Among the second generation of Greek philosophers, the views of Parmenides and the opposite position of Heraclitus deserve special attention. Unlike Parmenides, Heraclitus argued that everything in the world is constantly moving and changing. If we take both positions literally, then neither of them makes sense. But the science of philosophy itself practically interprets nothing literally. These are just reflections and different ways of searching for the truth. Parmenides did a lot of work on this path. What is the essence of his philosophy?
Fame
Parmenides was very famous in pre-Christian ancient Greece (ca. 5th century BC). In those days, the Eleatic school, the founder of which was Parmenides, became widespread. The philosophy of this thinker is well revealed in the famous poem "On Nature". The poem has reached our times, but not completely. However, its passages reveal the characteristic views of the Eleatic school. A student of Parmenidesfamous no less than his teacher was Zeno.
The fundamental teaching that Parmenides left, the philosophy of his school served to form the first rudiments of questions of knowledge, being and the formation of ontology. This philosophy also gave rise to epistemology. Parmenides separated truth and opinion, which, in turn, gave rise to the development of such areas as the rationalization of information and logical thinking.
Main idea
The main thread that Parmenides adhered to is the philosophy of being: apart from it, nothing exists. This is due to the impossibility of thinking about anything that is not inextricably linked with being. Hence, the conceivable is a part of being. It is on this conviction that Parmenides' theory of knowledge is built. The philosopher raises the question: “Can a person verify the existence of being, because this cannot be verified? However, being is very closely connected with thought. From this we can conclude that it still certainly exists.”
In the first verses of the poem "On Nature" Parmenides, whose philosophy denies the possibility of any existence outside of being, assigns the main role in the knowledge of reason. Feelings are secondary. Truth is based on rational knowledge, and opinion is based on feelings, which cannot give true knowledge about the essence of things, but show only their visible component.
Comprehension of life
From the first moments of the birth of philosophy, the idea of being is a logical means expressing the representation of the world inform of holistic education. Philosophy has formed categories that express the essential properties of reality. The main thing with which comprehension begins is being, a concept that is broad in scope, but poor in content.
For the first time, Parmenides draws attention to this philosophical aspect. His poem "On Nature" laid the foundation for the metaphysical ancient and European worldview. All the differences that the philosophy of Parmenides and Heraclitus has are based on ontological discoveries and ways of comprehending the truths of the universe. They considered the ontology from different angles.
Opposite views
Heraclitus is characterized by the way of questions, riddles, allegories, proximity to sayings and proverbs of the Greek language. This allows the philosopher to speak about the essence of being with the help of semantic images, covering the usual phenomena in all their diversity, but in a single sense.
Parmenides was clearly against those facts of experience that Heraclitus summarized and described quite well. Parmenides purposefully and systematically applied the deductive method of reasoning. He became the prototype of philosophers who rejected experience as a means of cognition, and all knowledge was derived from general premises that exist a priori. Parmenides could only rely on deduction with reason. He recognized exclusively conceivable knowledge, rejecting the sensual as a source of a different picture of the world.
The whole philosophy of Parmenides and Heraclitus was subject to careful research and comparison. These are, in fact, two oppositional theories. Parmenides speaks of the immobility of being inthe opposite of Heraclitus, who affirms the mobility of all things. Parmenides comes to the conclusion that being and non-being are identical concepts.
Being is indivisible and one, immutable and exists outside of time, it is complete in itself, and only it is the bearer of the truth of all things. This is exactly what Parmenides said. The direction in the philosophy of the Eleatic school did not gain many adherents, but it is worth saying that throughout its existence it found its supporters. In general, the school produced four generations of thinkers, and only later did it degenerate.
Parmenides believed that a person would rather understand reality if he abstracts from the variability, images and difference of phenomena, and pays attention to solid, simple and unchanging foundations. He spoke of all multiplicity, variability, discontinuity and fluidity, as about concepts related to the field of opinion.
The doctrine offered by the Eleatic school of philosophy: Parmenides, the aporias of Zeno and the thought of oneness
As already mentioned, a characteristic feature of the Eleatics is the doctrine of a continuous, single, infinite being, which is equally present in every element of our reality. The Eleatics speak for the first time about the relationship between being and thinking.
Parmenides believes that “thinking” and “being” are one and the same. Being is motionless and unified, and any change speaks of the departure of certain qualities into non-existence. Reason, according to Parmenides, is the path to the knowledge of Truth. Feelings can only deceive. Objections asidethe teachings of Parmenides were delivered by his disciple Zeno.
His philosophy uses logical paradoxes to prove the immobility of being. His aporias show the contradictions of human consciousness. For example, "Flying Arrow" says that when dividing the trajectory of the arrow into points, it turns out that separately at each of these points the arrow is at rest.
Contribution to philosophy
With the commonality of fundamental concepts, Zeno's reasoning contained a number of additional provisions and arguments, which he outlined more strictly. Parmenides gave only a hint to many questions, and Zeno was able to give them in expanded form.
The teaching of the Eleatics directed the thought to the division of intellectual and sensual knowledge of things that change, but have in themselves a special unchanging component - being. The introduction of the concepts of "movement", "being" and "non-being" in philosophy belongs precisely to the Eleatic school, the founder of which was Parmenides. The contribution to the philosophy of this thinker is difficult to overestimate, although his views did not receive too many adherents.
But the Eleatic school is of significant interest to researchers, it is very curious, as it is one of the oldest, in whose teaching philosophy and mathematics are closely intertwined.
Main messages
The whole philosophy of Parmenides (briefly and clearly) can fit into three theses:
- there is only being (there is no non-being);
- not only existence exists, but also non-existence;
- the concepts of being andnon-existence are identical.
However, Parmenides recognizes only the first thesis as the truth.
From Zeno's theses, only nine have survived to this day (it is assumed that there were about 45 in total). The evidence against the movement gained the most popularity. Zeno's thoughts led to the need to rethink such important methodological issues as infinity and its nature, the relationship between continuous and discontinuous, and other similar topics. Mathematicians were forced to pay attention to the fragility of the scientific foundation, which, in turn, affected the stimulation of progress in this scientific field. Zeno's aporias are involved in finding the sum of a geometric progression, which is infinite.
Contribution to the development of scientific thought brought by ancient philosophy
Parmenides gave a powerful impetus to a qualitatively new approach to mathematical knowledge. Thanks to his teachings and the Eleatic school, the level of abstraction of mathematical knowledge has increased significantly. More specifically, one can give an example of the appearance of "evidence by contradiction", which is indirect. When using such a method, they are repelled by the absurdity of the opposite. So mathematics began to take shape as a deductive science.
Melisse was another follower of Parmenides. Interestingly, he is considered the closest student to the teacher. He did not practice philosophy professionally, but was considered a philosophizing warrior. As an admiral of the Samos fleet in 441-440 BC. e., he defeated the Athenians. But his amateurish philosophy was severely judged by the first Greek historians, especiallyAristotle. Thanks to the work "About Melissa, Xenophanes and Gorgias" we know quite a lot.
Melissa's existence was described by the following features:
- it is infinite in time (eternally) and in space;
- it is one and unchangeable;
- he knows no pain and suffering.
Melisse differed from the views of Parmenides in that he accepted the spatial infinity of being and, being an optimist, recognized the perfection of being, as this justified the absence of suffering and pain.
What arguments of Heraclitus against the philosophy of Parmenides do we know?
Heraclitus refers to the Ionian school of philosophy of Ancient Greece. He considered the element of fire to be the origin of all things. In the view of the ancient Greeks, fire was the lightest, thinnest and most mobile matter. Heraclitus compares fire to gold. According to him, everything in the world is exchanged like gold and goods. In fire, the philosopher saw the basis and beginning of all things. The cosmos, for example, arises from fire in a downward and upward path. There are several versions of Heraclitus' cosmogony. According to Plutarch, fire passes into the air. In turn, the air passes into the water, and the water into the ground. Then the earth returns to fire again. Clement proposed a version of the origin of water from fire, from which, as from the seed of the universe, everything else is formed.
According to Heraclitus, the cosmos is not eternal: the lack of fire is periodically replaced by its excess. He revives the fire, speaking of it as a rational force. And the world court personifies with the world fire. Heraclitus generalized the idea of measure in the concept of logos as a rational word and an objective law of the universe: what is fire for the senses, then logos for the mind.
Thinker Parmenides: philosophy of being
Under being, the philosopher means a certain existing mass that fills the world. It is indivisible and is not destroyed by arising. Being is like a perfect ball, motionless and impenetrable, equal to itself. The philosophy of Parmenides is, as it were, a prototype of materialism. Existing is a finite, motionless, bodily, spatially defined material totality of everything. There is nothing but her.
Parmenides believes that the judgment about the existence of non-existent (non-existence) is fundamentally false. But such a statement gives rise to questions: “How does being arise and where does being disappear? How does it pass into non-existence and how does our own thinking arise?”
To answer such questions, Parmenides speaks of the impossibility of mentally expressing non-existence. The philosopher translates this problem into the plane of the relationship between being and thinking. He also argues that space and time do not exist as autonomous and independent entities. These are unconscious images constructed by us with the help of feelings, constantly deceiving us and not allowing us to see the true intelligible being, identical to our true thought.
The idea that the philosophy of Parmenides and Zeno carries was continued in the teachings of Democritus and Plato.
Aristotle criticized Parmenides. He argued that the philosopher interprets being very unambiguously. According to Aristotle, thisa concept can have multiple meanings, just like any other.
It is interesting that historians consider the philosopher Xenophanes the founder of the Eleatic school. And Theophrastus and Aristotle consider Parmenides a follower of Xenophanes. Indeed, in the teachings of Parmenides, a common thread can be traced with the philosophy of Xenophanes: the unity and immobility of being - truly existing. But the very concept of "being" as a philosophical category was first introduced by Parmenides. Thus, he transferred metaphysical reasoning to the plane of research into the ideal essence of things from the plane of consideration of the physical essence. Thus, philosophy acquired the character of ultimate knowledge, which is a consequence of self-knowledge and self-justification of the human mind.
Parmenides' view of nature (cosmology) is best described by Aetius. According to this description, the unified world is embraced by ether, under which the fiery mass is the sky. Under the sky, a row of crowns wrap around each other and surround the Earth. One crown is fire, the other is night. The area between them is partially filled with fire. In the center is the earthly firmament, under which there is another wreath of fire. The fire itself is presented in the form of a goddess who controls everything. It brings women a difficult birth, forces them to copulate with men, and men with women. Volcanic fire signifies the realm of the goddess of love and justice.
The sun and the Milky Way are vents, places where fire comes out. Living beings arose, according to Parmenides, due to the interaction of earth with fire, warm with cold, sensation and thinking. The way of thinking depends on what prevails:cold or warm. With the predominance of warm, the living being becomes purer and better. Warm prevails in women.
