## 1. Life and Writings



The dramatic occasion of Plato's dialogue, *Parmenides*,
is a fictionalized visit to Athens by the eminent Parmenides and his
younger associate, Zeno, to attend the festival of the Great
Panathenaea. Plato describes Parmenides as about sixty-five years old
and Socrates, with whom he converses in the first part of the
dialogue, as "quite young then," which is normally taken
to mean about twenty. Given that Socrates was a little past seventy
when executed by the Athenians in 399 BCE, one can infer from this
description that Parmenides was born about 515 BCE. He would thus
appear to have been active during the early to mid-fifth century BCE.
Speusippus, Plato's successor as head of the Academy, is said to
have reported in his *On Philosophers* that Parmenides
established the laws for the citizens of his native Elea, one of the
Greek colonies along southern Italy's Tyrrhenian coast (Speus.
fr. 3 Taran *ap*. D.L. 9.23; cf. Plu. *Col*.
1126A), though Elea was founded some 30 years before Parmenides'
birth. The ancient historiographic tradition naturally associates
Parmenides with thinkers such as Xenophanes and the Pythagoreans
active in Magna Graecia, the Greek-speaking regions of southern Italy,
whom he may well have encountered. A 1st c. CE portrait head of
Parmenides was discovered at Castellamare della Bruca (ancient Elea)
in the 1960s with an inscription--"Parmeneides, son of
Pyres, *Ouliades*, Natural Philosopher"--that
associates him with a cult of Apollo Oulios or Apollo the Healer.



According to Diogenes Laertius, Parmenides composed only a single work
(D.L. 1.16). This was a metaphysical and cosmological poem in the
traditional epic medium of hexameter verse. The title "On
Nature" under which it was transmitted is probably not
authentic. The poem originally extended to perhaps eight hundred
verses, roughly one hundred and sixty of which have survived as
"fragments" that vary in length from a single word (fr.
15a: "water-rooted," describing the earth) to the
sixty-two verses of fragment 8. That any portion of his poem survives
is due entirely to the fact that later ancient authors, beginning with
Plato, for one reason or another felt the need to quote some portion
of it in the course of their own writings. Sextus Empiricus quotes
thirty of the thirty-two verses of fragment 1 (the opening Proem of
the poem), though apparently from some sort of Hellenistic digest
rather than from an actual manuscript copy, for his quotation of fr.
1.1-30 continues uninterruptedly with five and a half verses
from fragments 7 and 8. The Alexandrian Neoplatonist Simplicius (6th
c. CE) appears to have possessed a good copy of the work, from which
he quoted extensively in his commentaries on Aristotle's
*Physics* and *De Caelo*. He introduces his lengthy
quotation of fr. 8.1-52 as follows: "Even if one might
think it pedantic, I would gladly transcribe in this commentary the
verses of Parmenides on the one being, which aren't numerous,
both as evidence for what I have said and because of the scarcity of
Parmenides' treatise." Thanks to Simplicius' lengthy
transcription, we appear to have the entirety of Parmenides'
major metaphysical argument demonstrating the attributes of
"What Is" (*to eon*) or "true reality"
(*aletheia*).



We are much less well informed about the cosmology Parmenides
expounded in the latter part of the poem and so must supplement the
primary evidence of the fragments with *testimonia*, that is,
with various reports or paraphrases of his theories that we also find
in later authors. (A number of these *testimonia* are collected
among the fifty-four "A-Fragmente" in the Parmenides
section of Diels and Kranz's *Die Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker*. A more comprehensive collection of
*testimonia*, with English translations, is to be found in
Coxon 2009, 99-267. Many of these *testimonia* are
presented and translated together with the verbatim fragments in the
**D** section of Laks and Most 2016.) As always when dealing with
an ancient philosopher whose work has not survived entire, one must
take into account how the philosophical and other concerns of later
authors thanks to whom we know what we do of Parmenides'
original poem are likely to have shaped the transmission of the extant
fragments and *testimonia*. Certainly the partial and imperfect
preservation of his poem is one factor that complicates understanding
of his thought.


## 2. Overview of Parmenides' Poem


### 2.1 The Proem



Parmenides' poem began with a proem describing a journey he
figuratively once made to the abode of a goddess. He described how he
was conveyed on "the far-fabled path of the divinity" (fr.
1.3) in a chariot by a team of mares and how the maiden daughters of
Helios, the sun-god, led the way. These maidens take Parmenides to
whence they themselves have come, to "the halls of Night"
(fr. 1.9), before which stand "the gates of the paths of night
and day" (fr. 1.11). The maidens gently persuade Justice,
guardian of these gates, to open them so that Parmenides himself may
pass through to the abode within. Parmenides thus describes how the
goddess who dwells there welcomed him upon his arrival:



> 
> And the goddess received me kindly, and in her hand she took / my
> right hand, and she spoke and addressed me thus: / "O young man,
> accompanied by immortal charioteers / and mares who bear you as you
> arrive at our abode, / welcome, since a fate by no means ill sent you
> ahead to travel / this way (for surely it is far from the track of
> humans), / but Right and Justice." (Fr. 1.22-28a)
> 



Parmenides' proem is no epistemological allegory of
enlightenment but a topographically specific description of a mystical
journey to the halls of Night. In Hesiod, the "horrible dwelling
of dark Night" (*Th*. 744) is where the goddesses Night
and Day alternately reside as the other traverses the sky above the
Earth. Both Parmenides' and Hesiod's conception of this
place have their precedent in the Babylonian mythology of the sun
god's abode. This abode also traditionally served as a place of
judgment, and this fact tends to confirm that when Parmenides'
goddess tells him that no ill fate has sent him ahead to this place
(fr. 1.26-27a), she is indicating that he has miraculously
reached the place to which travel the souls of the dead.



In the proem, then, Parmenides casts himself in the role of an
initiate into the kind of mysteries that were during his day part of
the religious milieu of Magna Graecia. The motif of the initiate is
important, for it informs Parmenides' portrayal of himself as
one whose encounter with a major divinity has yielded a special
knowledge or wisdom. The divinity in this instance would seem to be
Night herself: Parmenides goes to "the halls of Night"
(fr. 1.9), and the goddess who greets him welcomes him to "our
home" (fr. 1.25). The goddess Night serves as counselor to Zeus
in some of the major Orphic cosmologies, including the Derveni
cosmology (col. XI.10). In the closely related Orphic
*Rhapsodies*, Night instructs Zeus on how to preserve the unity
produced by his absorption of all things into himself as he sets about
initiating a new cosmogonic phase. It is thus appropriate that Night
should be the source of Parmenides' revelation, for Parmenidean
metaphysics is very much concerned with the principle of unity in the
cosmos.


### 2.2 The Ways of Inquiry



Immediately after welcoming Parmenides to her abode, the goddess
describes as follows the content of the revelation he is about to
receive:



> 
> You must needs learn all things,/ both the unshaken heart of
> well-rounded reality/ and the notions of mortals, in which there is no
> genuine trustworthiness./ Nonetheless these things too will you learn,
> how what they resolved/ had actually to be, all through all pervading.
> (Fr. 1.28b-32)
> 



This programmatic announcement already indicates that the
goddess' revelation will come in two major phases. The goddess
provides some further instruction and admonition before commencing the
first phase, the demonstration of the nature of what she here
mysteriously calls "the unshaken heart of well-rounded
reality" (fr. 1.29). She then follows this first phase of her
revelation with what in the originally complete poem was a much longer
account of the principles, origins, and operation of the cosmos and
its constituents, from the heavens and the sun, moon, and stars right
down to the earth and its population of living creatures, including
humans themselves. This second phase, a cosmological account in the
traditional Presocratic mold, is what she here refers to as "the
notions of mortals, in which there is no genuine
trustworthiness" (fr. 1.30).



The governing motif of the goddess' revelation is that of the
"ways of inquiry." In the all-important fragment 2, she
specifies two such ways:



> 
> Come now, I shall tell--and convey home the tale once you have
> heard--/just which ways of inquiry alone there are for
> understanding:/ the one, that [it] is and that [it] is not not to be,/
> is the path of conviction, for it attends upon true reality,/ but the
> other, that [it] is not and that [it] must not be,/ this, I tell you,
> is a path wholly without report:/ for neither could you apprehend what
> is not, for it is not to be accomplished,/ nor could you indicate it.
> (Fr. 2)
> 



The second way of inquiry is here set aside virtually as soon as it is
introduced. The goddess goes on to refer back to the first way of
inquiry and then speaks of another way as characteristic of mortal
inquiry:



> 
> It is necessary to say and to think that What Is is; for it is to be,/
> but nothing it is not. These things I bid you ponder./ For I shall
> begin for you from this first way of inquiry,/ then yet again from
> that along which mortals who know nothing/ wander two-headed: for
> haplessness in their/ breasts directs wandering understanding. They
> are borne along/ deaf and blind at once, bedazzled, undiscriminating
> hordes,/ who have supposed that it is and is not the same/ and not the
> same; but the path of all these turns back on itself. (Fr. 6,
> supplementing the lacuna at the end of verse 3 with
> *arxo* and taking *s*' earlier in the verse
> as an elision of *soi*, as per Nehamas 1981, 103-5; cf.
> the similar proposal at Cordero 1984, ch. 3, expanding parts of
> Cordero 1979.)
> 



Here the goddess again articulates the division of her revelation into
the two major phases first announced at the end of fragment 1. Compare
her subsequent pronouncement at the point of transition from the first
phase's account of reality to the second phase's
cosmology: "At this point I cease for you the trustworthy
account and meditation/ regarding true reality; from this point on
mortal notions/ learn, listening to the deceptive order of my
verses" (fr. 8.50-2).



Clearly, the goddess' account of "true reality"
proceeds along the first way of inquiry introduced in fragment 2. Some
have thought the cosmology proceeds along the second way of inquiry
introduced at fr. 2.5, on the ground that the two ways introduced in
fragment 2 appear to be presented as the only conceivable ways of
inquiry. However, the way presented in fragment 6, as that along which
wanders the thought of mortals "who have supposed that it is and
is not the same and not the same" (fr. 6.7-8a), involves
an intermingling of being and not-being altogether different from what
one sees in the way of inquiry earlier specified as "that [it]
is not and that [it] must not be" (fr. 2.5). Fragment 6 thus
appears to be introducing a third and different way, one not to be
identified with fragment 2's second way, which has already been
set aside. The same mixture of being and non-being likewise features
in the goddess' warning to Parmenides in fragment 7 not to allow
his thought to proceed along the way typical of mortal inquiries:
"...for this may never be made manageable, that things that
are not are./ But you from this way of inquiry restrain your
understanding,/ and do not let habit born of much experience force you
along this way,/ to employ aimless sight and echoing hearing/ and
tongue. But judge by reason the strife-filled critique/ I have
delivered" (fr. 7). Some have thought that here the
goddess's last directive signals that some argument, with
identifiable premises and conclusion, has been presented in the
preceding verses. She in fact appears to be indicating that her harsh
criticism of the inapprehension of ordinary humans, resulting from
their exclusive reliance on the senses, has been designed to keep
Parmenides firmly planted on the first way of inquiry.


### 2.3 The Way of Conviction



The goddess begins her account of "true reality," or what
is to be discovered along this first path, as follows: "As yet a
single tale of a way/ remains, that it is; and along this path markers
are there/ very many, that What Is is ungenerated and deathless,/
whole and uniform, and still and perfect" (fr. 8.1-4).
What Is (*to eon*) has by this point become a name for what
Parmenides will form a fuller conception of by following the
goddess' directions. These now include the programmatic
description here in fr. 8.3-4 of the attributes What Is will be
shown to have in the ensuing arguments. Thanks primarily to
Simplicius' transcription, we still possess in its entirety the
portion of Parmenides' poem comprising the goddess's
revelation of the nature of "true reality." This account
constitutes one of the philosophical tradition's earliest, most
extensive, and most important stretches of metaphysical reasoning.



The arguments here proceed methodically in accordance with the program
announced at fr. 8.3-4. The goddess begins by arguing, in fr.
8.5-21, that What Is must be "ungenerated and
deathless":



> 
> but not ever was it, nor yet will it be, since it is now together
> entire,/ single, continuous; for what birth will you seek of it?/ How,
> whence increased? From not being I shall not allow/ you to say or to
> think: for not to be said and not to be thought/ is it that it is not.
> And indeed what need could have aroused it/ later rather than before,
> beginning from nothing, to grow?/ Thus it must either be altogether or
> not at all./ Nor ever from not being will the force of conviction
> allow/ something to come to be beyond it: on account of this neither
> to be born/ nor to die has Justice allowed it, having loosed its
> bonds,/ but she holds it fast. And the decision about these matter
> lies in this:/ it is or it is not; but it has in fact been decided,
> just as is necessary,/ to leave the one unthought and nameless (for no
> true/ way is it), and <it has been decided> that the one that it
> is indeed is genuine./ And how could What Is be hereafter? And how
> might it have been?/ For if it was, it is not, nor if ever it is going
> to be:/ thus generation is extinguished and destruction unheard of.
> 



Fr. 8.5-6a, at the outset here, have often been taken as a
declaration that What Is has some type of timeless existence. Given,
however, that this verse and a half opens a chain of continuous
argumentation, claiming that What Is does not come to be or pass away,
these words are probably better understood as a declaration of What
Is's uninterrupted existence.



Continuing on, in fr. 8.22-5 the goddess presents a much briefer
argument for What Is's being "whole and
uniform":



> 
> Nor is it divided, since it is all alike;/ and it is not any more
> there, which would keep it from holding together,/ nor any worse, but
> it is all replete with What Is./ Therefore it is all continuous: for
> What Is draws to What Is."
> 



Then, at fr. 8.26-33, she argues that it is "still"
or motionless:



> 
> And unmoved within the limits of great bonds/ it is unbeginning
> unending, since generation and destruction/ have wandered quite far
> away, and genuine conviction has expelled them./ And remaining the
> same, in the same place, and on its own it rests,/ and thus steadfast
> right there it remains; for powerful Necessity/ holds it in the bonds
> of a limit, which encloses it all around,/ wherefore it is right that
> What Is be not unfulfilled; for it is not lacking: if it were, it
> would lack everything.
> 



Finally, at fr. 8.42-9 (which Ebert 1989 has shown originally
followed immediately after fr. 8.33, verses 34-41 having
suffered transposition from their original position following verse
52), the goddess concludes by arguing that What Is must be
"perfect," before transitioning to the second phase of her
revelation:



> 
> But since there is a furthest limit, it is perfected/ from every side,
> like the bulk of a well-rounded globe,/ from the middle equal every
> way: for that it be neither any greater/ nor any smaller in this place
> or in that is necessary;/ for neither is there non-being, which would
> stop it reaching/ to its like, nor is What Is such that it might be
> more than What Is/ here and less there. Since it is all inviolate,/
> for it is equal to itself from every side, it extends uniformly in
> limits.
> 


### 2.4 The Way of Mortals



We have decidedly less complete evidence for the revelation's
second phase, Parmenides' cosmology. The direct evidence
provided by the last lines of fragment 8 (50-64) and by the
other fragments plausibly assigned to this portion of the poem (frs. 9
through 19) originally accounted for perhaps only ten percent of the
cosmology's original length. Since a number of these fragments
are programmatic, we still have a good idea of some of the major
subjects it treated. From the end of fragments 8 and fragments 9
through 15a we know that these included accounts of the cosmos'
two basic principles, light and night, and then of the origin, nature,
and behavior of the heavens and their inhabitants, including the
stars, sun, moon, the Milky Way, and the earth itself. Witness the
programmatic remarks of fragments 10 and 11:



> 
> 
> You will know the aether's nature, and in the aether all the/
> signs, and the unseen works of the pure torch/ of the brilliant sun,
> and from whence they came to be,/ and you will learn the wandering
> works of the round-eyed moon/ and its nature, and you will know too
> the surrounding heaven,/ both whence it grew and how Necessity
> directing it bound it/ to furnish the limits of the stars. (Fr.
> 10)
> 
> 
> 
> ...how the earth and sun and moon/ and the shared aether and the
> heavenly milk and Olympos/ outermost and the hot might of the stars
> began/ to come to be. (Fr. 11)
> 
> 
> 



A few fragments, including one known only via Latin translation, show
that Parmenides also dealt with the physiology of reproduction (frs.
17-18) and with human thought (fr. 16). Fortunately, the sketchy
picture of the cosmology furnished by the fragments is significantly
improved by the *testimonia*. The impression given by the
fragments of the range of subjects is confirmed by both Simplicius,
who comments after quoting fr. 11 that Parmenides' account of
the genesis of things extended down to the parts of animals (Simp.
*in Cael*. 559.26-7), and likewise by Plutarch's
judgment that Parmenides' cosmology has so much to say about the
earth, heaven, sun, moon, and stars, right down to the genesis of
human beings, that it omits none of the major subjects typically
treated by ancient natural philosophers (Plu. *Col*. 1114B-C).
A particularly important *testimonium* in the doxographer
Aetius paraphrases, explicates, and supplements fr. 12 in ways
that give us a better picture of the structure of Parmenides'
cosmos (Aet. 2.7.1 = 28A37a Diels-Kranz). Likewise,
Theophrastus' comments on fragment 16 at *De Sensibus*
1-4 appear to provide more information about Parmenides'
views on cognition. The ancient *testimonia* tend to confirm
that Parmenides sought to explain an incredibly wide range of natural
phenomena, including especially the origins and specific behaviors of
both the heavenly bodies and the terrestrial population. One
fundamental problem for developing a coherent view of
Parmenides' philosophical achievement has been how to understand
the relation between the two major phases of the goddess'
revelation.


## 3. Some Principal Types of Interpretation



While Parmenides is generally recognized as having played a major role
in the development of ancient Greek natural philosophy and
metaphysics, fundamental disagreement persists about the upshot of his
philosophy and thus about the precise nature of his influence.
Sections 3.1 through 3.3 of what follows describe in brief outline the
types of interpretation that have played the most prominent roles in
the development of broader narratives for the history of early Greek
philosophy. These sections do not purport to present a comprehensive
taxonomy of modern interpretations, nor do they make any attempt to
reference all the representatives and variants of the principal types
of interpretation here described. They are not meant to be a history
of modern Parmenides interpretation, as worthy and fascinating a topic
as that is. Since some advocates of the interpretations outlined in
sections 3.1 to 3.3 have claimed to find ancient authority for their
views via selective appeal to certain facets of the ancient Parmenides
reception, it will also be worthwhile indicating what was in fact the
prevailing view of Parmenides in antiquity. After doing so in section
3.4, the final section of this article will outline a type of
interpretation that takes the prevailing ancient view more seriously
while responding to at least one major problem it encounters in the
fragments.



If one wishes to adjudicate among the various types of interpretation,
one may start by recognizing some of the requirements upon a
successful interpretation, or an interpretation offering a
historically plausible account of Parmenides' thought in its
place and time. A successful interpretation must take account of
advances in the understanding of the text and transmission of the
fragments of Parmenides' poem, such as Theodor Ebert's
identification of a transposition in fr. 8 (Ebert 1989) and the
results of Leonardo Taran's reexamination of the
manuscripts of Simplicius's commentary on Aristotle's
*Physics* (Taran 1987). A successful interpretation
should attend to the fr. 1 proem's indications of the
poem's cultural context. It should attend to the poem's
epistemology as well as to its logical and metaphysical dimensions.
Perhaps most importantly, it should take full and proper account of
Parmenides' cosmology (and not try to explain it away or else
simply ignore it). Attention in recent years to some of the most
innovative features of the cosmology have confirmed what should have
been evident in any case, namely, that the cosmology that originally
comprised the greater part of his poem is Parmenides' own
explanation of the world's origins and operation (see especially
Mourelatos 2013, Graham 2013, and Mansfeld 2015). A successful
interpretation must explain the relation between the two major
phases of the goddess's revelation so that the existence of what
is described in one is compatible with the existence of what is
described in the other. To this end, it should avoid attributing to
Parmenides views that are patently anachronistic or, worse, views that
cannot be coherently asserted or maintained. A successful
interpretation also needs to attend carefully to the structure of
Parmenides' argumentation in the path of conviction and to
follow it through to the end without lapsing into understanding his
claims that what is is "ungenerated and deathless,/ whole and uniform,
and still and perfect" (fr. 8.3-4) as mere metaphors.


### 3.1 The Strict Monist Interpretation



A good many interpreters have taken the poem's first major phase
as an argument for strict monism, or the paradoxical view that there
exists exactly one thing, and for this lone entity's being
totally unchanging and undifferentiated. On this view, Parmenides
considers the world of our ordinary experience non-existent and our
normal beliefs in the existence of change, plurality, and even, it
seems, our own selves to be entirely deceptive. Although less common
than it once was, this type of view still has its adherents and is
probably familiar to many who have only a superficial acquaintance
with Parmenides.



The strict monist interpretation is influentially represented in the
first two volumes of W. K. C. Guthrie's *A History of Greek
Philosophy*, where it is accorded a critical role in the
development of early Greek natural philosophy from the purported
material monism of the early Milesians to the pluralist physical
theories of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the early atomists, Leucippus
and Democritus. On Guthrie's strict monist reading,
Parmenides' deduction of the nature of reality led him to
conclude "that reality [is], and must be, a unity in the
strictest sense and that any change in it [is] impossible" and
therefore that "the world as perceived by the senses is
unreal" (Guthrie 1965, 4-5). Finding reason and sensation
to yield wildly contradictory views of reality, Parmenides presumed
reason must be preferred and sensory evidence thereby rejected as
altogether deceptive. His strict monism, on Guthrie's view, took
particular aim at the monistic material principles of Milesian
cosmology:



> 
> [Parmenides] argues with devastating precision that once one has said
> that something *is*, one is debarred from saying that it
> *was* or *will be*, of attributing to it an origin or a
> dissolution in time, or any alteration or motion whatsoever. But this
> was just what the Milesians had done. They supposed that the world had
> not always existed in its present cosmic state. They derived it from
> one substance, which they asserted to have changed or moved in various
> ways--becoming hotter or colder, drier or wetter, rarer or
> denser--in order to produce the present world-order. (Guthrie
> 1965, 15-16)
> 



A particular focus of Parmenides' criticism, on this view, was
Anaximander's idea that the opposites are initially latent
within the originative principle he called "the Boundless"
(*to apeiron*) prior to being separated out from it: if these
opposite characteristics existed prior to being separated out, then
the Boundless was not a true unity, but if they did not exist prior to
being separated out, then how could they possibly come into existence?
It is thus illegitimate to suppose that everything came into being out
of one thing (Guthrie 1962, 86-7). In addition to thus
criticizing the theoretical viability of the monistic material
principles of the early Milesian cosmologists, Parmenides also is
supposed to have criticized the Milesian union of the material and
moving cause in their principles by arguing that motion and change are
impossible and inadmissible conceptions (Guthrie 1965, 5-6,
52).



As we have seen, Parmenides' insistence on the point that
whatever is, is, and cannot ever not be leads him to be harshly
critical of the ordinary run of mortals who rely on their senses in
supposing that things are generated and undergo all manner of changes.
Parmenides directs us to judge reality by reason and not to trust the
senses. Reason, as deployed in the intricate, multi-staged deduction
of fragment 8, reveals what attributes whatever is must possess:
whatever is must be ungenerated and imperishable; one, continuous and
indivisible; and motionless and altogether unchanging, such that past
and future are meaningless for it. This is "all that can be said
about what truly exists," and reality is thus revealed as
"something utterly different from the world in which each one of
us supposes himself to live," a world which is nothing but a
"deceitful show" (Guthrie 1965, 51). Parmenides
nonetheless proceeded in the second part of his poem to present an
elaborate cosmology along traditional lines, thus presenting readers
with the following crux: "Why should Parmenides take the trouble
to narrate a detailed cosmogony when he has already proved that
opposites cannot exist and there can be no cosmogony because plurality
and change are inadmissible conceptions?" (Guthrie 1965, 5).
Guthrie suggests that Parmenides is "doing his best for the
sensible world...by giving as coherent an account of it as he
can," on the practical ground that our senses continue to
deceive us about its existence: "His account of appearances will
excel those of others. To ask 'But if it is unreal, what is the
point of trying to give an account of it at all?' is to put a
question that is not likely to have occurred to him" (Guthrie
1965, 5 and 52).


### 3.2 The Logical-Dialectical Interpretation



One problem with Guthrie's view of Parmenides is that the
supposition that Parmenides' strict monism was developed as a
critical *reductio* of Milesian material monism sits
uncomfortably with the notion that he actually embraced this wildly
counter-intuitive metaphysical position. There is the same type of
tension in the outmoded proposals that Parmenides was targeting
certain supposedly Pythagorean doctrines (a view developed in Raven
1948 and ensconced in Kirk and Raven 1957). Even as Guthrie was
writing the first two volumes of his *History*, a shift was
underway toward understanding Parmenides' arguments as driven by
strictly logical considerations rather than by any critical agenda
with respect to the theories of his Ionian or Pythagorean
predecessors. Here the watershed event was the publication of G. E. L.
Owen's "Eleatic Questions" (Owen 1960). Owen found
inspiration in Bertrand Russell for his positive interpretation of
Parmenides' argument in fragment 2, the essential point of which
Owen took to be that what can be talked or thought about exists.



Russell's treatment of Parmenides in his *A History of
Western Philosophy* was conditioned by his own abiding concern
with the problems of analysis posed by negative existential
statements. The essence of Parmenides' argument, according to
Russell, is as follows:



> 
> When you think, you think *of* something; when you use a name,
> it must be the name *of* something. Therefore both thought and
> language require objects outside themselves. And since you can think
> of a thing or speak of it at one time as well as another, whatever can
> be thought of or spoken of must exist at all times. Consequently there
> can be no change, since change consists in things coming into being or
> ceasing to be (Russell 1945, 49).
> 



Here the unargued identification of the subject of Parmenides'
discourse as "whatever can be thought of or spoken of"
prefigures Owen's identification of it as "whatever can be
thought and talked about," with both proposals deriving from fr.
2.7-8. There follows in Russell's *History* an
exposition of the problems involved in speaking meaningfully about
(currently) non-existent subjects, such as George Washington or
Hamlet, after which Russell restates the first stage of
Parmenides' argument as follows: "if a word can be used
significantly it must mean *something*, not nothing, and
therefore what the word means must in some sense exist" (Russell
1945, 50). So influential has Russell's understanding been,
thanks in no small part to Owen's careful development of it,
that it is not uncommon for the problem of negative existential
statements to be referred to as "Parmenides'
paradox."



The arguments of fragment 8, on this view, are then understood as
showing that what can be thought and talked about is, surprisingly,
without variation in time and space, that is, absolutely one and
unchanging. Owen adapted an image from Wittgenstein in characterizing
these arguments, ones which "can only show the vacuousness of
temporal and spatial distinctions by a proof which employs
them," as "a ladder which must be thrown away when one has
climbed it" (Owen 1960, 67). Owen also vigorously opposed the
assumption that "Parmenides wrote his poem in the broad
tradition of Ionian and Italian cosmology," arguing that
Parmenides claims no measure of truth or reliability for the cosmogony
in the latter part of his poem and that his own arguments in the
"Truth" (i.e., the "Way of Conviction")
neither derive from this earlier tradition nor depict the cosmos as
spherical in shape (Owen 1960, 48). On Owen's reading, not so
very differently from Guthrie's, Parmenides' cosmology is
"no more than a dialectical device," that is, "the
correct or the most plausible analysis of those presuppositions on
which ordinary men, and not just theorists, seem to build their
picture of the physical world," these being "the existence
of at least two irreducibly different things in a constant process of
interaction," whereas Parmenides' own arguments have by
this point shown both the plurality and change this picture
presupposes to be unacceptable (Owen 1960, 50 and 54-5).



Owen's view of Parmenidean metaphysics as driven by primarily
logical concerns and of his cosmology as no more than a dialectical
device would have a deep influence on two of the most important
surveys of Presocratic thought since Guthrie--Jonathan
Barnes's *The Presocratic Philosophers*
(19791, 19822) and Kirk, Raven, and
Schofield's *The Presocratic Philosophers*
(19832). While abandoning the idea that Parmenidean monism
was a specific reaction to the theories of any of his predecessors,
these two works continue to depict his impact on later Presocratic
systems as decisive. On their Owenian line, the story becomes that the
arguments of Parmenides and his Eleatic successors were meant to be
generally destructive of all previous cosmological theorizing, in so
far as they purported to show that the existence of change, time, and
plurality cannot be naively presumed. Parmenides' arguments in
fragment 8 effectively become, for advocates of this line, a
generalized rather than a specific *reductio* of early Greek
cosmological theorizing. Barnes, furthermore, responded to an
objection that had been raised against Owen's identification of
Parmenides' subject as whatever can be talked and thought
about--namely, that this identification derives from the reason
given at fr. 2.7-8 for rejecting the second path of inquiry,
whereas an audience could not be expected to understand this to be the
goddess' subject when she introduces the first two ways of
inquiry in fr. 2.3 and 2.5. Barnes modified Owen's
identification of Parmenides' subject so that it might be found
in the immediate context, specifically in the implicit object of fr.
2.2's description of the paths as "ways of inquiry";
thus, according to Barnes, the first path "says that
*whatever we inquire into* exists, and cannot not exist"
(Barnes 1982, 163). Barnes's modified Owenian line has since
been endorsed by prominent interpreters (including Schofield in Kirk,
Raven, and Schofield 1983, 245; cf. Brown 1994, 217). Barnes also
advanced the more heterodox proposal that Parmenides was not
necessarily a monist at all, arguing that the fragments are compatible
with the existence of a plurality of "Parmenidean Beings"
(Barnes 1979, cf. Untersteiner 1955). While this proposal has had
fewer adherents among other interpreters favoring the Russell-Owen
line, it has been taken up by certain advocates of the next type of
interpretation.


### 3.3 The Meta-Principle Interpretation



One influential alternative to interpretations of Parmenides as a
strict monist, certainly among scholars working in America, has been
that developed by Alexander Mourelatos in his 1970 monograph, *The
Route of Parmenides*. (See Mourelatos 1979 for a succinct
presentation of this alternative in response to perceived shortcomings
in Owen's logical-dialectical reading.) Mourelatos saw
Parmenides as utilizing a specialized, predicative sense of the verb
"to be" in speaking of "what is", a sense used
to reveal a thing's nature or essence. This sense of the verb,
dubbed by Mourelatos "the 'is' of speculative
predication," is supposed to feature in statements of the form,
"*X* is *Y*," where the predicate
"belongs essentially to, or is a necessary condition for, the
subject" and thus gives *X*'s reality, essence,
nature, or true constitution (Mourelatos 1970, 56-60). Alexander
Nehamas would likewise propose that Parmenides employs
"is" in the very strong sense of "is what it is to
be," so that his concern is with "things which are
*F* in the strong sense of being what it is to be
*F*" (Nehamas 1981, 107; although Nehamas cites Owen as
well as Mourelatos as an influence, Owen himself took
Parmenides' use of the verb "to be" in "what
is" as existential [see Owen 1960, 94]). On the resulting type
of interpretation, the first major phase of Parmenides' poem
provides a higher-order account of what the fundamental entities of
any ontology would have to be like: they would have to be *F*,
for some *F*, in this specially strong way. As such, it is not
an account of what there is (namely, one thing, the only one that
exists) but, rather, of whatever is in the manner required to be an
ontologically fundamental entity--a thing that is *F*, for
some *F*, in an essential way. Thus Nehamas has more recently
written:



> 
> the "signposts" along the way of Being which Parmenides
> describes in B 8 [may be taken] as adverbs that characterize a
> particular and very restrictive way of being. The signposts then tell
> us what conditions must be met if a subject is to be something in the
> appropriate way, if it is to be really something, and thus be a real
> subject. And to be really something, *F*, is to be
> *F*--B 8 tells us--ungenerably and imperishably,
> wholly, only and indivisibly, unchangingly, perfectly and completely.
> ... Parmenides uses "being" to express a very strong
> notion, which Aristotle eventually was to capture with his concept of
> "what it is to be." To say of something that it is
> *F* is to say that *F* constitutes its nature (Nehamas
> 2002, 50).
> 



A variant of the meta-principle interpretation, one that also draws
upon Barnes's suggestion that nothing in the "Truth"
precludes there being a plurality of Parmenidean Beings, has been
developed by Patricia Curd. On her view, Parmenides was not a strict
monist but, rather, a proponent of what she terms "predicational
monism," which she defines as "the claim that each thing
that is can be only one thing; it can hold only the one predicate that
indicates what it is, and must hold it in a particularly strong way.
To be a genuine entity, a thing must be a predicational unity, with a
single account of what it is; but it need not be the case that there
exists only one such thing. Rather, the thing itself must be a unified
whole. If it is, say, *F*, it must be all, only, and completely
*F*. On predicational monism, a numerical plurality of such
one-beings (as we might call them) is possible" (Curd 1998,
66).



Mourelatos, Nehamas, and Curd all take Parmenides to be concerned with
specifying in an abstract way what it is to be the nature or essence
of a thing, rather than simply with specifying what there in fact is,
as he is presumed to be doing on both the logical-dialectical and the
more traditional strict monist readings. Since the meta-principle
reading takes Parmenides' major argument in fragment 8 to be
programmatic instead of merely paradoxical or destructive, it suggests
a somewhat different narrative structure for the history of early
Greek philosophy, one where the so-called "post-Parmenidean
pluralists"--Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the early
atomists, Leucippus and Democritus--were not reacting against
Parmenides, but were actually endorsing his requirements that what
really is be ungenerated, imperishable, and absolutely changeless,
when they conceived of the principles of their respective physical
systems in these terms. The meta-principle reading has also seemed to
re-open the possibility that Parmenides was engaged in critical
reflection upon the principles of his predecessors' physical
systems.



If the first phase of Parmenides' poem provides a higher-order
description of the features that must belong to any proper physical
principle, then one would naturally expect the ensuing cosmology to
deploy principles that meet Parmenides' own requirements. The
goddess describes the cosmology, however, as an account of "the
beliefs of mortals, in which there is no genuine conviction"
(fr. 1.30, cf. fr. 8.50-2) and commences this part of her
revelation by describing how mortals have wandered astray by picking
out two forms, light and night, to serve as the basis for an account
of the cosmos' origin and operation (fr. 8.53-9).
Advocates of the meta-principle reading here face a dilemma. On the
one hand, they cannot plausibly maintain that the cosmology is what
their overall interpretation would lead one to expect, namely,
Parmenides' effort at developing a cosmology in accordance with
his own strictures upon what the principles of such an account must be
like. The cosmological principles light and night do not in fact
conform to those strictures. But then why should Parmenides have
bothered to present a fundamentally flawed or
"near-correct" cosmology, founded upon principles that
fail to satisfy the very requirements he himself has supposedly
specified? If one falls back on the position that the cosmology in the
poem is not Parmenides' own (which remains implausible given the
cosmology's innovations), then it becomes even more puzzling why
he should have described what the principles of an adequate cosmology
must be like and then failed to try to present one.



The presence of the cosmology in Parmenides' poem continues to
be problematic for advocates of the meta-principle interpretation,
just as it is for advocates of the other major types of interpretation
discussed thus far. Guthrie views the cosmology as Parmenides'
best attempt at giving an account of the sensible world, given that we
will continue to be deceived into thinking it exists despite his
arguments to the contrary. Not only is this an unstable interpretive
position, it imputes confusion to Parmenides rather than acknowledge
its own difficulties. It is hardly more satisfying to be told by Owen
that Parmenides' cosmology has a purpose that is "wholly
dialectical" (Owen 1960, 54-5; cf. Long 1963 for a more
detailed development of this interpretive line).



Although they repeat the essentials of Owen's view, Kirk, Raven,
and Schofield finally acknowledge that the presence of the elaborate
cosmology remains problematic for this line of interpretation:
"Why [the cosmology] was included in the poem remains a mystery:
the goddess seeks to save the phenomena so far as is possible, but she
knows and tells us that the project is impossible" (Kirk, Raven,
and Schofield 1983, 262, after echoing Owen's line on the
cosmology's dialectical character at 254-6). While the
meta-principle interpretation raises the expectation, which
fails to be met, that the principles of Parmenides' cosmology
will conform to the requirements he has supposedly specified earlier
in the poem, the strict monist and logical-dialectical interpretations
leave even some of their own advocates wondering why Parmenides
devoted the bulk of his poem to an account of things his own reasoning
is supposed to have shown do not exist.


### 3.4 The Aspectual Interpretation Prevailing in Antiquity



The idea that Parmenides' arguments so problematized the
phenomenon of change as to make developing an adequate theoretical
account of it the central preoccupation of subsequent Presocratic
natural philosophers is a commonplace of modern historical narratives.
Unfortunately, this notion has no real ancient authority.
Aristotle's account at *Physics*
1.8.191a23-33 of the wrong turn he claims earlier
natural philosophers took in trying to understand the principles of
change has often been thought to legitimate this view, given the
Eleatic-sounding argument it records. But Aristotle mentions
Parmenides nowhere in the passage, and his complaint is in fact
broadly directed against all the early Greek philosophers whose views
he has been surveying previously in the book. He complains that they
naively adopted the view that no fundamental entity or substance comes
to be or perishes, the result being that they are unable to account
for, because they disavow, substantial change, which is the very
phenomenon Aristotle is most interested in explaining. Aristotle
actually understands Parmenides' thesis that what is is one
(*hen to on*) and not subject to generation and change as
belonging, not to natural philosophy, but to first philosophy or
metaphysics (*Cael*. 3.1.298b14-24; cf.
*Metaph*. 1.5.986b14-18, *Ph*.
1.2.184a25-b12).



In the complex treatment of Parmenides in *Physics*
1.2-3, Aristotle introduces Parmenides together with Melissus as
representing the position - within the doxographical schema
adapted from that in Gorgias's *On Nature, or On What is
Not* that structures his own examination of earlier
*arche*-theories - that there is a single and
unchanging *arche* or principle (*Ph*.
1.2.184b15-16). Aristotle recognizes, however, that
this grouping obscures very real differences between the two
thinkers' views. According to Aristotle, Melissus held that
everything is a single, i.e. continuous or indivisible, and unlimited
quantity (or extension). Parmenides, on Aristotle's
reconstruction, recognized only a use of "being"
indicating what something is in respect of its substance or essence;
he accordingly supposed that everything that is is substance, and he
supposed everything to be one in the sense that the account of the
essence of everything is identical. Furthermore, on Aristotle's
view of Parmenides, whatever might differentiate what is cannot do so
with respect to its essence but only accidentally. But no accident of
what just is can belong to its essence, and since Parmenides admits
only a use of "being" indicating what something is in
respect of its substance or essence, no differentiating accident of
what is can be said to be. Such is the thrust of Aristotle's
reconstruction of Parmenides' reasoning at *Physics*
1.3.186a34-b4 and, likewise, of his summary
allusion to this passage at *Metaphysics*
1.5.986b28-31.



The only point where Aristotle's representation of Parmenides in
*Metaphysics* 1.5 appears to differ from the major treatment in
*Physics* 1.2-3 is in following up this summary with the
qualification that, being compelled to go with the phenomena, and
supposing that what is is one with respect to the account (sc. of its
essence) but plural with respect to perception, he posited a duality
of principles as the basis for his account of the phenomena
(986b27-34, reading *to on hen men* at
986b31, as per Alexander of
Aphrodisias's paraphrase). This is only a superficial
difference, given how at *Physics*
1.5.188a19-22 Aristotle points to the Parmenidean
duality of principles to support his thesis that all his predecessors
had made the opposites principles, including those who maintained that
everything is one and unchanging. Nonetheless, the representation of
Parmenides' position in *Metaphysics* 1.5, according to
which what is is one with respect to the account of its essence but
plural with respect to perception, is more indulgent than the
reconstruction of Parmenides' reasoning in *Physics* 1.3
in that it allows for a differentiated aspect of what is. By allowing
that what is may be differentiated with respect to its phenomenal
qualities, Aristotle seems to have recognized at some level the
mistake in assuming that Parmenides' failure to distinguish
explicitly among the senses of "being" entails that he
could only have employed the term in one sense.



Despite the assimilation of Melissus and Parmenides under the rubric
inherited from Gorgias, Aristotle recognized that grouping the two
figures together under this convenient label obscured fundamental
differences in their positions. The fact is that "monism"
does not denote a unique metaphysical position but a family of
positions. Among its species are strict monism or the position that
just one thing exists. This is the position Melissus advocated, one
which no serious metaphysician should want to adopt. More familiar
species include both numerical and generic substance monism, according
to which, respectively, there is a single substance or a single kind
of substance. Aristotle seems ultimately to have inclined toward
attributing this first type of "generous" monism to
Parmenides. In viewing Parmenides as a generous monist, whose position
allowed for the existence of other entities, rather than as a
"strict" monist holding that only one thing exists,
Aristotle is in accord with the majority view of Parmenides in
antiquity.



That some in antiquity viewed Parmenides as a strict monist is evident
from Plutarch's report of the Epicurean Colotes' treatment
of Parmenides in his treatise, *That One Cannot Live According to
the Doctrines of Other Philosophers*. Colotes' main claim
appears to have been that Parmenides prevents us from living by
maintaining that "the universe is one" (*hen to
pan*), a tag which Colotes apparently took to mean that Parmenides
denied the existence of fire and water and, indeed, "the
inhabited cities in Europe and Asia"; he may also have claimed
that if one accepts Parmenides' thesis, there will be nothing to
prevent one from walking off a precipice, since on his view there are
no such things (Plut. *Col*. 1114B). In short, as Plutarch
reports, Colotes said that "Parmenides abolishes everything by
hypothesizing that being is one" (1114D). Plutarch himself,
however, takes strong issue with Colotes' view, charging him
with imputing to Parmenides "disgraceful sophisms" (1113F)
and with deliberately misconstruing his position (1114D). Plutarch
explains that Parmenides was in fact the first to distinguish between
the mutable objects of sensation and the unchanging character of the
intelligible: "Parmenides...abolishes neither nature.
Instead, assigning to each what is appropriate, he places the
intelligible in the class of what is one and being--calling it
'being' in so far as it is eternal and imperishable, and
'one' because of its likeness unto itself and its not
admitting differentiation--while he locates the perceptible among
what is disordered and changing" (1114D). Plutarch insists that
Parmenides' distinction between what really is and things which
are what they are at one time, or in one context, but not another
should not be misconstrued as an abolition of the latter class of
entities: "how could he have let perception and *doxa*
remain without leaving what is apprehended by perception and
*doxa*?" (1114E-F). Plutarch's discussion of
Parmenides in *Against Colotes* is particularly significant in
that it is a substantial discussion of the relation between his
account of Being and his cosmology by an ancient author later than
Aristotle that is not overtly influenced by Aristotle's own
discussions. In many ways it anticipates the Neoplatonic
interpretation, represented in Simplicius, according to which, broadly
speaking, the two accounts delivered by Parmenides' goddess
describe two levels of reality, the immutable intelligible realm and
the plural and changing sensible realm (see especially
Simplicius's commentary on Arist. *Cael*.
3.1.298b14-24; cf. Procl. *in Ti*.
1.345.18-24).



Later Platonists naturally understood Parmenides as thus anticipating
Plato, for Plato himself seems to have adopted a
"Platonist" understanding of this thinker whose influence
on his own philosophy was every bit as profound as that of Socrates
and the Pythagoreans. Aristotle attributes to both Parmenides and
Plato the recognition that knowledge requires as its objects certain
natures or entities not susceptible to change--to Parmenides in
*De Caelo* 3.1, and to Plato, in remarkably similar language,
in *Metaphysics* 13.4. The arguments at the end of
*Republic* 5 that confirm Aristotle's attribution of this
line of reasoning to Plato are in fact suffused with echoes of
Parmenides. Plato likewise has his fictionalized Parmenides present
something very close to this line of argument in the dialogue bearing
his name: "if someone will not admit that there are general
kinds of entities...and will not specify some form for each
individual thing, he will have nowhere to turn his intellect, since he
does not admit that there is a character for each of the things that
are that is always the same, and in this manner he will destroy the
possibility of discourse altogether" (*Prm*. 135b5-c2).
The Platonic "natures" Aristotle has in mind are clearly
the Forms that Plato himself is prone to describing in language that
echoes the attributes of Parmenidean Being, most notably at
*Symposium* 210e-211b and *Phaedo* 78d and 80b. That
Plato's Forms are made to look like a plurality of Parmenidean
Beings might seem to supply Platonic authority for the meta-principle
interpretation. This would be a rash conclusion, however, for Plato
consistently represents Parmenides as a monist in later dialogues
(see, e.g., *Prm*. 128a8-b1, d1, *Tht*. 180e2-4,
183e3-4, *Sph*. 242d6, 244b6). Determining just what type
of monism Plato means to attribute to Parmenides in these dialogues
ultimately requires plunging into the intricacies of the examination
of Parmenides' thesis in the latter part of the
*Parmenides*.



Plato's understanding of Parmenides is best reflected in that
dialogue's exploration of his thesis in the Second Deduction
(*Prm*. 142a9 ff.). There the One is shown to have a number of
properties that reflect those Parmenides himself attributed to Being
in the course of fr. 8: that it is in itself and the same as itself,
that it is at rest, that it is like itself, that it is in contact with
itself, etc. In the Second Deduction, all these properties prove to
belong to the One in virtue of its own nature and in relation to
itself. This deduction also shows that the One has apparently contrary
attributes, though these prove to belong to it in other aspects, that
is, not in virtue of its own nature and/or not in relation to itself.
Plato would have found a model for his complex account of the various
and seemingly conflicting properties of the One in the two
major phases of Parmenides' poem if he, too, subscribed to
an "aspectual" interpretation of Parmenides, according to
which the Way of Conviction describes the cosmos in its intelligible
aspect *qua* being, while allowing that this description is
compatible with an alternate description of this self-same entity as a
world system comprised of differentiated and changing objects. These
two perspectives are notably reflected, respectively, in the
*Timaeus*'s descriptions of the intelligible living
creature and of the visible cosmos modelled upon it, both of which are
suffused with echoes of Parmenides (see especially *Ti*. 30d2,
31a7-b3, 32c5-33a2, 33b4-6, d2-3, 34a3-4, b1-2, and
92c6-9).



That Aristotle also viewed the two major phases of Parmenides'
poem as dual accounts of the same entity in different aspects is
perhaps most apparent in his characterization of Parmenides, in the
course of the discussion at *Metaphysics*
1.5.986b27-34, as having supposed that "what is
is one in account but plural with respect to perception."
Theophrastus likewise seems to have adopted such a line. Alexander of
Aphrodisias quotes him as having written the following of Parmenides
in the first book of his *On the Natural Philosophers*:



> 
> Coming after this man [sc. Xenophanes], Parmenides of Elea, son of
> Pyres, went along both paths. For he both declares that the universe
> is eternal and also attempts to explain the generation of the things
> that are, though without taking the same view of them both, but
> supposing that in accordance with truth the universe is one and
> ungenerated and spherical in shape, while in accordance with the view
> of the multitude, and with a view to explaining the generation of
> things as they appear to us, making the principles two, fire and
> earth, the one as matter and the other as cause and agent (Alex.Aphr.
> *in Metaph*. 31.7-16; cf. Simp. *in Ph*.
> 25.15-16, D.L. 9.21-2).
> 



Many of Theophrastus's points here can be traced back to
Aristotle, including the identification of Parmenides' elemental
light and night as, respectively, fire functioning as an efficient
principle and earth functioning as a material principle (cf. Arist.
*Ph*. 1.5.188a20-2, *GC*
1.3.318b6-7, 2.3.330b13-14,
*Metaph*. 1.5.986b28-987a2). The
passage on the whole suggests that, like Plato and Aristotle,
Theophrastus understood Parmenides as furnishing dual accounts of the
universe, first in its intelligible and then in its phenomenal
aspects.



While it would be going too far to claim that Plato, Aristotle,
Theophrastus, and the ancient thinkers who follow their broad view of
Parmenides as a generous monist got Parmenides right on all points,
nonetheless the impulse toward "correcting" (or just
ignoring) the ancient evidence for Presocratic thought has in this
case gone too far. Both Plato and Aristotle understood Parmenides as
perhaps the first to have developed the idea that apprehension of what
is unchanging is of a different order epistemologically than
apprehension of things subject to change. More fundamentally, Plato
and Aristotle both came to understand Parmenides as a type of generous
monist whose conception of what is belongs more to theology or first
philosophy than to natural science. This involved understanding
Parmenides' cosmology as his own account of the world in so far
as it is subject to change. It also involved understanding the first
part of Parmenides' poem as metaphysical, in the proper
Aristotelian sense of being concerned with what is not subject to
change and enjoys a non-dependent existence. Most importantly, both
Plato and Aristotle recognized that a distinction between the
fundamental modalities or ways of being was central to
Parmenides' system. None of these major points is tainted by the
kind of obvious anachronism that rightly makes one suspicious, for
instance, about Aristotle's identification of Parmenides'
light and night with the elements fire and earth. None of these broad
points, in other words, involves Plato or Aristotle viewing Parmenides
through the distorting lens of their own concepetual apparatus. The
next section will outline the view of Parmenides' philosophical
achievement that results from attending to his modal distinctions and
to the epistemological distinctions he builds upon them.


### 3.5 The Modal Interpretation



Numerous interpreters have variously resisted the idea that Parmenides
meant to deny the very existence of the world we experience. They have
consequently advocated some more robust status for the cosmological
portion of his poem. (See, e.g., Minar 1949, Woodbury 1958, Chalmers
1960, Clark 1969, Owens 1974, Robinson 1979, de Rijk 1983, and
Finkelberg 1986, 1988, and 1999, and Hussey 1990.) Unfortunately, too
many interpretations of this type deploy the terms
"reality," "phenomena," and
"appearance" so ambiguously that it can be difficult to
tell whether they intend to attribute an objective or merely some
subjective existence to the inhabitants of the
"phenomenal" world. More positively, a number of these
interpreters have recognized the important point that the two parts of
the goddess' revelation are presented as having different
epistemic status. (See also the proposal at Kahn 1969, 710 and n. 13,
to identify Parmenides' subject in the Way of Conviction as
"the object of knowing, what is or can be known.") They
have nonetheless failed to take proper account of the modal
distinctions that define Parmenides' presentation of the ways of
inquiry. In this omission they are not alone, of course, since none of
the types of interpretation reviewed so far recognizes that Parmenides
was the first philosopher rigorously to distinguish what must be, what
must not be, and what is but need not be.



In the crucial fragment 2, the goddess says she will describe for
Parmenides "which ways of inquiry alone there are for
understanding" (fr. 2.2). The common construal of this phrase as
tantamount to the only *conceivable* ways of inquiry has been
one of the principal spurs for readings according to which only two,
not three, paths feature in the poem, for it is natural to wonder how
the goddess can present fragment 2's two paths as the only
conceivable paths of inquiry and nonetheless in fragment 6 present
still another path, that along which mortals are said to wander.
Two-path interpretations respond to this apparent difficulty by
identifying the path of mortal inquiry with fragment 2's second
path (though implausibly so, as noted above, sect. 2.2).
Parmenides' goddess in fact has good reason to distinguish the
two ways of inquiry presented in fragment 2 from the way subsequently
presented in fragment 6. The two ways of fragment 2, unlike the third
way, are marked as ways "for understanding," that is, for
achieving the kind of understanding that contrasts with the
"wandering understanding" the goddess later says is
characteristic of mortals. The use of the Greek datival infinitive in
the phrase, "there are for understanding" (*eisi
noesai*, fr. 2.2b; cf. Empedocles fr. 3.12 for the identical
construction) distinguishes the two ways introduced in this fragment
from the one subsequently introduced in fragment 6, as ways
*for* understanding. That the goal is specifically
understanding *that does not wander* becomes clear when she
subsequently presents the third way as one followed by "mortals
who know nothing" (fr. 6.4), which leads to "wandering
understanding" (*plagkton noon*, fr. 6.6).
Comparison with fr. 8.34-6a's retrospective indication
that "understanding" (*noema*, *to
noein*), by which is apparently meant trustworthy thought (cf. fr.
8.50), has itself been a major goal of the inquiry suggests that a way
for understanding is one along which this goal of attaining
trustworthy understanding might be achieved.



The two ways of inquiry that lead to thought that does not wander are:
"that [it] is and that [it] is not not to be" (fr.
2.3)--i.e., "that [it] is and that [it] cannot not
be"--and "that [it] is not and that [it] must not
be" (fr. 2.5). Each verse appears to demarcate a distinct
modality or way of being. One might find it natural to call these
modalities, respectively, the modality of necessary being and the
modality of necessary non-being or impossibility. Parmenides conceives
of these modalities as ways of being or ways an entity might be rather
than as logical properties. If one respects the organizing metaphor of
the ways of inquiry, one can, even at this stage of the goddess'
revelation, appreciate what it means for "that [it] is and that
[it] cannot not be" to define a way of inquiry. This
specification indicates that what Parmenides is looking for is what is
and cannot not be--or, more simply, what must be. Pursuing this
way of inquiry requires maintaining a constant focus on the modality
of the object of his search as he tries to attain a fuller conception
of what an entity that is and cannot not be, or that must be, must be
like. To remain on this path Parmenides must resolutely reject any
conception of the object of his search that proves incompatible with
its mode of being, as the goddess reminds him at numerous points.



What one looks for along this path of inquiry is what is and cannot
not be, or, more simply, what must be. It is therefore appropriate to
think of the first path as the path of necessary being and of what
lies along it as what is (what it is) necessarily. What is and cannot
not be will be whatever is (what it is) actually throughout the
history of this world. Likewise, what is not and must not be will be
whatever is not (anything) actually at any moment in the world's
history. There are of course other ways for things to be, but not,
according to Parmenides, other ways for things to be such that
apprehension of them will figure as understanding that does not
wander. The second way is introduced alongside the first because the
modality of necessary non-being or impossibility specified in fr. 2.5
is just as constant and invariable as the modality of necessary being
specified in fr. 2.3. Whatever thought there may be about what lies
along this second way will be unwavering and, as such, will contrast
with the wandering thought typical of mortals. Even if the effort to
think about what lies along the second way ends (as it does) in a
total failure of apprehension, this non-apprehension remains
unwavering. Inquiry along the second way involves, first, keeping in
mind that what one is looking for is not and must not be, and thereby
trying to discover what an entity that is in this way must be like. It
is immediately evident, though, what an entity that is not and must
not be is like: nothing at all. The goddess warns Parmenides not to
set out on the second way because there is no prospect of finding or
forming any conception of what must not be. She thus tells Parmenides
at fr. 2.6 that this is a path where nothing at all can be learned by
inquiry.



Paying proper attention to the modal clauses in the goddess'
specification of the first two ways of inquiry enables us to
understand the last two verses of fragment 2 as making a sound
philosophical point. She says, again, at fr. 2.7-8:
"neither could you apprehend what is not, for it is not to be
accomplished,/ nor could you indicate it." Here she is warning
Parmenides against proceeding along the second way, and it should be
clear that "what is not" (*to me eon*) is the
goddess' way of referring to what is in the manner specified
just two verses above: "that [it] is not and that [it] must not
be" (fr. 2.5). She declares that Parmenides could neither know
nor indicate "what is not" by way of explaining her
assertion in the preceding verse that the second way is a way wholly
without report. Thus here "what is not" (*to me
eon*) serves as shorthand for "what is not and must not
be." (Given the awkwardness of having to deploy the phrase
"what is not and must not be" whenever referring to what
enjoys the second way's mode of being, one would expect
Parmenides to have employed such a device even if he had written in
prose.) One cannot, in fact, form any definite conception of what is
not and must not be, and *a fortiori* one cannot indicate it in
any way. (Try to picture a round square, or to point one out to
someone else.) Parmenides has not fallen prey here to the purportedly
paradoxical character of negative existential statements but makes a
perfectly acceptable point about the inconceivability of what
necessarily is not. Any philosopher with an interest in the relation
between conceivability and possibility should be prepared to recognize
in Parmenides' assertion that you could neither apprehend nor
indicate what is not (and must not be) one of the earliest instances
of a form of inference--that from inconceivability to
impossibility--that continues to occupy a central position in
metaphysical reasoning.



Before undertaking to guide Parmenides toward a fuller conception of
what is and cannot not be, the goddess properly warns him away from a
third possible path of inquiry in fragments 6 and 7, while at the same
time reminding him of the imperative to think of what is in the manner
specified in fr. 2.3 only as being (what it is). Fragment 6 begins
with the goddess instructing Parmenides that it is necessary to say
and think that "What Is" (*to eon*) *is*,
and that he is not to think of it as not being. (Here *to eon*
functions as a shorthand designation for what is in the way specified
in fr. 2.3, that is, what is and cannot not be, paralleling fr.
2.7's use of *to me eon* or "what is
not" as shorthand for what is in the way specified in fr. 2.5,
that is, what is not and must not be.) This is her essential directive
to Parmenides regarding how to pursue the first path of inquiry. The
goddess also indicates in this fragment that the second major phase of
her revelation will proceed along the path typically pursued by
mortals whose reliance upon sensation has yielded only wandering
understanding. She provides what amounts to a modal specification of
this path of inquiry when she describes mortals as supposing
"that it is and is not the same/ and not the same" (fr.
6.8-9a). The sense of this difficult clause seems to be that
mortals mistakenly suppose that an object of genuine understanding may
be subject to the variableness implicit in their conception of it as
being and not being the same, and being and not being not the same.
This is not to say that the things upon which ordinary humans have
exclusively focused their attention, because of their reliance upon
sensation, *do not exist*. It is merely to say that they do not
enjoy the mode of necessary being required of an object of unwandering
understanding. The imagery in fr. 6.4-7 that paints mortals as
wandering blind and helpless portrays them as having failed entirely
to realize that there is something that must be that is available for
them to apprehend if only they could awaken from their stupor. Even
so, the goddess does not say that mortals have no apprehension.
Understanding that wanders is still understanding.



The goddess reveals to Parmenides, however, the possibility of
achieving understanding that does not wander or that is stable and
unchanging, precisely because its object is and cannot not be (what it
is). The third way of inquiry can never lead to this, and thus it is
not presented by the goddess as a path of inquiry for understanding.
It directs the inquirer's attention to things that are (what
they are) only contingently or temporarily: they are and then again
are not, or they are a certain way and then again are not that way.
The problem with this path is not, as too many interpreters have
understood it to be, that nothing *exists* to be discovered
along this way. There are innumerably many things that are (and exist)
in the manner specified at fr. 6.8-9a (and fr. 8.40-1).
However, since their being is merely contingent, Parmenides thinks
there can be no stable apprehension of them, no thoughts about them
that remain steadfast and do not wander, and thus no true or reliable
conviction. According to Parmenides, genuine conviction cannot be
found by focusing one's attention on things that are subject to
change. This is why he has the goddess repeatedly characterize the
cosmology in the second phase of her revelation as deceptive or
untrustworthy. The modal interpretation thus makes it relatively
straightforward to understand the presence of the poem's
cosmology. It is an account of the principles, origins, and operation
of the world's mutable population. It is Parmenides' own
account, the best he was able to provide, and one firmly in the
tradition of Presocratic cosmology. At the same time, however,
Parmenides supposed there was more to the world than all those things
that have grown, now are, and will hereafter end (as he describes them
in fragment 19). There is also what is (what it is) and cannot not be
(what it is).



The first major phase of the goddess' revelation in fragment 8
is, on the modal interpretation, a meditation on the nature of what
must be. The goddess leads Parmenides to form a conception of the
attributes whatever must be has to possess just in virtue of its mode
of being. If one appreciates that Parmenides is concerned with
determining what can be inferred about the nature or character of What
Is simply from its mode of being, one can see that he is in fact
entitled to the inferences he draws in the major deductions of
fragment 8. Certainly what must be cannot have come to be, nor can it
cease to be. Both possibilities are incompatible with its mode of
being. Likewise, what must be cannot change in any respect, for this
would involve its not being what it is, which is also incompatible
with its mode of being, since what must be must be what it is. On the
assumption, inevitable at the time, that it is a spatially extended or
physical entity, certain other attributes can also be inferred. What
must be must be free from any internal variation. Such variation would
involve its being something or having a certain character in some
place(s) while being something else or having another character in
others, which is incompatible with the necessity of its (all) being
what it is. For much the same reason, it must be free from variation
at its extremity. Since the only solid that is uniform at its
extremity is a sphere, what must be must be spherical.



It is difficult to see what more Parmenides could have inferred as to
the character of what must be simply on the basis of its modality as a
necessary being. In fact, the attributes of the main program have an
underlying systematic character suggesting they are meant to exhaust
the logical possibilities: What Is both must be (or exist), and it
must be what it is, not only temporally but also spatially. For What
Is to be (or exist) across times is for it to be ungenerated and
deathless; and for it to be *what it is* across times is for it
to be "still" or unchanging. For What Is to be (or exist)
everywhere is for it to be whole. For it to be *what it is* at
every place internally is for it to be uniform; and to be so
everywhere at its extremity is for it to be "perfect" or
"complete." Taken together, the attributes shown to belong
to what must be amount to a set of perfections: everlasting existence,
immutability, the internal invariances of wholeness and uniformity,
and the invariance at its extremity of being optimally shaped. What Is
has thus proven to be not only a necessary but, in many ways, a
perfect entity.



On the modal interpretation, Parmenides may be counted a
"generous" monist. While he reasons that there is only one
entity that must be, he also sees that there are manifold entities
that are but need not be (what they are). Parmenides was a
"generous" monist because the existence of what must be
does not preclude the existence of all the things that are but need
not be. There are at least two options for envisaging how this is
supposed to be the case. Some who have understood Parmenides as a
generous monist have adopted a view similar to Aristotle's. In
*Metaphysics* 1.5, Aristotle remarks that Parmenides seems to
have had a conception of formal unity (986b18-19),
and he gives a compressed account of the reasoning by which he takes
Parmenides to have arrived at such a conception
(986b27-31). Then, as already noted, he adds the
comment that Parmenides, being compelled to go with the phenomena, and
supposing that *what is is one with respect to the account (sc. of
its essence) but plural with respect to perception*, posited a
duality of principles as the basis for his account of the phenomena
(986b27-34). Thus, for Aristotle, Parmenides held
that what is is one, in a strong and strict sense, but *it* is
also many (in and for perception). A number of modern interpreters
have also advocated some form of what amounts to the ancient
"aspectual" view of the relation between the two phases of
the goddess' revelation. (See Owens 1974 and Finkelberg 1999,
who explicitly position their views as heirs to that at Arist.
*Metaph*. 1.5.986b27-34.) Parmenides would
certainly have been a generous monist if he envisioned What Is as
consubstantial with the cosmos's perceptible and mutable
population. But an apparently insurmountable difficulty for this
response comes in the suggestive verses of fr. 4: "but behold
things that, while absent, are steadfastly present to thought:/ for
you will not cut off What Is from holding fast to What Is,/ neither
dispersing everywhere every way in a world-order (*kata
kosmon*)/ nor drawing together."



It thus seems preferable to understand What Is as coterminous but not
consubstantial with the perceptible cosmos: it is in exactly the same
place where the perceptible cosmos is, but is a separate and distinct
"substance." (Note the parallels between fr. 8.30b-31 and
fr. 10.5-7, as well as between fr. 8.24 and fr. 9.3.) On this view,
What Is imperceptibly interpenetrates or runs through all things while
yet maintaining its own identity distinct from theirs. Something like
this seems to be how Anaxagoras envisioned the relation between Mind
and the rest of the world's things: Mind, he says, "is now
where also all the others are, in that which surrounds many things and
in those which have accreted and in those which have separated
out" (Anaxag. fr. 14). Parmenides' vision of the relation
between What Is and the developed cosmos, as coterminous but not
consubstantial, also has its analogue in Xenophanes' conception
of the relation between his one greatest god and the cosmos, as well
as in Empedocles' conception of the divinity that is the
persistent aspect of the cosmos' perfectly unified condition,
darting throughout the cosmos with its swift thought. Both appear to
be coterminous but not consubstantial with the cosmos they
penetrate.



Although What Is in Parmenides has its nearest analogue in these
divine principles, Parmenides himself never in the extant fragments
calls What Is divine or otherwise suggests that it is a god. Instead,
he develops an exhaustive conception of the attributes what must be
has to possess, by systematically pursuing the fundamental idea that
what must be both must be or exist, and must be what it is, not only
temporally but also spatially. Whatever other attributes it might have
that cannot be understood to belong to it in one of these ways do not
enter into Parmenides' conception of What Is. Thus it has none
of the features of the religious tradition's heavenly gods that
persist as attributes of Xenophanes' greatest god, despite
resembling it in other respects. If Xenophanes can be seen as a
founder of rational theology, then Parmenides' distinction among
the principal modes of being and his derivation of the attributes that
must belong to what must be, simply as such, qualify him to be seen as
the founder of metaphysics or ontology as a domain of inquiry distinct
from theology.