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ParmenidesFirst published Fri Feb 8, 2008; substantive revision Sun Jun 3, 2012

Parmenides of Elea, active in the earlier part of the 5th c. BCE, authored adifficult metaphysical poem that has earned him a reputation as earlyGreek philosophy's most profound and challenging thinker. Hisphilosophical stance has typically been understood as at once extremelyparadoxical and yet crucial for the broader development of Greek naturalphilosophy and metaphysics. He has been seen as a metaphysical monist(of one stripe or another) who so challenged the naïve cosmologicaltheories of his predecessors that his major successors among thePresocratics were all driven to develop more sophisticated physicaltheories in response to his arguments. The difficulties involved in theinterpretation of his poem have resulted in disagreement about manyfundamental questions concerning his philosophical views, such as:whether he actually was a monist and, if so, what kind of monist he was;whether his system reflects a critical attitude toward earlier thinkers suchas the Milesians, Pythagoreans, and Heraclitus, or whether he wasmotivated simply by more strictly logical concerns, such as the paradoxof negative existentials that Bertrand Russell detected at the heart of histhought; whether he considered the world of our everyday awareness,with its vast population of entities changing and affecting one another inall manner of ways, to be simply an illusion, and thus whether the lengthycosmological portion of his poem represented a genuine attempt tounderstand this world at all. This entry aims to provide an overview ofParmenides' work and of some of the major interpretive approachesadvanced over the past few decades. It concludes by suggesting thatunderstanding his thought and his place in the development of earlyGreek philosophy requires taking due account of the fundamental modaldistinctions that he was the first to articulate and explore with any

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precision.

1. Life and Writings2. Overview of Parmenides' Poem

2.1 The Proem2.2 The Ways of Inquiry2.3 The Way of Conviction2.4 The Way of Mortals

3. Some Principal Types of Interpretation3.1 The Strict Monist Interpretation3.2 The Logical-Dialectical Interpretation3.3 The Meta-Principle Interpretation3.4 The Aspectual Interpretation Prevailing in Antiquity3.5 The Modal Interpretation

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1. Life and Writings

The dramatic occasion of Plato's dialogue, Parmenides, is a fictionalizedvisit to Athens by the eminent Parmenides and his younger associate,Zeno, to attend the festival of the Great Panathenaea. Plato describesParmenides as about sixty-five years old and Socrates, with whom heconverses in the first part of the dialogue, as “quite young then,” which isnormally taken to mean about twenty. Given that Socrates was a little pastseventy when executed by the Athenians in 399 BCE, one can infer fromthis description that Parmenides was born about 515 BCE. He would thus

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appear to have been active during the early to mid-fifth century BCE.Speusippus, Plato's successor as head of the Academy, is said to havereported in his On Philosophers that Parmenides established the laws forthe citizens of his native Elea, one of the Greek colonies along southernItaly's Tyrrhenian coast (Speus. fr. 3 Tarán ap. D.L. 9.23; cf. Plu. Col.1126A), though Elea was founded some 30 years before Parmenides'birth. The ancient historiographic tradition naturally associatesParmenides with thinkers such as Xenophanes and the Pythagoreansactive in Magna Graecia, the Greek-speaking regions of southern Italy,whom he may well have encountered. A 1st c. CE portrait head ofParmenides was discovered at Castellamare della Bruca (ancient Elea) inthe 1960's with an inscription—“Parmeneides, son of Pyres, Ouliadês,Natural Philosopher”—that associates him with a cult of Apollo Oulios orApollo the Healer.

According to Diogenes Laertius, Parmenides composed only a singlework (D.L. 1.16). This was a metaphysical and cosmological poem in thetraditional epic medium of hexameter verse. The title “On Nature” underwhich it was transmitted is probably not authentic. The poem originallyextended to perhaps eight hundred verses, roughly one hundred and sixtyof which have survived as “fragments” that vary in length from a singleword (fr. 15a: “water-rooted,” describing the earth) to the sixty-twoverses of fragment 8. That any portion of his poem survives is dueentirely to the fact that later ancient authors, beginning with Plato, for onereason or another felt the need to quote some portion of it in the course oftheir own writings. Sextus Empiricus quotes thirty of the thirty-two versesof fragment 1 (the opening Proem of the poem), though apparently fromsome sort of Hellenistic digest rather than from an actual manuscriptcopy, for his quotation of fr. 1.1–30 continues uninterruptedly with fiveand a half verses from fragments 7 and 8. The Alexandrian NeoplatonistSimplicius (6th c. CE) appears to have possessed a good copy of thework, from which he quoted extensively in his commentaries on

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Aristotle's Physics and De Caelo. He introduces his lengthy quotation offr. 8.1–52 as follows: “Even if one might think it pedantic, I would gladlytranscribe in this commentary the verses of Parmenides on the one being,which aren't numerous, both as evidence for what I have said and becauseof the scarcity of Parmenides' treatise.” Thanks to Simplicius' lengthytranscription, we appear to have entire Parmenides' major metaphysicalargument demonstrating the attributes of “What Is” (to eon) or “truereality” (alêtheia).

We are much less well informed about the cosmology Parmenidesexpounded in the latter part of the poem and so must supplement theprimary evidence of the fragments with testimonia, that is, with variousreports or paraphrases of his theories that we also find in later authors. (Anumber of these testimonia are collected among the fifty-four “A-Fragmente” in the Parmenides section of Diels and Kranz's DieFragmente der Vorsokratiker. A more comprehensive collection oftestimonia, with English translations, is to be found in Coxon 2009, 99–267.) As always when dealing with an ancient philosopher whose workhas not survived entire, one must take into account how the philosophicaland other concerns of later authors thanks to whom we know what we doof Parmenides' original poem are likely to have shaped the transmissionof the extant fragments and testimonia. Certainly the partial and imperfectpreservation of his poem is one factor that complicates understanding ofhis thought.

2. Overview of Parmenides' Poem

2.1 The Proem

Parmenides' poem began with a proem describing a journey hefiguratively once made to the abode of a goddess. He described how hewas conveyed on “the far-fabled path of the divinity” (fr. 1.3) in a chariot

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by a team of mares and how the maiden daughters of Helios, the sun-god,led the way. These maidens take Parmenides to whence they themselveshave come, to “the halls of Night” (fr. 1.9), before which stand “the gatesof the paths of night and day” (fr. 1.11). The maidens gently persuadeJustice, guardian of these gates, to open them so that Parmenides himselfmay pass through to the abode within. Parmenides thus describes how thegoddess who dwells there welcomed him upon his arrival:

Parmenides' proem is no epistemological allegory of enlightenment but atopographically specific description of a mystical journey to the halls ofNight. In Hesiod, the “horrible dwelling of dark Night” (Th. 744) is wherethe goddesses Night and Day alternately reside as the other traverses thesky above the Earth. Both Parmenides' and Hesiod's conception of thisplace have their precedent in the Babylonian mythology of the sun god'sabode. This abode also traditionally served as a place of judgment, andthis fact tends to confirm that when Parmenides' goddess tells him that noill fate has sent him ahead to this place (fr. 1.26–27a), she is indicatingthat he has miraculously reached the place to which travel the souls of thedead.

In the proem, then, Parmenides casts himself in the role of an initiate intothe kind of mysteries that were during his day part of the religious milieuof Magna Graecia. The motif of the initiate is important, for it informsParmenides' portrayal of himself as one whose encounter with a majordivinity has yielded a special knowledge or wisdom. The divinity in this

And the goddess received me kindly, and in her hand she took/ myright hand, and she spoke and addressed me thus:/ “O young man,accompanied by immortal charioteers/ and mares who bear you asyou arrive at our abode,/ welcome, since a fate by no means illsent you ahead to travel/ this way (for surely it is far from thetrack of humans),/ but Right and Justice.” (Fr. 1.22–28a)

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instance would seem to be Night herself: Parmenides goes to “the halls ofNight” (fr. 1.9), and the goddess who greets him welcomes him to “ourhome” (fr. 1.25). The goddess Night serves as counselor to Zeus in someof the major Orphic cosmologies, including the Derveni cosmology. Inthe closely related Orphic Rhapsodies, Night instructs Zeus on how topreserve the unity produced by his absorption of all things into himself ashe sets about initiating a new cosmogonic phase. It is thus appropriatethat Night should be the source of Parmenides' revelation, forParmenidean metaphysics is very much concerned with the principle ofunity in the cosmos.

2.2 The Ways of Inquiry

Immediately after welcoming Parmenides to her abode, the goddessdescribes as follows the content of the revelation he is about to receive:

This programmatic announcement already indicates that the goddess'revelation will come in two major phases. The goddess provides somefurther instruction and admonition before commencing the first phase, thedemonstration of the nature of what she here mysteriously calls “theunshaken heart of well-rounded reality” (fr. 1.29). She then follows thisfirst phase of her revelation with what in the originally complete poemwas a much longer account of the principles, origins, and operation of thecosmos and its constituents, from the heavens and the sun, moon, andstars right down to the earth and its population of living creatures,including humans themselves. This second phase, a cosmological accountin the traditional Presocratic mold, is what she here refers to as “the

You must needs learn all things,/ both the unshaken heart of well-rounded reality/ and the notions of mortals, in which there is nogenuine trustworthiness./ Nonetheless these things too will youlearn, how what they resolved/ had actually to be, all through allpervading. (Fr. 1.28b-32)

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notions of mortals, in which there is no genuine trustworthiness” (fr.1.30).

The governing motif of the goddess' revelation is that of the “ways ofinquiry.” In the all-important fragment 2, she specifies two such ways:

The second way of inquiry is here set aside virtually as soon as it isintroduced. The goddess goes on to refer back to the first way of inquiryand then speaks of another way as characteristic of mortal inquiry:

Here the goddess again articulates the division of her revelation into the

Come now, I shall tell—and convey home the tale once you haveheard—/just which ways of inquiry alone there are forunderstanding:/ the one, that [it] is and that [it] is not not to be,/ isthe path of conviction, for it attends upon true reality,/ but theother, that [it] is not and that [it] must not be,/ this, I tell you, is apath wholly without report:/ for neither could you apprehend whatis not, for it is not to be accomplished,/ nor could you indicate it.(Fr. 2)

It is necessary to say and to think that What Is is; for it is to be,/but nothing it is not. These things I bid you ponder./ For I shallbegin for you from this first way of inquiry,/ then yet again fromthat along which mortals who know nothing/ wander two-headed:for haplessness in their/ breasts directs wandering understanding.They are borne along/ deaf and blind at once, bedazzled,undiscriminating hordes,/ who have supposed that it is and is notthe same/ and not the same; but the path of all these turns back onitself. (Fr. 6, supplementing the lacuna at the end of verse 3 witharxô and taking s' earlier in the verse as an elision of soi, as perNehamas 1981, 103–5; cf. the similar proposal at Cordero 1984,ch. 3, expanding parts of Cordero 1979.)

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two major phases first announced at the end of fragment 1. Compare hersubsequent pronouncement at the point of transition from the first phase'saccount of reality to the second phase's cosmology: “At this point I ceasefor you the trustworthy account and meditation/ regarding true reality;from this point on mortal notions/ learn, listening to the deceptive order ofmy verses” (fr. 8.50–2).

Clearly, the goddess' account of “true reality” proceeds along the firstway of inquiry introduced in fragment 2. Some have thought thecosmology proceeds along the second way of inquiry introduced at fr. 2.5,on the ground that the two ways introduced in fragment 2 appear to bepresented as the only conceivable ways of inquiry. However, the waypresented in fragment 6, as that along which wanders the thought ofmortals “who have supposed that it is and is not the same and not thesame” (fr. 6.7–8a), involves an intermingling of being and not-beingaltogether different from what one sees in the way of inquiry earlierspecified as “that [it] is not and that [it] must not be” (fr. 2.5). Fragment 6thus appears to be introducing a third and different way, one not to beidentified with fragment 2's second way, which has already been setaside. The same mixture of being and non-being likewise features in thegoddess' warning to Parmenides in fragment 7 not to allow his thought toproceed along the way typical of mortal inquiries: “…for this may neverbe made manageable, that things that are not are./ But you from this wayof inquiry restrain your understanding,/ and do not let habit born of muchexperience force you along this way,/ to employ aimless sight and echoinghearing/ and tongue. But judge by reason the strife-filled critique/ I havedelivered” (fr. 7). Some have thought that here the goddess's last directivesignals that some argument, with identifiable premises and conclusion,has been presented in the preceding verses. She in fact appears to beindicating that her harsh criticism of the inapprehension of ordinaryhumans, resulting from their exclusive reliance on the senses, has beendesigned to keep Parmenides firmly planted on the first way of inquiry.

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2.3 The Way of Conviction

The goddess begins her account of “true reality,” or what is to bediscovered along this first path, as follows: “As yet a single tale of a way/remains, that it is; and along this path markers are there/ very many, thatWhat Is is ungenerated and deathless,/ whole and uniform, and still andperfect” (fr. 8.1–4). What Is (to eon) has by this point become a name forwhat Parmenides will form a fuller conception of by following thegoddess' directions. These now include the programmatic description herein fr. 8.3–4 of the attributes What Is will be shown to have in the ensuingarguments. Thanks primarily to Simplicius' transcription, we still possessin its entirety the portion of Parmenides' poem comprising the goddess'srevelation of the nature of “true reality.” This account constitutes one ofthe philosophical tradition's earliest, most extensive, and most importantstretches of metaphysical reasoning.

The arguments here proceed methodically in accordance with the programannounced at fr. 8.3–4. The goddess begins by arguing, in fr. 8.5–21, thatWhat Is must be “ungenerated and deathless”:

but not ever was it, nor yet will it be, since it is now togetherentire,/ single, continuous; for what birth will you seek of it?/How, whence increased? From not being I shall not allow/ you tosay or to think: for not to be said and not to be thought/ is it that itis not. And indeed what need could have aroused it/ later ratherthan before, beginning from nothing, to grow?/ Thus it must eitherbe altogether or not at all./ Nor ever from not being will the forceof conviction allow/ something to come to be beyond it: onaccount of this neither to be born/ nor to die has Justice allowed it,having loosed its bonds,/ but she holds it fast. And the decisionabout these matter lies in this:/ it is or it is not; but it has in factbeen decided, just as is necessary,/ to leave the one unthought and

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Fr. 8.5–6a, at the outset here, have often been taken as a declaration thatWhat Is has some type of timeless existence. Given, however, that thisverse and a half opens a chain of continuous argumentation, claiming thatWhat Is does not come to be or pass away, these words are probablybetter understood as a declaration of What Is's uninterrupted existence.

Continuing on, in fr. 8.22–5 the goddess presents a much brieferargument for What Is's being “whole and uniform”: “Nor is it divided,since it is all alike;/ and it is not any more there, which would keep itfrom holding together,/ nor any worse, but it is all replete with What Is./Therefore it is all continuous: for What Is draws to What Is.” Then, at fr.8.26–33, she argues that it is “still” or motionless:

Finally, at fr. 8.42–9 (which Ebert 1989 has shown originally followedimmediately after fr. 8.33, verses 34–41 having suffered transpositionfrom their original position following verse 52), the goddess concludes byarguing that What Is must be “perfect,” before transitioning to the secondphase of her revelation:

nameless (for no true/ way is it), and <it has been decided> thatthe one that it is indeed is genuine./ And how could What Is behereafter? And how might it have been?/ For if it was, it is not,nor if ever it is going to be:/ thus generation is extinguished anddestruction unheard of.

And unmoved within the limits of great bonds/ it is unbeginningunending, since generation and destruction/ have wandered quitefar away, and genuine conviction has expelled them./ Andremaining the same, in the same place, and on its own it rests,/and thus steadfast right there it remains; for powerful Necessity/holds it in the bonds of a limit, which encloses it all around,/wherefore it is right that What Is be not unfulfilled; for it is notlacking: if it were, it would lack everything.

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2.4 The Way of Mortals

We have decidedly less complete evidence for the revelation's secondphase, Parmenides' cosmology. The direct evidence provided by the lastlines of fragment 8 (50–64) and by the other fragments plausibly assignedto this portion of the poem (frs. 9 through 19) originally accounted forperhaps only ten percent of the cosmology's original length. Since anumber of these fragments are programmatic, we still have a good idea ofsome of the major subjects it treated. From the end of fragments 8 andfragments 9 through 15a we know that these included accounts of thecosmos' two basic principles, light and night, and then of the origin,nature, and behavior of the heavens and their inhabitants, including thestars, sun, moon, the Milky Way, and the earth itself. Witness theprogrammatic remarks of fragments 10 and 11:

But since there is a furthest limit, it is perfected/ from every side,like the bulk of a well-rounded globe,/ from the middle equalevery way: for that it be neither any greater/ nor any smaller inthis place or in that is necessary;/ for neither is there non-being,which would stop it reaching/ to its like, nor is What Is such that itmight be more than What Is/ here and less there. Since it is allinviolate,/ for it is equal to itself from every side, it extendsuniformly in limits.

You will know the aether's nature, and in the aether all the/ signs,and the unseen works of the pure torch/ of the brilliant sun, andfrom whence they came to be,/ and you will learn the wanderingworks of the round-eyed moon/ and its nature, and you will knowtoo the surrounding heaven,/ both whence it grew and howNecessity directing it bound it/ to furnish the limits of the stars.(Fr. 10)

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A few fragments, including one known only via Latin translation, showthat Parmenides also dealt with the physiology of reproduction (frs. 17–18) and with human thought (fr. 16). Fortunately, the sketchy picture ofthe cosmology furnished by the fragments is significantly improved by thetestimonia. The impression given by the fragments of the range ofsubjects is confirmed by both Simplicius, who comments after quoting fr.11 that Parmenides' account of the genesis of things extended down to theparts of animals (Simp. in Cael. 559.26–7), and likewise by Plutarch'sjudgment that Parmenides' cosmology has so much to say about the earth,heaven, sun, moon, and stars, right down to the genesis of human beings,that it omits none of the major subjects typically treated by ancient naturalphilosophers (Plu. Col. 1114B-C). A particularly important testimoniumin the doxographer Aëtius paraphrases, explicates, and supplements fr. 12in ways that give us a better picture of the structure of Parmenides'cosmos (Aët. 2.7.1 = 28A37a Diels-Kranz). Likewise, Theophrastus'comments on fragment 16 at De Sensibus 1–4 appear to provide moreinformation about Parmenides' views on cognition. The ancient testimoniatend to confirm that Parmenides sought to explain an incredibly widerange of natural phenomena, including especially the origins and specificbehaviors of both the heavenly bodies and the terrestrial population. Onefundamental problem for developing a coherent view of Parmenides'philosophical achievement has been how to understand the relationbetween the two major phases of the goddess' revelation.

3. Some Principal Types of Interpretation

While Parmenides is generally recognized as having played a major rolein the development of ancient Greek natural philosophy and metaphysics,

…how the earth and sun and moon/ and the shared aether and theheavenly milk and Olympos/ outermost and the hot might of thestars began/ to come to be. (Fr. 11)

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fundamental disagreement persists about the upshot of his philosophy andthus about the precise nature of his influence. Sections 3.1 through 3.3 ofwhat follows describe in brief outline the types of interpretation that haveplayed the most prominent roles in the development of broader narrativesfor the history of early Greek philosophy. These sections do not purport topresent a comprehensive taxonomy of modern interpretations, nor do theymake any attempt to reference all the representatives and variants of theprincipal types of interpretation here described. They are not meant to bea history of modern Parmenides interpretation, as worthy and fascinatinga topic as that is. Since some advocates of the interpretations outlined insections 3.1 to 3.3 have claimed to find ancient authority for their viewsvia selective appeal to certain facets of the ancient Parmenides reception,it will also be worthwhile indicating what was in fact the prevailing viewof Parmenides in antiquity. After doing so in section 3.4, the final sectionof this article will outline a type of interpretation that takes the prevailingancient view more seriously while responding to at least one majorproblem it encounters in the fragments.

3.1 The Strict Monist Interpretation

A good many interpreters have taken the poem's first major phase as anargument for strict monism, or the paradoxical view that there existsexactly one thing, and for this lone entity's being totally unchanging andundifferentiated. On this view, Parmenides considers the world of ourordinary experience non-existent and our normal beliefs in the existenceof change, plurality, and even, it seems, our own selves to be entirelydeceptive. Although less common than it once was, this type of view stillhas its adherents and is probably familiar to many who have only asuperficial acquaintance with Parmenides.

The strict monist interpretation is influentially represented in the first twovolumes of W. K. C. Guthrie's A History of Greek Philosophy, where it is

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accorded a critical role in the development of early Greek naturalphilosophy from the purported material monism of the early Milesians tothe pluralist physical theories of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the earlyatomists, Leucippus and Democritus. On Guthrie's strict monist reading,Parmenides' deduction of the nature of reality led him to conclude “thatreality [is], and must be, a unity in the strictest sense and that any changein it [is] impossible” and therefore that “the world as perceived by thesenses is unreal” (Guthrie 1965, 4–5). Finding reason and sensation toyield wildly contradictory views of reality, Parmenides presumed reasonmust be preferred and sensory evidence thereby rejected as altogetherdeceptive. His strict monism, on Guthrie's view, took particular aim at themonistic material principles of Milesian cosmology:

A particular focus of Parmenides' criticism, on this view, wasAnaximander's idea that the opposites are initially latent within theoriginative principle he called “the Boundless” (to apeiron) prior to beingseparated out from it: if these opposite characteristics existed prior tobeing separated out, then the Boundless was not a true unity, but if theydid not exist prior to being separated out, then how could they possiblycome into existence? It is thus illegitimate to suppose that everythingcame into being out of one thing (Guthrie 1962, 86–7). In addition to thus

[Parmenides] argues with devastating precision that once one hassaid that something is, one is debarred from saying that it was orwill be, of attributing to it an origin or a dissolution in time, or anyalteration or motion whatsoever. But this was just what theMilesians had done. They supposed that the world had not alwaysexisted in its present cosmic state. They derived it from onesubstance, which they asserted to have changed or moved invarious ways—becoming hotter or colder, drier or wetter, rarer ordenser—in order to produce the present world-order. (Guthrie1965, 15-16)

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criticizing the theoretical viability of the monistic material principles ofthe early Milesian cosmologists, Parmenides also is supposed to havecriticized the Milesian union of the material and moving cause in theirprinciples by arguing that motion and change are impossible andinadmissible conceptions (Guthrie 1965, 5–6, 52).

As we have seen, Parmenides' insistence on the point that whatever is, is,and cannot ever not be leads him to be harshly critical of the ordinary runof mortals who rely on their senses in supposing that things are generatedand undergo all manner of changes. Parmenides directs us to judge realityby reason and not to trust the senses. Reason, as deployed in the intricate,multi-staged deduction of fragment 8, reveals what attributes whatever ismust possess: whatever is must be ungenerated and imperishable; one,continuous and indivisible; and motionless and altogether unchanging,such that past and future are meaningless for it. This is “all that can besaid about what truly exists,” and reality is thus revealed as “somethingutterly different from the world in which each one of us supposes himselfto live,” a world which is nothing but a “deceitful show” (Guthrie 1965,51). Parmenides nonetheless proceeded in the second part of his poem topresent an elaborate cosmology along traditional lines, thus presentingreaders with the following crux: “Why should Parmenides take thetrouble to narrate a detailed cosmogony when he has already proved thatopposites cannot exist and there can be no cosmogony because pluralityand change are inadmissible conceptions?” (Guthrie 1965, 5). Guthriesuggests that Parmenides is “doing his best for the sensible world…bygiving as coherent an account of it as he can,” on the practical ground thatour senses continue to deceive us about its existence: “His account ofappearances will excel those of others. To ask ‘But if it is unreal, what isthe point of trying to give an account of it at all?’ is to put a question thatis not likely to have occurred to him” (Guthrie 1965, 5 and 52).

3.2 The Logical-Dialectical Interpretation

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One problem with Guthrie's view of Parmenides is that the suppositionthat Parmenides' strict monism was developed as a critical reductio ofMilesian material monism sits uncomfortably with the notion that heactually embraced this wildly counter-intuitive metaphysical position.There is the same type of tension in the outmoded proposals thatParmenides was targeting certain supposedly Pythagorean doctrines (aview developed in Raven 1948 and ensconced in Kirk and Raven 1957).Even as Guthrie was writing the first two volumes of his History, a shiftwas underway toward understanding Parmenides' arguments as driven bystrictly logical considerations rather than by any critical agenda withrespect to the theories of his Ionian or Pythagorean predecessors. Here thewatershed event was the publication of G. E. L. Owen's “EleaticQuestions” (Owen 1960). Owen found inspiration in Bertrand Russell forhis positive interpretation of Parmenides' argument in fragment 2, theessential point of which Owen took to be that what can be talked orthought about exists.

Russell's treatment of Parmenides in his A History of Western Philosophywas conditioned by his own abiding concern with the problems ofanalysis posed by negative existential statements. The essence ofParmenides' argument, according to Russell, is as follows:

Here the unargued identification of the subject of Parmenides' discourseas “whatever can be thought of or spoken of” prefigures Owen's

When you think, you think of something; when you use a name, itmust be the name of something. Therefore both thought andlanguage require objects outside themselves. And since you canthink of a thing or speak of it at one time as well as another,whatever can be thought of or spoken of must exist at all times.Consequently there can be no change, since change consists inthings coming into being or ceasing to be (Russell 1945, 49).

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identification of it as “whatever can be thought and talked about,” withboth proposals deriving from fr. 2.7–8. There follows in Russell's Historyan exposition of the problems involved in speaking meaningfully about(currently) non-existent subjects, such as George Washington or Hamlet,after which Russell restates the first stage of Parmenides' argument asfollows: “if a word can be used significantly it must mean something, notnothing, and therefore what the word means must in some sense exist”(Russell 1945, 50). So influential has Russell's understanding been,thanks in no small part to Owen's careful development of it, that it is notuncommon for the problem of negative existential statements to bereferred to as “Parmenides' paradox.”

The arguments of fragment 8, on this view, are then understood asshowing that what can be thought and talked about is, surprisingly,without variation in time and space, that is, absolutely one andunchanging. Owen adapted an image from Wittgenstein in characterizingthese arguments, ones which “can only show the vacuousness of temporaland spatial distinctions by a proof which employs them,” as “a ladderwhich must be thrown away when one has climbed it” (Owen 1960, 67).Owen also vigorously opposed the assumption that “Parmenides wrote hispoem in the broad tradition of Ionian and Italian cosmology,” arguing thatParmenides claims no measure of truth or reliability for the cosmogony inthe latter part of his poem and that his own arguments in the “Truth” (i.e.,the “Way of Conviction”) neither derive from this earlier tradition nordepict the cosmos as spherical in shape (Owen 1960, 48). On Owen'sreading, not so very differently from Guthrie's, Parmenides' cosmology is“no more than a dialectical device,” that is, “the correct or the mostplausible analysis of those presuppositions on which ordinary men, andnot just theorists, seem to build their picture of the physical world,” thesebeing “the existence of at least two irreducibly different things in aconstant process of interaction,” whereas Parmenides' own argumentshave by this point shown both the plurality and change this picture

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presupposes to be unacceptable (Owen 1960, 50 and 54–5).

Owen's view of Parmenidean metaphysics as driven by primarily logicalconcerns and of his cosmology as no more than a dialectical device wouldhave a deep influence on two of the most important surveys of Presocraticthought since Guthrie—Jonathan Barnes's The Presocratic Philosophers(19791, 19822) and Kirk, Raven, and Schofield's The PresocraticPhilosophers (19832). While abandoning the idea that Parmenideanmonism was a specific reaction to the theories of any of his predecessors,these two works continue to depict his impact on later Presocratic systemsas decisive. On their Owenian line, the story becomes that the argumentsof Parmenides and his Eleatic successors were meant to be generallydestructive of all previous cosmological theorizing, in so far as theypurported to show that the existence of change, time, and plurality cannotbe naively presumed. Parmenides' arguments in fragment 8 effectivelybecome, for advocates of this line, a generalized rather than a specificreductio of early Greek cosmological theorizing. Barnes, furthermore,responded to an objection that had been raised against Owen'sidentification of Parmenides' subject as whatever can be talked andthought about—namely, that this identification derives from the reasongiven at fr. 2.7–8 for rejecting the second path of inquiry, whereas anaudience could not be expected to understand this to be the goddess'subject when she introduces the first two ways of inquiry in fr. 2.3 and2.5. Barnes modified Owen's identification of Parmenides' subject so thatit might be found in the immediate context, specifically in the implicitobject of fr. 2.2's description of the paths as “ways of inquiry”; thus,according to Barnes, the first path “says that whatever we inquire intoexists, and cannot not exist” (Barnes 1982, 163). Barnes's modifiedOwenian line has since been endorsed by prominent interpreters(including Schofield in Kirk, Raven, and Schofield 1983, 245; cf. Brown1994, 217). Barnes also advanced the more heterodox proposal thatParmenides was not necessarily a monist at all, arguing that the fragments

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are compatible with the existence of a plurality of “Parmenidean Beings”(Barnes 1979, cf. Untersteiner 1955). While this proposal has had feweradherents among other interpreters favoring the Russell-Owen line, it hasbeen taken up by certain advocates of the next type of interpretation.

3.3 The Meta-Principle Interpretation

One influential alternative to interpretations of Parmenides as a strictmonist, certainly among scholars working in America, has been thatdeveloped by Alexander Mourelatos in his 1970 monograph, The Route ofParmenides. (See Mourelatos 1979 for a succinct presentation of thisalternative in response to perceived shortcomings in Owen's logical-dialectical reading.) Mourelatos saw Parmenides as utilizing a specialized,predicative sense of the verb “to be” in speaking of “what is”, a senseused to reveal a thing's nature or essence. This sense of the verb, dubbedby Mourelatos “the ‘is’ of speculative predication,” is supposed to featurein statements of the form, “X is Y,” where the predicate “belongsessentially to, or is a necessary condition for, the subject” and thus givesX's reality, essence, nature, or true constitution (Mourelatos 1970, 56–60).Alexander Nehamas would likewise propose that Parmenides employs“is” in the very strong sense of “is what it is to be,” so that his concern iswith “things which are F in the strong sense of being what it is to be F”(Nehamas 1981, 107; although Nehamas cites Owen as well asMourelatos as an influence, Owen himself took Parmenides' use of theverb “to be” in “what is” as existential [see Owen 1960, 94]). On theresulting type of interpretation, the first major phase of Parmenides' poemprovides a higher-order account of what the fundamental entities of anyontology would have to be like: they would have to be F, for some F, inthis specially strong way. As such, it is not an account of what there is(namely, one thing, the only one that exists) but, rather, of whatever is inthe manner required to be an ontologically fundamental entity—a thingthat is F, for some F, in an essential way. Thus Nehamas has more

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recently written:

A variant of the meta-principle interpretation, one that also draws uponBarnes's suggestion that nothing in the “Truth” precludes there being aplurality of Parmenidean Beings, has been developed by Patricia Curd.On her view, Parmenides was not a strict monist but, rather, a proponentof what she terms “predicational monism,” which she defines as “theclaim that each thing that is can be only one thing; it can hold only theone predicate that indicates what it is, and must hold it in a particularlystrong way. To be a genuine entity, a thing must be a predicational unity,with a single account of what it is; but it need not be the case that thereexists only one such thing. Rather, the thing itself must be a unifiedwhole. If it is, say, F, it must be all, only, and completely F. Onpredicational monism, a numerical plurality of such one-beings (as wemight call them) is possible” (Curd 1998, 66).

Mourelatos, Nehamas, and Curd all take Parmenides to be concerned withspecifying in an abstract way what it is to be the nature or essence of athing, rather than simply with specifying what there in fact is, as he is

the “signposts” along the way of Being which Parmenidesdescribes in B 8 [may be taken] as adverbs that characterize aparticular and very restrictive way of being. The signposts thentell us what conditions must be met if a subject is to be somethingin the appropriate way, if it is to be really something, and thus bea real subject. And to be really something, F, is to be F—B 8 tellsus—ungenerably and imperishably, wholly, only and indivisibly,unchangingly, perfectly and completely. … Parmenides uses“being” to express a very strong notion, which Aristotle eventuallywas to capture with his concept of “what it is to be.” To say ofsomething that it is F is to say that F constitutes its nature(Nehamas 2002, 50).

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presumed to be doing on both the logical-dialectical and the moretraditional strict monist readings. Since the meta-principle reading takesParmenides' major argument in fragment 8 to be programmatic instead ofmerely paradoxical or destructive, it suggests a somewhat differentnarrative structure for the history early Greek philosophy, one where theso-called “post-Parmenidean pluralists”—Empedocles, Anaxagoras, andthe early atomists, Leucippus and Democritus—were not reacting againstParmenides, but were actually endorsing his requirements that what reallyis be ungenerated, imperishable, and absolutely changeless, when theyconceived of the principles of their respective physical systems in theseterms. The meta-principle reading has also seemed to re-open thepossibility that Parmenides was engaged in critical reflection upon theprinciples of his predecessors' physical systems.

If the first phase of Parmenides' poem provides a higher-order descriptionof the features that must belong to any proper physical principle, then onewould naturally expect the ensuing cosmology to deploy principles thatmeet Parmenides' own requirements. The goddess describes thecosmology, however, as an account of “the beliefs of mortals, in whichthere is no genuine conviction” (fr. 1.30, cf. fr. 8.50–2) and commencesthis part of her revelation by describing how mortals have wanderedastray by picking out two forms, light and night, to serve as the basis foran account of the cosmos' origin and operation (fr. 8.53–9). Advocates ofthe meta-principle reading here face a dilemma. On the one hand, theycannot plausibly maintain that the cosmology is what their overallinterpretation would lead one to expect, namely, Parmenides' effort atdeveloping a cosmology in accordance with his own strictures upon whatthe principles of such an account must be like. The cosmologicalprinciples light and night do not in fact conform to those strictures. Butthen why should Parmenides have bothered to present a fundamentallyflawed or “near-correct” cosmology, founded upon principles that fail tosatisfy the very requirements he himself has supposedly specified? If one

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falls back on the position that the cosmology in the poem is notParmenides' own (which remains implausible given the cosmology'sinnovations), then it becomes even more puzzling why he should havedescribed what the principles of an adequate cosmology must be like andthen failed to try to present one.

The presence of the cosmology in Parmenides' poem continues to beproblematic for advocates of the meta-principle interpretation. just as it isfor advocates of the other major types of interpretation discussed thus far.Guthrie views the cosmology as Parmenides' best attempt at giving anaccount of the sensible world, given that we will continue to be deceivedinto thinking it exists despite his arguments to the contrary. Not only isthis an unstable interpretive position, it imputes confusion to Parmenidesrather than acknowledge its own difficulties. It is hardly more satisfyingto be told by Owen that Parmenides' cosmology has a purpose that is“wholly dialectical” (Owen 1960, 54–5; cf. Long 1963 for a moredetailed development of this interpretive line).

Although they repeat the essentials of Owen's view, Kirk, Raven, andSchofield finally acknowledge that the presence of the elaboratecosmology remains problematic for this line of interpretation: “Why [thecosmology] was included in the poem remains a mystery: the goddessseeks to save the phenomena so far as is possible, but she knows and tellsus that the project is impossible” (Kirk, Raven, and Schofield 1983, 262,after echoing Owen's line on the cosmology's dialectical character at 254–6). While the meta–principle interpretation raises the expectation, whichfails to be met, that the principles of Parmenides' cosmology will conformto the requirements he has supposedly specified earlier in the poem, thestrict monist and logical-dialectical interpretations leave even some oftheir own advocates wondering why Parmenides devoted the bulk of hispoem to an account of things his own reasoning is supposed to haveshown do not exist.

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3.4 The Aspectual Interpretation Prevailing in Antiquity

The idea that Parmenides' arguments so problematized the phenomenonof change as to make developing an adequate theoretical account of it thecentral preoccupation of subsequent Presocratic natural philosophers is acommonplace of modern historical narratives. Unfortunately, this notionhas no real ancient authority. Aristotle's account at Physics 1.8.191a23–33of the wrong turn he claims earlier natural philosophers took in trying tounderstand the principles of change has often been thought to legitimatethis view, given the Eleatic-sounding argument it records. But Aristotlementions Parmenides nowhere in the passage, and his complaint is in factbroadly directed against all the early Greek philosophers whose views hehas been surveying previously in the book. He complains that theynaively adopted the view that no fundamental entity or substance comesto be or perishes, the result being that they are unable to account for,because they disavow, substantial change, which is the very phenomenonAristotle is most interested in explaining. Aristotle actually understandsParmenides' thesis that what is is one (hen to on) and not subject togeneration and change as belonging, not to natural philosophy, but to firstphilosophy or metaphysics (Cael. 3.1.298b14–24; cf. Metaph.1.5.986b14–18, Ph. 1.2.184a25-b12).

In the complex treatment of Parmenides in Physics 1.2–3, Aristotleintroduces Parmenides together with Melissus as representing theposition, within the Gorgianic doxographical schema structuring his ownexamination of earlier archê-theories, that there is a single andunchanging archê or principle (Ph. 1.2.184b15–16). Aristotle recognizes,however, that this grouping obscures very real differences between thetwo thinkers' views. According to Aristotle, Melissus held that everythingis a single, i.e. continuous or indivisible, and unlimited quantity (orextension). Parmenides, on Aristotle's reconstruction, recognized only ause of “being” indicating what something is in respect of its substance or

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essence; he accordingly supposed that everything that is is substance, andhe supposed everything to be one in the sense that the account of theessence of everything is identical. Furthermore, on Aristotle's view ofParmenides, whatever might differentiate what is cannot do so withrespect to its essence but only accidentally. But no accident of what just iscan belong to its essence, and since Parmenides admits only a use of“being” indicating what something is in respect of its substance oressence, no differentiating accident of what is can be said to be. Such isthe thrust of Aristotle's reconstruction of Parmenides' reasoning at Physics1.3.186a34-b4 and, likewise, of his summary allusion to this passage atMetaphysics 1.5.986b28–31.

The only point where Aristotle's representation of Parmenides inMetaphysics 1.5 appears to differ from the major treatment in Physics1.2–3 is in following up this summary with the qualification that, beingcompelled to go with the phenomena, and supposing that what is is onewith respect to the account (sc. of its essence) but plural with respect toperception, he posited a duality of principles as the basis for his accountof the phenomena (986b27–34, reading to on hen men at 986b31, as perAlexander of Aphrodisias's paraphrase). This is only a superficialdifference, given how at Physics 1.5.188a19–22 Aristotle points to theParmenidean duality of principles to support his thesis that all hispredecessors had made the opposites principles, including those whomaintained that everything is one and unchanging. Nonetheless, therepresentation of Parmenides' position in Metaphysics 1.5, according towhich what is is one with respect to the account of its essence but pluralwith respect to perception, is more indulgent than the reconstruction ofParmenides' reasoning in Physics 1.3 in that it allows for a differentiatedaspect of what is. By allowing that what is may be differentiated withrespect to its phenomenal qualities, Aristotle seems to have recognized atsome level the mistake in assuming that Parmenides' failure to distinguishexplicitly among the senses of “being” entails that he could only have

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employed the term in one sense.

Despite the assimilation of Melissus and Parmenides under the rubricinherited from Gorgias, Aristotle recognized that grouping the two figurestogether under this convenient label obscured fundamental differences intheir positions. The fact is that “monism” does not denote a uniquemetaphysical position but a family of positions. Among its species arestrict monism or the position that just one thing exists. This is the positionMelissus advocated, one which no serious metaphysician should want toadopt. More familiar species include both numerical and genericsubstance monism, according to which, respectively, there is a singlesubstance or a single kind of substance. Aristotle seems ultimately to haveinclined toward attributing this first type of “generous” monism toParmenides. In viewing Parmenides as a generous monist, whose positionallowed for the existence of other entities, rather than as a “strict” monistholding that only one thing exists, Aristotle is in accord with the majorityview of Parmenides in antiquity.

That some in antiquity viewed Parmenides as a strict monist is evidentfrom Plutarch's report of the Epicurean Colotes' treatment of Parmenidesin his treatise, That One Cannot Live According to the Doctrines of OtherPhilosophers. Colotes' main claim appears to have been that Parmenidesprevents us from living by maintaining that “the universe is one” (hen topan), a tag which Colotes apparently took to mean that Parmenidesdenied the existence of fire and water and, indeed, “the inhabited cities inEurope and Asia”; he may also have claimed that if one acceptsParmenides' thesis, there will be nothing to prevent one from walking offa precipice, since on his view there are no such things (Plut. Col. 1114B).In short, as Plutarch reports, Colotes said that “Parmenides abolisheseverything by hypothesizing that being is one” (1114D). Plutarch himself,however, takes strong issue with Colotes' view, charging him withimputing to Parmenides “disgraceful sophisms” (1113F) and with

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deliberately misconstruing his position (1114D). Plutarch explains thatParmenides was in fact the first to distinguish between the mutableobjects of sensation and the unchanging character of the intelligible:“Parmenides…abolishes neither nature. Instead, assigning to each what isappropriate, he places the intelligible in the class of what is one and being—calling it 'being' in so far as it is eternal and imperishable, and 'one'because of its likeness unto itself and its not admitting differentiation—while he locates the perceptible among what is disordered and changing”(1114D). Plutarch insists that Parmenides' distinction between what reallyis and things which are what they are at one time, or in one context, butnot another should not be misconstrued as an abolition of the latter classof entities: “how could he have let perception and doxa remain withoutleaving what is apprehended by perception and doxa?” (1114E-F).Plutarch's discussion of Parmenides in Against Colotes is particularlysignificant in that it is a substantial discussion of the relation between hisaccount of Being and his cosmology by an ancient author later thanAristotle that is not overtly influenced by Aristotle's own discussions. Inmany ways it anticipates the Neoplatonic interpretation, represented inSimplicius, according to which, broadly speaking, the two accountsdelivered by Parmenides' goddess describe two levels of reality, theimmutable intelligible realm and the plural and changing sensible realm(see especially Simplicius's commentary on Arist. Cael. 3.1.298b14–24;cf. Procl. in Ti. 1.345.18–24).

Later Platonists naturally understood Parmenides as thus anticipatingPlato, for Plato himself seems to have adopted a “Platonist”understanding of this thinker whose influence on his own philosophy wasevery bit as profound as that of Socrates and the Pythagoreans. Aristotleattributes to both Parmenides and Plato the recognition that knowledgerequires as its objects certain natures or entities not susceptible to change—to Parmenides in De Caelo 3.1, and to Plato, in remarkably similarlanguage, in Metaphysics 13.4. The arguments at the end of Republic 5

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that confirm Aristotle's attribution of this line of reasoning to Plato are infact suffused with echoes of Parmenides. Plato likewise has hisfictionalized Parmenides present something very close to this line ofargument in the dialogue bearing his name: “if someone will not admitthat there are general kinds of entities…and will not specify some formfor each individual thing, he will have nowhere to turn his intellect, sincehe does not admit that there is a character for each of the things that arethat is always the same, and in this manner he will destroy the possibilityof discourse altogether” (Prm. 135b5-c2). The Platonic “natures”Aristotle has in mind are clearly the Forms that Plato himself is prone todescribing in language that echoes the attributes of Parmenidean Being,most notably at Symposium 210e-211b and Phaedo 78d and 80b. ThatPlato's Forms are made to look like a plurality of Parmenidean Beingsmight seem to supply Platonic authority for the meta-principleinterpretation. This would be a rash conclusion, however, for Platoconsistently represents Parmenides as a monist in later dialogues (see,e.g., Prm. 128a8-b1, d1, Tht. 180e2–4, 183e3–4, Sph. 242d6, 244b6).Determining just what type of monism Plato means to attribute toParmenides in these dialogues ultimately requires plunging into theintricacies of the examination of Parmenides' thesis in the latter part ofthe Parmenides.

Plato's understanding of Parmenides is best reflected in that dialogue'sexploration of his thesis in the Second Deduction. There the One isshown to have a number of properties that reflect those Parmenideshimself attributed to Being in the course of fr. 8: that it is in itself and thesame as itself, that it is at rest, that it is like itself, that it is in contact withitself, etc. In the Second Deduction, all these properties prove to belong tothe One in virtue of its own nature and in relation to itself. This deductionalso shows that the One has apparently contrary attributes, though theseprove to belong to it in other aspects, that is, not in virtue of its ownnature and/or not in relation to itself. Plato would have found a model for

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his complex account of the various and seemingly conflicting propertiesof the One in the two majors phases of Parmenides' poem if he, too,subscribed to an “aspectual” interpretation of Parmenides, according towhich the Way of Conviction describes the cosmos in its intelligibleaspect qua being, while allowing that this description is compatible withan alternate description of this self-same entity as a world systemcomprised of differentiated and changing objects. These two perspectivesare notably reflected, respectively, in the Timaeus's descriptions of theintelligible living creature and of the visible cosmos modelled upon it,both of which are suffused with echoes of Parmenides (see especially Ti.30d2, 31a7-b3, 32c5-33a2, 33b4-6, d2-3, 34a3–4, b1–2, and 92c6–9).

That Aristotle also viewed the two major phases of Parmenides' poem asdual accounts of the same entity in different aspects is perhaps mostapparent in his characterization of Parmenides, in the course of thediscussion at Metaphysics 1.5.986b27–34, as having supposed that “whatis is one in account but plural with respect to perception.” Theophrastuslikewise seems to have adopted such a line. Alexander of Aphrodisiasquotes him as having written the following of Parmenides in the firstbook of his On the Natural Philosophers:

Coming after this man [sc. Xenophanes], Parmenides of Elea, sonof Pyres, went along both paths. For he both declares that theuniverse is eternal and also attempts to explain the generation ofthe things that are, though without taking the same view of themboth, but supposing that in accordance with truth the universe isone and ungenerated and spherical in shape, while in accordancewith the view of the multitude, and with a view to explaining thegeneration of things as they appear to us, making the principlestwo, fire and earth, the one as matter and the other as cause andagent (Alex.Aphr. in Metaph. 31.7–16; cf. Simp. in Ph. 25.15–16,D.L. 9.21–2).

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Many of Theophrastus's points here can be traced back to Aristotle,including the identification of Parmenides' elemental light and night as,respectively, fire functioning as an efficient principle and earthfunctioning as a material principle (cf. Arist. Ph. 1.5.188a20–2, GC1.3.318b6–7, 2.3.330b13–14, Metaph. 1.5.986b28–987a2). The passage onthe whole suggests that, like Plato and Aristotle, Theophrastus understoodParmenides as furnishing dual accounts of the universe, first in itsintelligible and then in its phenomenal aspects.

While it would be going too far to claim that Plato, Aristotle,Theophrastus, and the ancient thinkers who follow their broad view ofParmenides as a generous monist got Parmenides right on all points,nonetheless the impulse toward “correcting” (or just ignoring) the ancientevidence for Presocratic thought has in this case gone too far. Both Platoand Aristotle understood Parmenides as perhaps the first to havedeveloped the idea that apprehension of what is unchanging is of adifferent order epistemologically than apprehension of things subject tochange. More fundamentally, Plato and Aristotle both came to understandParmenides as a type of generous monist whose conception of what isbelongs more to theology or first philosophy than to natural science. Thisinvolved understanding Parmenides' cosmology as his own account of theworld in so far as it is subject to change. It also involved understandingthe first part of Parmenides' poem as metaphysical, in the properAristotelian sense of being concerned with what is not subject to changeand enjoys a non-dependent existence. Most importantly, both Plato andAristotle recognized that a distinction between the fundamental modalitiesor ways of being was central to Parmenides' system. None of these majorpoints is tainted by the kind of obvious anachronism that rightly makesone suspicious, for instance, about Aristotle's identification ofParmenides' light and night with the elements fire and earth. None ofthese broad points, in other words, involves Plato or Aristotle viewing

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Parmenides through the distorting lens of their own concepetualapparatus. The next section will outline the view of Parmenides'philosophical achievement that results from attending to his modaldistinctions and to the epistemological distinctions he builds upon them.

3.5 The Modal Interpretation

Numerous interpreters have variously resisted the idea that Parmenidesmeant to deny the very existence of the world we experience. They haveconsequently advocated some more robust status for the cosmologicalportion of his poem. (See, e.g., Minar 1949, Woodbury 1958, Chalmers1960, Clark 1969, Owens 1974, Robinson 1979, de Rijk 1983, andFinkelberg 1986, 1988, and 1999, and Hussey 1990.) Unfortunately, toomany interpretations of this type deploy the terms “reality,”“phenomena,” and “appearance” so ambiguously that it can be difficult totell whether they intend to attribute an objective or merely somesubjective existence to the inhabitants of the “phenomenal” world. Morepositively, a number of these interpreters have recognized the importantpoint that the two parts of the goddess' revelation are presented as havingdifferent epistemic status. (See also the proposal at Kahn 1969, 710 and n.13, to identify Parmenides' subject in the Way of Conviction as “theobject of knowing, what is or can be known.”) They have nonethelessfailed to take proper account of the modal distinctions that defineParmenides' presentation of the ways of inquiry. In this omission they arenot alone, of course, since none of the types of interpretation reviewed sofar recognizes that Parmenides was the first philosopher rigorously todistinguish what must be, what must not be, and what is but need not be.

In the crucial fragment 2, the goddess says she will describe forParmenides “which ways of inquiry alone there are for understanding” (fr.2.2). The common construal of this phrase as tantamount to the onlyconceivable ways of inquiry has been one of the principal spurs for

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readings according to which only two, not three, paths feature in thepoem, for it is natural to wonder how the goddess can present fragment2's two paths as the only conceivable paths of inquiry and nonetheless infragment 6 present still another path, that along which mortals are said towander. Two-path interpretations respond to this apparent difficulty byidentifying the path of mortal inquiry with fragment 2's second path(though implausibly so, as noted above, sect. 2.2). Parmenides' goddess infact has good reason to distinguish the two ways of inquiry presented infragment 2 from the way subsequently presented in fragment 6. The twoways of fragment 2, unlike the third way, are marked as ways “forunderstanding,” that is, for achieving the kind of understanding thatcontrasts with the “wandering understanding” the goddess later says ischaracteristic of mortals. The use of the Greek datival infinitive in thephrase, “there are for understanding” (eisi noêsai, fr. 2.2b; cf.Empedocles fr. 3.12 for the identical construction) distinguishes the twoways introduced in this fragment from the one subsequently introduced infragment 6, as ways for understanding. That the goal is specificallyunderstanding that does not wander becomes clear when she subsequentlypresents the third way as one followed by “mortals who know nothing”(fr. 6.4), which leads to “wandering understanding” (plagkton nöon, fr.6.6). Comparison with fr. 8.34–6a's retrospective indication that“understanding” (noêma, to noein), by which is apparently meanttrustworthy thought (cf. fr. 8.50), has itself been a major goal of theinquiry suggests that a way for understanding is one along which this goalof attaining trustworthy understanding might be achieved.

The two ways of inquiry that lead to thought that does not wander are:“that [it] is and that [it] is not not to be” (fr. 2.3)—i.e., “that [it] is andthat [it] cannot not be”—and “that [it] is not and that [it] must not be” (fr.2.5). Each verse appears to demarcate a distinct modality or way of being.One might find it natural to call these modalities, respectively, themodality of necessary being and the modality of necessary non-being or

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impossibility. Parmenides conceives of these modalities as ways of beingor ways an entity might be rather than as logical properties. If onerespects the organizing metaphor of the ways of inquiry, one can, even atthis stage of the goddess' revelation, appreciate what it means for “that[it] is and that [it] cannot not be” to define a way of inquiry. Thisspecification indicates that what Parmenides is looking for is what is andcannot not be—or, more simply, what must be. Pursuing this way ofinquiry requires maintaining a constant focus on the modality of theobject of his search as he tries to attain a fuller conception of what anentity that is and cannot not be, or that must be, must be like. To remainon this path Parmenides must resolutely reject any conception of theobject of his search that proves incompatible with its mode of being, asthe goddess reminds him at numerous points.

What one looks for along this path of inquiry is what is and cannot not be,or, more simply, what must be. It is therefore appropriate to think of thefirst path as the path of necessary being and of what lies along it as whatis (what it is) necessarily. What is and cannot not be will be whatever is(what it is) actually throughout the history of this world. Likewise, whatis not and must not be will be whatever is not (anything) actually at anymoment in the world's history. There are of course other ways for thingsto be, but not, according to Parmenides, other ways for things to be suchthat apprehension of them will figure as understanding that does notwander. The second way is introduced alongside the first because themodality of necessary non-being or impossibility specified in fr. 2.5 isjust as constant and invariable as the modality of necessary beingspecified in fr. 2.3. Whatever thought there may be about what lies alongthis second way will be unwavering and, as such, will contrast with thewandering thought typical of mortals. Even if the effort to think aboutwhat lies along the second way ends (as it does) in a total failure ofapprehension, this non-apprehension remains unwavering. Inquiry alongthe second way involves, first, keeping in mind that what one is looking

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for is not and must not be, and thereby trying to discover what an entitythat is in this way must be like. It is immediately evident, though, what anentity that is not and must not be is like: nothing at all. The goddesswarns Parmenides not to set out on the second way because there is noprospect of finding or forming any conception of what must not be. Shethus tells Parmenides at fr. 2.6 that this is a path where nothing at all canbe learned by inquiry.

Paying proper attention to the modal clauses in the goddess' specificationof the first two ways of inquiry enables us to understand the last twoverses of fragment 2 as making a sound philosophical point. She says,again, at fr. 2.7–8: “neither could you apprehend what is not, for it is notto be accomplished,/ nor could you indicate it.” Here she is warningParmenides against proceeding along the second way, and it should beclear that “what is not” (to mê eon) is the goddess' way of referring towhat is in the manner specified just two verses above: “that [it] is not andthat [it] must not be” (fr. 2.5). She declares that Parmenides could neitherknow nor indicate “what is not” by way of explaining her assertion in thepreceding verse that the second way is a way wholly without report. Thushere “what is not” (to mê eon) serves as shorthand for “what is not andmust not be.” (Given the awkwardness of having to deploy the phrase“what is not and must not be” whenever referring to what enjoys thesecond way's mode of being, one would expect Parmenides to haveemployed such a device even if he had written in prose.) One cannot, infact, form any definite conception of what is not and must not be, and afortiori one cannot indicate it in any way. (Try to picture a round square,or to point one out to someone else.) Parmenides has not fallen prey hereto the purportedly paradoxical character of negative existential statementsbut makes a perfectly acceptable point about the inconceivability of whatnecessarily is not. Any philosopher with an interest in the relationbetween conceivability and possibility should be prepared to recognize inParmenides' assertion that you could neither apprehend nor indicate what

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is not (and must not be) one of the earliest instances of a form ofinference—that from inconceivability to impossibility—that continues tooccupy a central position in metaphysical reasoning.

Before undertaking to guide Parmenides toward a fuller conception ofwhat is and cannot not be, the goddess properly warns him away from athird possible path of inquiry in fragments 6 and 7, while at the same timereminding him of the imperative to think of what is in the mannerspecified in fr. 2.3 only as being (what it is). Fragment 6 begins with thegoddess instructing Parmenides that it is necessary to say and think that“What Is” (to eon) is, and that he is not to think of it as not being. (Hereto eon functions as a shorthand designation for what is in the wayspecified in fr. 2.3, that is, what is and cannot not be, paralleling fr. 2.7'suse of to mê eon or “what is not” as shorthand for what is in the wayspecified in fr. 2.5, that is, what is not and must not be.) This is heressential directive to Parmenides regarding how to pursue the first path ofinquiry. The goddess also indicates in this fragment that the second majorphase of her revelation will proceed along the path typically pursued bymortals whose reliance upon sensation has yielded only wanderingunderstanding. She provides what amounts to a modal specification of thispath of inquiry when she describes mortals as supposing “that it is and isnot the same/ and not the same” (fr. 6.8–9a). The sense of this difficultclause seems to be that mortals mistakenly suppose that an object ofgenuine understanding may be subject to the variableness implicit in theirconception of it as being and not being the same, and being and not beingnot the same. This is not to say that the things upon which ordinaryhumans have exclusively focused their attention, because of their relianceupon sensation, do not exist. It is merely to say that they do not enjoy themode of necessary being required of an object of unwanderingunderstanding. The imagery in fr. 6.4–7 that paints mortals as wanderingblind and helpless portrays them as having failed entirely to realize thatthere is something that must be that is available for them to apprehend if

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only they could awaken from their stupor. Even so, the goddess does notsay that mortals have no apprehension. Understanding that wanders is stillunderstanding.

The goddess reveals to Parmenides, however, the possibility of achievingunderstanding that does not wander or that is stable and unchanging,precisely because its object is and cannot not be (what it is). The thirdway of inquiry can never lead to this, and thus it is not presented by thegoddess as a path of inquiry for understanding. It directs the inquirer'sattention to things that are (what they are) only contingently ortemporarily: they are and then again are not, or they are a certain way andthen again are not that way. The problem with this path is not, as toomany interpreters have understood it to be, that nothing exists to bediscovered along this way. There are innumerably many things that are(and exist) in the manner specified at fr. 6.8–9a (and fr. 8.40–1).However, since their being is merely contingent, Parmenides thinks therecan be no stable apprehension of them, no thoughts about them thatremain steadfast and do not wander, and thus no true or reliableconviction. According to Parmenides, genuine conviction cannot be foundby focusing one's attention on things that are subject to change. This iswhy he has the goddess repeatedly characterize the cosmology in thesecond phase of her revelation as deceptive or untrustworthy. The modalinterpretation thus makes it relatively straightforward to understand thepresence of the poem's cosmology. It is an account of the principles,origins, and operation of the world's mutable population. It is Parmenides'own account, the best he was able to provide, and one firmly in thetradition of Presocratic cosmology. At the same time, however,Parmenides supposed there was more to the world than all those thingsthat have grown, now are, and will hereafter end (as he describes them infragment 19). There is also what is (what it is) and cannot not be (what itis).

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The first major phase of the goddess' revelation in fragment 8 is, on themodal interpretation, a meditation on the nature of what must be. Thegoddess leads Parmenides to form a conception of what whatever must behas to be like just in virtue of its modality. Appreciating that Parmenidesis concerned with determining what can be inferred about the nature orcharacter of What Is simply from its mode of being enables one to seethat he is in fact entitled to the inferences he draws in the majordeductions of fragment 8. Certainly what must be cannot have come to be,nor can it cease to be. Both possibilities are incompatible with its mode ofbeing. Likewise, what must be cannot change in any respect, for thiswould involve its not being what it is, which is also incompatible with itsmode of being, since what must be must be what it is. On the assumption,inevitable at the time, that it is a spatially extended or physical entity,certain other attributes can also be inferred. What must be must be freefrom any internal variation. Such variation would involve its beingsomething or having a certain character in some place(s) while beingsomething else or having another character in others, which isincompatible with the necessity of its (all) being what it is. For much thesame reason, it must be free from variation at its extremity. Since the onlysolid that is uniform at its extremity is a sphere, what must be must bespherical.

It is difficult to see what more Parmenides could have inferred as to thecharacter of what must be simply on the basis of its modality as anecessary being. In fact, the attributes of the main program have anunderlying systematic character suggesting they are meant to exhaust thelogical possibilities: What Is both must be (or exist), and it must be whatit is, not only temporally but also spatially. For What Is to be (or exist)across times is for it to be ungenerated and deathless; and for it to be whatit is across times is for it to be “still” or unchanging. For What Is to be (orexist) everywhere is for it to be whole. For it to be what it is at everyplace internally is for it to be uniform; and to be so everywhere at its

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extremity is for it to be “perfect” or “complete.” Taken together, theattributes shown to belong to what must be amount to a set of perfections:everlasting existence, immutability, the internal invariances of wholenessand uniformity, and the invariance at its extremity of being optimallyshaped. What Is has thus proven to be not only a necessary but, in manyways, a perfect entity.

On the modal interpretation, Parmenides may be counted a “generous”monist. While he reasons that there is only one entity that must be, he alsosees that there are manifold entities that are but need not be (what theyare). Parmenides was a “generous” monist because the existence of whatmust be does not preclude the existence of all the things that are but neednot be. There are at least two options for envisaging how this is supposedto be the case. Some who have understood Parmenides as a generousmonist have adopted a view similar to Aristotle's. In Metaphysics 1.5,Aristotle remarks that Parmenides seems to have had a conception offormal unity (986b18–19), and he gives a compressed account of thereasoning by which he takes Parmenides to have arrived at such aconception (986b27–31). Then, as already noted, he adds the commentthat Parmenides, being compelled to go with the phenomena, andsupposing that what is is one with respect to the account (sc. of itsessence) but plural with respect to perception, posited a duality ofprinciples as the basis for his account of the phenomena (986b27–34).Thus, for Aristotle, Parmenides held that what is is one, in a strong andstrict sense, but it is also many (in and for perception). A number ofmodern interpreters have also advocated some form of what amounts tothe ancient “aspectual” view of the relation between the two phases of thegoddess' revelation. (See Owens 1974 and Finkelberg 1999, whoexplicitly position their views as heirs to that at Arist. Metaph.1.5.986b27–34.) Parmenides would certainly have been a generous monistif he envisioned What Is as consubstantial with the cosmos's perceptibleand mutable population. But an apparently insurmountable difficulty for

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this response comes in the suggestive verses of fr. 4: “but behold thingsthat, while absent, are steadfastly present to thought:/ for you will not cutoff What Is from holding fast to What Is,/ neither dispersing everywhereevery way in a world-order (kata kosmon)/ nor drawing together.”

It thus seems preferable to understand What Is as coterminous but notconsubstantial with the perceptible cosmos: it is in exactly the same placewhere the perceptible cosmos is, but is a separate and distinct“substance.” (Note the parallels between fr. 8.30b-31 and fr. 10.5-7, aswell as between fr. 8.24 and fr. 9.3.) On this view, What Is imperceptiblyinterpenetrates or runs through all things while yet maintaining its ownidentity distinct from theirs. Something like this seems to be howAnaxagoras envisioned the relation between Mind and the rest of theworld's things: Mind, he says, “is now where also all the others are, inthat which surrounds many things and in those which have accreted and inthose which have separated out” (Anaxag. fr. 14). Parmenides' vision ofthe relation between What Is and the developed cosmos, as coterminousbut not consubstantial, also has its analogue in Xenophanes' conception ofthe relation between his one greatest god and the cosmos, as well as inEmpedocles' conception of the divinity that is the persistent aspect of thecosmos' perfectly unified condition, darting throughout the cosmos withits swift thought. Both appear to be coterminous but not consubstantialwith the cosmos they penetrate.

Although What Is in Parmenides has its nearest analogue in these divineprinciples, Parmenides himself never in the extant fragments calls What Isdivine or otherwise suggests that it is a god. Instead, he develops anexhaustive conception of what what must be has to be like, bysystematically pursuing the fundamental idea that what must be both mustbe or exist, and must be what it is, not only temporally but also spatially.Whatever other attributes it might have that cannot be understood tobelong to it in one of these ways do not enter into Parmenides' conception

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of What Is. Thus it has none of the features of the religious tradition'sheavenly gods that persist as attributes of Xenophanes' greatest god,despite resembling it in other respects. If Xenophanes can be seen as afounder of rational theology, then Parmenides' distinction among theprincipal modes of being and his derivation of the attributes that mustbelong to what must be, simply as such, qualify him to be seen as thefounder of metaphysics or ontology as a domain of inquiry distinct fromtheology.

Bibliography

References to items prior to 1980 are much more selective than those tomore recent items. For a nearly exhaustive, annotated listing ofParmenidean scholarship down to 1980, consult L. Paquet, M. Roussel,and Y. Lafrance, Les Présocratiques: Bibliographie analytique (1879–1980), vol. 2, Montreal: Bellarmin/Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1989, 19–104.

Primary Sources

The standard collection of the fragments of the Presocratics and sophists,together with testimonia pertaining to their lives and thought, remains:

Diels, H., and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th edn.Berlin: Weidmann, 1951–52.

The principal editions or other presentations of the fragments ofParmenides' poem and testimonia include:

Cassin, B. 1998. Parménide: Sur la nature ou sur l’Étant. La langue del’étre. Paris: Éditions de Seuil.

Conche, M. 1996. Parménide. Le Poème: Fragments. Paris: PressesUniversitaires de France.

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Cordero, N.-L. 1984. Les Deux Chemins de Parménide: Édition critique,traduction, études et bibliografie. Paris: J. Vrin; Brussels: ÉditionsOusia.

Coxon, A. H. 2009. The Fragments of Parmenides: A critical text withintroduction, translation, the ancient testimonia and a commentary.Revised and expanded edition with new translations by RichardMcKirahan. Las Vegas/Zurich/Athens: Parmenides Publishing.

Gallop, D. 1984. Parmenides of Elea: Fragments. Toronto: University ofToronto Press.

Kirk, G. S., J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield 1983. The PresocraticPhilosophers. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Chapter VIII: “Parmenides of Elea.”

O'Brien, D. (with J. Frère). 1987. Le Poème de Parménide: Texte,Traduction, Essai Critique = P. Aubenque (gen. ed.), Études surParménide, i. Paris: J. Vrin.

Reale, G., and Ruggiu, L. 1991. Parmenide. Poema sulla natura. Iframmenti e le testimonianze indirette. Milan: Rusconi.

Tarán, L. 1965. Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Commentary, andCritical Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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