Palmer, John Anderson, Parmenides Eleates Parmenides And Presocratic Philosophy

Palmer, John Anderson, Parmenides Eleates Parmenides And Presocratic Philosophy

Author: Palmer John Anderson,

Year: 1900

Parmenides of Elea is the most brilliant and controversial of the Presocratic philosophers. This book aims to achieve a better understanding of his thought and of his place in the history of early Greek philosophy. To this end, I here develop and defend a modal interpretation of the ways of inquiry that define Parmenides’ philosophical outlook. He was, on this view, the first to have distinguished in a rigorous manner the modalities of necessary being, necessary nonbeing or impossibility, and contingent being. He himself specifies these modalities as what is and cannot not be, what is not and must not be, and what is and is not. Accompanying this fundamental ontological distinction is a set of epistemological distinctions that associates a distinct form of cognition with each mode of being. With this framework in place, Parmenides proceeds to consider what what must be will have to be like just in virtue of its mode of being and then to present an account of the origins and operation of the world’s mutable population. In defending the modal interpretation, it will be necessary to go beyond issues internal to Parmenides’ poem and to consider his relation to other Presocratic philosophe