Several New Notions Introduced and Exploited, but not Made Explicit, by Zeno (of Elea)

Autores/as

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.47661/afcl.v14i28.41369

Palabras clave:

Zeno of Elea, Gorgias, Plato, Communication Strategies, Paradoxes, The Stadium Paradox, The Space Paradox

Resumen

That Zeno availed himself of a number of previously unfamiliar (and often unknown) and very sophisticated notions, such as that of relative speed, a ten thousandth, infinite division and so on—almost a dozen mostly innovative notions—is a point one simply cannot deny. Yet, so far as I know, this feature of Zeno’s remains has never been highlighted and studied as they probably deserve with only one notable exception: a seminal paper by Cherubin-Mannucci 2011.

Let me state first some facts. That the paradox of the Millet Seed exploits the notion of to murioston (“the/a ten thousandth”) is clearly assumed by our main source (Simplicius), an adjective noun that, while murios as a notion is already at use in the Homeric poems, is totally unattested before; it is therefore unlikely that it had some circulation before Zeno. Moreover, this notion plays a key role; in fact, this paradox, left without to murioston, would simply collapse. But consider the Dichtomy (‘division in two parts’) paradox: what would remain, were the notion of infinite division not clearly at work, thus not yet clearly available to Zeno? Or the Stadium: what would remain, were the notions of relative motion and that of onkoi (‘masses’) not yet clearly available at least to him? To devise a Stadium without being able to rely upon them would have been extremely difficult!

This is the starting point of the paper, which is meant to account as clearly as I can for so fantastic a repository of totally unknown notions. It follows than, in my opinion, no professional account of Zeno’s paradoxes is conceivable without focusing one’s attention upon what ostensibly was a total novelty, and a new beginning.

A notable feature of these pages is the attention paid to what Gorgias and Plato knew about the Space paradox (sources usually excluded from the main collections).

Biografía del autor/a

Livio Rossetti, Università di Perugia

Livio Rossetti has been professore di Storia della Filosofia Antica in the Università di Perugia, Italia. His areas of investigation include the Presocratics, the Socratics (Plato included), and Greek Law.

Citas

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Publicado

2020-12-16