IDENTIFY three (3) themes in Heraclitus and Parmenides, and COMPARE AND

CONTRAST by identifying the FRAGMENTS and explaining how they COMPARE and
CONTRAST.
 
TABULATE using the TABLE FORMAT below.

CRITERIA HERACLITUS PARMENIDES

The statics
Being is everlastingly the same, and the time
The change is unreal because past, present, and future
Whatever changes may take are all one.
place, they are not changes Melissus: universe was unlimitted,
from being to non-being; unchangeable,2 immovable, indivisible and
they are all change within homogeneous
Being1 What you can call and think must Being be
The becoming For Being can, and nothing cannot, be3
The cyclic The first line expresses the universality of
Being: whatever you can call by any name,
whatever you can think of, must be. Why
accordance with Heraclitus, so? Presumably because if I utter a name or
people do not learn by think a thought, I must be able to answer the
experience, as they cannot question ‘What is it that you are talking
process the information they about or thinking of?’ The second line is that
perceive, however, humans anything that can be at all must be
Theme 1
still exercise “self- something4
or other; it cannot be just
knowledge and sound nothing.
thinking” Never shall this prevail, that Unbeing is;
Rein in your mind from any thought like this.
Contrary to Parmenides,
Heraclitus being a Unbeing represents the negation of Parmenides’
cosmologist mentions in his participle
texts the kosmos “order” own selves are deceptive and accentuated
describing the world around subjectivity of individual perception.
us, that he identifies with fire
According to Guthrie, for Parmenides there was
no cosmology, as he presented the proofs of the
Due to his “fire and flux impossibility of the opposites’ existence
theory” he explains the
presence of God in While Parmenides suggests that What Is is a
everything on earth. god, and what must be “must be or exist and
must be what it is, not only temporally but also
spatially”

Theme 2 “Fire lives the death of earth The Being is one and indivisible: it has no
1
Anthony Kenny, Ancient philosophy (New York: Oxford University, 2004, 18)
2
Anthony Kenny, Ancient philosophy (New York: Oxford University, 2004, 19)
3
Anthony Kenny, Ancient philosophy (New York: Oxford University, 2004, 200)
4
Anthony Kenny, Ancient philosophy (New York: Oxford University, 2004, 200)
 and air lives the death of
fire; water lives the death of beginning and no end; and it is not subject to
air, earth that of water”. (Fr temporal change.
76a)
Theme 3 The one The one

 
Remember: Compare and Contrast. 
 

2.2 The School of Parmenides

The philosophical scene is very different when we turn to Parmenides, who was born in the closing
years of the sixth century. Though probably a pupil of Xenophanes, Parmenides spent most of his
life not in Ionia but in Italy, in a town called Elea, seventy miles or so south of Naples. He is said to
have drawn up an excellent set of laws for his city; but we know nothing of his politics or political
philosophy. He is the first philosopher whose writing has come down to us in any quantity: he
wrote a philosophical poem in clumsy verse, of which we possess about a hundred and twenty lines.
In his writing he devoted himself not to cosmology, like the early Milesians, nor to theology, like
Xenophanes, but to a new and universal study which embraced and transcended both: the discipline
which later philosophers called ‘ontology’. Ontology gets its name from a Greek word which in the
singular is ‘on’ and in the plural ‘onta’: it is this word – the present participle of the Greek verb ‘to
be’ – which defines Parmenides’ subject matter. His remarkable poem can claim to be the founding
charter of ontology.
To explain what ontology is, and what Parmenides’ poem is about, it is neces- sary to go into detail
about points of grammar and translation. The reader’s patience with this pedantry will be rewarded,
for between Parmenides and the present-day, ontology was to have a vast and luxuriant growth, and
only a sure grasp of what Parmenides meant, and what he failed to mean, enables one to see one’s
way clear over the centuries through the ontological jungle.
Parmenides’ subject is ‘to on’, which translated literally means ‘the being’. Be- fore explaining the
verb, we need to say something about the article. In English we sometimes use an adjective,
preceded by the definite article, to refer to a class of people or things; as when we say ‘the rich’ to
mean people who are rich, and ‘the poor’ to mean those who are poor. The corresponding idiom
was much more frequent in Greek than in English: Greeks could use the expression ‘the hot’ to
mean things that are hot, and ‘the cold’ to mean things that are cold. Thus, for instance,
Anaximenes said that air was made visible by the hot and the cold and the moist and the moving.
Instead of an adjective after ‘the’ we may use a participle: as when we speak, for instance, of a
hospice for the dying, or a playgroup for the rising fours. Once again, the corresponding
construction was possible, and frequent, in Greek; and it is this idiom which occurs in ‘the being’.
‘The being’ is that which is be-ing, in the same way as ‘the dying’ are those who are dying.
A verbal form like ‘dying’ has, in English, two uses: it may be a participle, as in ‘the dying should
not be neglected’, or it may be a verbal noun, as in ‘dying can be a long-drawn-out business’.
‘Seeing is believing’ is equivalent to ‘To see is to believe’. When philosophers write treatises about
being, they are commonly using the word as a verbal noun: they are offering to explain what it is for
something to be. That is not, or not mainly, what Parmenides is about: he is concerned with the
being, that is to say, with whatever is, as it were, doing the be-ing. To distinguish this sense of
‘being’ from its use as a verbal noun, and to avoid the strangeness of the literal ‘the being’ in
English, it has been traditional to dignify Parmenides’ topic with a capital ‘B’. We will follow this
convention, whereby ‘Being’ means whatever is engaged in being, and ‘being’ is the verbal noun
equivalent to the infinitive ‘to be’.
Very well; but if that is what Being is, in order to make out what Parmenides is talking about we
must also know what being is, that is to say, what it is for something to be. We can understand what
it is for something to be blue, or to be a puppy: but what is it for something to just be, period? One
possibility which suggests itself is this: being is existing, or, in other words, to be is to exist. If so,
then Being is all that exists.
In English ‘to be’ can certainly mean ‘to exist’. When Hamlet asks the question ‘to be or not to be?’
he is debating whether or not to put an end to his existence. In the Bible we read that Rachel wept
for her children ‘and would not be com- forted because they are not’. This usage in English is poetic
and archaic, and it is not natural to say such things as ‘The Tower of London is, and the Crystal
Palace is not’, when we mean that the former building is still in existence while the latter is no
longer there. But the corresponding statement would be quite natural in ancient Greek; and this
sense of ‘be’ is certainly involved in Parmenides’ talk of Being.
If this were all that was involved, then we could say simply that Being is all that exists, or if you
like, all that there is, or again, everything that is in being. That is a broad enough topic, in all
conscience. One could not reproach Parmenides, as Hamlet reproached Horatio, by saying:
There are more things in heaven and earth Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
For whatever there is in heaven and earth will fall under the heading of Being. Unfortunately for us,
however, matters are more complicated than this. Exist- ence is not all that Parmenides has in mind
when he talks of Being. He is interested in the verb ‘to be’ not only as it occurs in sentences such as
‘Troy is no more’ but as it occurs in any kind of sentence whatever – whether ‘Penelope is a
woman’ or ‘Achilles is a hero’ or ‘Menelaus is gold-haired’ or ‘Telemachus is six-feet high’. So
understood, Being is not just that which exists, but that of which any sentence containing ‘is’ is true.
Equally, being is not just existing (being, period) but being anything whatever: being red or being
blue, being hot or being cold, and so on ad nauseam. Taken in this sense, Being is a much more
difficult realm to comprehend.
After this long preamble, we are in a position to look at some of the lines of Parmenides’
mysterious poem.
What you can call and think must Being be For Being can, and nothing cannot, be.
The first line stresses the vast extension of Being: if you can call Argos a dog, or if you can think of
the moon, then Argos and the moon must be, must count as part of Being. But why does the second
line tell us that nothing cannot be? Well, anything that can be at all, must be something or other; it
cannot be just nothing.
Parmenides introduces, to correspond with Being, the notion of Unbeing.
Never shall this prevail, that Unbeing is;
Rein in your mind from any thought like this.
If Being is that of which something or other, no matter what, is true, then Unbeing is that of which
nothing at all is true. That, surely, is nonsense. Not only can it not exist, it cannot even be thought
of.
Unbeing you won’t grasp – it can’t be done – Nor utter; being thought and being are one.
Given his definition of ‘being’ and ‘Unbeing’ Parmenides is surely right here. If I tell you that I am
thinking of something, and you ask me what kind of thing I’m thinking of, you will be puzzled if I
say that it isn’t any kind of thing. If you then ask me what it is like, and I say that it isn’t like
anything at all, you will be quite baffled. ‘Can you then tell me anything at all about it?’ you may
ask. If I say no, then you may justly conclude that I am not really thinking of anything or indeed
thinking at all. In that sense, it is true that to be thought of and to be are one and the same.
We can agree with Parmenides thus far; but we may note that there is an important difference
between saying
Unbeing cannot be thought of and saying
What does not exist cannot be thought of.
The first sentence is, in the sense explained, true; the second is false. If it were true, we could prove
that things exist simply by thinking of them; but whereas lions and unicorns can both be thought of,
lions exist and unicorns don’t. Given the convolutions of his language, it is hard to be sure whether
Parmenides thought that the two statements were equivalent. Some of his successors have accused
him of that confusion; others have seemed to share it themselves.
We have agreed with Parmenides in rejecting Unbeing. But it is harder to follow Parmenides in
some of the conclusions he draws from the inconceivability of Unbeing and the universality of
Being. This is how he proceeds.
One road there is, signposted in this wise: Being was never born and never dies; Foursquare,
unmoved, no end it will allow It never was, nor will be; all is now,
One and continuous. How could it be born Or whence could it be grown? Unbeing? No – That
mayn’t be said or thought; we cannot go So far ev’n to deny it is. What need,
Early or late, could Being from Unbeing seed? Thus it must altogether be or not.
Nor to Unbeing will belief allot
An offspring other than itself . . .
‘Nothing can come from nothing’ is a principle which has been accepted by many thinkers far less
intrepid than Parmenides. But not many have drawn the conclusion that Being has no beginning and
no end, and is not subject to tem- poral change. To see why Parmenides drew this conclusion, we
have to assume that he thought that ‘being water’ or ‘being air’ was related to ‘being’ in the same
way as ‘running fast’ and ‘running slowly’ is related to ‘running’. Someone who first runs fast and
then runs slowly, all the time goes on running; similarly, for Parmenides, stuff which is first water
and then is air goes on being. 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 non-being; they are all
changes within Being, not changes of Being.
Being must be everlasting; because it could not have come from Unbeing, and it could never turn
into Unbeing, because there is no such thing. If Being could – per impossibile – come from nothing,
what could make it do so at one time rather than another? Indeed, what is it that differentiates past
from present and future? If it is no kind of being, then time is unreal; if it is some kind of being,
then it is all part of Being, and past, present and future are all one Being.
By similar arguments Parmenides seeks to show that Being is undivided and unlimited. What would
divide Being from Being? Unbeing? In that case the division is unreal. Being? In that case there is
no division, but continuous Being. What could set limits to Being? Unbeing cannot do anything to
anything; and if we imagine that Being is limited by Being, then Being has not yet reached its
limits.
To think a thing’s to think it is, no less.
Apart from Being, whate’er we may express, Thought does not reach. Naught is or will be Beyond
Being’s bounds, since Destiny’s decree Fetters it whole and still. All things are names Which the
credulity of mortals frames –Birth and destruction, being all or none, Changes of place, and colours
come and gone.
Parmenides’ poem is in two parts: the Way of Truth and the Way of Seeming. The Way of Truth
contains the doctrine of Being, which we have been examin- ing; the Way of Seeming deals with
the world of the senses, the world of change and colour, the world of empty names. We need not
spend time on the Way of Seeming, since what Parmenides tells us about this is not very different
from the cosmological speculations of the Ionian thinkers. It was his Way of Truth which set an
agenda for many ages of subsequent philosophy.
The problem facing future philosophers was this. Common sense suggests that the world contains
things which endure, such as rocky mountains, and things which constantly change, such as rushing
streams. On the one hand, Heraclitus had pronounced that at a fundamental level, even the most
solid things were in perpetual flux; on the other hand, Parmenides had argued that even what is
most apparently fleeting is, at a fundamental level, static and unchanging. Can the doctrines of
either Heraclitus or Parmenides be refuted? Is there any way in which they can be reconciled? For
Plato, and his successors, this was a major task for philosophy to address.
Parmenides’ pupil Melissus (fl. 441) put into plain prose the ideas which Parmenides had
expounded in opaque verse. From these ideas he drew out two particular shocking consequences.
One was that pain was unreal, because it implied a deficiency of being. The other was that there was
no such thing as an empty space or vacuum: it would have to be a piece of Unbeing. Hence, motion
was impossible, because the bodies which occupy space have no room to move into.
Zeno, a friend of Parmenides some twenty-five years his junior, developed an ingenious series of
paradoxes designed to show beyond doubt that movement was inconceivable. The best known of
these purports to prove that a fast mover can never overtake a slow mover. Let us suppose that
Achilles, a fast runner, runs a hundred-yard race with a tortoise which can only run a quarter as fast,
giving the tortoise a forty-yard start. By the time Achilles has reached the forty-yard mark, the
tortoise is still ahead, by ten yards. By the time Achilles has run those ten yards, the tortoise is
ahead by two-and-a-half yards. Each time Achilles makes up the gap, the tortoise opens up a new,
shorter, gap ahead of him; so it seems that he can never overtake him. Another, simpler, argument
sought to prove that no one could ever run from one end of a stadium to another, because to reach
the far end you must first reach the half-way point, to reach the half-way point you must first reach
the point half way to that, and so ad infinitum.
These and other arguments of Zeno assume that distances are infinitely divis- ible. This assumption
was challenged by some later thinkers, and accepted by others. Aristotle, who preserved the puzzles
for us, was able to disentangle some of the ambiguities. However, it was not for many centuries that
the paradoxes were given solutions that satisfied both philosophers and mathematicians.
Plato tells us that Parmenides, when he was a grey-haired sixty-five-year-old, travelled
with Zeno from Elea to a festival in Athens, and there met the young Socrates. This would
have been about 450 bc. Some scholars think the story a dramatic invention; but the
meeting, if it took place, was a splendid inauguration of the golden age of Greek
philosophy in Athens. We shall turn to Athenian philosophy shortly; but in the meantime
there remain to be considered another Italian thinker, Empedocles of Acragas, and two
more Ionian physicists, Leucippus and Democritus.
2.2.1 The Way: B1
Careering chargers, thundering swift, dispatch
My heart to places only hearts can match.
Then destinies, far out in front, fast speed
Me down a road of song, whose windings feed
The knowing man through every village found.
This way conveyed I came. For coursers crowned
With wise renown advanced my speeding heart
Along—outstretching far my quickening cart.
Fair maidens led the way. From out its shaft
The axle sent a whining cry abaft,
Hot-burning under constant friction, bright
Within fast flickering hubs. For in their flight
Two wheels whirled the axle on a lathe,
As fleet Heliades caress and bathe
My car with dawning light, abandoning
Dark realms of Night to seek their father's ring
Of light; while turning back, with regal hand,
Smooth veils from fair faces. Right there stand
Twin lofty gates dividing the way of Night
From Day. A lintel and sill of stony might
Encase them strong on either side, while doors
Of massive sweep and sway fill up with force
Their heavenly frame. And painful Justice holds,
With pain-dispensing woe, both locking bolts.
But gently urging maidens urged their way
With softened words, and quick She thrust away
For them the bolt-bars from the guarded gate.
Its doors then forced a yawning chasm great,
Unfolding giant wings attached with pins
Of brass in two-way hinges. Squealing dins
The air with plaintive moans, as doors fixed fast
With rows of riveted bolts wheel lazily past.
Through open gates swift maidens reined my horse
And car to trace their high celestial course.
A gracious goddess kindly welcomed me
With open arms and hospitality.
My right hand softly she entwined with hers
And spake to me in song this gentle verse:
"O Child of high-soaring ecstasies,
Immortal charioteers and chargers seize
You to my palace halls. I welcome you
Today! No evil Fate has sent you to
Traverse this starry path of mine (far back
It lies, removed from man's own beaten track),
But Right and Justice teamed. Necessity
Demands you learn of nature's panoply:
To wit, well-rounded Truth's untrembling core
Of life, plus opinions born of common lore,
In which there is no true belief. Still yet
There is one thing you must not soon forget
How needs must seem those things which seem-to-be,
Far-penetrating all reality."
Bảo vệ bộ sạc, nhanh như sấm, cử
Trái tim tôi đến những nơi chỉ có trái tim mới có thể sánh được.
Rồi những số phận, xa phía trước, tốc độ nhanh
Tôi đi xuống một con đường của bài hát, có những khúc quanh co nuôi
Người đàn ông hiểu biết qua mọi ngôi làng được tìm thấy.
Theo cách này, tôi đã đến. Đối với các môn đăng quang
Với sự nổi tiếng khôn ngoan nâng cao trái tim nhanh chóng của tôi
Dọc theo — vượt xa chiếc xe đẩy hàng nhanh chóng của tôi.
Những thiếu nữ công bằng dẫn đường. Từ trục của nó
Trục phát ra một tiếng kêu rên rỉ ở phía sau,
Đốt nóng dưới ma sát liên tục, sáng
Trong các trung tâm nhấp nháy nhanh. Trong chuyến bay của họ
Hai bánh xe quay trục trên máy tiện,
Khi hạm đội Heliades vuốt ve và tắm rửa
Chiếc xe của tôi với ánh sáng rực rỡ, bỏ rơi
Cõi đêm tối để tìm kiếm chiếc nhẫn của cha họ
Của ánh sáng; trong khi quay lại, với bàn tay vương giả,
Những tấm màn mịn khỏi khuôn mặt công bằng. Đứng ngay đó
Đôi cổng cao cả phân chia lối đi của Bóng đêm
Từ ngày. Một cây đinh lăng và ngưỡng cửa bằng đá có thể
Bọc chúng chắc chắn ở hai bên, trong khi cửa ra vào
Quét mạnh và lắc lư đầy sức mạnh
Khung trời của họ. Và công lý đau đớn nắm giữ,
Với sự khốn nạn khi pha chế đau đớn, cả hai khóa bu lông.
Nhưng nhẹ nhàng thúc giục các thiếu nữ đã thúc giục con đường của họ
Với những lời nhẹ nhàng, và nhanh chóng, cô ấy đẩy đi
Đối với họ, các thanh chắn từ cánh cổng được canh gác.
Cánh cửa của nó sau đó tạo ra một hố sâu ngáp lớn,
Mở rộng đôi cánh khổng lồ gắn với ghim
Bằng đồng thau trong bản lề hai chiều. Tiếng kêu trong quán ăn
Không khí với những tiếng rên rỉ ai oán, khi những cánh cửa được cố định nhanh chóng
Với hàng bánh xe bu lông đinh tán uể oải đi qua.
Qua những cánh cổng mở, những cô thiếu nữ nhanh nhẹn cưỡi ngựa của tôi
Và chiếc xe để theo dõi thiên đường cao của họ.
Một nữ thần nhân từ đã vui lòng chào đón tôi
Với vòng tay rộng mở và lòng hiếu khách.
Tay phải của tôi mềm mại cô ấy đan vào tay cô ấy
Và nói với tôi trong bài hát câu hát nhẹ nhàng này:
"Hỡi đứa con của những vùng đất cao ngất ngưởng,
Người đánh xe bất tử và bộ sạc bắt giữ
Bạn đến hội trường cung điện của tôi. tôi chào mừng bạn
Hôm nay! Không có số phận xấu xa nào đưa bạn đến
Đi qua con đường đầy sao này của tôi (quay lại xa
Nó nói dối, bị xóa khỏi bản nhạc bị đánh bại của chính con người),
Nhưng Quyền và Công lý đã hợp tác. Sự cần thiết
Các nhu cầu bạn tìm hiểu toàn cảnh về thiên nhiên:
Nói một cách dí dỏm, cốt lõi không thể lay chuyển của Sự thật đầy đủ
Về cuộc sống, cộng với những ý kiến sinh ra từ truyền thuyết chung,
Trong đó không có niềm tin chân chính. Vẫn chưa
Có một điều bạn không được sớm quên
Làm thế nào nhu cầu phải dường như những thứ dường như,
Xuyên thấu mọi thực tại. "
2.2.2 Thea: B1
2.2.3 Being: B2
Far-penetrating all reality."
"Arise, I say, take home my warbling lays
To hear afresh. These are the only ways
A thinking man should seek: One claims quite free
That Being Is, and is not not-to-be!
(She is Persuasion's path, attending Truth).
The other, in opposite vein, retorts forsooth,
There is no Being! There must not ever be!
This path, I say, you'll never learn to see;
For neither can you know non-being, a sheer
Impossibility, nor phrase it clear
Xuyên thấu mọi thực tại. "
"Hãy trỗi dậy, tôi nói, hãy mang về nhà những con chiến kê của tôi
Để nghe lại. Đây là những cách duy nhất
Một người đàn ông có tư duy nên tìm kiếm: Một người tuyên bố khá tự do
Đó là tồn tại, và không phải là hiện hữu!
(Cô ấy là con đường của Thuyết phục, tham dự Sự thật).
Người còn lại, trong tĩnh mạch ngược lại, phản hồi forsooth,
Không có tồn tại! Không bao giờ phải có!
Con đường này, tôi nói, bạn sẽ không bao giờ học cách nhìn thấy;
Vì bạn cũng không thể biết không tồn tại, một người tuyệt đối
Không thể, cũng không phải cụm từ rõ ràng
2.2.4 Thought B3, B4, B5
For Thinking and Being are one and the same."
"Behold within your mind's own deepening frame
Those presences steadfastly fixed, yet all
Removed from obviousness; for never shall
These beings dissolve their ineluctable hold
On Being, whether scattered manifold
Across the cosmic all, or packed into
A rounded ball; for, where I start, thereto
Vì Suy nghĩ và Hiện hữu là một và giống nhau. "
"Kìa trong khung cảnh sâu thẳm của tâm trí bạn
Những hiện diện đó đã được cố định một cách kiên định, nhưng tất cả
Loại bỏ khỏi sự hiển nhiên; sẽ không bao giờ
Những sinh vật này làm tan biến sự lưu giữ không thể cưỡng lại của họ
Trên bản thể, cho dù đa tạp phân tán
Trên khắp vũ trụ, hoặc đóng gói vào
Một quả bóng tròn; cho, nơi tôi bắt đầu, đến đó

2.2.5 No Discernment-nhận thức: B6, B7

Shall I again return self-same. Now you
Must say and think that Being exists as true
Necessity; since Being is to Be,
But nothingness impossibility.
I urge you now to contemplate these lays,
For from the first path's search I block your gaze.
Far off her winding course have mortals strayed
Alone in ambiguity, dismayed
Mid nothing seen nor known; for helplessness
Drives on the mind far-wandering their heart's abyss.
They carry on both dumb and blind, amazed,
Confused, these feckless tribes, who wholly dazed,
Adjudge to be and not to be the same,
Yet not the same—A backward turning game
The path of all. So never be seduced
By thoughts that nothings equal beings reduced.
Blot from your thought this course! Raise high a fence!
Don't let old Habit's harsh experience
Propel you headlong down this fruitless path.
But close your blinded eyes, your ears with wrath
Of worldly sounds beset, and stay your tongue,
To judge, by reason's aid alone, among
The paths my strife-filled refutations rive.
2.2.6 Semata: B8

2.2.7 Of those who die ...

B8 (6th section), B9, B10, B11, B12, B13, B14, B15, B16, B17, B18, B19