Parmenides Was Right

For Thinking and Being Are the Same

After a long and necessary period of passivity, I have felt the call to return to public writing. I thank everyone for their prayers and their continued support.

The present article is once again more on the introductory and pedagogical side of things. It was written in about a day, and I hope I have not misspoken too gravely in my haste. In it, I simply introduce some key ideas of Parmenides and relate them to Platonism, particularly to Plotinus. It is sometimes vague rather than esoteric. My hope is that writing articles of this sort will help me to write the longer and more technical pieces that are my goal. There is more to come.

Introduction

The very names of certain ancients are powerful enough to function almost as magic words: Pythagoras, Empedocles, Heraclitus, not to mention legendary figures like Orpheus or Hermes Trismegistus. The more enigmatic the thought, the more “primitive” the reasoning, the more obscure the figure—all these things serve to solidify the name and attract to it a kind of occult power. Notably this occurs where the sage in question is also a holy man, a thaumaturge, or the founder of an esoteric brotherhood. Whatever fragments of text we receive from (or about) such men always touch us as being deeper and more profound by far than those composed in a later and more cynical age.

Perhaps the name of Parmenides still holds something of its old power.

While we have in some ways gained much by the sharp division of subject and object, thought and reality, epistemology and ontology, theory and fact, in other ways man has struck himself down with a Dolorous Stroke from which he has yet to arise. It is a necessary truth that the relative sharpening of one distinction produces, as if by a law of conservation operating in the act of thinking itself, the weakening of another. One is not permitted to be a god for whom all is equally clear and for whom everything is equally real. Though we all of us weep, it cannot be so.

Perhaps Parmenides and the “primitive” nature of his thought can dissolve some of our own ingrained distortions and restore us to a long-lost health.

In the history of philosophy, in the progressive accumulation of noise and cope, certain things have been forgotten and even purposefully covered over. What was once clear as day has become overhung by shadows, and our excited eyes have tended elsewhere. We recline at table, concocting wild tales of what hovers just behind our backs, claiming victory over what even now floats menacingly above our heads. But one does not banish what is real merely by decreeing that it be false.

Perhaps it is time to propitiate once again the ghost of the sage of Elea.

Parmenides and Plato

Of all the Pre-Socratic philosophers, Parmenides was perhaps the most respected by Plato. The latter’s masterwork of esoteric metaphysics, the Parmenides, has an elderly Parmenides discussing the theory of Forms with a youthful but enthusiastic Socrates. Ultimately, Parmenides defeats the young philosopher at every turn, suggesting at the last that, while the theory of Forms carries with it numerous difficulties, the Forms must exist, and furthermore must be “always the same” (Parm. 135c). He tells Socrates that, at the moment, the latter is too inexperienced to successfully defend the Forms against a master dialectician (which he undoubtedly is and was). What follows is the famous “gymnastic” or “exercise”, the elaboration of various hypotheses regarding the one and the many; most consider these to be the most obscure passages in all of Plato.

Some have foolishly read the Parmenides as a Platonic disavowal of the earlier-held theory of Forms, to be replaced by alternative frameworks in later dialogues such as Sophist and Statesman, usually with an emphasis on “immanence” and “conceptual analysis”. On this interpretation, Parmenides’ concluding words to Socrates before the gymnastic, and the whole point of the gymnastic itself, become meaningless.

While the Parmenides fulfills several functions simultaneously, some of these are clearer than others, and some more esoteric. One function is to create an explicit dialogue between the cornerstone of Platonism, the theory of Forms, and the Parmenidean insight into Being. Earlier in the work, Zeno, Parmenides’ pupil, argues with Socrates, presenting the latter with a classic Eleatic conundrum regarding the one and the many. Socrates adduces the theory of Forms to try to avoid the contradictions brought to light by Zeno regarding things being both like and unlike. The details of this argument are not as important for our purposes here as the overall shape of the dialogue, summarized in the following steps: Eleatic-style proof by contradiction, proposal of Forms, critique of Forms, gymnastic. The last is presumably to ready Socrates for a true dialectical defense of Forms.

Parmenides thus functions in the dialogue as a true master, a role usually assumed by Socrates. But here, the former evinces none of the humility of the latter; he does not claim to know nothing, but rather dispenses a secret wisdom, evidently judging that Socrates is a proper vessel for such an outpouring.

From this we can conclude something further: Plato is placing himself in the lineage of Parmenides via Socrates (at least the Socrates of the dialogue). The Forms were perhaps first apprehended and theorized to avoid Eleatic paradoxes, but here Plato admits that the earlier theory (represented by the young Socrates) did not succeed. Parmenides is therefore still the source and wellspring of the Platonic perfection. Socrates begins from Parmenides (or here from the younger Eleatic philosopher Zeno), and when this has proved inadequate, who but Parmenides himself can provide the truth? Always what is needed is a return to the source. Perhaps today we should return to just the same source, and contemplate the Being of Parmenides, so that we too can train ourselves in Platonism. Indeed, later Platonic philosophy, in its numerous systematic articulations, never truly leaves Parmenides behind. He is not a primitive logician to be superseded in our enlightened age, but a constant companion on the road to reality.

Parmenides the Logician?

It is indicative of our particular malaise that historians and scholars of philosophy typically designate Parmenides as someone pathologically obsessed with the consequences of logic. Parmenides, certainly, was one of the first philosophers, east or west, to argue as masterfully as he did. His conception of Being was indeed strictly “logical”, and the implications were followed out faithfully in his poem. At one point in that poem, the goddess urges the narrator to judge her argument λόγῳ, usually translated as “rationally” or “logically”. While all of this is true, unfortunately our understanding of “logic”, our sense of what it is and what it does, has warped our interpretation of such facts as these.

There is in fact nothing merely formal about the Parmenidean argument. This is not to say that Parmenides was unaware of logical forms; he obviously was, and his student Zeno went very far in the development of dialectical refutations. In itself this would be a world-historical contribution to philosophy and thought more broadly.

In fact, Parmenides is to be credited with insight into Being, and that to a degree rarely achieved before or since. This is not to say he had a mere “experience” of Being, as one subjective affective state among others, all flat and all equally pitiful. No, he truly thought Being, and here “thought” is not interchangeable with “imagined”, “reasoned about”, “deduced”, or any other such term of our impoverished faculty psychology.

If the expression of the way of Truth involves certain rigorously logical relations, certain totalizing distinctions, and certain dialectical forms, this should rather tell us about Being than about the psychological profile of any human being. Indeed, ontology is not identical to logic, and Being is prior to any logic. Parmenides did not therefore become bewitched by “pure reason”, or any such nonsense, but beheld what Being is really like, and sought to explain it both through poetry and argument, perhaps primarily to communicate its means of access, which is thought alone. This is simply what every true philosopher attempts to do, though very few have achieved it half so well.

The Proem

The work of Parmenides, On Nature (ΠΕΡΙ ΦΥΣΕΩΣ), is a poem. It begins with a kind of prologue.

Parmenides rides upon a horse-drawn chariot, preceded by immortal maidens, the daughters of the sun, from out of the House of Night. He rides to the gates of the paths of night and day. There, at the threshold, resides a goddess, variously identified by scholars as Necessity (Ἀνάγκη) or Truth (Ἀλήθεια); some are content to leave her unnamed. She declares that right (θέμις) and justice (δική) have brought him here. Consequently, she assures the sage, “it is right that you should learn all things” (χρεὼ δέ σε πάντα πυθέσθαι).¹

The Twofold Primordial Division

It might be said that Parmenides’ poem, which we have only in fragmentary form, expresses just one thing: Being (and negatively, what “is” not Being). This it does by enacting a twofold primordial division.

The poem, after its prologue as recounted briefly above, is divided into two parts, the first titled “Truth” (ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ) and the second “Seeming” or “Opinion” (ΔΟΞΑ). It is worth dwelling on these terms for a moment (or for one’s whole life, as the case may be). Heidegger famously emphasized truth as unveiling, seeing in the term ἀλήθεια the alpha-privative (“a-”) and a form of λανθάνω or λήθη, “to escape notice” or “oblivion, forgetting”, respectively. Thus truth would mean something roughly like “un-forgetting” (or unveiling, disclosure). Evidently this is something different than the usual correspondence theory of truth, on Heidegger’s reading at least. We should keep this in mind for later.

On the other hand, δόξα and the related verb δοκεῖν indicate something in between “opinion” and “seeming” or “appearance”. As things appear, so they seem to me to be such and such, and so my opinion regarding them is that they are such and such. Thus the terms have both an ontological and an epistemological valence (or non-discursive and discursive, or experiential and judgmental, or whatever other like distinction one prefers); phenomenology will later exploit this ambiguity to terrifying effect.

In Platonic philosophy, truth is correlated with knowledge (ἐπιστήμη, also sometimes translated “scientific understanding”) and intellection (νόησις and its related verb νοεῖν). Knowledge and intellection are always true, always unveiling the essence (apprehending the Forms). In contrast, δόξα and δοκεῖν are fallible judgments, with or without a reasonable account; these arise from sense-perceptions and the judgments made by the soul on the basis of the assimilated form, on the one hand, and the recollection of the correlate Form (where one is knowledgeable), on the other. The early Platonic dialogues are constantly pondering how to achieve true knowledge as against mere belief or opinion, and, once such knowledge is had, how one would know that indeed they possessed such knowledge.

It is a signature of ancient philosophy that opinion is distinct from knowledge not only in the sense that one is epistemically “stronger” than the other, but because their very objects are different. This is a key to understanding Plato, but it is already here in Parmenides, if in somewhat occluded form. For Plato, knowledge can only be had of Forms; one cannot have knowledge of the objects of sense-perception. Different cognitive acts have different sets of objects upon which they can act, just as the olfactory sense perceives only smells and the sense of sight sees only colors. Let us see how it stands with Parmenides.

In fragment 2, the goddess initiates Parmenides into the way of truth:

Come, I shall tell you, and do you listen and convey the story,

What routes of inquiry alone there are for thinking:

The one - that [it] is, and that [it] cannot not be,

Is the path of Persuasion (for it attends upon truth);

The other - that [it] is not and that [it] needs must not be,

That I point out to you as wholly unlearnable,

For you could not know what-is-not (for that is not feasible),

Nor could you point it out.

Thus, within the way of truth, two routes or paths are outlined. Importantly, they are paths for “thinking” (νοῆσαι). Thinking is thus subject to the second part of the primordial division, that between Being (or “is”) and non-being (or “is not”, elsewhere called “nothing”). The way of truth is a way of thinking, and it has only one thing to think: Being.

Parmenides’ position is that between Being and non-being there is an infinite chasm, dividing as it were sense from nonsense. For when we say that something “is” not, are we not putting words to what is impossible? If you said that something was not, then what is the something you just pointed out? Strictly speaking, it is something, or else you were referring to… nothing at all.

Thus in fragment 6, we find:

It must be that what is there for speaking and thinking of is; for [it] is there to be,

Whereas nothing is not; that is what I bid you consider,

Once again, “thinking” here has the same root meaning as before (νοεῖν). The phrase “for [it] is there to be” is simply “ἔστι γὰρ εἶναι”, alternately translated “for there is Being". Here we see explicit reasons as to why we cannot “point out” what is not; it “is” not there for us to point out in the first place. If we speak or think of something, therefore, what we refer to is in some fundamental way. Being and non-being (here called “nothing”) are in sharp contrast; we cannot have hazy apprehensions of nothing.

And in fragment 7, we have:

For never shall this prevail, that things that are not are;

But do you restrain your thought from this route of inquiry

The division is merciless. Truth demands that the objects of intellection are; they cannot not be. Nor is it possible for Being and nothing to mix or blend, or transition from one into the other. For thought (which, remember, apprehends Being), there can be no such thing as change. Change demands non-being, either Being coming to be out of non-being (absurd), or non-being coming to be out of Being (equally absurd). This is true whether we are speaking of the generation of substances or of a change of qualities or any other category, as a careful reader can prove to themselves with but a moment of thought.

This aspect of the Parmenidean conception of Being has been criticized, analyzed, deconstructed, and parodied for millennia. One day, Parmenides was debating a filthy cynic or some such person. When the former claimed that motion was impossible, the latter responded by standing up and walking away.² Thus does the way of δόξα vent its spleen upon the truth.

The Fully-Elaborated Primordial Division

Parmenides’ twofold primordial division thus divides Being from non-being, casting away non-being since it “is” nothing and thus cannot be thought. Thus the way of truth is the way of Being, and is the only route for thought. Therefore, in the last analysis we have on the one hand the way of truth, which is the thinking of Being, and on the other the way of seeming, which is a contradictory mixture of Being and non-being, of change and motion, of sprawling multiplicity and the noise of the marketplace. This is the fully elaborated primordial division, with both divisions assimilated into a single structure.

Now, we have thinking on one hand, and belief/seeming on the other, a good Platonic distinction. We know that thinking thinks Being, and that opinion “thinks” becoming (as an incoherent mixture of Being and nothing).

Being: One & Continuous

In fragment 8, the fundamental division is put to work elaborating the implications and features of Being. With each foreclosure, each banishment, we have shaped the space where Being resides. And now it just remains for us to look.

If Being is changeless, then it can neither come to be nor pass away, and so it eternally always is. There was never a moment when it was not, nor can there be one in future. Furthermore, it is “one, continuous” (ἕν, συνεχές). It is completely and equally at all points:

Nor is [it] divisible, since [it] all alike is;

Nor is it somewhat more here, which would keep it from holding together,

Nor is [it] somewhat less, but [it] is all full of what-is.

Therefore [it] is all continuous; for what-is is in contact with what-is.

Because Being is indivisible and continuous, it cannot be more here than there, nor less. This is to be read very strongly: it cannot be more just here than there, nor more hot here than there. For if it were just here but not there, it would be the case that justice was not there. And similarly for everything else that is. It cannot be divided according to any quality, quantity, or lack thereof. It is each of the things that are, and one cannot refer to a part of it wherein something, that is, was not.

Thus we might say that Being is not only continuous, but homogeneous. Throughout its indivisible “body”, at each point it is the same in every way, for it all alike “is” (“is-hot”, “is-just”) and there is nowhere in it where anything is not, for that would be absurd.

Therefore, we are left with a homogeneous Being that is indivisible, the same throughout, that is really real, and that is the object (and the only object) of thinking in the primary sense. It is one in a very strong sense, therefore. Zeno evidently argued against the existence of the many, and this was taken by Socrates in the Platonic Parmenides to amount to a proof of the one (the not-many) by contradiction. But evidently this one-Being is not one in the strongest of all senses; it is not simple, for then it could not be the things that are. In fact, if it were simple, it could not be, because then it would have a minimal distinction between essence and existence, or what it is and that it is. It would then not be one, but two. Therefore, perhaps it is better to call this Being a one-many.

Parmenides & Plotinus

For the Platonist, this is equivalent to the principle Intellect. Intellect is a one-many, containing all the Forms, which is to say all of Being (all Beings). The Forms within Intellect are changeless, never having come to be in time nor perishing at some future moment. They are eternally present, accessed only by intellection, by thinking in the primary sense. Their very presence is truth.

Most importantly, each Form contains all the others, such that there is no place where one Form exists and another does not. Plotinus puts it rather poetically, but not merely metaphorically:

For everything is transparent and there is nothing dark or opaque, but every god is visible to all the others through and through, for it is light that is visible to light. For every god has everything in himself, and, again, he sees everything in another, so that everything is everywhere and all is all and each is all and the glory is unlimited. For each of them is great since even the small is great. And the sun in the intelligible world is all the stars, and all the stars are, again, the sun and all the other stars. Something different stands out in each, even if everything is manifest in all (Plotinus, Enneads 5.8.4.4-11)³

Everything is manifest in all, for if it were not, the Parmenidean consequence would follow: Non-being would be mixed with Being, and this cannot be. Being, therefore, is one, identical, and simultaneously everywhere whole. Platonists were more careful not to ascribe spatial existence to Being, whereas Parmenides likened Being to a sphere; this is a function above all of the development of philosophical vocabulary and dialectic, and not one of greater intelligence or insight. In any case, Being is not in space and thus there is no problem with it being everywhere, and being a kind of fractal Truth. Sometimes it is likened by Plotinus to a science: the theorems of the science contain within themselves reference to the greater science of which they are a part, and each theorem mutually implies all others; despite this, one theorem is different from another.

In addition, it is worth considering the relation between thinking and being, and how their identity also finds its way from Parmenides into Platonism. Consider fragment 3:

…because the same thing is there for thinking and for being.

Or alternatively:

…Thinking and Being are the same thing.⁴

And the Greek:

τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἔστιν τε καὶ εἶναι

The syntax makes this fragment famously frustrating. We have already explained how thinking is the access to Being, and how, in order to think something, it must be. But the Platonic interpretation of fragment 3 takes the thinking-Being dyad still further. Primary thinking, that is the activity of Intellect, is identical to Being, which is to say all the Forms. The nature of this identity is profound.

In the first place, it is an ancient idea that like knows like. In the most extreme form, this could manifest in theories positing the eye or the mind as taking on the precise shape of the thought or thing seen, in miniature as it were. Thus, note that the term “knows” in our present maxim is used quite loosely and quite generally, standing in for, at the very least, any cognitive act or relation.

The same (though more sophisticated) intuition occurs in Plato’s theory of recollection. Consider the implication of Meno’s Paradox: If you are seeking to know something, how would you know when you found it, if it were not already within you? It is necessary for the knowledge to be already within, to be already known, such that when one encounters it it is recognized; the soul fits what is within it to what is without and makes a comparison of sorts. Like knows like—if there were nothing like unto the external object within you, it could not be comprehended or known (again using “know” loosely). Or finally, for such is the fecundity of the maxim, we can like can be said to know like in the sense of classes of cognition: intellection knows the intelligibles because there is something like between them; similarly, sense-perception knows the sensibles. Everything in its proper place, its proper domain, related to its proper objects; all is held together by some degree of identity (and difference).

But let us see how it is with primary thinking, since “νοεῖν” is the term used by Parmenides in fragment 3. In Ennead 5.5, Plotinus argues that the intelligibles must be inside Intellect, which is to say that Intellect must be identical to them. For if they were external to Intellect, then thinking would receive mere impressions (τύποι), which is to say, not the Beings themselves but an image thereof (Enneads 5.5.1). But then how would it differ from sense-perception? In sense-perception, the object remains outside, and sends a mere impression to my senses. The gap between perceiver and perceived is pernicious, and opens itself to all sorts of skeptical arguments. But if knowledge is to be infallible, then it cannot countenance such a gap. If knowledge at all (in the exalted sense) is to be possible, then the primary thinking must be identical to Being, i.e., Intellect must have the intelligibles within itself. Even further, each intelligible is an intellect and every intellect is an intelligible; so strong is the identity of thinking and Being (without yet being absolute identity or simple oneness).

Plotinus’ theory of how the Intellect thinks the Forms, of the activity of Intellect and the partial identity relation implied, of the relative priority of thinking and Being in the ‘generation’ of the intelligibles—all this could be given much more space, and will be in future articles. But here we are sticking to the basics as a commentary on Parmenides. Plotinus himself cites (and is one manuscript source for) fragment 3. Let us all thank him for preserving such wisdom.

All knowledge is self-knowledge, “for thinking and being are the same thing”. The intelligibles are internal to Intellect, “for thinking and being are the same thing”. Perfect knowledge exists, and thus our own cognition is made possible, “for thinking and being are the same thing”. See how the whole complex of the Platonic theory of knowledge can be explained and supported by the Parmenidean conception of Being!

Being & Truth

The identity of thinking of Being has an implication that is often missed, and that is sorely worth considering. Heidegger emphasized it (as he always did), and perhaps he was right in this case.

Truth is rightly considered an attendant of Being. In the commonplace understanding, truth obtains in the correspondence of either thought or statement (or proposition, God forbid) with “reality” or with what is. . If my statement matches or reduplicates what is, then I have said something true, otherwise false. Truth thus emerges in correspondence (thus the infamous and disgusting phrase “correspondence theory of truth”).

As noted above, “truth” in Greek is “ἀλήθεια”. Just as Being is misinterpreted, misunderstood, and forgotten, so too is its attendant, ἀλήθεια. Just as we are not to read Parmenides’ Being as the summum genus, perhaps we are not to understand his truth as correspondence. Let us see how it stands.

Being is (and here Heidegger begins rolling in his grave). This means: Being is present, as the one-whole totality of Beings. The appearance of these Beings (or this Being) is permanent, everpresent, everywhere, always one and unchanging. They appear to the divine Intellect, as Parmenides said they are dis-covered by thinking, without ceasing. This is just to say that they always are and never “are” not. The individual Being itself is identical to its self-showing to Intellect, which is identical to itself. Being cannot be distinguished from this self-uncovering, and from the self-contemplation of Intellect in its substantial act. Platonism declares that this self-identity makes possible any correspondence (or illusion of correspondence) that follows upon it. The very possibility of correspondence requires both the shining of the glory of Being in all its Beings as well as a separation from this, such that the unreality of seeming finds itself thrust out very near to the darkness of what cannot be thought. The truth of what is external, in other words, is derivative of the truth that is this showing and this thinking—and this Being.

Plotinus puts it this way, referring to the Being in Intellect:

So, the real truth [ὄντως ἀλήθεια] is also not its being in harmony [συμφωνοῦσα] with something else, but with itself, and it expresses [λέγει] nothing else besides itself, but what it expresses, it is, and what it is, this is also what it expresses. (5.5.2.18-20)

As indicated earlier, this is hardly the position of a logician. Perhaps those who interpret Parmenides’ goddess as Necessity are enchanted by the ontologist’s rigorous logic, whereas those who call her Truth have some glimpse of this prior reality. It is presented by Parmenides himself as a revelation, after an initiatory journey beyond the gates of duality. The heart of ontology is the insight into Being, not the force of logical necessity. Any logic, any correspondence of statement and what is, is posterior to this. We would do well not to be seduced by language, here as everywhere. For judgment comes after the vision, when one has descended here, and we return once again, at least in part, to the way of seeming.

1. The translations of Parmenides are from David Gallop, unless otherwise noted.

2. I cannot remember where I read this story, which is likely apocryphal; it may have been Zeno rather than Parmenides, and it may not have been a cynic, but in either case the tale is appropriate here. A brief perusal of Diogenes Laertius turned up nothing.

3. The Plotinus passages quoted are the Cambridge translation by Gerson et al.

4. trans. Vlastos.