"The crisis at the heart of Parmenides' argument, "is or is not," rules out any candidate for an ultimate entity in an explanation of what there is that is subject to coming-to-be, passing-away, or alteration of any sort. Such an entity must be a whole, complete, unchanging unity: it must be a thing that is of a single kind β¦ But it does not follow from this that there can be only one such entity. Parmenides' arguments allow for a plurality of fundamental, predicationally unified entities that can be used to explain the world reported by the senses."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Patricia Curd, in The Legacy of Parmenides (1997), p. 241
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Parmenides
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Parmenides
Parmenides (fl. early 5th century BC) was an ancient Greek monist philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy, and founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem which has survived only in fragmentary form, in which he argues that Reality is One, change is impossible, and that existence is timeless and uniform.
49 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Parmenides β
Related Quotes
"The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this iβ¦"
"For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be."
"It is indifferent to me where I am to begin, for there shall I return again."
"Never will this prevail, that the things that are not are β bar your thought from this road of inquiry."
"Do not let habit, born from experience, force you along this road, directing aimless eye and echoing ear and tongue; β¦"
"There is one story left, one road: that it is. And on this road there are very many signs that, being, is uncreated aβ¦"
"The purest example of the Greek desire to comprehend, a desire which in him would have nothing to do with what was noβ¦"
"The Greek tradition was a complete contrast to that of the Far East. ...the Greeks placed logic at the pinnacle of huβ¦"
"Parmenides believed that all Being is what he called the One, and denied absolutely the possibility of change. He belβ¦"
"You must learn all things, both the unshaken heart of persuasive truth, and the opinions of mortals in which there isβ¦"