By Ryan Smith
3.1 For it is the same thing that can be thought of and that can be.
This fragment has traditionally been used to justify numerous accounts of Parmenides as a logician who dabbled in semiotics. One classical interpretation goes so far as to assert that Parmenides intended to bar us from speaking of things that have no empirical existence, but are purely objects of the imagination (such as unicorns and fairies).[1] In my opinion, it is not easy to see the philosophical value of such an assertion even if it had been Parmenides’ meaning (which it is not).
Another, more plausible interpretation is this: If the primordial One exists and is the transcendental source of everything in the cosmos, then there is no need to distinguish between entities such as “thought” and matter”; predicatives such “inner” and “outer,” and so on. Considerations as to whether thoughts “inside” the mind accurately point to “outer” objects will therefore be meaningless. When reality is apprehended from the perspective of transcendental being, there can be no opposition at all, since the primordial One stands “alone without a second,” completely devoid of distinction.[2] There is no need to ask whether the thought of a unicorn actually mirrors some external object, since “thought” and “matter”; “inner” and “outer”; “fantasy” and “reality” are just false oppositions that arise with the Way of Seeming. That is to say, they arise when one believes that transcendental being “is not and needs not be” (2.5) – a way of perceiving which we know from the goddess is a “wholly untrustworthy way” (2.6).
A striking parallel to this mode of thought can be found in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, which holds that “this infinite being, immersed in the fully lucid Atman, knows nothing of the difference between the internal and external world.”[3]
As I said in my analysis of Fragment 2, if the first route (2.3-4) is true (as the goddess says it is), then anything that exists owes its existence to transcendental being. It would therefore not only be impossible for something to exist that was not some manifestation of the world-principle, but also impossible to think anything that was not in the final instance some manifestation of it. This is really the whole meaning of Fragment 3: “It is the same thing that can be thought of and that can be.”
Again, the parallels to the Indian concept of Brahman are not to be denied: When the Indian sages say that Brahman is a principle identical with the whole of the cosmos, and which therefore cannot be contained as a part of it, nor anything be in the world which is not Brahman, they could equally well have been speaking of Parmenides’ concept of transcendental being as featured in the Way of Truth.
To put it simply, since transcendental being is itself undifferentiated, there is no opposition between matter and thought. There is only the fundamental oneness of existence. Scholars who take this opposition to be part of Parmenides’ truth (as opposed to the false Way of Seeming) evince an unsuitable Cartesian bias. They tend to construe the meaning of Fragment 3 as pertaining to the mind/matter dualism or the epistemological qualifications for justified true belief.[4]
Indeed, such scholars would do well to heed the the Madhyamika philosopher Candrakirti’s refutation of the Yogacara school’s claims that “internal being” (consciousness) was somehow different from “external being” (matter). Candrakirti granted that the Yogacara analysis was advantageous in calling attention to the deficiencies of ordinary empirical consciousness (corresponding to Parmenides’ Way of Seeming), that is, the view that things exist of their own accord, without recourse to the primordial One, and that everything in the universe can be adequately understood as objects and phenomena. However, he disagreed that one could therefore say (as the Yogacarins did) that consciousness was distinct from matter.[5] If the primordial One is unconditioned and utterly devoid of any opposition or dualism, as all parties agree that it is, then the Yogacara analysis cannot be exhaustive. For any analysis the Yogacarins would apply to “external being” (pointing out how things are incapable of supplying their own being, but must rely on the primordial One) could equally well be applied to the “internal” domain of consciousness. Thoughts and feelings – and indeed consciousness itself – are also incapable of supplying their own self-existence. The “inner” is just as dependent on the “outer” as vice versa, and ultimately, the whole opposition itself is exposed as a falsehood when viewed from the vantage point of the primordial One (corresponding to Parmenides’ Way of Truth).
Again, if the goddess’s First Route of Inquiry in Fragment 2 is true, as Parmenides assumes that it is, then thinking only exists because of Being (i.e. because of the primordial One). If the primordial One is the source of everything in the cosmos, then thinking itself will also be part of this totality and formed by it, just as much as physical objects are. When all phenomena have been peeled back from perception, there is only the One, and transcendental Being emerges as the only potential object of thought. All apparent phenomena, all seemingly individual objects, and all thoughts and feelings – indeed all operations of mind – are recognized as expressions of the One, as transcendental being, and hence it is truly “the same thing that can be thought of and that can be.”
Fragment 3 is thus no pledge of Cartesian allegiance. Rather, its message is that because everything is fundamentally Being, which is itself undifferentiated, there can be no difference between the object known and the knowing faculty that perceives it. It is the same thing that can be thought of and that can be.
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The whole Cartesian approach is an anachronism that has been promoted by scholar after scholar — Furth, Kirk, Raven, Schofield, Owen, Russell, Wedin, Popper, and others.
These “Cartesians” not only assume that Parmenides was a remorseless logician concerned with “grand deductions”: They eagerly make such dualisms as subject and object; mind and matter; inner and outer; knower and known the point of Parmenides’ thought and think that these stringent logical entities must be the prerequisites for the Way of Truth, when in reality they are false perceptions that arise with the Way of Seeming. To make their Cartesian reading possible, these scholars tend to rely on the following sleight of hand: They introduce a subject in the verses where Parmenides speaks of being. Parmenides never – as in not once – says “it is” in the Greek: He simply says “IS.” Hence, there is actually no subject to go along with the object in Parmenides’ text, but only the free-standing concept of being.[6] This omission simply makes no sense in a Cartesian context, but as we have seen, it makes perfect sense if – as I have argued – Parmenides “object” is transcendental being: A Greek version of the Indian concept of Brahman; a world-principle that is identical with the whole of the cosmos, and which therefore never forms only part of it, nor encounters anything in the cosmos which is not itself. As the Indians say, this world-principle transcends the subject-object dichotomy (along with all other dichotomies), standing alone as the “one without a second.”[7]
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The pre-Socratics scholar Daniel Graham supposes that, if taken literally, the meaning of Fragment 3 – “thinking and being are one and the same” – might imply an extreme metaphysical idealism à la Berkeley.[8] Strangely, Graham does not seem to consider that if one had to be subordinate to the other, the notion could equally well mean the reverse (i.e. that thought was subordinate to matter). That is, it could equally well be taken to plead an extreme metaphysical materialism, positing either that thoughts are themselves material or that thoughts are merely the passive epiphenomena of matter.
At any rate, the intended meaning of “thinking and being are one and the same” is not to subordinate thought to matter, nor is it to subordinate matter to thought. As we have seen, any of these beliefs would constitute a concession to the Way of Seeming. The purpose of Fragment 3 is to assert that the primordial One is completely without opposition and thus that from the vantage point of transcendental being, no distinctions or dualisms can really be true at all.
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Along with Fragment 2 and Fragment 7, it has largely been misunderstandings of Fragment 3 that have been responsible for the pervasive and long-standing misreadings of Parmenides. To this day, scholars continue to claim that a main point of Parmenides’ is that “we cannot speak of nothing.”[9] As we have seen, this is a mistake: It construes Parmenides as a pedant, firing linguistic points into the void. Parmenides’ teaching does not bar anyone from speaking of non-being. The point is not linguistic, but ontological: It indicates the falsehood inherent in conceiving of something that is not, in the final instance, ultimately some manifestation of the primordial One; the entity that is the bedrock of all the cosmos and of all being. Thus, while scholars mistakenly take Fragment 3 to mean “you cannot speak of nothing,” the true meaning of this fragment should rather be taken to be that “you cannot conceive of anything that does not owe its existence to transcendental being.” This distinction is important, since it governs the ontological status of objects. From the standpoint of the Way of Truth, there can only be one object, namely the primordial One. The seeming multiplicity of objects in the cosmos is unreal – mere illusory concessions to the Way of Seeming and erroneous apprehensions of the One.
From the vantage point of the primordial One, we are wrong to think that the various and varied entities of the cosmos could ever supply themselves with being, that is, that they could possess a kind of own-being that is not ultimately derived from (and dependent upon) the primordial One. The moment we perceive the cosmos as being devoid of the primordial One – the route that “[it] is not and needs not be” (2.5) – our cognition falls into error and gives rise to dualisms and oppositions – precisely those instruments of perception that the Way of Truth sees as false, since it is “whole and of a single kind; unshaken and complete” (8.4). Hence, as we also saw in our analysis of Fragment 2, if the premise of the world-principle (i.e. an absolutely transcendent entity underlying the whole of the cosmos) is accepted as true, we are immediately faced with the problem of why most people do not experience the world as a primordial unity, but seem to believe in exactly the multiplicity (as well as the dualisms and oppositions) that the goddess renounces as false (2.6-8). The classical “Parmenides problem” of why the Way of Seeming is included in the poem (and elaborated upon in great detail) given that it is repeatedly renounced as deceitful (2.6-8; 6.4-9; 8.52) can thus be answered with the straightforward solution that any philosophy that bases its account of truth on the cognition of such a transcendent world-principle must account for the epistemological status (and deficiencies) of ordinary empirical consciousness.[10] I am not aware of any scholar who has suggested this solution before me. Yet if the subject for being is accepted to be transcendental being (as I have argued so far, and which I am not the first to have claimed), then the two solutions effortlessly reinforce each other, pointing to the same overall meaning and message in the work of Parmenides.
In other words, Parmenides is not saying that one cannot speak of non-being or nothingness. Rather, he is saying that one cannot be in accordance with truth if one conceives of the cosmos in a way where everything does not ultimately derive its being from the primordial One. Anyone who thinks otherwise has fallen prey to the Way of Seeming.
REFERENCES
Barnes, J.: Early Greek Philosophy Penguin 1987
Gallop, D.: Parmenides of Elea Torronto University Press 2013
Graham, D.W.: The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy vol. I Cambridge University Press 2011
Henn, M.J.: Parmenides of Elea Praeger 2003
Kirk, Raven, and Schofield: The Presocratic Philosophers Cambridge University Press 1995
Mourelatos, P.D.: The Pre-Socratics Anchor Books 1974
Popper, K.R.: Conjectures and Refutations Routledge 2010
NOTES
[1] Furth, in Mourelatos: The Pre-Socratics p. 250 cf. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield: The Presocratic Philosophers p. 246
[2] Chandogya Upanishad 6.2.1
[3] Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.3.21
[4] Kirk, Raven, and Schofield: The Presocratic Philosophers p. 241 cf. Popper: Conjectures and Refutations p. 12
[5] Candrakirti: Prasannapada II.60-63
[6] Henn: Parmenides of Elea p. 120
[7] Isha Upanishad 8
[8] Graham: The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy p. 236
[9] Gallop: Parmenides of Elea p. 9, 32, cf. Barnes: Early Greek Philosophy p. 40
[10] E.g. Katha Upanishad 2.1.14-15 describes empirical consciousness (i.e. the Way of Seeming):
“As the rain on a mountain peak runs off
The slopes on all sides, so those who see
Only the seeming multiplicity of life
Run after things on every side.”
And transcendental consciousness (i.e. the Way of Truth):
“As pure water poured into pure water
Becomes the one, so does the Self
Of the illuminated knower …
Verily, he becomes one with the Absolute.”
The Buddhist doctrine of “two truths” can also serve as an example here.