Plato's Parmenides

Plato's Parmenides PDF

Author: Samuel Scolnicov

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2003-07-08

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 0520925114

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Of all Plato’s dialogues, the Parmenides is notoriously the most difficult to interpret. Scholars of all periods have disagreed about its aims and subject matter. The interpretations have ranged from reading the dialogue as an introduction to the whole of Platonic metaphysics to seeing it as a collection of sophisticated tricks, or even as an elaborate joke. This work presents an illuminating new translation of the dialogue together with an extensive introduction and running commentary, giving a unified explanation of the Parmenides and integrating it firmly within the context of Plato's metaphysics and methodology. Scolnicov shows that in the Parmenides Plato addresses the most serious challenge to his own philosophy: the monism of Parmenides and the Eleatics. In addition to providing a serious rebuttal to Parmenides, Plato here re-formulates his own theory of forms and participation, arguments that are central to the whole of Platonic thought, and provides these concepts with a rigorous logical and philosophical foundation. In Scolnicov's analysis, the Parmenides emerges as an extension of ideas from Plato's middle dialogues and as an opening to the later dialogues. Scolnicov’s analysis is crisp and lucid, offering a persuasive approach to a complicated dialogue. This translation follows the Greek closely, and the commentary affords the Greekless reader a clear understanding of how Scolnicov’s interpretation emerges from the text. This volume will provide a valuable introduction and framework for understanding a dialogue that continues to generate lively discussion today.

Legacy of Parmenides

Legacy of Parmenides PDF

Author: Patricia Curd

Publisher: Parmenides Publishing

Published: 2004-10-15

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1930972423

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Parmenides of Elea was the most important and influential philosopher before Plato. He rejected as impossible the scientific inquiry practiced by the earlier Presocratic philosophers and held that generation, destruction, and change are unreal and that only one thing exists. In this book, Patricia Curd argues that Parmenides sought to reform rather than to reject scientific inquiry, and she offers a more coherent account of his influence on later philosophers.The Legacy of Parmenides examines Parmenides' arguments, considering his connection to earlier Greek thought and how his account of what-is could have served as a model for later philosophers. Curd also explores the theories of his successors, including the Pluralists (Anaxagoras and Empedocles), the Atomists (Leucippus and Democritus), the later Eleatics (Zeno and Melissus), and the later Presocratics (Philolaus of Croton and Diogenes of Apollonia). She concludes with a discussion of the importance of Parmenides' work to Plato's Theory of Forms.The Legacy of Parmenides challenges traditional views of early Greek philosophy and provides new insights into the work of Parmenides.

Parmenides of Elea

Parmenides of Elea PDF

Author: Parmenides

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 1991-01-01

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 9780802069085

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David Gallop provides a Greek text and a new facing-page translation of the extant fragments of Parmenides' philosophical poem. He also includes the first complete translation into English of the contexts in which the fragments have been transmitted to us, and of the ancient testimonia regarding Parmenides' life and thought. All of the fragments have been translated in full and are arranged in the order that has become canonical since the publication of the fifth edition of Diels-Rranz's Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Alternative renderings are provided for passages whose meaning is disputed or where major questions of interpretation hinge upon the text or translation adopted. In an extended introductory essay, Gallop offers guidance on the background of the poem, and a continuous exposition of it, together with a critical discussion of its basic argument. The volume also includes an extensive bibliography, a glossary of key terms in the poem, and a section on sources and authorities.

Fragments of Parmenides

Fragments of Parmenides PDF

Author: Parmenides

Publisher:

Published: 2017-12-10

Total Pages: 30

ISBN-13: 9781981469918

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Parmenides of Elea was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia (Greater Greece, included Southern Italy). He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides describes two views of reality. In "the way of truth" (a part of the poem), he explains how reality (coined as "what-is") is one, change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, necessary, and unchanging. In "the way of opinion," he explains the world of appearances, in which one's sensory faculties lead to conceptions which are false and deceitful. He has been considered to be the founder of metaphysics or ontology. The first hero cult of a philosopher we know of was Parmenides' dedication of a heroon to his teacher Ameinias in Elea. Parmenides was the founder of the School of Elea, which also included Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos. Of his life in Elea, it was said that he had written the laws of the city. His most important pupil was Zeno, who according to Plato was 25 years his junior, and was regarded as his eromenos. Parmenides had a large influence on Plato, who not only named a dialogue, Parmenides, after him, but always wrote about him with veneration.

Parmenides of Elea

Parmenides of Elea PDF

Author: Parmenides

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 2003-06-30

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13:

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This offers to the reader a reinvigorating verse translation of the Diels and Kranz B-Fragments of Parmenides cast in rhyming couplet iambic pentameter.

Plato versus Parmenides

Plato versus Parmenides PDF

Author: Robert J. Roecklein

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2010-12-16

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 0739150790

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The issue of coming into being in Greek philosophy is investigated mostly by specialists in language analysis and philological science. Plato versus Parmenides, Robert J. Roecklein brings to the fore Plato's refutation of Parmenides' argument in his famous dialogue by that name. Roecklein offers an unprecedented exposition of the dialogue the Parmenides, and seeks to illuminate a political dimension in Parmenides' early formulations of the challenges made to the reality of coming into being in nature.

Fragments of Parmenides

Fragments of Parmenides PDF

Author: A. H. Coxon

Publisher: Parmenides Publishing

Published: 2009-11-22

Total Pages: 475

ISBN-13: 1930972687

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This book is a revised and expanded version of A.H. Coxon's full critical edition of the extant remains of Parmenides of Elea-the fifth-century B.C. philosopher by many considered "e;one of the greatest and most astonishing thinkers of all times."e; (Karl Popper) Coxon's presentation of the complete ancient evidence for Parmenides and his comprehensive examination of the fragments, unsurpassed to this day, have proven invaluable to our understanding of the Eleatic since the book's first publication in 1986. This edition, edited by Richard McKirahan and with a new preface by Malcolm Schofield, is released on the 100th anniversary of Coxon's birth. This new edition for the first time includes English translations of the testimonia and of any Ancient Greek throughout the book, as well as an English/Greek glossary by Richard McKirahan, and revisions by the late author himself. The text consists of Coxon's collations of the relevant folios of manuscripts of Sextus Empiricus, Proclus and Simplicius and includes all extant fragments, a commentary, the testimonia, a complete list of sources, linguistic parallels from both earlier and later authors, and the fullest critical apparatus that has appeared since Diels' Poetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta (1901). The collection of testimonia includes the philosophical discussions of Parmenides by Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonists, most of which had been omitted by Diels. The introduction discusses the history of the text, the language and form of the poem, Parmenides' use and understanding of the verb 'to be', his place in the history of earlier and later philosophy and the biographical tradition. In the commentary Coxon deals in detail with both the language and the subject matter of the poem and pays full attention to Parmenides' account of the physical world. The appendix relates later Eleatic arguments to those of Parmenides.

Parmenides and the Way of Truth

Parmenides and the Way of Truth PDF

Author:

Publisher: Richard Geldard

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 0976684349

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Parmenides was a philosopher, healer, and spiritual guide in fifth-century BC Elea, a Greek outpost on the western coast of Italy. Around 450 BC he and a young Socrates engaged in a debate on the nature of reality, later immortalized by Plato in The Parmenides, the dialogue that re-created that meeting. Richard Geldard's inspiring account brings new life and contemporary understanding to Parmenides, allowing us to understand his thought and benefit from his wisdom. Richard Geldard earned his PhD in dramatic literature and classics at Stanford University. He is the author of Remembering Heraclitus and The Traveler's Key to Ancient Greece.

TO THINK LIKE GOD

TO THINK LIKE GOD PDF

Author: Arnold Hermann

Publisher: Parmenides Publishing

Published: 2004-12-15

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 193097244X

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This book is the scholarly & fully annotated edition of the award-winning The Illustrated To Think Like God. To Think Like God focuses on the emergence of philosophy as a speculative science, tracing its origins to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, from the late 6th century to mid-5th century B.C. Special attention is paid to the sage Pythagoras and his movement, the poet Xenophanes of Colophon, and the lawmaker Parmenides of Elea. In their own ways, each thinker held that true insight, whether as wisdom or certainty, belonged not to mortal human beings but to the gods.The Pythagoreans sought to approach this otherwordly knowledge by studying numerical relationships, believing them to govern the universe, and that those who know the number of a thing know its true nature. Yet their quest was a hopeless one, bogged down by cultism, numerology, political conspiracies, bloody uprisings, and exile. Above all, number did not turn out as the most reliable of mediums; it was certainly not a key to the realm of the divine. Thus, their contributions to philosophy's inception, while much better-publicized, was not the most significant. That particular role was reserved for an unusual challenge and the elaborate reaction it provoked.

Plato's Reception of Parmenides

Plato's Reception of Parmenides PDF

Author: John A. Palmer

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 1999-04-08

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 0191584657

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John Palmer presents a new and original account of Plato's uses and understanding of his most important Presocratic predecessor, Parmenides. Adopting an innovative approach to the appraisal of intellectual influence, Palmer first explores the Eleatic underpinnings of central elements in Plato's middle-period epistemology and metaphysics. He then shows how in the later dialogues Plato confronts various sophistic appropriations of Parmenides while simultaneously developing his own deepened understanding. Along the way Palmer gives fresh readings of Parmenides' poem in the light of the Platonic reception, and discusses Plato's view of Parmenides' relation to such key figures as Xenophanes, Zeno, and Gorgias. By tracing connections among the uses of Parmenides over the course of several dialogues, Palmer both demonstrates his fundamental importance to the development of Plato's thought and furthers understanding of central problems in Plato's own philosophy.