Among the second generation of Greek philosophers, the views of Parmenides and the opposite position of Heraclitus deserve special attention. Unlike Parmenides, Heraclitus claimed that everything in the world is constantly moving and changing. If we consider both positions literally, then none of them makes sense. But science itself philosophy treats practically nothing literally. These are just thoughts and different ways of seeking the truth. Parmenides did a lot of work on this path. What is the essence of his philosophy?
Fame
Parmenides was very famous in ancient Greece of pre-Christian times (approximately V century BC). In those days, the Elea School, whose founder was Parmenides, spread. The philosophy of this thinker is well disclosed in the famous poem "On Nature". The poem has reached our times, but not completely. However, her passages reveal the characteristic views of the Elean school. The student of Parmenides, who became famous not less than his teacher, was Zeno.
The fundamental doctrine that Parmenides left, the philosophy of his school, served to form the first rudiments of the questions of cognition, being, and the formation of ontology. Also, this philosophy gave rise to epistemology. Parmenides shared the truth and opinion, which, in turn, gave rise to the development of areas such as rationalization of information and logical thinking.
main idea
The main thread that Parmenides adhered to is the philosophy of being: nothing exists except for it. This is due to the inability to think about anything, which is not inextricably linked with being. Hence, the conceivable is part of being. It is on this conviction that the theory of knowledge of Parmenides is built. The philosopher raises the question: “Can a person verify the existence of being, because this cannot be verified? However, being is very closely connected with thought. From this we can conclude that it still certainly exists. ”
In the first verses of the poem "On Nature" Parmenides, whose philosophy denies the possibility of any existence outside of being, assigns a major role in cognition of the mind. In a secondary position are feelings. Truth is based on rational knowledge, and opinion is based on feelings that can not give true knowledge about the essence of things, but to show only their visible component.
Understanding of being
From the first moments of the emergence of philosophy, the idea of being is a logical means expressing the representation of the world in the form of a holistic education. Philosophy has formed categories expressing the essential properties of reality. The main thing that begins with comprehension is being, a broad concept, but a poor concept.
For the first time, Parmenides draws attention to this philosophical aspect. His poem "On Nature" laid the foundation for a metaphysical antique and European worldview. All the differences that the philosophy of Parmenides and Heraclitus has are based on ontological discoveries and ways of understanding the truths of the universe. They examined ontology from different angles.
The opposite of views
Heraclitus is characterized by the path of questions, riddles, allegories, proximity to sayings and proverbs of the Greek language. This allows the philosopher to talk about the essence of being with the help of semantic images, embracing familiar phenomena in all their diversity, but in a single sense.
Parmenides was clearly against the facts of experience, which Heraclitus generalized and described quite well. Parmenides purposefully and systematically applied the deductive method of reasoning. He became the prototype of philosophers who reject experience as a means of cognition, and all knowledge was derived from general premises, a priori existing. Parmenides could only rely on deduction with reason. He recognized exclusively conceivable knowledge, rejecting the sensory as the source of a different picture of the world.
The whole philosophy of Parmenides and Heraclitus was subject to careful study and comparison. These are, in fact, two opposition theories. Parmenides speaks of the stillness of being, as opposed to Heraclitus, who affirms the mobility of all things. Parmenides comes to the conclusion that being and non-being are identical concepts.
Being is indivisible and one, unchangeable and exists outside of time, it is finished in itself, and only it is the bearer of the truth of all things. That is what Parmenides claimed. The direction in the philosophy of the Elean school did not find many adherents, but it is worth saying that throughout its existence it found its supporters. In general, the school gave four generations of thinkers, and only later did it degenerate.
Parmenides believed that a person would rather understand reality if he abstracts from the variability, images and difference of phenomena, and draws attention to solid, simple and unchanging foundations. He spoke of all the multiplicity, variability, discontinuity, and fluidity as concepts related to the field of opinion.
The doctrine, which was offered by the Eleatic school of philosophy: Parmenides, the aporia of Zeno and the idea of a single
As already mentioned, a characteristic feature of the Eleatics is the doctrine of continuous, single, infinite being, which is equally present in every element of our reality. Eleatics for the first time talk about the relationship of being and thinking.
Parmenides believes that “thinking” and “being” are one and the same thing. Being is motionless and united, and any change indicates the departure of certain qualities into non-existence. Reason, according to Parmenides, is the path to knowing the Truth. Feelings can only be misleading. Against objections to the teachings of Parmenides his pupil Zeno spoke.
His philosophy uses logical paradoxes to prove the stillness of being. His aporias show the contradictions of human consciousness. For example, the “Flying arrow” indicates that when dividing the arrow trajectory into points, it turns out that separately at each this point the arrow is at rest.
Contribution to Philosophy
Given the generality of fundamental concepts, Zeno's arguments contained a whole series of additional provisions and arguments, which he stated more strictly. Parmenides made only a hint of many questions, and Zenon was able to submit them in expanded form.
The teachings of the Eleatics directed the idea to the separation of the intellectual and sensory cognition of things that change, but have in themselves a special unchanging component - being. The introduction of the concepts of "movement", "being" and "non-being" in philosophy belongs precisely to the Elean school, the founder of which was Parmenides. The contribution to the philosophy of this thinker can hardly be overestimated, although too many adherents have not received his views.
But the Elea school is of significant interest to researchers, it is very curious, as it is one of the oldest, in the teaching of which philosophy and mathematics are closely intertwined.
The main points
The whole philosophy of Parmenides (briefly and clearly) can fit into three theses:
- there is only being (there is no non-being);
- not only being exists, but non-being;
- the concepts of being and non-being are identical.
However, for the truth Parmenides recognizes only the first thesis.
Of the theses of Zeno, only nine have survived to our times (it is assumed that there were about 45 of them). The most popular evidence against the movement. Zeno’s thoughts led to the need to rethink such important methodological issues as infinity and its nature, the ratio of continuous and discontinuous and other similar topics. Mathematicians were forced to pay attention to the fragility of the scientific foundation, which, in turn, affected the stimulation of progress in this scientific field. The aporia of Zeno is involved in finding the sum of a geometric progression, which is infinite.
Contribution to the development of scientific thought, which brought ancient philosophy
Parmenides gave a powerful impetus to a qualitatively new approach to mathematical knowledge. Thanks to his teaching and the Eleat school, the level of abstraction of mathematical knowledge has increased significantly. More specifically, we can give an example of the appearance of "evidence from the contrary," which is indirect. When using this method, they are repelled by the absurdity of the opposite. So mathematics began to take shape as a deductive science.
Another follower of Parmenides was Meliss. Interestingly, he is considered the student closest to the teacher. He did not engage in philosophy professionally, but was considered a philosophizing warrior. Being the admiral of the Samos fleet in 441-440 BC. e., he defeated the Athenians. But his amateurish philosophy was severely appreciated by the first Greek historians, especially Aristotle. Thanks to the work “About Melissa, Xenophanes and Gorgia”, we know quite a lot.
In Melissa, being was described by such features:
- it is infinite in time (eternally) and in space;
- it is one and invariable;
- he does not know pain and suffering.
Meliss differed from the views of Parmenides in that he accepted the spatial infinity of being and, being an optimist, recognized the perfection of being, as this justified the absence of suffering and pain.
What arguments of Heraclitus against the philosophy of Parmenides are known to us?
Heraclitus belongs to the Ionian school of philosophy of Ancient Greece. He considered the beginning of all things to be the element of fire. In the view of the ancient Greeks, fire was the most light, subtle, and mobile matter. Fire Heraclitus compares with gold. According to him, everything in the world is exchanged like gold and goods. In a fire, the philosopher saw the foundation and beginning of all things. Space, for example, emerges from fire up and down. There are several versions of the cosmogony of Heraclitus. According to Plutarch, fire passes into the air. In turn, air passes into water, and water into the earth. Then the earth returns to the fire again. Clement proposed a version of the emergence of fire from water, from which, as from the seed of the universe, everything else is formed.
According to Heraclitus, space is not eternal: the lack of fire is periodically replaced by its excess. He enlivens the fire, speaking of it as a rational force. And the world court personifies with a world fire. Heraclitus generalized the idea of measure in the concept of the logos as a rational word and the objective law of the universe: for the feeling of fire, then for the mind is the logo.
The Thinker Parmenides: Philosophy of Being
By being, the philosopher means a certain mass that fills the world. It is indivisible and is not destroyed when it arises. Being is like a perfect ball, motionless and impenetrable, equal to itself. The philosophy of Parmenides is a kind of prototype of materialism. Existence is a finite, motionless, bodily, spatially defined material aggregate of everything. There is nothing besides her.
Parmenides believes that the judgment of the existence of nonexistent (non-being) is fundamentally false. But such a statement raises questions: “How does being arise and where does it disappear? How does it turn into non-existence and how does our own thinking arise? ”
To answer such questions, Parmenides speaks of the impossibility of mentally expressing non-being. The philosopher translates this problem into the plane of the correlation of being and thinking. He also claims that space and time do not exist as autonomous and independent entities. These are unconscious images constructed by us with the help of feelings, constantly deceiving us and not allowing us to see the true intelligible being, identical with our true thought.
The idea, which carries the philosophy of Parmenides and Zeno, was continued in the teachings of Democritus and Plato.
Aristotle criticized Parmenides. He argued that the philosopher interprets being very unambiguously. According to Aristotle, this concept can have several meanings, like any other.
Interestingly, historians consider the philosopher Xenophanes the founder of the Elea school. But Theophrastus and Aristotle consider Parmenides a follower of Xenophanes. Indeed, in the teachings of Parmenides, a common thread can be traced with the philosophy of Xenophanes: the unity and stillness of being - truly existing. But the very concept of “being” as a philosophical category was first introduced precisely by Parmenides. Thus, he translated metaphysical reasoning into the plane of research of the ideal essence of things from the plane of consideration of the physical essence. Thus, philosophy acquired the character of ultimate knowledge, which is a consequence of self-knowledge and self-justification of the human mind.
Parmenides' view of nature (cosmology) is best described by Aetius. According to this description, a single world is enveloped in ether, under which the fiery mass is the sky. Under the sky, a series of crowns twisting around each other and surrounding the Earth. One crown is fire, the other is night. The area between them is partially filled with fire. In the center is the earth’s firmament, beneath which is another crown of fire. Fire itself is represented as a goddess governing everything. It gives women difficult births, forces them to mate with men, and men with women. Volcanic fire means the kingdom of the goddess of love and justice.
The sun and the Milky Way are vents, the place of the exit of fire. Living creatures arose, as Parmenides believed, due to the interaction of the earth with fire, warm with cold, sensation and thinking. The way of thinking depends on what prevails: cold or warm. With the predominance of the warm, the living being is made cleaner and better. In women, warm prevails.