Materialism and Immaterialism, Compatibility and Incompatibility in Parmenides
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47661/afcl.v14i28.41379Keywords:
Parmenides, Presocratic philosophy, materialism, Doxa, AletheiaAbstract
The article provides a critical assessment of the viability of a materialist interpretation of Parmenides’ ontology, discussing it in the context of the notorious issue of the compatibility of what-is in Alētheiaand the cosmic constituents (light and night) in Doxa. It makes a case for a strictly incompatibilist view and, on this basis, concludes that a materialist interpretation of what-is is wanting. Clarifying Parmenides’ own notion of the material, it makes the proposal that, whereas the mind vs. body/matter contradistinction was not available for Parmenides, he did distinguish between the natural and the supernatural. Finally, it suggests that a special kind of duality reminiscent of the contradistinction could have featured in his philosophy, which might have influenced Plato.
References
Adluri, V., Parmenides, Plato and Mortal Philosophy: Return from Transcendence
(New York 2011).
Austin, S., Parmenides: Being, Bounds, and Logic (New Haven and London 1986).
—————,“Scepticism and Dogmatism of the Presocratics,” Apeiron 33 (2000) 239-246.
—————, Parmenides and the History of Dialectic: Three Essays (Las Vegas, Zurich, Athens 2007).
—————. “Foreword for the Routledge Classics Edition,” in Arne F. Petersen (ed.), The World of Parmenides: Essay in the Presocratic Enlightenment, With the assistance of Jørgen Mejer, with a new foreword by Scott Austin (London and New York 2012) vii-xi.
Barnes, J., The Presocratic Philosophers (London and New York 1982).
Bremmer, Jan N., The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton and New Jersey 1983).
Brown, Lesley, “Innovation and Continuity: The Battle of Gods and Giants, Sophist 245-249,” In Jyl Gentzler (ed.), Method in Ancient Philosophy (Oxford 1998) 181-208.
Burnet, J., Early Greek Philosophy 4th ed. (London 1945).
Burnyeat, M.F., “Idealism in Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed,” The Philosophical Review 91 (1982) 3-40.
Cherubin, Rose, “Light, Night, and the Opinion of Mortals: Parmenides B8.51-61 and B9,” Ancient Philosophy 25 (2005) 1-24.
——————,“’Mortals Lay Down Trusting to be True’,” Epoché 21 (2017) 251-271.
Claus, D., Toward the Soul: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Psyche Before Plato (New Haven and London 1981).
Cordero, N.-L. (ed.), Parmenides, Venerable and Awesome (Plato, Theaetetus 183e): Proceedings of the International Symposium Buenos Aires, October 29-November 2, 2007 (Las Vegas, Zurich, Athens 2011).
Cornford, F.M., Principium Sapientiae (Cambridge 1952).
Cosgrove, M.R., “What Are ‘True’ Doxai Worth to Parmenides? Essaying a Fresh Look at his Cosmology,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 46 (2014) 1-31.
Coxon, A.H., The Fragments of Parmenides: A Critical Text with Introduction and Translation, the Ancient Testimonia and a Commentary, Rev. and expand. ed. with new transl. by Richard McKirahan and a new Preface by M. Schofield (Las Vegas, Zurich, Athens 2009).
Crystal, I., “The Scope of Thought in Parmenides,” Classical Quarterly 52 (2002) 207-219.
Curd, Patricia, The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic Monism and Later Presocratic Thought (Princeton 1998).
——————,“Thought and Body in Parmenides,” in Cordero (ed.), Parmenides, Venerable and Awesome, 115-133.
Furley, D.J., “The Early History of the Concept of Soul,” Bulletin of the Institue of Classical Studies 3 (1956) 1-18.
Giancola, Donna M., “Toward a Radical Reinterpretation of Parmenides’ B3,” Journal of Philosophical Research 26 (2001) 635-653.
Graham, D.W., Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy (Princeton 2006).
Granger, H., “The Cosmology of Mortals,” in V. Caston and D.W. Graham (eds.), Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Alexander Mourelatos (Aldershot 2002) 101-116.
Guyer, P. and Horstmann, R.-P., “Idealism,” in E.N.Zalta (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition). URL: <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/idealism/>.
Hussey, E., “Parmenides on Thinking,” in R.A.H. King (ed.), Common to Body and Soul: Philosophical Approaches to Explaining Living Behaviour in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Berlin, New York 2006) 13-30.
Johansen, T.K., “Parmenides’ Likely Story,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 50 (2016) 1-29.
Kahn, Ch.H., “The Thesis of Parmenides,” Review of Metaphysics 22 (1968/69) 700-725.
Kingsley, P., Reality (Inverness 2003).
Kurfess, Ch., “An Overlooked Fragment of Parmenides in Proclus?” Apeiron 51 (2017) 1-13.
Lebedev, A.V., “Parmenides ΑΝΗΡ ΠΥΘΑΓΟΡΕΙΟΣ. Monistic Idealism (Mentalism) in Archaic Greek Metaphysics,” in Indo-European Linguistics and Classical Philology XXI: Proceedings of the 21st Conference in Memory of Professor Joseph M. Tronsky. June 26-28, 2017 (Saint-Petersburg 2017) 493-536.
Long, A.A., “The Principles of Parmenides’ Cosmology,” Phronesis 8 (1963) 90-107.
—————,“Parmenides on Thinking Being,” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 12 (1996) 125-162.
McKirahan, R.D., “Signs and Arguments in Parmenides B8,” in Patricia Curd and D.W. Graham (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy (Oxford 2008) 189-229.
Mogyoródi, Emese, “Xenophanes and the Rise of Theology in Early Greek Thought,” International Philosophical Inquiry 43 (2019) 4-30.
Mourelatos, A.P.D., “Some Alternatives in Interpreting Parmenides,” The Monist 62 (1979) 3-14. (Reprinted in The Route of Parmenides, 2nd expanded edn. 350-363.
—————––––, The Route of Parmenides, 2nd expanded edn. (Las Vegas 2008). (Originally: New Haven and London 1970).
—————––––,“Parmenides, Early Greek Astronomy, and Modern Scientific Realism,” in Cordero (ed.), Parmenides, Venerable and Awesome, 167-189.
Owen, G.E.L., “Eleatic Questions,” Classical Quarterly N.S. 10 (1960) 84-102.
Palmer, John A., Plato’s Reception of Parmenides (Oxford 1999).
—————–––, Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy (Oxford 2009).
Parker, R., On Greek Religion (Ithaca, NY 2011).
Phillips, E.D., “Parmenides on Thought and Being,” Philosophical Review 64 (1955) 546-560.
Popper, Karl R., The World of Parmenides: Essay in the Presocratic Enlightenment, Arne F. Petersen (ed.), With the assistance of Jørgen Mejer (London and New York 1998, 2nd edn. 2012).
Pulpito, M., “Parmenides and the Forms,” in Cordero (ed.), Parmenides, Venerable and Awesome, 191-212.
Robbiano, Chiara, Becoming Being: On Parmenides’ Transformative Philosophy (Sankt Augustin 2006).
———————,“Parmenides’ and Śaṅkara’s Nondual Being Without Not-Being,” Philosophy East and West 66 (2016) 290-327.
Sedley, D., “Parmenides and Melissus,” in A.A. Long (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy (Cambridge 1999) 113-133.
Sisko, J. E. & Weiss, Y., “A Fourth Alternative in Interpreting Parmenides,” Phronesis 60 (2015) 40-59.
Thanassas, P., Parmenides, Cosmos, and Being: A Philosophical Interpretation (Milwaukee 2007).
—————, “Parmenidean Dualism,” in Cordero (ed.), Parmenides, Venerable and Awesome, 289-308.
Tor, S., Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology (Cambridge 2017).
Vlastos, G., “Parmenides’ Theory of Knowledge,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 77 (1946) 66-77.
————, “The Physical Theory of Anaxagoras,” in D. Furley and R.E. Allen (eds.), Studies in Presocratic Philosophy, Vol. 2, The Eleatics and the Pluralists (New York 1975) 323-353.
Wedin, M.V., Parmenides’ Grand Deduction: A Logical Reconstruction of the Way of Truth (Oxford 2014).
