Parmenides and Being

In Chapter 2 of Philosophy: The Power of Ideas, by Moore and Bruder, we learned about the

thought of the pre-socratic Greek philosophers, who were interested in the nature of being and

existence. They developed the fields of epistemology, metaphysics and used them as tools in their path

to understanding the world. One of the thinkers I thought was very interesting in this chapter was

Parmenides, who believed that all being was one, that the differences between things were illusions and

that change and movement were ultimately impossible because being was eternal and everywhere. His

thought, best expressed in his poem On Nature, had a very crucial effect in future philosophers, most

importantly Plato and a lot of the philosophical works that came out on the metaphysics of being after

him seemed to react in one way or another to the challenge he gives out in this poem (Collinson 1998:

13). According to Preus, Parmenides' contributions also show advanced scientific knowledge, like that

the moon does not shine with its own light; that the morning and the evening stars were the same and

that the Earth was a sphere while the other pre-socratics thought the Earth was a cylinder (Preus 2007:

195).

In his poem, Parmenides says that the differences between things are an illusion, because in

reality everything is the same substance at the same time. He says that there is no past or future, that

things don't “become” and things never “have been” because everything that is just “is” right now

(Collinson 1988: 14). He also does not believe that matter is really made of meaningful particles, but

that we only perceive that there is “more” of one thing in a certain place in a given time, when in fact if

things changed composition, or if particles really moved across a space, then they would not be because

they would be “becoming” or “ongoing” instead of “being there.” He also does not believe that void

exists because the substance of being is all that exists, and for something not to “be there” would mean

that it could not even be part of the universe in the first place, because the only real way for things not

to “be there” is for them not to even have the potential to do so. If they can be thought of as being
there, then they are according to Parmenides, because he believed that the thought, the thinker and the

thing that is thought were all the same, because there can be no thought without an origin in “being”

and being can only be known through thought.

This last point is very important when we look at this philosopher, because Parmenides seems

to have come to this way of thinking after looking at a problem of epistemology (Collinson 1988: 13;

Preus 2007: 194). His poem says that there are two ways of understanding the world, the “Way of the

Truth” and the “Way of Opinion.” The way of the truth comes from reason. It goes back to the

fundamental essence of things, which is separate from appearances but in the end transcendent and

true. The “Way of Truth” comes from the senses, from the impressions of our bodies. His own poem

describes Parmenides cosmogony only with the idea of helping the reader “not to be made a fool” .

Parmenides believes that the Way of Opinion comes from our common sense error of putting

everything into opposites (light and dark, fluid and solid, etc) (Collinson 1988: 13).

Even though I think that Parmenides' work was very important and a breakthrough for

philosophy to this day I do not agree with him idea of “being” in two main ways. The first one is

unfair, because I have the advantage of living at a later time than he did. I think now science tells us

many things that are against Parmenides, like the fact that “void” does in exist inside this universe, and

that the material of all things is not as easy to find as we think, even if we have the tools of science. In

fact, science says that not everything is made of the same material (although some people could say

that Parmenides was talking about this “substance” in a metaphysical way and not as a material thing).

The second way I disagree with Parmenides was with his belief that the oneness of being makes change

impossible. Modern phycisists tell us now that in some ways, Parmenides was right because many

things that we thought were opposite, or different, are in some fundamental way the same, like matter

and energy or the space and the time in which they manifest. This does not mean, however, that the

principles that make them different are not part of the essence of what these things are in the end.

Energy would not be as it is in this universe if it did not manifest in the many ways and with the
properties that it does in things as different as the binding force of atoms and the radiation of black

holes and the effort in the muscles of a man carrying water. I think these differences are not just a

matter of opinion in two ways: one, that these differences are demonstrable by reason itself, and two,

that the universe that is cannot be said not to be against the proof of its own facts.

This leads me to my biggest disagreement with Parmenides. I think that he was right that we

need reason to really understand the world, but reason can only go so far. We need observation, and

observation needs the senses to make sense of the world. The science that helps us find out so many

things about the world needs to work with contradictions. When the observations of the senses “don't

make sense” then we can use reason to test why. For example, if we figure out through reason that the

morning star and the evening star are the same, are a planet and the Earth is round, then how do we

explain that we are not falling off the surface, like our senses say things do when they are not falling

against a surface? We need reason, but we need a motive for reason to go and act, and many times in

the history of science reason goes and looks for explanations only when you go and test things out with

observation. Even though we know that our observations not always take us to the right answer, this

does not mean that our observations cannot be improved to bring us closer to a truth that was hiding.

All we need to do is trust both the senses and reason, because we cannot ignore either one.

Regardless of my disagreement with Parmenides in some things, I still think that the fact that he

put out some of these questions was more important than the answers that he could have found at his

time. There are things I agree with Parmenides in, though, like his idea that people tend to think in

dualities, and that this many times results in incorrect interpretations of the world. Some of his most

fundamental questions are still making us think today, and I think that is the most important job that a

philosopher has. Whether Being is one thing fundamentally and cannot change or not be at all may be

outside of our ability to ever find an answer, but the most important thing is we are here, and we will

keep trying.
 Sources

Collinson, D. (1988). Fifty Major Philosophers: a Reference Guide. New York, NY: Routledge.

Preus, A. (2007). Historical Dictionary of Ancient Greek Philosophy. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press.