PHL109: Ancient Philosophy: Parmenides

Contents: List of bibliographical abbreviations --
Part 1. Parmenides' life. Fragments I-XIX: Text, translation, and commentary --
Part 2. Critical essays. Parmenides' concept of being --
Aletheia and Doxa --
The world of appearance described in the Doxa --
Parmenides in the ancient philosophical tradition --
Appendix I --
Appendix II.

David Gallop provides a Greek text and a new facing-page translation of the extant fragments of Parmenides' philosophical poem. He also includes the first complete translation into English of the contexts in which the fragments have been transmitted to us, and of the ancient testimonia regarding Parmenides' life and thought. All of the fragments have been translated in full and are arranged in the order that has become canonical since the publication of the fifth edition of Diels-Rranz's Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Alternative renderings are provided for passages whose meaning is disputed or where major questions of interpretation hinge upon the text or translation adopted. In an extended introductory essay, Gallop offers guidance on the background of the poem, and a continuous exposition of it, together with a critical discussion of its basic argument. The volume also includes an extensive bibliography, a glossary of key terms in the poem, and a section on sources and authorities.

Parmenides, a lecture course delivered by Martin Heidegger at the University of Freiburg in 1942-1943, presents a highly original interpretation of ancient Greek philosophy. A major contribution to Heidegger's provocative dialogue with the pre-Socratics, the book attacks some of the most firmly established conceptions of Greek thinking and of the Greek world. The central theme is the question of truth and the primordial understanding of truth to be found in Parmenides' "didactic poem." Heidegger highlights the contrast between Greek and Roman thought and the reflection of that contrast in language. He analyzes the decline in the primordial understanding of truth-and, just as importantly, of untruth-that began in later Greek philosophy and that continues, by virtue of the Latinization of the West, down to the present day. Beyond an interpretation of Greek philosophy, Parmenides (volume 54 of Heidegger's Collected Works) offers a strident critique of the contemporary world, delivered during a time that Heidegger described as "out of joint."

In this careful study of the fragments of Parmenides' hexameter poem, On Nature, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos combines traditional philological reconstruction with the approaches of literary criticism and philosophical analysis to reveal the thought structure and expressive unity of the best preserved, most important and coherent text of Greek philosophy before Plato. The author shows how Parmenides' deduction of the signposts and bounds of what-is critically defines the concept of reality implicit in Greek-cognitive vocabulary and in early speculative cosmologies. He interprets the second part of the poem, the Doxa, as a cosmology designed to bring out both similarities and contrasts with Parmenides' own doctrine of what-is. The Doxa thus serves as a semantic commentary on the first part, the Truth. Mourelatos' discussions of the concepts of persuasion, fidelity, opinion, belief, and appearance elucidate terms strategically important for interpreting Parmenides and contribute in the history of Greek philosophical vocabulary.

Parmenides of Elea was the most important and influential philosopher before Plato. Patricia Curd here reinterprets Parmenides' views and offers a new account of his relation to his predecessors and successors. On the traditional interpretation, Parmenides argues that generation, destruction, and change are unreal and that only one thing exists. He therefore rejected as impossible the scientific inquiry practiced by the earlier Presocratic philosophers. But the philosophers who came after Parmenides attempted to explain natural change and they assumed the reality of a plurality of basic entities. Thus, on the traditional interpretation, the later Presocratics either ignored or contradicted his arguments. In this book, Patricia Curd argues that Parmenides sought to reform rather than to reject scientific inquiry and offers a more coherent account of his influence on the philosophers who came after him. "The Legacy of Parmenides "provides a detailed examination of Parmenides' arguments, considering his connection to earlier Greek thought and how his account of what-is could serve as a model for later philosophers. It then considers the theories of those who came after him, including the Pluralists (Anaxagoras and Empedocles), the Atomists (Leucippus and Democritus), the later Eleatics (Zeno and Melissus), and the later Presocratics Philolaus of Croton and Diogenes of Apollonia. The book closes with a discussion of the importance of Parmenides' views for the development of Plato's Theory of Forms.

This text comprises several essays on ancient Greek philosophy, inspired, as Sir Karl Popper himself states in his preface, by two desires - first, to illustrate the thesis that all history is the history of problem situations and that in following this principle we may further our understanding of the Presocratics and other thinkers of the past; and second, to show the greatness of the early Greek philosophers, who gave Europe its philosophy, its science and its humanism. This collection of essays, published together for the first time, not only elucidates the complexity of ancient Greek thought, but also reveals Popper's engagement with Presocratic philosophy and the enlightenment he experienced in reading Parmenides. This collection also includes some pieces that have never before appeared in print. These writings on Greek science, philosophy and history demonstrate Popper's life-long fascination with and love for the Presocratic philosophers, in particular Parmenides, Xenophanes and Heraclitus.