course, you will recognize that 'is' and 'is not' are not the same. But in failing to decide between them you will treat them as though they were the same.

293 was probably followed, after an interval, by a fragment in which the goddess bids Parmenides to make up his mind (unlike the mortals dismissed in 293) about her refutation of the second way:

294 Fr. 7, Plato Sophist 242A (lines 1-2); Sextus adv. math. VII, 114 (lines 2-6)…. [translation]

For never shall this be forcibly maintained, that things that are not are, but you must hold back your thought from this way of enquiry, nor let habit, born of much experience, force you down this way, by making you use an aimless eye or an ear and a tongue full of meaningless sound: judge by reason the strife-encompassed refutation spoken by me.

(iii) Signs of truth

295 Fr. 8, 1-4, Simplicius in Phys. 78, 5; 145, 1…. [translation]

There still remains just one account of a way, that it is. On this way there are very many signs, that being uncreated and imperishable it is, whole and of a single kind and unshaken and perfect.

If we must avoid the way 'is not', our only hope as enquirers lies in pursuit of the way 'is'. At first sight it would appear that if we embrace that alternative, there open for us limitless possibilities of exploration: the requirement that any subject we investigate must exist seems to impose scarcely any restriction on what we might be able to discover about it; and the argument that what is available to be thought of must exist (293, 1-2) makes it look as though the range of possible subjects of investigation is enormous, including centaurs and chimaeras as well as rats and restaurants. But in the course of a mere 49 lines Parmenides succeeds in reducing this infinity of possibilities to exactly one. For the 'signs' programmatically listed in 295 in fact constitute further formal requirements which any subject of enquiry must satisfy; and they impose formidable constraints (note the metaphor of chains in 296 and 298 below) on the interpretation of what is compatible with saying of something that it exists. The upshot of Parmenides' subsequent argument for these requirements is a form of monism: it certainly transpires that everything there is must have one and the same character; and it is doubtful whether in fact anything could have that character except reality as a whole.

(iii) (a) Uncreated and imperishable

296 Fr. 8, 5-21, Simplicius in Phys. 78, 5; 145, 5 (continues 295)…. [translation]

It never was nor will be, since it is now, all together, one, continuous. For what birth will you seek for it? How and whence did it grow? I shall not allow you to say nor to think from not being: for it is not to be said nor thought that it is not; and what need would have driven it later rather than earlier, beginning from the nothing, to grow? Thus it must either be completely or not at all. Nor will the force of conviction allow anything besides it to come to be ever from not being. Therefore Justice has never loosed her fetters to allow it to come to be or to perish, but holds it fast. And the decision about these things lies in this: it is or it is not. But it has in fact been decided, as is necessary, to leave the one way unthought and nameless (for it is no true way), but that the other is and is genuine. And how could what is be in the future? How could it come to be? For if it came into being, it is not: nor is it if it is ever going to be in the future. Thus coming to be is extinguished and perishing unheard of.

These lines (as the conclusion, line 21, shows) are designed to prove that what is can neither come to be nor perish.⁶ Parmenides is content to marshal explicit arguments only against coming into being, taking it as obvious that a parallel case against perishing could be constructed by parity of reasoning. He advances two principal considerations, corresponding to the dual interrogative: 'How and whence did it grow?' (line 7). He assumes that the only reasonable answer to 'whence?' could be: 'from not existing', which he rejects as already excluded by his argument against 'is not' (lines 7-9). In his treatment of 'how?' he appeals to the Principle of Sufficient Reason. He assumes that anything which comes to be must contain within it some principle of development ('need') sufficient to explain its generation. But if something does not exist, how can it contain any such principle?

(iii) (b) One and continuous

297 Fr. 8, 22-5, Simplicius in Phys. 144, 29 (continues 296)…. [translation]

Nor is it divided, since it all exists alike; nor is it more here and less there, which would prevent it from holding together, but it is all full of being. So it is all continuous: for what is draws near to what is.

Does Parmenides have in mind spatial or temporal continuity here? He surely means to show that what is is continuous in any dimension it occupies; but 296 has probably already denied that it exists in time. Is the point simply that any subject of enquiry must be characterized by internal continuity, or is Parmenides more ambitiously claiming that all reality is one? It is hard to resist the impression that he intends the stronger thesis, although why he thinks himself entitled to assert it is unclear (perhaps he would rely, for example, on the identity of indiscernibles: there is no basis for distinguishing anything that is from anything else that is). The same ambiguity affects 298 and 299, and the same verdict suggests itself.

(iii) (c) Unchangeable

298 Fr. 8, 26-31, Simplicius in Phys. 145, 27 (continues 297)…. [translation]

But changeless within the limits of great bonds it exists without beginning or ceasing, since coming to be and perishing have wandered very far away, and true conviction has thrust them off. Remaining the same and in the same place it lies on its own and thus fixed it will remain. For strong Necessity holds it within the bonds of a limit, which keeps it in on every side.

Lines 26-8 suggest the following argument:

(1) It is impossible for what is to come into being or to perish.

So (2) it exists unchangeably within the bonds of a limit.

It is then natural to read lines 29-31 as spelling out the content of (2) more fully. So construed, they indicate a more complex inference from (1):

(2a) it is held within the bonds of a limit which keeps it in on every side.

So (2b) it remains the same and in the same place and stays on its own.

The notion of limit Parmenides is employing here is obscure. It is easiest to understand it as spatial limit; and then (2b) follows intelligibly from (2a). But why on this interpretation should (2a) follow from (1)? Perhaps rather 'within limits' is a metaphorical way of talking about determinacy. In (2a) Parmenides will then be saying that what is has no potentiality for being different—at any time or in any respect—from what it is at present.

(iii) (d) Perfect

299 Fr. 8, 32-49, Simplicius in Phys. 146, 5 (continues 298)…. [translation]

Therefore it is right that what is should not be imperfect; for it is not deficient—if it were it would be deficient in everything. The same thing is there to be thought and is why there is thought. For you will not find thinking without what is, in all that has been said.⁷ For there neither is nor will be anything else besides what is, since Fate fettered it to be whole and changeless. Therefore it has been named all the names which mortals have laid down believing them to be true—coming to be and perishing, being and not being, changing place and altering in bright colour. But since there is a furthest limit, it is perfected, like the bulk of a ball wellrounded on every side, equally balanced in every direction from the centre. For it needs must not be somewhat more or somewhat less here or there. For neither is it non-existent, which would stop it from reaching its like, nor is it existent in such a way that there would be more being here, less there, since it is all inviolate: for being equal to itself on every side, it lies uniformly within its limits.

This long and difficult final section of the Truth combines a summing-up of the whole first part of the poem with a derivation of the perfection of reality from its determinacy (argued fully in lines 42-9, which are often—as in KR—regarded as presenting a train of thought quite distinct from both lines 32-3 (usually reckoned part of 298) and lines 34-41). Parmenides first briefly sketches his main argument that what is, if limited or determinate, cannot be deficient, and if not deficient, cannot be imperfect (32-3). Then he takes us right back to his original starting-point: if you have a thought about some object of enquiry, you must be thinking about something that is (34-6). You might suppose you can also think about something besides what already is coming into being. But the argument has shown that what is exists completely and changelessly—it is never in process of coming to be (36-8). So expressions like 'comes to be' and 'changes' employed by mortals can in fact refer (despite their mistaken intentions) only to complete and changeless reality (38-41). Indeed from the fact that what is is limited or determinate, we can infer its perfection (42-4). For its determinacy excludes not just the possibility that it is subject to coming into being and change but any kind of deficiency in its reality (44-9).

Once again we face a puzzling choice between a literal and a metaphorical interpretation of'limit'. Once again what the argument seems to require is only some form of determinacy (cf. 296, 14-15). Once again the spatial connotations of the word are hard to forget—indeed they are pressed upon our attention (NB the epithet pumaton, 'furthest limit'). And one can well imagine Parmenides concluding that if reality is both spatially extended and determinate, it must be limited in spatial extension. In the end we must settle for both the literal and the metaphorical reading of the term.

Pursuit of the way 'is' thus leads to a conclusion as astonishing as the result of consideration of 'is not'. Parmenides' final position in 299 is in fact doubly paradoxical. He not only denies the logical coherence of everything we believe about the world, but in mak ing all reality a finite sphere introduces a notion whose own logical coherence must in turn be doubted.⁸

Mortal Opinions

(i) The status of Parmenides' account

300 Simplicius in Phys. 30, 14 (continuation of 299, cf. in Phys. 146, 23…. [translation]

Parmenides effects the transition from the objects of reason to the objects of sense, or, as he himself puts it, from truth to opinion, when he writes: 'Here I end my trustworthy discourse and thought concerning truth; henceforth learn the beliefs of mortal men, listening to the deceitful ordering of my words.'

The goddess's account will doubtless be unreliable and deceitful principally because it presents beliefs which are themselves utterly confused as though they were in order (cf. 293). The second half of the poem did not simply describe or analyse current opinions about the cosmos. It contained an elaborate and distinctive theogony and cosmology reminiscent in parts of Hesiod, in parts of Anaximander. Parmenides' object, as we shall see, is to present mortal opinions not as they actually are, but as they might be at best. But that makes the account deceitful in a further sense: in effect it provides a deceptively plausible (although not genuinely convincing) representation of reality.

To understand better the connexion between Parmenides' cosmology and mortal opinions in general, we need to consider the last two lines of 301:⁹

301 Fr. 1, 28-32, Simplicius de caelo 557, 25 (from 288). … [translation]

It is proper that you should learn all things, both the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth, and the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true reliance. But nonetheless you shall learn these things too, how what is believed would have to be assuredly, pervading all things throughout.

Lines 31-2 are naturally interpreted as stating the condition upon which the genuine existence of the objects of mortal belief may be secured, viz. that they completely pervade all things. This condition is closely akin to the requirement of the Truth that any subject of enquiry exist completely. What Parmenides takes to be false in lines 31-2 is not the goddess's specification of the condition, but her claim that it can be satisfied by objects of mortal belief. It follows that the cosmology of the second part of the poem should be read as a reinterpretation of the world mortals believe in, in terms which explain it (falsely but attractively) as satisfying the pervasiveness condition.

(ii) Light and night

302 Fr. 8, 53-61, Simplicius in Phys. 38, 28 (continues 300)…. [translation]

For they made up their minds to name two forms, of which they needs must not name so much as one¹⁰—that is where they have gone astray—and distinguished them as opposite in appearance and assigned to them signs different one from the other—to one the aitherial flame of fire, gentle and very light, in every direction identical with itself, but not with the other; and that other too is in itself just the opposite, dark night, dense in appearance and heavy. The whole ordering of these I tell you as it seems fitting, for so no thought of mortal men shall ever outstrip you.

303 Fr. 9, Simplicius in Phys. 180, 8…. [translation]

But because all things have been named light and night, and things corresponding to their powers have been assigned to this and that, all is full of light and of obscure night at once, both equal, since neither has any share of nothing.

302-3 advance the specific hypothesis by which Parmenides seeks to do the best that can be done to save mortal opinions. He pretends that they are built upon the foundation of a belief in two basic and mutually irreducible sensible forms, which are individually ascribed something like the determinacy required of subjects of enquiry in the Truth, and which together satisfy the condition of 301, 31-2 that they pervade all reality. Other things are treated simply as manifestations of light or of night (or, presumably, of both), and are characterized by specific powers associated with one form or the other.

The fiction of an arbitrary decision to introduce the names 'light' and 'night' has sometimes been implausibly construed as an explanation of how there can be a world of the sort believed in by mortals. It rather expresses dramatically an epistemological characterization of their belief. Mortal opinions do not reflect the discovery of objective truth: the only alternative is to interpret them as products of conventions elaborated by the human mind. Now it follows that nothing about the world can explain why mortals should have such conventions or why they should invest them with the specific content they give them. Hence the currency of these conventions can only be represented as due to arbitrary fiat.

Parmenides was evidently quite systematic in his use of light and night in physical explanation, to judge from 305-7 below and from Plutarch's testimony (which also indicates the main topics discussed; cf. fr. 11, Simpl. de caelo 559, 20):

304 Plutarch adv. Colotem 1114B (DK 28B10)…. [translation]

Parmenides has actually made an ordering, and by blending as elements the clear and the dark produces out of them and by them all sensible appearances. For he has said much about the earth and about the heavens and sun and moon, and he recounts the coming into being of men; and as befits an ancient natural philosopher, who put together his own book, not pulling apart someone else's, he has left none of the important topics undiscussed.

While Parmenides offers no rational justification for choosing light and night as cosmological principles, he was probably conscious of following Hesiod's Theogony 123ff. (31 above), which was certainly the model for his treatment of the origin of Love (fr. 13; cf. 31, 116-22) and of War and Discord (Cicero de natura deorum I, 11, 28, DK 28A37; cf. Theog. 223-32).

(iii) Cosmology

305 Fr. 10, Clement Strom. V, 138…. [translation]

And you shall know the nature of aither and all the signs [i.e. constellations] in it and the destructive works of the pure torch of the shining sun, and whence they came into being; and you shall hear of the wandering works of the round-eyed moon and of her nature; and you shall know too of the surrounding heaven, whence it grew and how Necessity guiding it fettered it to hold the limits of the stars.

306 Fr. 12, Simplicius in Phys. 39, 14 and 31, 13…. [translation]

The narrower rings are filled with unmixed fire, those next to them with night, but into them a share of flame is injected; and in the midst of them is the goddess who steers all things; for she governs the hateful birth and mingling of all things, sending female to mix with male, and again conversely male with female.

307 Aetius II, 7, 1 (DK 28A37) II…. [translation]

Parmenides said that there were rings wound one around the other, one formed of the rare, the other of the dense; and that there were others between these compounded of light and darkness. That which surrounds them all like a wall is, he says, by nature solid; beneath it is a fiery ring; and likewise what lies in the middle of them all is solid; and around it is again a fiery ring. The middlemost of the mixed rings is the [primary cause] of movement and of coming into being for them all, and he calls it the goddess that steers all, the holder of the keys, Justice and Necessity. The air, he says, is separated off from the earth, vaporized owing to the earth's stronger compression; the sun is an exhalation of fire, and so is the circle of the Milky Way. The moon is compounded of both air and fire. Aither is outermost, surrounding all; next comes the fiery thing that we call the sky; and last comes the region of the earth.

305 evidently formed part of the introduction to the detailed account of the heavens. It is full of echoes of the Truth, e.g. when it speaks of the heaven 'surrounding' (cf. 298, 31), of the 'limits of the stars' (cf. 298, 26, 31; 299, 42, 49), and of how 'Necessity fettered' the heaven (cf. 296, 14; 298, 30-1). Perhaps they are meant to suggest that in attempting to save mortal opinions our descriptions of the world they invent must approximate so far as possible to those used in our account of true reality.

The exiguous surviving evidence of Parmenides' astronomical system is so brief (306) and so obscure (307) that it is impossible with any confidence to reconstruct a coherent account of his extraordinary theory of 'garlands' or rings.¹¹ The whole construction was built out of the basic forms of light and night, as witness further Parmenides' memorable line about the moon's borrowed light:

308 Fr. 14, Plutarch adv. Colotem 1116A…. [translation]

A night-shining, foreign light, wandering around the earth.

The theory seems to have been surprisingly influential. Philolaus (446-7 below) was perhaps following Parmenides when he placed fire both at the extremity of the universe and at its centre, displacing the earth from the position traditionally assigned to it (but Parmenides' idea may have been of a fire within the earth). And Plato developed his own version of the scheme, including its presiding deity, in the myth of Er in the Republic (617-18). Parmenides for his part probably owed something to Anaximander's rings (125-8), although Hesiod had spoken of 'the shining stars with which the heaven is garlanded' (Theog. 282).

Postulation of a deity as first cause of cosmogonic mixture is supported by appeal to her operation in animal procreation (306, 4-6), which we know was one of the topics of this part of the poem (cf. 304). A single line of Parmenides' embryology is preserved:

309 Fr. 17, Galen in Epid. VI, 48…. [translation]

On the right boys, on the left girls …

Parmenides' interest in these matters was perhaps stimulated by the Crotoniate medical tradition; his notion of mixture of opposites may be compared with Alcmaeon's theory of health (probably roughly contemporary in date):

310 Aetius V, 30, 1 (DK 24B4)…. [translation]

Alcmaeon maintains that the bond of health is the 'equal rights' of the powers, moist and dry, cold and hot, bitter and sweet, and the rest, while the 'monarchy' of one of them is the cause of disease; for the monarchy of either is destructive. Illness comes about directly through excess of heat or cold, indirectly through surfeit or deficiency of nourishment; and its centre is either the blood or the marrow or the brain. It sometimes arises in these centres from external causes, moisture of some sort or environment or exhaustion or hardship or similar causes. Health on the other hand is the proportionate admixture of the qualities.

It is unclear whether Parmenides' divine first cause is anything more than a metaphor for the mutual attraction exercised by opposite forms, although there is no room for such a cause in the ontology of 302-3. What is clear and important in his cosmogony is the general idea that creation is the product not (as the Milesians thought) of separation from an original unity, but of the interaction and harmony of opposite powers. This idea was to be taken up by Empedocles and (in a distinctively Pythagorean form) by Philolaus.

(iv) Theory of mortal thought

311 Theophrastus de sensu I ff. (DK 28A46)…. [translation]

The majority of general views about sensation are two: some make it of like by like, others of opposite by opposite. Parmenides, Empedocles and Plato say it is of like by like, the followers of Anaxagoras and of Heraclitus of opposite by opposite … Parmenides gave no clear definition at all, but said only that there were two elements and that knowledge depends on the excess of one or the other. Thought varies according to whether the hot or the cold prevails, but that which is due to the hot is better and purer; not but what even that needs a certain balance; for, says he, 'As is at any moment the mixture of the wandering limbs, so mind is present to men; for that which thinks is the same thing, namely the substance of their limbs, in each and all men; for what preponderates is thought'¹²—for he regards perception and thought as the same. So too memory and forgetfulness arise from these causes, on account of the mixture; but he never made clear whether, if they are equally mixed, there will be thought or not, or, if so, what its character will be. But that he regards perception as also due to the opposite as such he makes clear when he says that a corpse does not perceive light, heat or sound owing to its deficiency of fire, but that it does perceive their opposites, cold, silence and so on. And he adds that in general everything that exists has some measure of knowledge.

Fr. 16 gains in point if construed as a final dismissive comment on mortal opinion. In Truth genuine thought was in a sense identified with the being which is its object. But mortal opinion is mere invention of the human mind, not determined by reality. Mortal thoughts are now reductively 'explained' in terms of the very forms they have invented, as functions of the proportions of light and night in the human body.

Conclusion

312 Fr. 19, Simplicius de caelo 558, 8. … [translation]

Thus according to belief these things came to be and now are, and having matured will come to an end after this in the future; and for them men have laid down a name to distinguish each one.

313 Fr. 4, Clement Strom. V, 15, 5…. [translation]

But look at things which, though far off, are securely present to the mind; for you will not cut off for yourself what is from holding to what is, neither scattering everywhere in every way in order [i.e. cosmic order] nor drawing together.

The goddess may have concluded her account of the content of mortal opinions (rounded off in 312) with the obscure exhortation of 313 to contemplate the truth. Why that elaborate account was included in the poem remains a mystery: the goddess seeks to save the phenomena so far as is possible, but she knows and tells us that the project is impossible. Perhaps Parmenides simply failed to resist the opportunity for versatility afforded by the idea of 'saying many false things resembling the truth and uttering true things when we wish' (Hesiod Theog. 27-8).

Notes

¹ DK = Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 5th to 7th eds., by H. Diels, ed. with additions by W. Kranz. (7th ed. 1954.)

² Boldface numbers refer to sections in The Presocratic Philosophers, Kirk, Raven, and Schofield.

³ With 289 may be compared 290 Heraclitus fr. 103, Porphyrius in Iliadem XIV, 200. (In a circle beginning and end are common.) But despite his talk of 'wellrounded truth' Parmenides need not be implying here that his own thought is circular.

⁴ A difficulty: Parmenides further specifies the first way as 'it is impossible for [it] not to be' and the second as 'it is needful that [it] not be', which are not contradictories. A solution: perhaps these further specifications constitute not characterizations of the two ways, but indications of their incompatibility. Line 3 will be saying: the first way is '[it] is'; and it follows necessarily that, if something is, it is not the case that it is not. So mutatis mutandis for line 5.

⁵ Editors often complete the half-line 291, 8, with a fragment known only in quite different sources: 292 Fr. 3, Clement Strom. VI, 23; Plotinus V, 1, 8 … (For the same thing is there both to be thought of and to be.) If thus translated (but some render: 'Thought and being are the same'), it does sound as though it may fit here; 293, 1 shows that Parmenides explicitly deploys considerations about what can be thought, not just what can be known, in the context of argument against the negative way. But if so it is surprising that neither Proclus nor Simplicius quotes it at the end of 291. And it is hard to see what contribution it adds to the reasoning of 291, 6-8. (If noein meant 'know' here, as e.g. C. H. Kahn (Review of Metaphysics 22 (1968-9), 700-24) thinks, then perhaps 292 would simply be another way of putting 291, 7-8. But noein is used by Parmenides in parallel with simple verbs of saying (293, 1; 296, 8; cf. anōnumon, 296, 17), and so must be translated 'think'.)

⁶ In lines 5-6 Parmenides appears to go farther than this. The statement 'it never was nor will be, since it is now, all together' seems to claim not merely that what is will not come to exist, but that it will not exist at all in the future. Probably what Parmenides means to ascribe to what is is existence in an eternal present not subject to temporal distinctions of any sort. It is very unclear how he hoped to ground this conclusion in the arguments of 296.

⁷ Or: 'in which thinking is expressed'.

⁸ Must there not be real empty space beyond the limits of the sphere if they are to function as limits? This objection might persuade one that Parmenides could not have held reality to be a sphere, were it not that what leads us to think he must have believed that is his apparently uncritical exploitation of the metaphor of limit (i.e. of what we would take to be a metaphor).

⁹ Text, translation and interpretation are vexed: see Mourelatos, Route, ch. VIII. The main problem is that lines 31-2 appear to attempt to save the credit of mortal opinions, in flagrant contradiction with the assertion of line 30 that there is no truth in them. The solution is to read the content of the teaching of lines 31-2 as a lie, as indeed it is explicitly presented in 300 (cf. Hesiod Theog. 26-7, the model for 301).

¹⁰ Alternatively: (a) 'not name one' (sc. although the other is correct); the culprit is then identified as night, following Aristotle's view (mistaken: see 303) that Parmenides 'ranges the hot with what is and the other with what is not' (Met 986b31), or as not-being (an over-ingenious suggestion). (b) 'not name only one': so KR, following Simplicius; but mortals in general avoid this error—their discourse is full of contrary expressions, as 302 obviously recognizes. See further e.g. A. A. Long in Furley and Allen (eds.), Studies in Presocratic Philosophy II, 82-101, Mourelatos, Route, 80-7, D. J. Furley in Exegesis and Argument, ed. E. N. Lee et al. (Phronesis Supp. Vol. I), 1-15.

¹¹ For some attempts see K. Reinhardt, Parmenides (Bonn, 1916) 10-32, H. Frankel in Furley and Allen (eds.), Studies in Presocratic Philosophy II, 22-5, J. S. Morrison, Journal of Hellenic Studies 75 (1955), 59-68, U. Hölscher, Parmenides: Vont Wesen des Seienden (Frankfurt am Main, 1969), 106-11.

¹² Or: 'for the full is thought'. Translation and interpretation of the whole fragment are much disputed. See e.g. Guthrie, HGP II, 67-9 for discussion and references to the scholarly literature.