PREFACE TO PARMENIDES’ FRAGMENTS
In this series, I am going to analyze the meaning of the Parmenides fragments as I presently understand them. I am going to argue that, far from being the “single-brained super-logician” that modern scholarship takes him to be, Parmenides was in fact a shaman-healer and initiate of an Apollo mystery cult in his home town of Elea (an assertion borne out by archaeological evidence, no less).* Adopting this interpretation will allow us to make sense of the classical, hitherto unsolvable “Parmenides problems,” such as (a) what is the subject for being? (b) why does the goddess call her own account ‘deceitful’ (8.52)? and (c) why is the Way of Seeming (doxa) included in the poem, and elaborated upon in great detail, if false?
It must be stated that I am not the first to have gleaned the “mystical” meaning of the Parmenides poem. Predecessors such as Peter Kingsley, Thomas McEvilley and others have proposed similar interpretations of the poem, although as far as I am able to tell, the precise contents of their analyses are almost entirely different from mine. At any rate, though, the view of Parmenides as a shaman is still an absolute minority view, with most scholars either asserting that he was a single-minded remorseless logician or a primitive physicist and physician.
It would perhaps be helpful to address why this series chooses Fragment 2 as its beginning instead of the traditional Fragment 1. One reason is that Fragment 1, with its allegorical and religious imagery, is much more open to interpretation than the rest of the poem. For this reason, most scholars simply apply the interpretation of Fragment 1 that suits their overall analysis of the poem the best after having determined what that meaning will be, based on their analysis of the other fragments. My approach will be no different, and for this reason, it seems more honest to set Fragment 1 aside for later.
In the history of Jungian typology, Parmenides has often been taken to be an extreme example of Introverted Thinking and Thinking in general. Since this interpretation hinges on the view of Parmenides as a “super logician,” the present analysis, once completed, will also allow us to take a step back and re-assess the matter of Parmenides’ personal psychological type.
* See Graham: The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy (Cambridge University Press 2010) p. 234
FRAGMENT 2
2.1 Come, I shall tell you, and you will listen and preserve my account,
2.2 What routes of inquiry alone are there for knowing:
2.3 The one – that [it] is and that [it] is cannot not be,
2.4 Is the path of conviction for it attends upon true reality.
2.5 The other – that [it] is not and that [it] needs not be,
2.6 This I point out to you is a path wholly without rapport [with true reality],
2.7 For you cannot comprehend what is not, for that is impossible,
2.8 Nor can you indicate it.
***
By Ryan Smith
Here the goddess sets out to distinguish two routes of inquiry. She insists that only one of these routes is true (2.4). In the past it was sometimes argued that these lines had the goddess positing three routes of inquiry, but in fact there are only two.[1]
The one route is that “[it] is and cannot not be” (2.3).The other is that “[it] is not and that it is not necessary for [it] to be” (2.5). In both cases, the ‘it’ is bracketed because the lines lack a subject in the Greek. Naturally, this omission of a subject has sent scholars whirling in all directions – what could this subject be? Why did Parmenides not supply one?
The subject is the absolute transcendent entity that underlies the cosmos – “the One that has no second.”[2] No matter how we refer to this entity, any name that we give it will always be a source of dissatisfaction – grossly inadequate compared to the direct experience of the One itself. It is a unity that is beyond names, oppositions, dualisms, and attributes. Hence it is purposeful, indeed expedient, to omit a subject for this kind of being, especially since the Greek allows it.
The first route, then, asserts that there is such an entity as transcendental being, which we could also call the primordial One, and that it is necessary for this kind of being to be.
With the second route, of which the goddess says that “[it] is not and that [it] needs not be,” the subject is again this kind of transcendental being. So the meaning of the line more properly reads: “The other route holds that transcendental being is not and that this kind of transcendental being needs not be” (2.5).
Again in (2.5), transcendental being is the primordial One that is the source of the entire cosmos. We could deftly compare it with Brahman, the impersonal world-principle of Indian philosophy. Once this reference is understood, it becomes clear that libraries of “Parmenides studies,” casting Parmenides as a “super-logician” or analytic philosopher must be relegated to the proverbial dung-heap of history.[3] The question of the two routes is not some logical “grand deduction,” as is often supposed by scholars, but a question concerning the existence of transcendental being (which we could also call the primordial One or a Greek version of Brahman). Is the cosmos underpinned by a transcendental world-principle that is the source of being or is it not? These are the two routes that the goddess presents to the youth.
Thus, the first route posits: Everything that we observe is derived from the primordial One, which lends its essence to everything in the cosmos. In Indian philosophy, the Upanishads give the example that all objects fashioned out of gold, no matter their shape or form, ultimately depend on the existence of gold itself for their being.[4] The first route posits the same: Transcendental being is the true source of everything we observe in the cosmos.
Conversely, the second route concerns itself with the possibility of a universe without the world-principle of transcendental being. If there is no primordial One that is the source of all being, then things exist of their own accord, and everything in the universe can be adequately understood as objects and phenomena without missing out on truth.
So summing up, there are two “routes”; two ways of viewing the world:
- Either there is a cosmic world-principle (transcendental being or the primordial One) which underpins all objects and phenomena in the universe and is the true source of all existence.
- Or there is no such world-principle and things exist of their own accord.
***
According to the goddess, the first route is true (2.4) and the second false (2.6-7). But the goddess is not playing fair here. She tacitly inserts the premise that the first route is true into her assessment of the second, when she claims that one “cannot comprehend or point towards” the second route (2.7-8): If the first route were true, then not only all objects, but all mental comprehension as well, would depend on the world-principle for its being (the equivalence of being and thinking is a theme that the goddess will revisit in Fragment 3: “For it is the same thing that can be thought of and that can be”). So if the first route were true, it would not only be impossible to comprehend anything apart from the world-principle, but also impossible to think anything that was not in the final instance some manifestation of it. Thus, the goddess’s assertion can scarcely be called an argument. It is an appraisal of the two routes, given from the perspective of the first route: It assumes that the first route is true prior to any analysis.
If the first route is true, and everything owes its existence to the primordial One, then it follows that we cannot know anything that does not derive from this One. Without the existence of the One, there would be nothingness; no knower, no knowledge, and nothing known. But if, instead, the first route was considered from a neutral point of view, it would be easy to rebut the goddess’s assertion by interjecting that objects could be the source of their own existence. That they could possess “own-being,” as it were. Thus, supplying themselves with their own existence, they would have no need of the primordial One. Indeed, there would be no need for the primordial One to exist at all, and the second route of inquiry would in fact be true.
As we have seen, however, Fragment 2 does not appraise the two routes from a dispassionate and neutral point of view. It proceeds from the assumption that the world-principle of transcendental being exists and is the source of everything in the cosmos. With the premise thus assumed to be true, the goddess can declare the second route false at her ease. The closest her assertion comes to reasoning is a certain kinship with the ontological argument: Transcendental being must possess being, therefore transcendental being must be.
Speaking from a point of view where the first route of inquiry is assumed to be true, the goddess can therefore declare that the two routes laid out before the youth are “the only two possible ones” (2.2): If the first route is accepted as true, then all objects and phenomena are ultimately expressions of the primordial One. Since this ontology alone is real, all other viewpoints are essentially variants of the second route.
Though the goddess is fully convinced of the reality of the primordial One, she still concedes that it is possible to perceive the world without reference to it. This is the viewpoint of mortals who “knowing nothing, wander two-headed” (6.4-5), i.e. believing objects to be the source of their own existence and not ultimately dependent on the One. Thus, while the reality of the world-principle is unchanging, the viewpoints of mortals can nevertheless be mistaken: They may perceive the world as consisting of multiplicity, but in reality they are merely observing different manifestations of the One while failing to take stock of their underlying unity. Thus what they see is not exactly falsehood, but Seeming mistaken for truth. It is the primordial One, wrongly apprehended.
***
In Parmenides studies, it is widely agreed that his work contrasts Seeming (doxa) with Truth (alatheia). However, there is little agreement as to how this contrast relates to the different parts of the poem. Let me therefore end the analysis of Fragment 2 with an overview of how these things fit together:
- First route: There is a world-principle (transcendental being or the primordial One) that is the true source of everything in the cosmos; multiplicity is illusory. This is the Way of Truth.
- Second route: There is no world-principle; objects exist of their own accord; multiplicity is truth. This is the Way of Seeming.
REFERENCES
Cordero, N.L.: Parmenides Venerable and Awesome Parmenides Publishing 2012
Graham, D.W.: Explaining the Cosmos Princeton University Press 2009
McKirahan, R.D.: Philosophy Before Socrates Hackett 2010
Mourelatos, P.D.: The Pre-Socratics Anchor Books 1974
NOTES
[1] The “third route” mentioned above is a contrivance of scholars who are beholden to the notion that Parmenides was a critical epistemologist and “super-logician” of unparalleled stringency. Because scholars so often interpret the two routes as logical propositions intended to discern the veracity of a claim, they interpret the mention of a route that “mortals, knowing nothing, wander two-headed” in Fragment 6 (6.4-5) as suggesting an unexpected “third” route. However, as my reading implies, the route that “mortals who know nothing wander two-headed” is none other than the second route being revisited in Fragment 6 (i.e. the route that entails that objects and phenomena exist of their own accord and are not ultimately derived from the One). Why the routes of (2.5) and (6.4-5) are identical will become clearer in the course of this study. For now, let us note that the goddess calls the mortals who wander the route of (6.4-5) “lacking in knowledge.” The implication is that mortals who mistakenly believe objects and phenomena to have self-existence must necessarily lack acquaintance with the true form of the primordial One. Again, the goddess is not speaking as a neutral arbiter between two routes of inquiry, but from the vantage point of someone who has already attained complete conviction in the ontology of the first route. Hence, whoever prefers the second route must be deficient in knowledge since they lack acquaintance with the highest (indeed, the only) ontological entity in the cosmos. See: Cordero: Parmenides Venerable and Awesome p. 107, cf. McKirahan: Philosophy Before Socrates p. 156, and Furth, in Mourelatos: The Pre-Socratics p. 248
[2] Chandogya Upanishad 6.2.1
[3] Graham: Explaining the Cosmos p. 173
[4] Chandogya Upanishad 6.1.5