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Philosophy of Parmenides. Philosophy Briefly: Eleatic School: Parmenides, Zeno

Chronologically, the first leader of the school was Parmenides (born about 540 BC), the true founder of the Eleatic school.

Information about the life of Parmenides is rather contradictory. Diogenes Laertius mentions that the acme (fortieth birthday) of Parmenides falls on 504-501 BC, i.e. in this case Parmenides turns out to be almost the same age as Heraclitus. At the same time, Plato reports that the sixty-year-old Parmenides talked with the young Socrates, which means that Parmenides was much younger than both Heraclitus and Xenophanes and was born around 515 BC. Plato's opinion seems to be confirmed by evidence that Parmenides was at one time a student of Xenophanes. However, it is rather Diogenes who is right, and not Plato, who preferred artistry to facts.

Being a citizen of the newly founded Elea, Parmenides also acted as a legislator.

"On Nature. Prologue".

Philosophical doctrine is set forth by Parmenides in the essay "On Nature", written in verse. According to its content, it is divided into the Prologue and two other parts: about nine-tenths of the first have survived, and one-tenth of the second. parmenides philosophical antique thinking

The "Prologue" tells about the fantastic trip of the young Parmenides to the goddess of justice, justice and retribution Dika, into whose mouth the philosopher puts his thoughts. The path to the goddess is described in images: a carriage harnessed by "wise horses" in which it flies throughout the universe to meet the goddess Parmenides; the Virgins of the Sun who govern it; Gate of the ways of Day and Night; True, guarding the double keys to these gates. And finally, Dike herself. She greets the young man, takes him by the right hand and starts talking.

"On Nature. The Way of Truth".

In the first part of the poem - "The Way of Truth" - the goddess reveals to Parmenides the doctrine of the true and intelligible being, which is alien to most mortals. Here are the two most important philosophical problems: the question of the relationship of being and non-being and the question of the relationship of being and thinking, which can only be resolved by reason.

Already at the beginning of this part of the poem, a dilemma appears, on which the whole philosophy of Parmenides is built: there is - there is not. There is - this is what cannot not be, this is being. Not to eat is, on the contrary, something that cannot be, i.e. non-existence.

And here for the first time in ancient philosophy Parmenides gives logical evidence in favor of his opinion, since before him philosophers either expressed truths or relied on analogies and metaphors. For example, the main proof of the non-existence of non-existence is that it is impossible to know, impossible to express in a word. Non-existence is unthinkable, inexpressible, therefore, it cannot exist. Moreover, the very thought of non-existence is proof that non-existence does not exist. The thought of non-existence presupposes the existence of this non-existence, since otherwise there would be nothing to think about. So non-existence exists. But if non-being exists, then in this case it is being. Consequently, the very idea of ​​the existence of non-existence proves just the opposite - that non-existence does not exist (“One can only speak and think what is: after all, there is being, but nothing is”). There is only that which is conceivable and expressible in words, i.e. being ("what "is" and "it is impossible not to be": this is the path of conviction, which is a companion of Truth").

However, on the path of truth, the mind is waiting for "traps", falling into which, it will never come to the truth. The first "trap" consists in admitting the existence of non-existence ("not to be" and "not to be must inevitably"). The second "trap" says that being and non-being are identical and non-identical. Here it is allowed, as well as the existence of non-being (the first "trap"), and its identification with being, and then the denial of this identity:

"Before you, I turn away the path of research,

And then from where people, deprived of knowledge,

Roam about two heads. Pitiful helplessness rules

In their chest with a confused mind, and they are in amazement

Rushing about, deaf and blind alike, indistinct crowds,

Which "to be and not to be" are recognized as one and the same

And not the same, but everything goes back down immediately.

In these lines, Parmenides says that one head cannot contain two mutually exclusive theses. It is impossible to think that being and non-being are identical and non-identical at the same time, just as it is impossible to think about the existence of non-being, since this would mean its equality to being. Thus, Parmenides approached the law of the prohibition of contradiction - the main law of thinking.

To these two "traps" - false theses - Parmenides opposes his point of view, that is, the conviction that there is being, but there is no being at all - a conviction that will help not to err on the path of truth. Proving the thesis about the existence of being through the denial of the existence of non-being, Parmenides turns to the question of being and thinking.

The philosopher recognizes as existing only that which can be comprehended and expressed in words. Goddess Dike says: "... For thinking is the same as being ...". In this phrase, Parmenides formulates the idea of ​​coincidence, the identity of being and thinking. Moreover, the most important proof of the existence of being is that it can be comprehended. However, Parmenides erroneously connected the object of feeling (thing) and the object of thought, because it follows from this that the criterion of being is its conceivability. The philosopher was right when he said that only that which can be an object of thought truly exists (since there is a lot of seeming in sensory perception), but he was wrong when he thought that everything thinkable exists.

"On Nature. The Way of Opinion".

After talking about being, non-being and thinking, Dike abruptly interrupts:

"Here is a reliable word and I complete my thought

I'm talking about Truth: from now on you teach the opinions of mortals,

Listening to the false order of my elegant verses.

Starting a story about the opinions of mortals,

The goddess promises Parmenides that he will know "the nature of the ether and all that is in the ether

Signs, and pure lamps of the work of the radiant Sun

Invisible, also from here they were born.

And you also recognize the round-eyed moon

You and deeds, and nature, and the Sky that embraces everything,

How and where it was born, how it was chained

Stars border guard Ananka...

Like the Earth and the Sun and the Moon,

Ether, the Heavenly Milk, common to all, and also

Extreme Olympus and the hot power of the stars set off

Suddenly born into the world ... ".

However, this is not known from the surviving lines of the second part. You can only find out that in this part of the poem we are talking about two natural principles - fire and earth (light and darkness, respectively).

In the picture of this imaginary world described by Dike, Aphrodite and her son Eros play an important role. Aphrodite is in the center of the cosmos and controls everything from there, and Eros connects and connects the opposite (light and darkness, male and female). Consequently, Parmenides' physical picture of the world is dialectical, but he also declared it untrue.

"I announce to you this world order, quite probable,

May you not be overtaken by the opinion of mortals."

That is, Dike tells the apparent arrangement of things so that the opinion of mortals does not overtake the philosopher.

Metaphysics of Parmenides.

In his doctrine of truth and in his view of knowledge, Parmenides came to conclusions that, from the point of view of the ordinary perception of observed phenomena, seemed paradoxical. Observation, based on external senses, shows the multiplicity of things in the world around us. Parmenides denies the conceivability of plurality. Plurality exists only for the senses. However, feelings do not give us a true picture of the world, feelings are imaginary. For thought, for the mind, the world appears as the strictest unity.

For the senses, all things in the world appear to be constantly moving, changing: arising and perishing. But, according to the teachings of Parmenides, this is only an illusion. The true picture of the world is revealed and verified only by the mind. This picture consists in the fact that the world is identical, knows neither emergence nor death. Indeed, any change presupposes that something disappears into non-existence and something emerges from non-existence. And since non-existence does not exist in principle, then being is one, unchangeable and "immovably lies within the bounds of the greatest fetters." It was this thesis about the immutability and immobility of the world that made Parmenides the founder of ancient metaphysics and the opponent of dialectics.

From the point of view of ordinary perception, the world consists of separate things, separated from one another by empty gaps. However, here Parmenides argues that this is not a reliable picture of the world, but an illusion generated by deceptive feelings. On the contrary, space separated from bodies, from matter, does not exist, it is impossible. Space is inseparable from matter. After all, only non-existence could divide being, that is, to be emptiness, but it does not exist.

To all these positions, extremely paradoxical from the point of view of ordinary sensory perception and observation, Parmenides added one more thought: the opposition between truth and opinion, between completely certain knowledge and knowledge, which can be said to be not devoid of probability, is only a plausible assumption. .

Since then, logic and the theory of knowledge have long since found out great value probabilistic knowledge for practice, for science and for logical thinking. Thus, in itself, the thought of Parmenides, pointing to the difference that exists between certain knowledge and knowledge that is only probable, was a valuable thought. Parmenides associates certain knowledge with the activity of the mind, and probable knowledge with sensory perception, and argues that sensory perception cannot give true knowledge. Such knowledge is given to us only by the thought, the discernment of the mind.

Name: Parmenides (Parmenides)

Date of Birth: 540 BC e.

Age: 90 years old

Date of death: 450 BC e.

Activity: philosopher

Family status: not married

Parmenides: biography

Parmenides is an ancient Greek philosopher who managed to express his own views on being, the world order and the meaning of human existence in a poetic form. The ideas and theories of Parmenides formed the basis of philosophy as a science, and the works of this man still arouse interest and heated debate among those who are interested in philosophical issues.

Childhood and youth

Little information has been preserved about the biography of Parmenides. It is known that the philosopher comes from the so-called Great Greece (now it is the south of Italy). According to another philosopher, Parmenides was born in 475 BC in the city of Elea. According to other information, the thinker was born around 540 BC. Information was also found that Parmenides came from a noble and wealthy family and even participated in the management of the city.


The teachers of the future thinker were Xenophanes and Aminius. Parmenides eagerly absorbed the ideas of mentors, but passed them through the prism of his own opinion, interpreting them in his own way. When Aminius died, Parmenides, as a devoted student, erected a tomb for the philosopher on his own.

Philosophy

The teachings of Parmenides are set forth in a poem called On Nature. This great work formed the basis of the Eleatic school of philosophy. Unfortunately, the poem has not been preserved in its entirety. It is noteworthy that Parmenides expressed his own point of view poetically: the work was written in hexameter.

The first part that has come down to the modern reader is the introduction, which is an allegory. The action begins with the fact that beautiful virgins offer Parmenides to make a journey in a chariot. This chariot begins to ascend upward, symbolizing the ascension human soul On sky. Soon, Parmenides' path upstairs ends, and the philosopher finds himself in front of the gates to the divine chambers.


At the threshold of the thinker, a goddess awaits, who invites Parmenides to proceed inside. The immortal maiden is going to reveal to the philosopher the highest truth about the destiny of mortal people. Here the introduction, or rather the surviving part, breaks off.

The following passage outlines Parmenides' reasoning about being. The philosopher imagined being in the form of a ball. Here the opinions of the interpreters differ: according to one version, Parmenides had in mind not the physical component of being, but the spiritual content. On the other hand, the ball in the work of the philosopher reflects the shape of the universe, as the author imagined it. It is also worth emphasizing that in the view of the Greeks of that time, the ball was a symbol of ideal and harmony.

The plot of the poem continues with the story of the goddess. The beautiful maiden told the thinker that being is eternal, has never been born and, accordingly, will not stop. Being is also distinguished by four characteristics: perfection, corporeality, immobility and self-sufficiency. Any changes that occur within being (that is, in life common man), do not touch the essence of being. In other words, no events that seem important to mortals affect existence.

In fact, with such thought statements, Parmenides conducts a kind of dialogue with the philosopher Heraclitus, who, on the contrary, was of the opinion that being is finite and any events affect its essence by changing circumstances.


Not close to Parmenides and the idea of ​​the emergence of being from the void. The philosopher called such thoughts absurd. In addition, the thinker refuted the point of view of those who believe that the existence of the world is non-existence. In this case, Parmenides believed, human life, development and attempts to understand the world are meaningless. It is worth paying tribute to the philosopher - unlike many contemporaries, Parmenides supported each idea with facts and evidence.

The presentation of the philosopher is largely based on opposition. Mainly, Parmenides emphasizes that opinions ordinary people opposed to the highest truth, which is inaccessible to mortals. Being in the poem is opposed to the concept of necessity. Necessity is that which does not allow being to cease to exist and turn into non-being.

AT modern philosophy Parmenides is considered the founder of materialism. However, the way that the thinker chose to present his own theories seems strange: before Parmenides, no philosopher wrote in verse. In addition, no one also used mystical allegories and images of the gods.

The teachings of Parmenides were developed by the student of the philosopher Zeno of Elea. This thinker cited 36 so-called aporias (contradictions) that prove Parmenides' ideas about being. The contradiction about Achilles and the tortoise has become commonplace, which says: Achilles, who went to a certain point later than the tortoise, will not be able to overtake it, since the tortoise will move away from Achilles at every moment of time, overcoming a certain distance.


Similar ideas of another philosopher are often compared with the teachings of Parmenides about being - who, unlike Parmenides, considered being as an interconnection of many separated atoms.

Personal life

No information has been preserved about the personal life of the philosopher. It is not known whether Parmenides had a family or whether the thinker devoted his life to philosophical reflections and his own poetic treatise.

Death

There is also no reliable information about the death of the great thinker. According to one version, during his lifetime, the philosopher, as well as the Eleatics (followers of the teachings of Parmenides) were persecuted and persecuted for the ideas expressed, and the thinker himself was executed, as a warning to the rest. On the other hand, the teachings of Parmenides were available only to a narrow circle of like-minded philosophers, who lived safely to a ripe old age.


ancient philosophers in Raphael's "School of Athens"

Be that as it may, it is safe to say that the ideas of Parmenides influenced the development of the philosophy of that time, and are still being discussed and disputed by people who are not indifferent to the problems of being.

It is also obvious that the teachings of Parmenides, quotes from which are still of interest, became the foundation for the works of European philosophers of a later time. Who knows, perhaps, without the treatise “On Nature”, the development of European culture would have taken place radically in a different direction.

Quotes

  • "Thinking and being are one and the same."
  • "Being is the beginning of everything, being is, but there is no non-being, everything is filled with being."
  • "Existence is not subject to corruption and death, otherwise it would turn into non-existence, but non-existence does not exist."
  • “Being has neither past nor future. Being is pure present."

Parmenides(Παρμενίδης) from Elea (Southern Italy; according to Apollodorus, acme 504-501 BC) - ancient Greek philosopher, founder Eleatic school , teacher of Zeno of Elea, according to the ancient "successions of philosophers" - a student Xenophanes , according to a more reliable version - the Pythagorean Aminius. According to Speusippus, he was the legislator of his native city. The philosophical didactic poem "On Nature" (later title, about 160 verses survived), written in archaic Homeric language, which makes interpretation difficult, is preceded by a mystical-allegorical introduction and is divided into two parts: "The Way of Truth" (ʼΑλήθεια) and "The Way of Opinion" (doxa ). In the mystical vision of the introduction, written on behalf of a “young man” (the motive of initiation into secret knowledge), a swift flight on a chariot leads the author to the beyond world through the “gates of day and night” from “darkness” to “light”, from the ignorance of the sensual world and human experience to the knowledge of absolute truth. The goddess of Truth (Dike) meeting the young man reveals to him “both the trembling heart of the rounded truth, and the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true certainty” (B 1, 29–30). The Way of Truth provides the first compendium of deductive metaphysics in the history of Greek and European thought. Theoretically, two “paths of search” (methods of cognition) are conceivable: 1) to admit that something “is and cannot not be”; 2) to admit that something "is not and of necessity must not be." The first of them is the path of conviction and truth, the second must be immediately discarded as “completely unknowable”, for “what is not, cannot be known or expressed” (fr. B 2): the denial of the existence of something implies knowledge of it and thus its reality. This is how the identity of being and thinking is deduced: “thinking and being are one and the same” (fr. B 3), “one and the same thinking and what thought is about” (fr. B 8, 34). Thought can never be empty (“without being”); its fullness should correspond to the “fullness” of the universe that exists: emptiness (“bearing”, “what is not”) is impossible (Fr. B 4). In addition to the two alternative “paths of search”, there is another path, forbidden to a young man, along which ignorant “mortals with two heads” wander, believing that something can “be and not be” at the same time - probably this is the “path of opinion” corresponding to sensory experience (Fr. B 6). Trusting neither sight nor hearing, the young man must, with the help of "reason" (logos) alone, judge the "multi-controversial" (i.e., dialectical) argumentation of Truth and recognize the path "is" as the only true one. From this “is” all the characteristics of the truly existing are necessarily derived: it “has not arisen, is not destroyed, is whole, unique, motionless and endless (in time)” (B 8, 4-5). It is impossible to say about him “was” or “will be”, “since. now it is all together, one, continuous” (B 8, 5–6). It is "indivisible" and completely homogeneous (B 8:22), since recognition of heterogeneity or discreteness would require the assumption of emptiness (“what is not”), it always stays in the same place (B 8, 29), “does not need anything” (B 8, 33), is devoid of sensual qualities and any processes of change (B 8, 40–41) and, finally, concluded by Fate (Moira; she is Necessity-Ananka and Truth-Dika) within the boundaries of an ideal “sphere” (the word “onkos” is used here - “a block, a mass ”), “balanced everywhere from the center” (B 8, 43-44).

In Parmenides' argument, in addition to the law of contradiction and the principle "from nothing there will be nothing", an essential role is played by the law of sufficient reason (later known as μηδὲν μάλλον, "no more so than so"). Having finished the “authentic word about the truth”, the goddess proceeds to the “opinions of mortals” and sets out a lengthy cosmology in the Ionian style, starting from the primary elements (“forms”, B 8, 53 ff.), the origin of the sky and the luminaries (B 10-11), cosmology that is unclear to us (B 12) and ending with the physiology of knowledge (B 16), embryology (B 17) and even the origin of hermaphrodites (B 18). The world of human experience, abolished in the first part, turns out to be rehabilitated as a probable hypothesis. The world of truth and the world of doxa are one and the same world, perceived by the divine (ideal) and human (imperfect) subject, respectively, as a fixed one in the first case, as becoming many - in the second. The world of doxa is entirely conditioned by human language, which has arbitrarily established many "names" for one being (cf. B 8, 38 ff. and especially B 19, 3). The world of doxa is not completely unreal: it is "ridiculous" of being and non-being, truth and falsehood. At the phenomenal level, "being" and "non-being" act as "light" and "darkness" ("ethereal fire" and "heavy body of the earth"), an active spirit and inert dark matter; these are two fundamental elements, the "mixing" of which in certain proportions constitutes the whole variety of sensory phenomena, and also explains the states of consciousness, life and death, etc. All physical opposites - "rarefied and dense", "light and heavy", "hot and cold" (B 8, 56-59 with scholion), etc. are reducible to the opposition of light and darkness as synonyms. But one member of this fundamental opposition is imaginary, and "should not have been called" by a separate name (B 8, 54): "night" is the absence of light and, therefore, is not substantial. In that - fatal mistake mortals, leading them from monism to dualism. A polytheistic theogony is built into the cosmogony of doxa (B 13; A 37): "gods" are understood as allegories of the elements, luminaries, passions, etc.; thus, traditional mythology is reduced to the level of "the opinion of the crowd", and the metaphysics of truth acquires the character of a new, rational, monotheistic theology (hence the sacred language of the introduction). “The intrepid heart of truth”, “invulnerability” and “inviolability” of the existent in the ethical consciousness are transformed into the “equanimity” of the sage, iron morality, contempt for sensual pleasures and pain as unreal, etc. (cf. the legend of the heroic death of Zeno, who carried the "teachings of Parmenides" through torture like pure gold through fire - 29 A 7).

Typologically, the philosophy of Parmenides is close to the system of idealistic monism such as Advaita Vedanta, but it is necessary to take into account the absence in his time of a strict dualism of spirit and matter, the idea of ​​the spatial extension (and even corporeality) of being (the English historian of philosophy J. Burnet, going to the other extreme, considered Parmenides "father of materialism"). In addition to direct influence on the traditions of the Eleatic and Megarian schools, the philosophy of Parmenides indirectly, through the requirement of a rational justification for movement and plurality, had an impact on the formation of natural philosophical systems of the 5th century. (especially the atomists) and the theoretical physics of Aristotle. The opposition of being and becoming, sensual and intelligible, truth and opinion entered the ABC of Platonism. The tradition of seeing in Parmenides a key figure in the history of early Greek thought and even dividing it into pre- and post-Parmenides goes back to the book of K. Reinhardt (1916). In the 20th century Existential phenomenology (Heidegger) and Anglo-American analytical philosophy are of particular interest to Parmenides.

Fragments and evidence:

1. DK I, 217–246;

2. Parmenides. A text with transl., comm. and critical essays by L.Taran. Princeton, 1965;

3. Heitsch E. Parmenides. Munch., 1974;

4. Gallop D. Parmenides of Elea, Fragments. Toronto, 1984;

5. Coxon A.H. The Fragments of Parmenides. Assen, 1986;

6. Aubenque P.(ed.), Études sur Parmenide, t. 1: Le Poème de Parmenide: Texte, traduction, essai critique, t. 2: Problems d'interpretation. P., 1987;

7. Lebedev A.V.(ed.). Fragments of early Greek philosophers, part 1. M., 1989.

Literature:

1. Dobrokhotov A.L. Presocratic doctrine of being. M., 1980;

2. Long A.A. The Principles of Parmenides' Cosmogony. - Phronesis 8, 1963, p. 90–107 (repr.: R.E. Allen, D.J. Furley (eds.), Studies in Presocratic Philosophy. L., 1975, vol. 2, p. 82–101);

3. Furth M. Elements of Eleatic Ontology. - "Journal of the History of Philosophy" 6, 1968, p. 111–132 (repr.: A.P.D. Mourelatos. The Pre-Socratics. N.Y., 1989, p. 241-270);

4 Mourelatos A.P. D., The Route of Parmenides: A Study of Word, Image, and Argument in the Fragments. New Haven, 1970;

5. Die Einheit der Erfahrung: eine Interpretation der Parmenidieshen Fragmente. Munich-W., 1976;

6. Parmenides Studies Today. – The Monist, 1979, v. 62, 1;

7. Kahn C.H. Being In Parmenides and Plato. - "La Parola del Passato" 43, 1988, p. 237–261.

South Italy; according to Apollodorus, acme 504-501 BC. BC) - an ancient Greek philosopher, founder of the Elea school, teacher of Zeno of Elea, according to the ancient "successions of philosophers" - a student of Xenophanes, according to a more reliable version - the Pythagorean Aminius. According to Speusippus, he was the legislator of his native city. The philosophical didactic poem “On Nature” (later title, about 160 verses have survived), written in archaic Homeric language, which makes interpretation difficult, is preceded by a mystical and allegorical introduction and is divided into two parts: “The Way of Truth” () and “The Way of Opinion” (doxa) . In the mystical vision of the introduction, written on behalf of a “young man” (the motive of initiation into secret knowledge), a swift flight on a chariot leads the author to the beyond world through the “gates of day and night” from “darkness” to “light”, from the ignorance of the sensual world and the human experience to the knowledge of absolute truth. The goddess of Truth (Dike) meeting the young man reveals to him “both the fearless heart of the rounded truth, and the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true certainty” (B 1.29-30). The Way of Truth provides the first compendium of deductive metaphysics in the history of Greek and European thought. Theoretically, two “paths of search” (methods of cognition) are conceivable: 1) to admit that something “is and cannot not be”; 2) to admit that something "is not and of necessity must not be." The first of them is the path of conviction and truth, the second must be immediately discarded as “completely unknowable”, for “what is not, cannot be known or expressed” (fr. B 2): the denial of the existence of something implies knowledge of it and thus its reality. This is how the identity of being and thinking is derived: “thinking and being are one and the same” (fr. B 3), “one and the same thinking and what thought is about” (fr. B 8, 34). Thought can never be empty (“without being”), its fullness must correspond to the “fullness” of the universe being: emptiness (“bearing”, “what is not”) is impossible (Fr. B 4). In addition to the two alternative “paths of search”, there is one more, forbidden to the young man, the path along which ignorant “mortals with two heads” wander, believing that something can “be and not be” at the same time - probably this is the “path of opinion” corresponding to sensory experience (Fr. B 6). Trusting neither sight nor hearing, the young man must, with the help of "reason" (logos) alone, judge the "multi-controversial" (i.e., dialectical) argumentation of Truth and recognize the path "is" as the only true one. From this “is” all the characteristics of the truly existing are necessarily derived: it “has not arisen, is not destroyed, is whole, unique, immovable and endless (in time)” (B 8:4-5). It is impossible to say about him “was” or “will be”, “i.e. because now it is all together, one, continuous” (B 8, 5-6). It is “indivisible” and completely homogeneous (B 8, 22), since the recognition of heterogeneity or discreteness would require the assumption of emptiness (“what is not”), it always stays in the same place (B 8, 29) , “does not need anything” (B 8.33), is devoid of sensual qualities and any processes of change (B 8.40-41) and, finally, is concluded by Fate (Moira; she is Necessity Ananke and Pravda-Dike) within the boundaries of the ideal “spheres” (the word “onkos” is used here - “block, mass”), “balanced everywhere from the center” (B 8.43-44).

In the argument of Parmenides, in addition to the law of contradiction and the principle “from nothing there will be nothing”, an essential role is played by the law of sufficient reason (later known as “no more so than so”). Having finished the “authentic word about the truth”, the goddess proceeds to the “opinions of mortals” and sets out a lengthy cosmology in the Ionian style, starting from the primary elements (“forms”, B 8, 53 sp.), the origin of the sky and the luminaries (B 10-11), cosmology that is unclear to us (B 12) and ending with the physiology of knowledge (B 16), embryology (B 17) and even the origin of hermaphrodites (B 18). The world of human experience, abolished in the first part, turns out to be rehabilitated as a probable hypothesis. The world of truth and the world of doxa are one and the same world, perceived by the divine (ideal) and human (imperfect) subject, respectively, as a fixed one in the first case, as becoming many - in the second. The world of doxa is entirely conditioned by human language, which has arbitrarily established many "names" for one being (cf. B 8, 38, and especially B 19, 3). The world of doxa is not completely unreal: it is "ridiculous" of being and non-being, truth and falsehood. At the phenomenal level, "being" and "non-being" act as "light" and "darkness" ("ethereal fire" and "heavy body of the earth"), active spirit and inert dark matter; these are two fundamental elements, the “mixing” of which in certain proportions constitutes the whole variety of sensory phenomena, and also explains the states of consciousness, life and death, etc. All physical opposites are “rarefied and dense”, “light and heavy”, "hot and cold" (B 8:56-59 with scholion), etc., are reducible to the opposition of light and darkness as synonyms. But one member of this fundamental opposition is imaginary, and it "should not have been called" by a separate name (B 8 , 54): "night" is the absence of light and, therefore, non-substantial. This is the fatal mistake of mortals, which led them from monism to dualism Polytheistic theogony is built into the cosmogony of doxa (B 13; A 37); "gods" are understood as allegories of the elements , luminaries, passions, etc., thereby reducing traditional mythology to the level of "the opinion of the crowd", and the metaphysics of truth acquires the character of a new, rational, monotheistic theology (hence the sacred language of the introduction). ” and the “immutability” of what exists in the ethical consciousness are translated into the “equanimity” of the sage, iron morality, contempt for sensual pleasures and pain as unreal, etc. (cf. the legend of the heroic death of Zeno, who carried the "teachings of Parmenides" through torture like pure gold through fire - 29 A 7). Typologically, the philosophy of Parmenides is close to the system of idealistic monism such as Advaita Vedanta, however, it is necessary to take into account the absence in his time of a strict dualism of spirit and matter, the idea of ​​the spatial extent (and even corporeality) of being (the English historian of philosophy J. Burnet, going to the other extreme, considered Parmeid "father of materialism"). In addition to direct influence on the traditions of the Eleatic and Megarian schools, the philosophy of Parmenides indirectly, through the requirement of a rational justification for movement and plurality, had an impact on the formation of natural philosophical systems of the 5th century. (especially the atomists) and the theoretical physics of Aristotle. The opposition of being and becoming, sensual and intelligible, truth and opinion entered the ABC of Platonism. The tradition of seeing in Parmenides a key figure in the history of early Greek thought and even dividing it into pre- and post-Parmenides goes back to the book by K. Reinhardt (1916). In the 20th century Existential phenomenology (Heidegger) and Anglo-American analytical philosophy are of particular interest to Parmenides.

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He attributes the same properties to everything real in general, because, in his opinion, they necessarily follow from the concept of reality; therefore, he recognizes the multiplicity and changes of things as mere appearance. This thinker, highly revered in antiquity and especially aroused the admiration of Plato, was born - according to the instructions of Plato's Parmenides, not earlier than 520-515 BC. However, this evidence is probably among the anachronisms that Plato often allowed for artistic reasons, and Diogenes Laertes closer to the truth, attributing the "flourishing" of Parmenides ( acme, usually - the 40th year of life) by the 69th Olympiad, and therefore, his birth - by the 59th Olympiad (544-540 BC). His development was influenced by two Pythagoreans and he himself was famous for his Pythagorean life; but him philosophical theory adjoins in its basic ideas to Xenophanes, and only his hypothetical cosmology adjoins the cosmology of Pythagoras, - perhaps also to the cosmology of Anaximander. His poem περί φύσεως ("about nature") begins with the fiction of the poet's journey in a chariot to the realm of light, where the goddess proclaims to him the immutable truth, and then - the deceptive opinions of people. The poem thus falls into two parts, the doctrine of being (Αλήθεια) and the doctrine of appearances (Δόξα).

Great Philosophers. Heraclitus and Parmenides. video film

The basic concept from which Parmenides proceeds is the concept of being in its opposition to the concept of non-being. By being, he means not an abstract image of pure being, but a “complete” one, a mass that fills space and is devoid of any further definitions. “Only the existent exists, but the non-existent does not exist, and it is unthinkable” - from this basic thought Parmenides derives all his definitions of the existent. The existent can neither arise nor cease to exist, for it can neither arise from the non-existent, nor turn into the non-existent, it has never been and never will be, but is inseparably wholly in the present (νυν εστίν δμοΰ παν εν ξυνεχές). It is indivisible, for it is equally everywhere what it is, and there is nothing by which it can be divided. It is motionless and unchangeable, equal to itself everywhere, can be likened to a well-rounded ball, and evenly extends from the center in all directions. Nor is thinking different from being, for it is only the thinking of beings. Therefore, only that knowledge owns the truth, which in everything shows us this one unchanging being, that is, only the mind owns the truth ( logos); feelings, which bring us visions of the multiplicity of things, of emergence, annihilation and change, i.e., in general represent the being of non-existent, are the source of all delusions. There is a hypothesis that Parmenides, condemning those who consider being and non-being identical, had in mind Heraclitus (cf. the latter's saying: [in a continuously changing world] "everything exists and at the same time does not exist").

Parmenides tried in the second part of his poem to show how the world should be explained from the point of view of conventional way representation. In reality, only being exists. The mind of men puts next to it the non-existent, and thus thinks of everything as composed of two elements, of which one corresponds to the existent, the other to the non-existent; the world is composed of light and fiery, on the one hand (φλογός αίθέριον πυρ), and "night", dark, heavy and cold, on the other, which Parmenides also called earth. According to Theophrastus, he described the first element as an active principle, the last as a passive one, and added to them the mythical image of the goddess who directs everything. He promises to show how, under these assumptions, the origin and structure of the world must be explained; but few of these considerations have come down to us. It represents the universe as made up of the globe and various spheres embracing it and covered by a firm firmament; some of these spheres are light, others are dark, others are of a mixed nature. He apparently held the opinion that people originated from the mud of the earth. Their ideas are determined by the material composition of their body: each of the two elements in the body cognizes what is related to itself. The nature of representations depends on which of the two elements predominates; therefore, representations have greater truth if warm (existing) prevails in the body.