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Parmenides : Gospel of Being (1) what is and what is not
Parmenides gospel of being (1) what is and what is not.hwp
Parmenides is one of the most important philosopher in western philosophy. To understand his philosophical thought is not easy, because no one before him ever thought of the general possibility
of knowledge i.e. of science as universal, objective, unchangeable knowledge.
Therefore his thought is above all important. Greek philosophy existed before Parmenides, however previous thinker of Greek philosophy were not certain of the possibility of science in the name of philosophy.
Therefore Socrates seemed to confess that he knew nothing.
Socrates said, “The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing.” although in Plato’s dialogue “Apology” Socrates knew about “nature philosophy” at his time.
Parmenides’ theory of being could defend philosophical, scientific knowledge against the relativism, scepticism and agnosticism about the truth as objective knowledge at that time. Then the objective, universal knowledge was fundamentally challenged, refuted and ignored by a lot of sophists. They were suspicious of possibility of knowledge, i.e. universal knowledge especially that of moral and value. According to sophists everyone has his own knowledge i.e. knowledge is realtive to the individuals : All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.
A great sophist, Gorgias, for example, established his nihilistic argument as “trilemma”:
i. Nothing exists
ii. Even if existence exists, it cannot be known
iii. Even if it could be known, it cannot be communicated.
As will be later discussed, the position of Parmenides with regard to being, knowledge and communication is the direct opposition to that of Gorgias. Parmenides says in opposition to Gorgias “nothing” or nonbeing is impossible! They are absurd! Only “being” or “something” or “that which exist” is meaningful. A detailed argument will be given later.
Therefore Plato and Aristotle came to use the argument on being from the standpoint of Parmenides.
Consequently Parmenides was very meaningful to Plato and Aristotle.
They emphasized the possibility of the public, objective knowledge through Parmenides. As a result Aristotle could perform the system of science or philosophy.
However it is not easy to interpret Parmenides’ thought in his fractional writings consistently. Therefore I limit my study on Parmenides to some important phrases of his fractional writing of philosophy.
Above over spoken arguments, Parmenides matters especially in relation to the Buddhism for asian people and scientists.
# Parmenides and Buddhism
Parmenides denied the change, becoming, birth, death, because these things contains nothing or negation in itself. As will be later on discussed, being cannot be turned into nothing. Consequently the change of all things is to be rejected by Parmenides.
One of the most important realizations in life is “vanity”. The Bible's book : Ecclesiastes chapter 1:2 says, "Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity“.
It is our life that is so vain and futile. A close friend suddenly dies. Children often pass away before their parents. In this case we feel vanity of life.
Buddhism is also based on such a reflection of life. Buddhism says, "Matter is void" The material world is all in vain. Therefore Buddhism regards this world as fantasy or illusion.
Direct translation : Color is empty. Color is here to be interpreted as the world of matter, experience and phenomena. Matter is empty, meaningless and false.
The person who realized this is called Buddha. In addition “I ”am void too. There is no “I”(=ego) in the real sense in Buddhism. The world and I are simultaneously refuted.
Why are our lives so futile? The answer is quite simple: It is because all things are changing. Changed world provokes the emotion of vanity, transcience.
The concept of change is twofold : the positive side and the negative side. The positive side of change means birth, development and growth, On the contrary the negative side of it means fall, decay and death. Moreover the finitude of our lives often overwhelms the joy of life.
In addition to this finitude of worldly things an epistemological reflexion about life and world makes the world more unreliable : The sensible may not be real. Like over said, matter is in fact my sensation, therefore matter as my sensation may not be objective thing. In this relationship the Buddhistic saying : "Matter is void" can be understood.
Gotama’s teaching : 제행무상(諸行無常), 일체개고(一切皆苦), 제법무아(諸法無我)
All the behavior is meaningless, all the life-thing is only suffering, all the truth refers to Nonexistence of
the Self.
Human common sense and Buddhistic wisdom end here: Life is vain or all the action is vain.
Is there any permanent thing beyond all the change, becoming, motion and the sensible (=epistemomological relativity) ?
The answer to it was given by one of the most famous philosophers in 2500 year-old-western philosophy. This man is Parmenides in ancient Greece.
My argument is as follows : If Gotama Buddah had known the philosophy of Parmenides, Buddhism would not have been born. Because although Parmenides also denied the recognition of finite things, he affirmed the recognition of the reality, that is being or being as being. This is also the birth of the western science as the public, objective knowledge of the truth.
Common sense and Buddhistic wisdom is simple and evident to understand. But the difference between them is as follows : the former is resignation, lamentation, instead the latter wants to overcome the vanity of life through the hard abstinence and spiritual training.
But Buddhism gives up scientific, public, intersubjective knowledge of the truth, instead it seeks the truth in the realm of private experience, that can be named as mysticism. The truth lies over the speech and letters.
On this point Buddhism and the western philosophy(=science) diverge.
Parmenides on behalf of the western philosophy defined this problem of vanity as a matter of change and becoming.
In other words, the problem of life becoming death and life occurring in death is determined simply as a matter of change. Change or becoming , however, is impossible because it implies nothing or negation in itself according Parmenides. To Parmenides, therefore, the problem of nonbeing or negation is essential; the problem of change is returned to that of negation. Therefore negation is more fundamental than change or becoming.
The world of matter, color, motion and generation and destruction are all illusion, fantasy as Buddhism thinks, because these phenomena involve negation, nonbeing or simply “not” in themselves.
Like Buddhism, Parmenides also regarded this world of change and becoming as imagination or fantasy.
But instead of staying there, he keeps on going to analyze the way of being and its correlative human cognition : The identity of being and thought. Otherweise being is not sensitive but intelligible. This view also makes up fundamental element of western thought.
delivered Parmenides’ writing in fractions
Parmenides tried to capture the essence of universe, reality through the analysis of structure of “being” or “what is”. Being or “what is” doesn’t have any special, determinate meaning but only general meaning of being or something. In this relation the concept of being refers to the most common notion of being. Parmenides found above all the logical structure of being : Being cannot be denied.
The core of Parmenides’s thought is that being or “what is” can not denied, negated. Therefore nonbeing or “what is not” is false, impossible.
This is the essence of his argument on being.
And we can think, say and learn only being or “what is”. Therefore being or “what is“ is public, objective and unchangeable. Knowledge of being is valid. In this perspective his thought is quite simple. As will be revealed later on, ”not“ or negation belongs to the subjective part of cognition. Therefore Parmenides was able to assert the mistake of nonbeing or nothing.
It was the "being" concept of Parmenides that served as the basis for the formation of Plato's Idea(=eidos) theory. On top of that, Aristotles’ philosophy too was founded on the concept of being of Parmenides. This problem I will debate later again.
The science in the West owes Parmenides absolutely, without him no science at all. More closely to say, the possibility of science or scientific recognition was due to the teaching of Parmenides on being.
The basis of western philosophy is ontology or metaphysics. But before Plato and Aristotle, it was Parmenides who laid the foundation of the ontology and metaphysics through the analysis of being.
Parmenides’ scripts No. II, III
II
Εἰ δ΄ ἄγ΄ ἐγὼν ἐρέω, κόµισαι δὲ σὺ µῦθον ἀκούσας,
αἵπερ ὁδοὶ µοῦναι διζήσιός εἰσι νοῆσαι·
ἡ µὲν ὅπως ἔστιν τε καὶ ὡς οὐκ ἔστι µὴ εἶναι,
Πειθοῦς ἐστι κέλευθος - Ἀληθείῃ γὰρ ὀπηδεῖ -,
II
Come now, I will tell thee - and do thou hearken to my
saying and carry it away - the only two ways of search that
can be thought of. The first, namely, that It is, and that it is
impossible for anything not to be, is the way of conviction,
[5] ἡ δ΄ ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν τε καὶ ὡς χρεών ἐστι µὴ εἶναι,
τὴν δή τοι φράζω παναπευθέα ἔµµεν ἀταρπόν·
οὔτε γὰρ ἂν γνοίης τό γε µὴ ἐὸν - οὐ γὰρ ἀνυστόν -
οὔτε φράσαις·
5 for truth is its companion. The other, namely, that It is not,
and that something must needs not be, - that, I tell thee, is a
wholly untrustworthy path. For you cannot know what is
not - that is impossible - nor utter it;
ΙΙΙ
... τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι.
III
For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.
One of the famous propositions of Parmenides is as follows:
The first, namely, that It is, and that it is impossible for it not to be, is the way of conviction, for truth is its companion. The other, namely, that It is not, and that it must needs not be,—that, I tell thee, is a path that none can learn of at all. For thou cannot not know what is not—that is impossible—nor utter it; for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be. (text of Parmenides)
According to Parmenides, what is, is. It seems to be very natural. Therefore it seems to be tautology, in the form of A=A. However the content of “It is” goes beyond the tautology. In my opinion the tautology of A=A stemed from “It is” or “what is is” by Aristotle in his logical writing.
The implication of “It is” is as follows : In the area of “being” or “what is” there is no denying of existence. Denying or negation consists not in things themselves but in the mind; in subjective thinking.
Therefore Parmenides said that “It is not” or “what is not” is mistaken. They cannot be true. There is no denying of being, existence. Negation or denial belongs to the logic as the instrument of human knowledge. Aristotle called his logic as Organon.
In the elementary step of metaphysics and logic, Parmenides could not the discriminate between the truth of being and that of logic, especially of judgment. Later Aristotle could knew the function of affirmation and denial, to solve the difficulty of “what is not, is not” by Parmenides. The point is that denial or negation doesn’t be ascribed to the being but to the assertion as a combination of two beings or two things. That is; negation is a kind of subjective function of human mind.
Affirmation and Denial in Aristotle’s De interpretationeIn the De interpretatione (Int.), Aristotle holds that affirmation (κατάφασις) and denial (ἀπόφασις) constitute two different kinds of assertion (ἀπόφανσις) or assertive sentence (λόγος ἀποφαντικός). He conceptualizes the distinction in terms of combination (σύνθεσις) and separation, or division (διαίρεσις). In his view, affirming that Socrates is white, for example, requires combining being white with Socrates, whereas denying that he is white requires separating being white from him. (Springer link. com)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11245-019-09669-y
In this perspective there is no affimation and negation in the beings or things. This is the secret of Parmenides’s enigmatic philosophical expression: “What is is, what is not is not”. Being of Parmenides refers to “term” in Aristotle’s logic. Thus can we say that negation is not applied to term but to judgment or proposition in Aristotle’s logic.
Therefore verbal expressinos as “nothing” or “it is not” or “what is not” is absurd by Parmenides. Affirmation or negation is functions of human mind. Furthermore the function of negation as “not” in a sentence is said to mean separation or division between things. A negative statement e.g. “Socrtes is not a philosopher” separates Socrates from a philosopher.
# counter-criticism against criticism of Parmenides
From this viewpoint, many false critics against Parmenides’ axioms; being is, only being can be thought, are to be counter-criticized.
For example a great philosophy scholar W. K. C. Guthrie said in his book; “The Greek Philosophers”, that Parmenides only knew one meaning of the verb “to be”, i.e. that of existence. Parmenides is said to be ignorant of the other meaning of the verb “to be” as copula , a predicative use of the verb.
This opinion is to be criticized because “what is” of Parmenides has no predicative or connecting function; he emphasized only the existence of being, being qua being. Therefore Parmenides said : “What is not” is impossible. Existence or being qua being has no negation, denial. Only in the level of connection and separation of beings, matters i.e. in the realm of language, sentence lies the negation as “not”
The predicative or connecting function of the verb “to be” had been discovered by Aristotle. It is also a very great contribution of Aristotle in the history of western philosophy.
This book I read at the age of 26. A very informative, concise description of Greek philosophy.
The other minor criticisms against the philosophy of Parmenides I will not mention any more. They are not aware of the core value of “what is” principle of Parmenides. Furthermore I discussed fully the meaning of identity of being and thought in this article.
From this standpoint says Parmenides : For you cannot not know what is not—that is impossible—nor utter it; for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.
“Nothing” or “what is not” is even not to be uttered as well as to be thought. We can think and utter only “what is” or being according to Parmenides.
But the insufficient moment of his thought, i.e. an absence of instrumental, logical consideration hat to wait for a long and winding way of philosophical sturuggle through Plato and Aristotle.
Negation is as a matter of fact a function of our mind and it occures in the judgment, assertion, proposition. As Aristotle over said, negation stands in the combination of two things. Therefore nonbeing as “what is not” belongs to the realm of assertion or proposition. E.g. a sentence; Socrates is philosopher, is a judgment, a combination of two things, Socrates and philosopher. Therefore No-Socrates or “Socrates doesn’t exist” can have no meaning by Parmenides. Being has no negation but assertion has negation.
In short, Parmenides first of all saw the “being as such” or “being qua being” but he didn’t see the level of human cognition depending on being and language(=assertion). For reasons of his shortage of knowledge, Parmenides embarrassed us with his enigmatic expressions. Although human recognition depends on being or what is, it requires more i.e. language and assertion or formal logic.
# identity of being and thought
Here we should discuss the problem of identity of being and thought or that of object and subject as it appeared and was asserted by Parmenides. The identity or unity of being and thought is not a mystic concept, but a simple matter of fact, i.e. that we can understand something: That is when we understand simple mathmatical case 2+2 = 4, the identity of being and thought occures. In other words identity of being and thought means understanding, cognition, knowledge.
A curious thing about identity of being and thought or knowledge is that it consists in only the realm of universal cognition. Like Parmenides argues, to the realm of the sensible, individual things the identity of being and thought or knowledge does not be applied.
As Hegel says in his “Phenomenology of Spirit”, the truth of “sensible certainty” e.g. “Now is the November 14th” is soon falsified. Therefore the truth or unity of being and thought remains in the universal area. This argument would Parmenides assert when he said that only being can be thought, spoken, and learned. Human knowledge consists only in the level of the universal. Thinking and speaking are valid only in the universal area. In other words both being and knowledge of it are public and intelligible.
Hegel too like other philosophers rejected effectively the possibility of individual, sensible cognition in his master work “Phenomonology of Spirit”
# denial of becoming, change
As the first finder of being qua being Parmenides proceeds to the denial of change and becoming. Change and becoming involves the moment of negation.
For example when a child is born, where had he been before his birth? Conversely when a man died, where was he gone?
One path only is left for us to speak of, namely, that It is. In this path are very many tokens that what is is uncreated and indestructible; for it is complete, immovable, and without end.
Nor was it ever, nor will it be;
for now it is, all at once, a continuous one. For what kind of origin for it wilt thou look for? In what way and from what source could it have drawn its increase? I shall not let thee say nor think that it came from what is not; for it can neither be thought nor uttered that anything is not. (text of Parmenides)
What is is uncreated and indestructible. According to the previous argument of Parmenides being or what is is. Nonbeing or what is not is impossible. This point is to be accepted. Being doesn’t contain negation or “not”, there is no denying of being. With help of Aristotle we can come to ascribe negation or simple “not” to the assertion, sentence.
This argument of Parmenides can we define as the general structure of being : Being has no negation.
On the basis of hitherto discussed Parmenides goes a step more : There is no becoming, birth, growth and death. They are all illusion of sensation. There are no creation, destruction at all. The world of birth, generation, decaying, vanishing is due to the stupidity of human spirit. As over mentioned Buddhism coincides with denial of sensory world. Like Buddhism, Parmenides also regarded this world of change and becoming as imagination and fantasy; phenomenon.
The world of change, withering and vanishing invokes the emotion of vanity, meaninglessness. Nevertheless, being of Parmenides is not as God conceived. On the contrary his being seems
to be material.
Parmenides denies coming into being as well as coming into nonbeing. These are contradictory to the nature of being. Being is declared as forever, eternal. Closely said, being is timeless. However Parmenides goes over the timeless being as the logical structure of being to substantiate being i.e. he makes one being from the general structure of being : Being is like a sphere.
Since, then, it has a furthest limit, it is complete on every side, like the mass of a rounded sphere, equally poised from the centre in every direction
The thought of being as the mass of a rounded sphere collides with the being as being or what is. From this point of view is Parmenides’ system of being-philosophy somewhat insufficient and incomplete.
# Parmenides and christianity
Parmenides principle of being and denial of change lead to the concept of the eternal one being i.e. God. In some respect being of Parmenides coincides with the concept of biblical god, however being has no function of creation and providence.
But the concept of self-identity, eternity, unchangeableness can contribute to the formation of christian theology.
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