Graham, Daniel W. 1999. "Empedocles and Anaxagoras: Responses to Parmenides." In The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, edited by Long, Anthony Arthur, 159-180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"There is no question that Parmenides' poem was a watershed in the history of early Greek philosophy. No serious thinker could ignore his work. And yet it seems to pose insuperable problems for cosmology and scientific inquiry. The first generation to follow Parmenides

includes thinkers who wished to continue the tradition of Ionian speculation. But how would they confront Parmenides? What would they make of him and what effect would his arguments have on their work? The first neo-Ionians(1), as they have been called, were Empedocles and Anaxagoras.(2) Despite some salient differences, the two philosophers have much in common in their approach. They are near contemporaries,3 and as we shall see, they make similar moves in their approach to scientific speculation. Let us first examine

the systems of Empedocles and Anaxagoras, and then discuss their responses to Parmenides." (p. 159)

(1) 1 The term is from Barnes [The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. [1st ed. 1979 in 2 vols.] (London, 1982)] ch. 15, who stresses the continuity of their project with that of early Ionian philosophers. The term aptly allows us to class philosophers of Italy and Sicily, such as Philolaus and Empedocles, with later philosophers from Ionia such as Anaxagoras.

(2) These two philosophers seem to have been active about a generation earlier than Philolaus, Archelaus, Diogenes of Apollonia, and Leucippus, and perhaps a couple of generations earlier than Democritus.
———. 2002. "Heraclitus and Parmenides." In Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos, edited by Caston, Victor and Graham, Daniel W., 27-44. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"The two most philosophical Presocratics propound the two most radically different philosophies: Heraclitus the philosopher of flux and Parmenides the philosopher of changelessness. Clearly they occupy opposite extremes of the philosophical spectrum. But what is their historical relation? For systematic reasons, Hegel held that Parmenides preceded Heraclitus. But in a footnote of an article published in 1850, Jacob Bernays noticed that in the passage we now know as DK 28 B 6 Parmenides could be seen as criticizing Heraclitus.(*) Bernays' insight had already been widely recognized as the key to the historical relationship between the two philosophers when Alois Patin strongly advocated the Bernays view in a monograph published in 1899. But in 1916 Karl Reinhardt reasserted the view that Heraclitus was reacting to Parmenides. Others argued that no connection. was provable. The Reinhardt view was never popular, while the Bernays-Patin view gradually came to be widely accepted. Twenty-five years ago Michael C. Stokes (One and many in Presocratic philosophy, 1971) launched a devastating attack on the view that Parmenides was replying to Heraclitus. That attack has never been answered and the Bernays-Patin thesis at present remains undefended.

In this chapter I wish to argue that the Bernays-Patin thesis is true after all. And in the process of defending it, I hope to show that accepting the thesis has some value for understanding Parmenides beyond the external question of his relation to Heraclitus. Minimally, appreciating Heraclitus' influence on Parmenides will help us understand Parmenides' argument better; but beyond that, it may help us put the whole course of early Greek philosophy in perspective. I shall first review the evidence for a connection between the philosophers (section I), then analyze the evidence for a connection (II), consider the role of historical influences in philosophical exegesis (III), and finally try to reconstruct Parmenides' dialectical opponent from his argument (IV)." (p. 27 notes omitted)

(*) In his Kleine Schriften (1885), vol. 1, pp. 62-3, n. 1.
———. 2006. Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Chapter 6: Parmenides' Criticism of Ionian Philosophy, pp. 148-185.

"What connection, if any, there is between Heraclitus and Parmenides has long been disputed(1). Of the four a priori possibilities: (a) that Parmenides influenced Heraclitus, (b) that Heraclitus influenced Parmenides, (c) that the two did not know or acknowledge each other, and (d) that they are influenced by a common source, only (b) and (c) seem likely. For, contra (a), Heraclitus likes to abuse his predecessors(2), and, contra (d), he tends to radically rework the material he inherits(3). There have been, and continue to be, proponents of both (b) and (c).(4) While it seems attractive in some ways to dodge the question and thus deal only with textual certainties rather than historical contingencies, I believe that textual evidence is adequate to decide the question in favor of (b), and, moreover, to help determine the philosophical relationship between the two most philosophical Presocratics—and the two most ideologically opposed." (p. 148)

(1) The argument in this section is drawn from a longer study (Graham 2002a). The results are disputed by Nehamas 2002.

(2) Heraclitus B40, B42, B57, B81a, B106, B129. “Dieses bleiben die Ecksteine der Geschichte der Vorsokratiker: Heraklit zitiert und bekämpft Pythagoras, Xenophanes und Hekataios, nicht Parmenides; dieser zitiert und bekämpft Heraklit” (Kranz 1916, 1174).

(3) E.g., he is at pains to deny the possibility of cosmogony at B30, the one doctrine common to all his philosophical forebears.

(4) Arguments for (a) start with Hegel 1971, 319ff., followed by Zeller, and revived by Reinhardt 1916; this view has mostly been abandoned, but see Hölscher 1968, 161–65. The argument for (b) was first made by Bernays 1885, 1: 2.62, n. 1, and defended vigorously by Patin 1899; this view was accepted by Baeumker 1890, 54; Windelband 1894, 39, n. 2; Diels 1897, 68ff.; Ueberweg 1920, 1st Part: 95, 97, 99; Kranz 1916, 1934; Burnet 1930, 179-80, 183-84; Calogero 1977, 44-45; Cherniss 1935, 382–83; Vlastos 1955a, 341, n.

11, KR (tentatively) 183, 264, 272, Guthrie 1962-1981, 2.23–24; Tarán 1965; Coxon 1986; Giannantoni 1988, 218-20, and others. Diels 1897, 68, says of Bernays: “[S]eine Ansicht is fast allgemein durchgedrungen,” noting that only Zeller has resisted the interpretation; but in his revised edition of Zeller, 1919–1920, 684, n. 1, and 687, n. 1, Nestle abandons Zeller’s view as obsolete. For (c) are Gigon 1935, 31-34; Verdenius 1942; Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1959, 2.208-9; Mansfeld 1964, ch. 11; Marcovich 1965, col. 249;

Stokes 1971, 111-27.

Bibliography

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Bernays, Jacob. 1885 [1850]. “Heraclitea.” In Gesammelte Abhandlungen. Edited by H. Usener. Vol. 1, 1-108. Berlin: Wilhelm Herz.

Burnet, John. 1930 [1892]. Early Greek Philosophy. 4th ed. London: Adam & Charles Black.

Calogero, Guido. 1977 [1932]. Studi sull’Eleatismo. New ed. Florence: "La Nuova Italia" Editrice.

Cherniss, Harold. 1935. Aristotle’s Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Coxon, A. H. 1986. The Fragments of Parmenides. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Diels, Hermann. 1897. Parmenides Lehrgedicht. Berlin: Georg Reimer.

Giannantoni, Gabriele. 1988. “Le Due ‘Vie' di Parmenide.” La Parola del Passato 43: 207–21.

Gigon, Olof. 1935. Untersuchungen zu Heraklit. Leipzig.

Graham, Daniel W. 2002a. “Heraclitus and Parmenides.” In Caston and Graham 2002, 27-44.

Guthrie, W.K.C. 1962–1981. A History of Greek Philosophy. 6 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hegel, G.W.F. 1971. Werke. Edited by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel. Vol. 18, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Hölscher, Uvo. 1968. Anfänglisches Fragen. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht.

KR = Kirk, G. S., and J. E. Raven. The Presocratic Philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957.

Kranz, Walther. 1916. "Über Aufbau und Bedeutung des parmenideischen Gedichtes.” Sitzungsberichte der königlichen preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1148-76.

Mansfeld, Jaap. 1964. Die Offenbarung des Parmenides und die menschlichen Welt. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Marcovich, Miroslav. 1965. “Herakleitos.” In Paulys Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Edited by G. Wissowa et al., Supplementband 10. Stuttgart: Druckenmüller.

Nehamas, Alexander 2002. “Parmenidean Being/Heraclitean Fire.” In Caston and Graham 2002, 45-64.

Patin, Alois. 1899. Parmenides im Kampfe gegen Heraklit. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner.

Reinhardt, Karl. 1916. Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie. Bonn: Friedrich Cohen.

Stokes, Michael C. 1971. One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy. Washington: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Tarán, Leonardo. 1965. Parmenides. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Ueberweg, Friedrich. 1920. Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie. Edited by Karl Praechter. 1st Part. 11th ed. Berlin: Ernst Friedrich Siegfried und Sohn.

Verdenius, W. J. 1942. Parmenides: Some Comments on His Poem. Groningen: J. B. Wolters.

Vlastos, Gregory. 1955a. “On Heraclitus.” American Journal of Philology 76: 337-78.

Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von. 1959 [1931–1932]. Der Glaube der Hellenen. 2 vols. 3rd ed. Basel: Benno Schwabe.

Windelband, Wilhelm. 1894. Geschichte der alten Philosophie. Munich: C. H. Beck.

Zeller, Eduard. 1919–1920. Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtliche Entwicklung. Edited by Wilhelm Nestle. Part 1, Vorsokratische Philosophie. 2 vols. Leipzig: O. R. Reisland.
———. 2013. Science before Socrates: Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and the New Astronomy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 3: Borrowed Light: The Insights of Parmenides, pp. 85-108.

"We began by asking a series of questions about early Greek astronomy:

1. Who discovered the theories in question first?

2. What led him to this discovery?

3. Did the two philosophers (Anaxagoras and Empedocles) have good evidence for the theories?

4. Did the community of philosophers accept the theories?

5. Did they develop the theory on their own, or did they borrow it from another source (Thales, Pythagoras, the Babylonians)?

We have at present provided at least a partial answer to two of these questions. The remarkable chain of events that began theoretical astronomy as we know probably started with the recognition of heliophotism.

This theory, or insight, derives, as far as we can tell, from Parmenides of Elea, who, writing in the early fifth century, saw that the moon's phases could be explained on the basis of the moon's position relative to the sun, supposing that the sun was the moon's source of light-just as, perhaps, it is for clouds. It is plausible to suppose that Parmenides came to this insight by himself, unaided by earlier speculations on the moon, which were unhelpful, or Babylonian data and theories, which were most likely unknown to him, and which did not, in any case, derive the moon's light from the sun. The supposition that he had a Pythagorean informant seems gratuitous.

Thus in answer to question (2): Parmenides paved the way. In partial answer to question (5): Parmenides seems to be original in his contribution to the beginnings of astronomy. As to the further development of the theory of eclipses, there is no record that Parmenides had anything to say about eclipses, even if both his predecessors and his successors did. The students of astronomy and doxographers who canvassed early studies for new theories seem to have found nothing on this topic from Parmenides. We can say in answer to ( 1) that Parmenides (and not either Anaxagoras or Empedocles) discovered the source of the moon's light; as to the explanation of eclipses, question (1) must remain open, as well as questions (3) and (4). Moreover, we will have to see what role Parmenides' insights played in the further development of early Greek astronomy. What difference does it make to know that the moon gets its light from the sun?" (pp. 107-108)
———. 2013. "Two Stages of Early Greek Cosmology." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy no. 28:41-63.

Abstract: "It is generally held that Presocratic cosmologies are sui generis and unique to their authors. If, however, a division is made between sixth-century and fifth-century BC cosmologies, some salient differences emerge. For instance, heavenly bodies in sixth-century cosmologies tend to be light, ephemeral, fed by vapors, and located above the earth; those in fifth-century cosmologies tend to be heavy, permanent, heated by friction, and to travel below the earth. The earlier cosmologies seem to embody a meteorological model of astronomy, the latter a lithic model. The change in models can be accounted for on the basis of Parmenides’ discovery that the moon is illuminated by the sun and hence is a spherical, permanent, opaque or earthy body. This insight generated empirical evidence to confirm itself and rendered obsolete earlier cosmologies."
———. 2020. "The Metaphysics of Parmenides' Doxa and its Influence." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 14:35-58.

Abstract: "Parmenides’ Aletheia receives the lion’s share of philosophical scrutiny. His Doxa, focusing on the explanation of natural phenomena, by contrast, is often neglected, especially in studies focusing on metaphysics.

But it is the latter that occupied most of Parmenides’ poem and which had, arguably, a more profound influence on later philosophy.

The Doxa seems to embody the Eleatic properties Parmenides attributes to the proper object of understanding, at least as far as possible in a theory designed to account for change. Apparently for the first time, it attempts to explain changeable phenomena in terms of changeless principles. The principles of the Doxa offered a model for subsequent philosophies of nature, and provided the basis for theories of elements from the fifth century BC until today."
Granger, Herbert. 2002. "The Cosmology of Mortals." In Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos, edited by Caston, Victor and Graham, Daniel W., 101-116. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"But why could not Parmenides take up a position of the sort his successors among the pluralists adopt(49) and introduce Light and Night as primal, eternal entities, each fully real, different and underived from one another, without their being just a denser or more rarefied version of something more fundamental? This is impossible for Parmenides and the goddess as long as they take the word ‘being' to be a univocal predicate and to be what expresses the very nature of its subject. Parmenides' successors can conceive of Being as coming in a variety of forms, but not because they take ‘being' to be equivocal or believe it to be something other than a qualitative term. On these points they would be in fundamental agreement with Parmenides and the goddess. Plausibly it may be argued that the pluralists who follow Parmenides are in a position to recognize the possibility of a qualitative heterogeneity within an existential homogeneity, because they take ‘being' to be more like a generic than a specific term in its descriptive role, and thus they may take Being to be more like a determinable than a determinate in its nature. This would then put them in a position to maintain that Being may come in a variety of different sorts within a single conception of what it is to be.

The pathway to a cosmology of the post-Parmenidean sort is closed to the goddess and her disciple Parmenides. The goddess holds out no hope for any sort of cosmology, and she is in no position to appreciate or to anticipate the pluralism of the successors of Parmenides. The goddess should be taken, then, at her word when she warns that the order of her words on mortal opinions is deceptive. The cosmology of mortals is nothing more than a deception, which deceives by giving the appearance of reality without yielding its substance, and there is no reason to search for something more than mere deception in the deceptive words of the goddess upon the cosmos." (pp. 114-115)

(49) For example, Anaxagoras (B 5, B 17); Empedocles (B 17.27-35, B 6, B 8, B 9). On both of them, see Aristotle, Ph. 1.4, 187a22-b7. It is commonly held that Parmenides' successors presume a plurality without any argument. For example, Malcolm observes this of Empedocles and Anaxagoras, ["On avoiding the void", Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 9, 75-94] 1991, pp. 92-3, and Curd of the atomists as well, [Parmenidean monism] 1991, p. 261, and Curd [The Legacy of Parmenides], 1998, pp. 64-5, 129-31. Curd takes their lack of an argument to indicate that none was needed because Parmenides did not deny a plurality, since he was not a ‘numerical monist' who held that a single entity constitutes reality. Curd charges that Parmenides' successors would have been remiss in their philosophical duty if they had presumed a plurality in the face of any argument by Parmenides against it. Yet even if the successors of Parmenides offered no argument for plurality, this need not indicate that Parmenides did not argue against plurality and that his successors in their presumption of plurality were not philosophically responsible. Parmenides' successors may have understood their charge to be the development of a compromise between the demands of his argument and those of common sense, in which the demands of these two extremes must be satisfied as much as possible without any hope that all of them would receive satisfaction.
———. 2008. "The Proem of Parmenides' Poem." Ancient Philosophy no. 28:1-20.

"The paper defends the view that the Proem of Parmenides' poem is a secular allegory. At the allegory's center is the unnamed goddess who in the body of the poem instructs the unnamed youth, through her use of a priori argumentation, about the nature of reality. The goddess provides the very symbol for a priori reason, and a central feature of Parmenides' expression of this symbolic value for the goddess is his confused presentation of her in the Proem. His presentation is intentionally vague, and it defies any definitive interpretation that clearly identifies the classification of the goddess and her circumstances within traditional or unconventional Greek religious belief. Instead, she recalls in an confusing fashion traditional revelatory goddesses, of whom the Muses and cult goddesses provide paradigm instances. Hence the youth's journey in the Proem to the unnamed goddess leads to no clearly identifiable circumstances, yet what it arrives at is still bound up within the medium of the standard epic style. Parmenides uses the old idea of the revelatory goddess in this unexpected way to try to show how it harbors something like the exercise of a priori reason. The reflection of the a priori does not reside merely in the similarity that the Muses bestow knowledge, which lies beyond the limited powers of human observation, about past, present, and future. The similarity is stronger and more significant when the Muses grant knowledge that lies beyond their own powers of observation in the form of insights into events they could not have possibly witnessed, such as the birth of the gods. Parmenides picks his unnamed goddess for his symbol for a priori reason because he takes himself to be demythologizing the philosophical truth reflected in a distorted fashion within the tradition of divine revelation. By placing a priori reason in the garb of the revelatory goddess who appears in a puzzling form, Parmenides indicates to his audience that this use of the power of reason has its antecedents in traditional practices that did not recognize this power for its true nature. There is a value in the tradition of divine revelation, which transcends the fictions of the poets in their story-telling, but revelatory deities must now step aside for the clear expression of the power of a priori reason. Hence the goddess abdicates her authority when she demands that the youth judge her words by his logos. Parmenides' verse conforms with his symbolic use of the goddess. It helps him mark his difference from his competitors among the new intellectuals, the so-called `natural philosophers', who generally favor prose over verse. These intellectuals abandoned the Muses and their gift of verse, and they aspire to cosmologies that depend for their justification upon observation and inductive arguments that appeal to analogies and inferences to the best explanation. Verse as the medium of the Muses allows Parmenides to stress in a literary fashion how he adheres to a mode of thinking that does not rely upon the power of observation for the truth." (p. 1)
———. 2010. "Parmenides of Elea: rationalist or dogmatist?" Ancient Philosophy no. 30:15-38.

"Parmenides of Elea is often lauded as a major figure of Western philosophy because he is the first to give an extensive role in his speculation to a priori argumentation.

In his poem we find for the first time in history sustained rational argumentation for the establishment of a complex metaphysical doctrine. Parmenides does not merely dictate to his audience a set of doctrines about reality, but, instead, undertakes to support his doctrines by means of logical inferences based on premises that have some claim to plausibility or self-evidence or a priori justification. This evaluation of PParmenides'accomplishment is not without its detractors, however. Kingsley has mounted a vigorous challenge to the presumption that Parmenides relies on argument for his opinions about reality, and recently Gemelli Marciano has significantly buttressed Kingsley's case by furthering his ideas in her detailed comments on Parmenides' poem. Kingsley and Gemelli Marciano maintain that Parmenides is a dogmatic mystic who depends for his dogmas entirely upon what he learns from divine revelation and that he makes no serious effort 10 defend his mystical beliefs by genuine argumentation.

In fact, reasoned argument not only cannot discover the truth, it provides an impediment that muse be transcended or suppressed." (p. 15; notes omitted)
Greenstine, Abraham Jacob. 2017. "Diverging Ways: On the Trajectories of Ontology in Parmenides, Aristotle, and Deleuze." In Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Metaphysics, edited by Greenstine, Abraham Jacob and Johnson, Ryan J., 202-223. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Unversity Press.

"Presently there is a flood of ontologies, an uproar over being. Not only is metaphysics permitted, it has become, perhaps, expected. Not that continental philosophy has returned to some sort of Wolffian systematic science of ontology.

Rather, we now find ourselves inundated by a variety of ontological styles:

it seems that every philosopher and scholar has their own theory of being. To make our way through this torrent, we might ask: what is ontology? How can we speak of being? Can it be narrated, accounted for, expressed?

In this essay I explore three philosophically and historically decisive answers to these questions: those of Parmenides, Aristotle, and Gilles Deleuze.

I examine not only what each thinker says about being, but also how they say it, that is, what the project of ontology is for each. Rather than proposing so many different hypotheses in a single pre-established discourse on being, each of them endeavors to create a new ontology. Parmenides inaugurates ontology, leading us on a journey to the truth through the path of what is. Aristotle, rejecting Parmenides' way of truth, instead proposes a knowledge of being, a science of ontology, which leads in turn to knowledge of the divine as the first causes of things. Deleuze, denying both the truth of Parmenides and the first causes of Aristotle, instead contends that there is only one proposition about being, just a single voice of ontology. Path, knowledge, and proposition: each philosopher institutes his own ontological style. Each defends an ontology apparently unassimilable to the others." (p. 202)
Gregory, Andrew. 2014. "Parmenides, Cosmology and Sufficient Reason." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 47:16-47.

Abstract: "Why Parmenides had a cosmology is a perennial puzzle, if, as the ‘truth' part of his poem appears to claim, what exists is one, undifferentiated, timeless and unchanging.1 Indeed, not only does the cosmological part of the poem tell us how the cosmos is arranged, it also tells us how the cosmos, humans and animals all came into being. Although more of the truth has survived, the cosmology originally made up some 2/3 to 3/4 of the poem. The poem claims it will give the ‘complete ordering' and Parmenides is perceived to have ‘completed all the phenomena'.3 Parmenides also seems to have made some important original contributions to cosmology. These I take to be important facts which any explanation of the nature of this cosmology must account for. The aim of this paper is to explore a new suggestion for the status of the cosmology, that it may be equalled but not surpassed by other cosmologies which are capable of accounting for all of the phenomena. Its function, I argue, is to raise sufficient reason issues about some fundamental questions in cosmogony and cosmology. I will also argue that we can find sufficient reason considerations relating to cosmogony and cosmology in the truth part of the poem. This opens the possibility that it is at least in part issues of sufficient reason that link the two parts of the poem. Finally I will argue that by paying close attention to what Parmenides has to say about signs, σήματα, we can see how he leaves open the possibility of making positive contributions to cosmology.

I believe this gives us a richer account of Parmenides, places him more firmly in the debates of presocratic cosmology and cosmogony and gives him interesting relations to his predecessors and successors. These sufficient reason considerations may work both as a critique of contemporary cosmogony and cosmology and a challenge to any future cosmogony and cosmology." (pp. 16-17; notes omitted)
Groarke, Leo. 1985. "Parmenides' Timeless Universe." Dialogue no. 24:535-541.

"In his recent collection of Parmenides' fragments,(1) David Gallop joins a number of commentators ( among them, Tarán(2) and Stokes(3) ) who argue against the view that fragment 8 contains a commitment to a reality which is "timeless" or "atemporal". His arguments seem to me convincing if one adopts Owen's view(4) that timelessness is a result of indistinguishable phases of existence. Gallop's arguments could decide the issue if this was, as Tarán suggests, "the only reason to maintain that Being is a non-temporal entity".(5) There is, however, an alternative way to defend the atemporal interpretation, though it has not been elaborated in any detail.(6) If I am not mistaken, it can elude Gallop's criticisms and provide a more plausible account of Parmenides' philosophy.(7)"

(1) Parmenides of Elea, Fragments, a Text and Translation with an Introduction by David Gallop (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 13-16. For good reason, the book is sure to become the standard reference for years to come.

(2) Leonardo Tarán, Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Commentary, and Critical Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), 175-181.

(3) Michael C. Stokes, One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy (Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, 1971), 127-137.

(4) See G. E. L. Owen, "Plato and Parmenides on the Timeless Present", in A. P. D. Mourelatos. ed. The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1974). I cannot discuss Owen's views in detail here.

(5) Tarán, Parmenides. 181.

(6) For interpretations of Parmenides' similar to the one that I suggest, see the following: W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 29: Felix M. Cleve, The Giants of Pre-Sophistic Greek Philosophy: An Attempt to Reconstruct their Thought (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 1965), 531; and Peter Geach, Providence and Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 53-54. None of these authors develops a detailed interpretation.

(7) The question of Parmenides' view of time (exemplified by disputes over fragment 8.5) is a thorny one. In G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (2nd ed.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), Schofield writes, for

example, that "Probably what Parmenides means to ascribe to what is is existence in an eternal present not subject to temporal distinctions of any sort. It is very unclear how he hoped to ground this conclusion in the arguments of [fragment 8]... ." If the account

I suggest is correct, this conclusion is neither surprising nor difficult to understand.
———. 1987. "Parmenides' Timeless Universe, Again." Dialogue no. 26:549-552.

"In a recent discussion note,(1) Mohan Matthen criticizes my claim that Parmenides is committed to an atemporal reality. I shall argue that his critique misrepresents by views , misunderstands Parmenides , and is founded on a capricious view of h1stoncal interpretation."

(...)

"The key to my account is the suggestion that Parmenides rejection of what does not exist entails the rejection of the past and future, for they do not exist (because the past no longer exists and the future does not yet exist). This is, I think, the most plausible interpretation of Parmenides claim that what is "neither was ... once nor will be, since it is now" (8.5, cf. my previous discussion of 8.19-20). It follows that sentences cannot meaningfully refer to the past and future, for we cannot refer to what is not (8.8)."

(1) Mohan Matthen, "A Note on Parmenides' Denial of Past and Future ", Dialogue 25/3 (1986), 553-557.
Grondin, Jean. 2012. Introduction to Metaphysics: From Parmenides to Levinas. New York: Columbia University Press.

Translated from Introduction a la métaphysique, Québec: Les Presses de l’Universite de Montreal 2004 by Lukas Soderstrom.

Chapter 1. Parmenides: The Evidence of Being, pp. 1-20.

"Can we really identify Parmenides with the Presocratic physiological tradition?

Some modern interpreters,(9) influenced by Aristotle (but then, who is not?), and by the modern scientific explanation of nature as well, have read Parmenides as a philosopher attempting to understand the structure of the universe. But one must recognize that he probably also opposed the Milesian physiological tradition by arguing against their attempts at a genetic explanation of nature. According to Parmenides’ Poem, there is no becoming because this would imply a passage from Nonbeing to Being and therefore the existence of Nonbeing. And since Nonbeing is unthinkable, there can only be Being and therefore no becoming. Thus, briefly summarized, is the doxographical content of Parmenides’ disconcerting Poem." (p. 6)

(...)

"Although using the term “ metaphysics” here may be premature, we may perhaps allow the use of the term “ ontology” to characterize the inextricable relation the Poem urges us to think, despite the fact that it would be extremely anachronistic since the term ontologia did not appear before the seventeenth century. Here, the word ontology simply means that the true, or rational, discourse— that is, the logos, is dedicated to Being in its most basic sense— that is, imperishable and incorruptible. And it would be accordingly an overestimation of the mortals’ linguistic capacities to believe there actually are such things as birth and death, change and becoming. Since then, philosophy or Western science has been enraptured by a stable and permanent Being, and enthralled to the rigors of “ thought,” which did not really exist prior to Parmenides." (p. 15)

(9) The most influential reading of this type, which is also a classic introduction to Presocratic thought, is John Burnett’s Early Greek Philosophy (Cleveland, NY: Meridian, 1957 [1930]) 169-196.-
Groth, Miles. 2017. Translating Heidegger. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Chapter Four: Paratactic Method: Transtlating Parmenides, Fragment VI, pp. 165-193.

"Heidegger’s efforts to translate the Greek thinkers are the source of his philosophy of translation, which I have summarized from a review of his published writings. In his 1951–52 translation of Parmenides’s Fragment VI, Heidegger brings to bear a half-century-long conversation with ancient Greek and demonstrates his practice of translating in full stride. Until now, Heidegger’s philosophy of translation is part of what has been left unspoken of Heidegger’s thought. It will have become clear that in my review of the early critical literature and the first English translations of Heidegger, I have had the principles of Heidegger’s philosophy of translation in mind, and in my critique, I have countered the interpretatii of his early readers with Auslegungen of his fundamental words. In this chapter, I will present an account of Heidegger at work in an Auslegung of a fragment of pre-Socratic thought." (p. 165)

"In this chapter, I will focus on the Parmenides translation which he presented during the second semester of the lecture course “Was heißt Denken?,” Heidegger’s last series of lectures as a regular professor

at the University of Freiburg. Fragment VI is introduced in the transition (Stundenübergang) between Session Five and Session Six of the Spring 1952 semester when Heidegger begins the translation itself. He devotes the last six hours of the course to the task. The background of the translation is the presiding question: What is it that we call thinking?" (p. 166, notes omitted)
Guetter, David Lloyd. 2011. "« Opposition » in Parmenides B12.5." Euphrosyne no. 39:227-246.

Abstract: "This paper argues that Parmenides distinguished between the kinds of opposition signaled by anti- and enanti-, then chose the latter deliberately to make a point about the ambivalence, perhaps even perversity, deeply characteristic of human existence. This ambivalence is reflected intra-personally (reason and passion), inter-personally (male and female), and even theologically (the goddess of Truth and the god of Love), suggesting that human Love untethered from Truth constitutes human cruelty. If so, it is little wonder that as far as our records go he refused to propagate it any further himself."
Guthrie, William Keith Chambers. 1965. A History of Greek Philosophy. Vol. II: The Presocratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

See the First Chapter: The Eleatics. Parmenides - pp. 1-79.

"Presocratic philosophy is divided into two halves by the name of Parmenides. His exceptional powers of reasoning brought speculation about the origin and constitution of the universe to a halt, and caused it to make a fresh start on different lines. Consequently his chronological position relative to other early philosophers is comparatively easy to determine. Whether or not he directly attacked Heraclitus, (1) had Heraclitus known of Parmenides it is incredible that he would not have denounced him along with Xenophanes and others. Even if ignorance of an Elean on the part of an Ephesian is no sure evidence of date, philosophically Heraclitus must be regarded as pre-Parmenidean, whereas Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus and Democritus are equally certainly post-Parmenidean." (p. 1)

(1) See vol. 1, 408 n. 2 and pp. 23 ff., 32 below.

"The poem of Parmenides raises peculiar problems, and it will be as well to approach the text with the chief of these already in mind. In the prologue he receives from a goddess the promise that she will reveal to him two sorts of information: first the truth about reality, then the opinions of mortals, which are unambiguously said to be false. 'Nevertheless these too shall thou learn' (fr. 1.31). In conformity with this, the first part of the poem deduces the nature of reality from premises asserted to be wholly true, and leads among other things to the conclusion that the world as perceived by the senses is unreal. At this point (fr. 8.50) the goddess solemnly declares that she ceases to speak the truth, and the remainder of the instruction will be 'deceitful'; yet she will impart it all 'that no judgment of men may outstrip thee'. Then follows the second part of the poem consisting of a cosmology on traditional lines. Starting from the assumption of a pair of opposites, 'fire' and 'night' or light and darkness, it proceeds as a narrative of an evolutionary process in time. The 'true way', on the other hand, had asserted that reality was, and must be, a unity in the strictest sense and that any change in it was impossible: there is no before or after, and the exposition unfolds as a timeless series of logical deductions.

Here is the 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? Has it in his eyes no merit or validity whatsoever, so that his purpose in composing it is only to show it up, together with all such attempts at cosmogony, for the hollow shams that they are? If so, the further question arises: what is it? Some have thought it to be based on a particular cosmic system of which he disapproved, for instance that of Heraclitus or the Pythagoreans. Others have suggested, following up the goddess's own words about the 'opinions of mortals' in general, that it is partly or wholly intended as a synthesis of what the ordinary man believed about the world; others again that it is an original production, indeed the best that Parmenides could devise, but still intended to show that even the most plausible account of the origin and nature of the sensible world is utterly false. These critics point to the motive expressed by the goddess, 'that no judgment of mortals may outstrip (or get the better of) thee'.

An alternative is to suppose that Parmenides is doing his best for the sensible world, perhaps on practical grounds, by giving as coherent an account of it as he can, saying in effect: I have told you the truth, so that if I go on to speak about the world in which we apparently live you will know it is unreal and not be taken in. But after all, this is how it does appear to us; however misleading our senses may be, we must eat and drink and talk, avoid putting our hand in the fire or falling over a precipice, live in short as if their information were genuine. Being ourselves mortals we must come to terms with this deceitful show, and I can at least help you to understand it better than other people.

These are the most baffling problems which Parmenides presents: the nature of the 'Way of Seeming' and the relation between it and the 'Way of Truth'. Yet the essence of his remarkable achievement lies, as might be expected, within the Way of Truth itself. " (pp. 4-6)
Hankinson, R. Jim. 2002. "Parmenides and the Metaphysics of Changelessness." In Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos, edited by Caston, Victor and Graham, Daniel W., 65-80. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"Conclusions.

Parmenides seeks to demonstrate the impossibility of generation (and hence change) dilemmatically: on the one hand the notion of caused generation turns out to be incoherent, while the supposition of uncaused generation, on the other, makes it inexplicable. Neither arm of the dilemma is successful. One cannot simply invoke PSR [Principle of Sufficient Reason] in order to rule out uncaused change, since PSR is at best an empirical hypothesis and not some Leibnizian a priori law of thought; (53) and a suitably sophisticated analysis of the logical form of change, one which recognizes the ambiguity of 'from' in propositions such as 'x comes to be from y,' will dispose of Parmenides' bomb. But it needed an Aristotle to disarm it.

The basic principle involved, namely:

P1 Nothing comes to be from nothing,

is not original to Parmenides (it first occurs in a fragment of the sixth-century lyric poet Alcaeus, although we do not know in what context; (54) its early history has been ably traced by Alex Mourelatos (55) but its use in destructive argument certainly is. P1 is ambiguous between the causal principle

P1a Nothing comes to be causelessly,

and the conservation principle

P1b Nothing comes to be except from pre-existing matter;

and that ambiguity is not always patent. Indeed, distinguishing (P1a) from (P1b) is the first step towards solving the Eleatic puzzle, as Aristotle (certainly: Ph. I.7, 190a14-31; cf. Metaph. V.24; GA 1.18, 724a20-34) and Plato (possibly: Phd. 103b) realized. Moreover, as Hume was to show, neither version can be accepted as an a priori truth: both the causal principle and the conservation principle (at any rate crudely interpreted as asserting the conservation of matter) are rejected by the standard interpretation of quantum physics; and whatever else may be true of quantum physics, it is not logically incoherent." (p. 80)

(53) Cf. Leibniz, Monadology §32; on the status of the principle, see Kant, Prolegomena §4.

(54) Alcaeus, fr. 76 Bergk; Mourelatos 1981 [Pre-socratics Origins of the Principle that there are No Origins of Nothing, (Journal of Philosophy, 78, 1981, pp. 649-665] pp. 132-3 discusses this text.

(55) Mourelatos, 1981.
Havelock, Eric A. 1958. "Parmenides and Odysseus." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology no. 63:133-143.

"It is commonly supposed that Parmenides' statement of his philosophical principles is preceded by a "proem" of an allegorical nature (the precise symbolism of the allegory being in dispute) which describes the philosopher's inspired journey from darkness to light.

(...)

The first question to ask is whether it is proper to identify such a "proem" at all, as a separate entity in the poem. Would the author himself have recognized it as such?

(...)

If, however, the motive in Sextus for first identifying and then explaining this allegory in Parmenides was itself unhistorical, modern criticism has two resources with which to correct him. It can supply a better interpretation of the "proem"; or it can conclude that the original identification of the " proem" as such was a mistake. It is in part to this more radical view that the present article addresses itself." (p. 133)

(...)

"The foreground of Parmenides' imagination is occupied by Circe on Aeaea and the nymphs on Thrinacia all of them daughters of the sun. The latter he has converted from herdsmen into outriders, perhaps assisted therein by the common image of the sun's chariot. Both Teiresias and Circe forewarned him concerning Thrinacia, the sun's island. But Circe's warning held also a hint of promise: "You will come to the isle Thrinacia where feed many herds of the sun; and there is no birth of them nor do they pass away. Their herdsmen are nymphs . . . daughters of the sun."(56) In short, the island is involved with some implication of immortality; it holds a mystery which can be approached but not violated. The centrality of this episode in the memory of the philosopher and his audience was guaranteed by the fact that Homer had selected it from among all others for dramatization in the preface(57) to his epic as central to Odysseus' experience in the nostos. So Parmenides remembered how on that island coming to be and perishing had been banished. This provided his climatic poetic excuse for linking the daughters of the sun with the marvels of a mental journey which had taken the traveller into an absolute, where there is no coming to be and no passing away.(58) For the philosopher, this was where the nostos ended. The journey of his mind and thought had reached the mansions of home.(59)" (p. 140)

(56) Od. 12. 130.

(57) Od. 1. 7-9.

(58) Frag. 8. 21.

(59) The Odysseus theme may persist even into the "second part" of Parmenides' poem. The Homeric hero, so Circe had told him, while his ship "bypassed" the Sirens, was to be allowed the pleasure of hearing their song (Od. 12. 47 and 52; cf. also 10. 109). When they sing, they admonish him that to "bypass" without listening is impossible and that to listen is to learn of all things that happened at Troy and of "all that is born on the earth" (12. 186-190). So Odysseus listens, while the ship "bypasses" them (12. 197).

Correspondingly, Parmenides comes to the end of his "reliable discourse and thought" (Frag. 8, line 5o, equivalent to the "true" directives of Teiresias and Circe) and then allows his listener to hear a "deceitful composition of my epic tale" (Frag. 8, line 52), a story of how all things " are born and end" (Frag. 19).

This story is told so that his audience may not be "bypassed" by any mortal type of intelligence (Frag. 8, sub fin.). Is the verb παρέλασση which he here uses a reminiscence of the corresponding verb which Homer had used four times? If so, the philosopher's poetic memory has transposed it in application.
Heidegger, Martin. 1975. "'Moira' (Parmenides, fr. 8,34-41)." In Early Greek Thinking, edited by Krell, David Farrell and Capuzzi, Frank A., 79-101. New York: Harper & Row.

"The topic under discussion is the relation between thinking and Being. In the first place we ought to observe that the text (VIII, 34-41) which ponders this relation more thoroughly speaks of eon and not -- as in Fragment III -- about einai. Immediately, and with some justification, one concludes from this that Fragment VIII concerns beings rather than Being. But in saying eon Parmenides is in no way thinking "beings in themselves," understood as the whole to which thinking, insofar as it is some kind of entity, also belongs. Just as little does eon mean einai in the sense of "Being for itself," as though it were incumbent upon the thinker to set the non sensible essential nature of Being apart from, and in opposition to, beings which are sensible. Rather eon, being, is thought here in its duality as Being and beings, and is participially expressed -- although the grammatical concept has not yet come explicitly into the grasp of linguistic science. This duality is at least intimated by such nuances of phrasing as "the Being of beings" and "beings in Being." In its essence, however, what unfolds is obscured more than clarified through the "in" and the "of " These expressions are far from thinking the duality as such, or from seriously questioning its unfolding.

"Being itself," so frequently invoked, is held to be true so long as it is experienced as Being, consistently understood as the Being of beings. Meanwhile the beginning of Western thinking was fated to catch an appropriate glimpse of what the word einai, to be, says -- in Physis, Logos, En. Since the gathering that reigns within Being unites all beings, an inevitable and continually more stubborn semblance arises from the contemplation of this gathering, namely, the illusion that Being (of beings) is not only identical with the totality of beings, but that, as identical, it is at the same time that which unifies and is even most in being [das Seiendste]. For representational thinking everything comes to be a being.

The duality of Being and beings, as something twofold, seems to melt away into nonexistence, albeit thinking, from its Greek beginnings onward, has moved within the unfolding of this duality, though without considering its situation or at all taking note of the unfolding of the twofold. What takes place at the beginning of Western thought is the unobserved decline of the duality. But this decline is not nothing. Indeed it imparts to Greek thinking the character of a beginning, in that the lighting of the Being of beings, as a lighting, is concealed. The hiddenness of this decline of the duality reigns in essentially the same way as that into which the duality itself falls. Into what does it fall? Into oblivion, whose lasting dominance conceals itself as Lethe to which Aletheia belongs so immediately that the former can withdraw in its favor and can relinquish to it pure disclosure in the modes of Physis, Logos, and En as though this had no need of concealment.

But the apparently futile lighting is riddled with darkness. In it the unfolding of the twofold remains as concealed as its decline for beginning thought. However, we must be alert to the duality of Being and beings in the eon in order to follow the discussion Parmenides devotes to the relation between thinking and Being." (pp. 86-87)
———. 1992. Parmenides (Lecture course 1942-43). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Gesamtausgabe Vol. 54. Lecture course from the winter semester 1942-43, first published in 1982; translated by André Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz.

"We are attempting to follow the path of thought of two thinkers, Parmenides and Heraclitus. Both belong, historiographically calculated, to the early period of Western thought. With regard to this early thinking in the Occident, among the Greeks, we are distinguishing between outset and beginning. Outset refers to the coming forth of this thinking at a definite "time." Thinking does not mean here the course of psychologically represented acts of thought but the historical process in which a thinker arises, says his word, and so provides to truth a place within a historical humanity. As for time, it signifies here less the point of time calculated according to year and day than it means "age," the situation of human things and man's dwelling place therein. "Outset" has to do with the debut and the emergence of thinking. But we are using "beginning" in a quite different sense. The "beginning" is what, in his early thinking, is to be thought and what is thought. Here we are still leaving unclarified the essence of this thought. But supposing that the thinking of a thinker is distinct from the knowledge of the "sciences" and from every kind of practical cognition in all respects, shell we have to say that the relation of thinking to its thought is essentially other than the relation of ordinary "technical-practical" and "moral-practical" thinking to what it thinks.

Ordinary thinking, whether scientific or prescientific or unscientific, thinks beings, and does so in every case according to their individual regions, separate strata, and circumscribed aspects. This thinking is an acquaintance with beings, a knowledge that masters and dominates beings in various ways. In distinction from the mastering of beings, the thinking of thinkers is the thinking of Being. Their thinking is a retreating in face of Being. We name what is thought in the thinking of the thinkers the beginning. Which hence now means: Being is the beginning. Nevertheless, not every thinker, who has to think Being, thinks the beginning. Not every thinker, not even every one at the outset of Western thought, is a primordial thinker, i.e., a thinker who expressly thinks the beginning.

Anaximander, Parmenides, and Heraclitus are the only primordial thinkers. They are this, however, not because they open up Western thought and initiate it. Already before them there were thinkers. They are primordial thinkers because they think the beginning. The beginning is what is thought in their thinking. This sounds as if "the beginning" were something like an "object" the thinkers take up for themselves in order to think it through. But we have already said in general about the thinking of thinkers that it is a retreating in face of Being. If, within truly thoughtful thinking, the primordial thinking is the highest one, then there must occur here a retreating of a special kind. For these thinkers do not "take up" the beginning in the way a scientist "attacks" something. Neither do these thinkers come up with the beginning as a self-produced construction of thought. The beginning is not something dependent on the favor of these thinkers, where they are active in such and such a way, but, rather, the reverse: the beginning is that which begins something with these thinkers -- by laying a claim on them in such a way that from them is demanded an extreme retreating in the face of Being. The thinkers are begun by the beginning, "in-cepted" [An-gefangenen] by the in-ception [An-fang]; they are taken up by it and are gathered into it.

It is already a wrong-headed idea that leads us to speak of the "work" of these thinkers. But if for the moment, and for the lack of a better expression, we do talk that way, then we must note that their "work," even if it had been preserved for us intact, would be quite small in "bulk" compared with the "work" of Plato or Aristotle and especially in comparison with the "work" of a modern thinker. Plato and Aristotle and subsequent thinkers have thought far "more," have traversed more regions and strata of thinking, and have questioned out of a richer knowledge of things and man. And yet all these thinkers think "less" than the primordial thinkers." (pp. 7-8)
———. 1999. "The Last, Undelivered Lecture (XII) from Summer Semester 1952." In The Presocratics after Heidegger, edited by Jacobs, David C., 171-184. Albany: State University of New Yoek Press.

"Translator's Introduction

The following text presents for the first time a translation of the final lecture prepared by Heidegger for the second part of his 1951-1952 course Was heisst Denken? (What is Called Thinking?). Although included in the original handwritten manuscript, this lecture was not delivered as part of the course, apparently because there was insufficient time at the end of the summer semester. The published version of the course likewise omits the final lecture. Heidegger did, however, read the text of lecture XII as part of a subsequent “Colloquium on Dialectic," which took place in Muggenbrunn on 15 September 1952. Both the protocol of the “Colloquium" and the lecture are published in Hegel-Studien, Band 25 (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1990). The text of the lecture is significant not only because it belongs to the original manuscript of Was heisst Denken? , but also because it represents an early version of the essay that appeared in revised form under the title “Moira" in Vorträge und Aufsätze.

In preparing this translation I have had reference to the translation of "Moira," by Frank A. Capuzzi, which appears in Early Greek Thinking (New York: Harper Collins, 1984). The English reader should note that the German text—in particular the introduction—has a somewhat stilted style, and that this is reflected in the translation. The numbers in square brackets indicate the original manuscript pagination, and facilitate cross-reference to the German text.

Will McNeill"
———. 2003. "Seminar in Zähringen 1973." In Four Seminars, 64-84. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

"In the silence that follows, Jean Beaufret notes: The text we just heard completes, as it were, the long meditation in which you have turned first towards Parmenides and then Heraclitus. One could even say that your thinking has engaged differently with Heraclitus and Parmenides. Indeed, in Vorträge and Aufsätze, the primacy seemed to be given to Heraclitus. Today what place would Heraclitus take with respect to Parmenides?

Heidegger: From a mere historical perspective, Heraclitus signified the first step towards dialectic. From this perspective, then, Parmenides is more profound and essential (if it is the case that dialectic, as is said in Being and Time, is "a genuine philosophic embarrassment") In this regard, we must thoroughly recognize that tautology is the only possibility for thinking what dialectic can only veil.

However, if one is able to read Heraclitus on the basis of the Parmenidean tautology, he himself then appears in the closest vicinity to that same tautology, he himself then appears in the course of an exclusive approach presenting access to being." (p. 81)
———. 2015. The Beginning of Western Philosophy: Interpretation of Anaximander and Parmenides. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Translated by Richard Rojcewicz; this is a translation of a lecture course Martin Heidegger offered in the summer semester of 1932 at the University of Freiburg. The German original appeared posthumously in 2012 as volume 35 of the philosopher’s Gesamtausgabe (“Complete Works”).

Contents: Part One: The dictum of Anaximander of Miletus, 6th–5th century 1-26; Part Two: Interposed considerations 27-77; Part Three: The “didactic poem” of Parmenides of Elea, 6th–5th century 79; §18. Introduction 79;§19. Interpretation of fragment 1. Preparation for the question of Being 81; §20. Interpretation of fragments 4 and 5 86; §21. Interpretation of fragments 6 and 7 92; §22. Interpretation of fragment 8 103; §23. The δόξα-fragments 9, 12, 13, 10, 11, 14, 16, 19 (in the order of their interpretation) 144< Conclusion. §24. The inceptual question of Being; the law of philosophy 152.

"We will start at once with the interpretation of Parmenides’s didactic poem. What the previous endeavors at interpreting Parmenides have accomplished will be mentioned when discussing the respective issues. For the rest, however, those works will not be presented in more detail. Not because they are insignificant but because they are so unavoidable that one cannot speak about them at first. Our concern is primarily with securing a philosophical understanding of the beginning of Western philosophy and only secondarily with initiating ourselves into the procedure of appropriating an earlier philosophy, i.e., into the method of interpretation.

With respect to all previous interpretive attempts, even Hegel’s, it should be said that they made their work philosophically too easy, in part by invoking as a highest explanatory principle the view that the beginning is precisely the primitive and therefore is crude and raw—the illusion of progress! (In this regard, nothing further to say about the previous attempts.)

The interpretation of Parmenides is closely coupled to the question of his relation to Heraclitus, who presupposed Parmenides and contests against him. The notion that in essentials they are in the sharpest opposition is thereby presupposed as valid. In the end, however, this presupposition is precisely an error. In the end, Parmenides and Heraclitus are in the utmost agreement—as are all actual philosophers—not because they renounce battling, but precisely on account of their own respective ultimate originality.

For nonphilosophers, who adhere only to works, opinions, schools, names, and claims, the history of philosophy and of philosophers does of course present the appearance of a madhouse. But that can quietly remain as it is." (p. 77)
Heller, Agnes. 1997. "Parmenides and the Battle of Stalingrad." Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal no. 19:247-262.

Abstract: "For the winter semester of 1942-1943, Heidegger announced a lecture course at the University of Freiburg on Parmenides and Heraclitus. In Heidegger’s collected works, volume 54, the lecture course was published under the title Parmenides, since Heidegger never actually discussed Heraclitus in the course. I may add that he barely discussed Parmenides either. The lecture course proceeds in circles. The lecturer seems to introduce new themes again and again, quickly digressing from each, only to return to some, but not all, of them. Allow me to list the main themes in order of their appearance in the lecture notes: originary thinking, aletheia, goddess, translation, conflict, the Greek word pseudos and its translations, how the Romans mistranslated the Greeks, the Greek word methodos and its misunderstanding, lethe, the translation of zoon logon ekhon, the word, pragma, techne, physis and how it is not natura, unconcealing and concealing, the history of being, the polis, the daimon, the essence of the Greek gods, politeia, adike, what philosophy is, to think on something or about something, metaphysics, the subject/object relation, I-ness, egoism, metaphysics as the essence of technology, to think being, the essence of truth, the fate of the Occident, to rethink originary thinking, the foundation/less and so on. As one can see from this brief, and by no means full enumeration, Heidegger’s lecture course on Parmenides contains a small encyclopedia of the so called “basic words” of his philosophical turn. There is nothing in his famous Letter on Humanism that was not already present during the Parmenides course in the winter semester of 1942-1943."
Helmig, Christoph. 2022. "Interpreting Parmenides of Elea in Antiquity: From Plato’s Parmenides to Simplicius’ Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics." In Received Opinions: Doxography in Antiquity and the Islamic World, edited by Lammer, Andreas and Jas, Mareike, 175-206. Leiden: Brill.

"In Antiquity, the reception of Parmenides starts with Plato’s Eleatic dialogues, especially with the Parmenides and the Sophist, and concludes almost 900 years later with Simplicius’ Commentary on the Physics and, to a lesser extent, his Commentary on the De Caelo. It is well known that the Neoplatonist played an eminent role in the transmission of Presocratic philosophy. Leonardo Tarán estimated that “in the case of the Presocratics Simplicius alone has preserved at least two thirds of all the verbatim quotations.” (p. 176)

(...)

"Because of its eminent role in the transmission and interpretation of Parmenides, it is worthwhile looking a bit closer at how Simplicius dealt with the material he quotes from the poem. Since our volume has a special focus on doxography, I shall, in what follows, try to situate Simplicius in the broader doxographical context of Parmenides’ philosophy and raise the question as to how the Parmenidean doxographical tradition can best be characterised and delineated. What is the role of Simplicius within the doxographical tradition of Parmenides and how can he be characterised compared to his predecessors (esp. Plato and the Platonic tradition after him)?" (p. 178)

(6) Tarán, “The Text of Simplicius’ Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics,” 246 f. The full quote is given right below,
Hermann, Arnold. 2004. To Think Like God: Pythagoras and Parmenides, the Origins of Philosophy. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Contents: Preface XIII; Acknowledgments XXI; A Note on References, Translations, Citations, Notes, Bibliography, and Some Idiosyncrasies XXV; Abbreviations XXIX;

Introduction 1; I. Pythagoras15; II. The Pythagoreans 31; III. In Want of a Mathematics for the Soul 93; IV. Pythagorizing versus Philosophizing 115; V. Parmenides 127; VI. The Poem of Parmenides 151; VII. The Poem's Most Difficult Points Explained 163; VIII. Guidelines for an Evidential Account 211; IX. Methods of Proof and Disproof 225; X. Irrationals and the Perfect Premise 251; CI. Mind and Universe: Two Realms, Two Separate Approaches 267; Appendix 279; Subdivided Bibliography 297; Index Locorum 341; General Index 353-374.

"What is the Poem about? As I have indicated—and contrary to out-of-date interpretations and the cursory definitions which typify the average works of reference—the Poem is not about the universe, existence, or the oneness-of-it-all. All of these rather lofty objectives are later inventions, even if they have been repeated ad nauseam for the last 2,500 years. Yet the verses themselves bear no evidence that such matters belong to Parmenides' actual concerns. They show, rather, that Parmenides' inquiries were

less esoteric, without being less exciting, considering their fundamental ramifications for the integrity of human knowledge and communication, which indeed may also include our knowledge of the universe, existence, and so forth, and the mode we choose to explain them. Thus Parmenides focused on reasoning and speaking, and how to make both dependable, regardless of what in the end their object may be (as long as it is an expressible object). I like A. A. Long’s comment on this issue: “What Parmenides says is a continuous provocation to our own thinking about thinking.”(450)

There is a fine but very crucial difference to be made between the advancement of a cosmological theory and the demonstration of techniques of how to make an account reliable. Naturally, such an account may also be used to express a variety of things, including the universe and everything in it, but it is only reliable when such matters are addressed in their capacity as objects of thought (see frs. 4 and 7.3–6), and in a form that does not lead to self-contradiction (see fr. 8). In a nutshell, Parmenides' central problem was how to ensure the reliability of discourse. Statements had to be defended against self-contradiction as well as against the misleading plausibility of vagueness—regardless, ultimately, of what said statements were about. For both of these vulnerabilities, Parmenides introduces examples and methods to extricate the truth." (pp. 151-152)

(450) Long [‘Parmenides on Thinking Being'] expands on Heidegger’s remark about Parmenides' Poem that it “continually deserves more thought.” p. 127.
———. 2008. "Negative Proof and Circular Reasoning." In Eleatica 2006: Parmenide scienziato?, edited by Rossetti, Livio and Marcacci, Flavia, 103-112. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"In Cordero’s work By Being It Is, chapter VI, p. 123, parallels are drawn between Parmenides' Poem and Plato’s Parmenides. Cordero focuses on the use of Ί begin' [arxomai] by the Eleatic thinker - found in B5 and also B8, when the Goddess announces a new beginning before commencing with the Doxa (8.50) - comparing it to how the argumentative exercises are introduced in the second part of the Parmenides (137a-b). Plato, in this latter work, is having his own Parmenides - the dialogues' protagonist - also state that he will 'begin' the demonstration that will follow, the one that addresses his hypothesis ‘that one is'. Cordero speculates that this allusion is not coincidental in Plato, suggesting that Plato was not only aware of the Parmenidean principle of circularity in argumentative proving, but that he used it deliberately in the Parmenides.

While working on the Parmenides, particularly on its translation, I had come to similar conclusions. The idea of returning to one’s initial premise by way of a challenge or test is at the heart of the Parmenidean method, an approach also used exhaustively by Plato in his Parmenidean dialogue. However, in Cordero’s presentation of this approach, one particular point has remained somewhat unclear or unaddressed, namely whether the circulatory proving has to be taken as germane to the whole account, or only to specific parts. That is, must the whole account of the Goddess return to its beginning, or is this only required of the individual arguments that compose it? Personally, I hold the latter view, as this can be fairly easily demonstrated both by the Poem and the Platonic dialogue." (p. 103)
———. 2009. "Parmenides versus Heraclitus?" In Nuevos Ensayos sobre Heráclito. Actas del Segundo Symposium Heracliteum, edited by Hülsz Piccone, Enrique, 261-284. México: U.N.A.M.

"Five years ago, at the annual Arizona Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, Daniel Graham gave a first draft of a paper titled ‘Heraclitus and Parmenides.' He was investigating the possibility of a Parmenidean response to the Ephesian, and he defended the idea quite vigorously.

Graham’s paper was a response to Michael Stokes, who, years ago, in his work One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy, had debunked this theory rather convincingly. I, of course, was very much in Stokes' camp, and as an avid and sometimes excessive student of Parmenides, had strong reservations. But Graham, very graciously, entrusted me with a copy of this early draft. Years passed and although I investigated other things, Graham’s paper, and in a way his challenge, was always at the back of my mind. So it is only fitting that now, after all these years, I’ve thought to complete the circle, in a truly Parmenidean fashion, and devote this paper to Graham’s observations.

A few brief remarks about Daniel Graham’s study: the paper has remained the last word on the subject of a Parmenidean response. The work is well-researched and detailed, each argument meticulously worked out; particularly the final or published version which has some substantial improvements on the original draft.(1) Graham has dug up parallels between Parmenides and Heraclitus that, to my knowledge, have remained largely unnoticed, and I have benefited greatly from this thoughtful study. All in all, Daniel has offered us an excellent defense of the “Parmenides answers to Heraclitus” theory (subsequently acronymed to “PATH theory”). Nevertheless, I have remained unconvinced.

To establish a link between the two thinkers, certain criteria have to be met:

1. The question of chronology.

2. The textual correspondence, parallels or similarities of both works.

3. The question of an equivalent subject-matter: is there a shared object of inquiry or discourse in the teachings of both thinkers?

4. The testimonia of subsequent commentators, their criticisms, interpretations of teachings, and general opinions on Heraclitus and Parmenides.

5. And finally, if the chronological question cannot be resolved, and if no thinker mentions the other by name, and if the testimonia let us down, but if nonetheless textual agreement or parallels can be found, we must find some other means of determining who influenced whom. Perhaps, in this case, we should also consider the possibility that neither thinker influenced the other, but that they both were responding to a third party. My modest survey indicates that this may indeed be the case, a possibility that took me

quite by surprise, considering that in the beginning I was aiming to show that Parmenides was an entirely original thinker, and if in fact he answered to anyone, then only to Xenophanes' epistemological challenge (B 34), (but certainly not to his theology).(2)" (pp. 261-262)

(1) Graham, “Heraclitus and Parmenides”, Presocratic Philosophy. Ed. Caston and Graham, Ashgate, 27–44.

(2) I am aware of the Homeric, Hesiodic and Orphic echoes in the Proem, but I dont consider this a response in the same vein as Parmenides is said to have answered to Heraclitus. It is rather a utilization of familiar or popular themes, which allowed him to evoke a mythical atmosphere.
———. 2011. "Parricide or Heir? Plato’s Uncertain Relationship to Parmenides." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 147-165. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "Most scholars view Plato’s critique of Parmenides in the Sophist, particularly the observations surrounding the “parricide” remark, as quite apt and justified. The theory is that Parmenides deserves to be rebuked for failing to recognize that “What Is Not” can be understood in more ways than one, namely, not only in an existential sense, but also predicatively or, in the language of the Sophist, as indicating “difference.” I aim to show, nevertheless, that Plato’s indictment of Parmenides misses the mark in significant ways, allowing Parmenides to escape the so-called threat of parricide not once but twice.

For example, Parmenides' abundant use of alpha-privatives (e.g., ἀγένητον)—as well as the negative οὐ (or οὐκ) when there is no a-privative form available—indicates that he was well aware of the difference between indicating “is not” predicatively versus existentially. Moreover, the Poem nowhere suggests that his strictures regarding the use of What Is Not are to be taken in the broadest possible sense, disallowing, in effect, the discrimination between the existential and the predicative case. Only when sought after as a “way of inquiry” does What Is Not—in contrast to the Way of What Is—fail to provide us with a graspable, expressible object. After all, the “Way of What Is Not,” lacks any sort of sēmata, or signs, that can be used to navigate it. As a “way of inquiry for thinking” (B2), it leads nowhere, lacking any sort of expressible or knowable object or goal. The complete absence of an object or result, however, does not hinder us from making statements to this effect, nor from uttering the words “What Is Not” or “Not Being.” Yet this fine distinction is lost to many who have criticized Parmenides for being inconsistent, careless, or simply ignorant. The move from the intellectual unavailability of an object that marks a defunct way of inquiry, to the claim that to even speak of such a “way” is both illegitimate and impossible—all the while insisting that Parmenides himself is to be blamed for such a monstrous fallacy—seems an egregious gloss-over, even if the perpetrator is someone of Plato’s stature. If my arguments prove sound, then Parmenides should be absolved of the charges leveled against him."
Hershbell, Jackson P. 1970. "Parmenides' Way of Truth and B16." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 4:1-23.

Reprinted in: J. P. Anton, A. Preus (eds.), Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Vol. Two, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983, pp. 41-58.

"At least three interpretations have been given to B16 of Parmenides' poem. It has been taken for a fragment of his theory of knowledge, of his doctrine of sense perception, and of his views on sensing and knowing.(1) Evidence for these interpretations is taken from Aristotle's Metaphysics and Theophrastus' De Sensibus. The fragment is usually assigned to the second part of the poem, the Way of Seeming or Opinion.

In this study it will be argued that B16 comes from the first part of the poem, the Way of Truth, and that it is a statement neither of a theory of knowledge nor of sense perception, but an affirmation of the close relationship between thought and Being:(2) there can be no thought without that which is, or in Parmenides' words, ". . . neither can you recognize that which is not (that is impossible) nor can you speak about it" (B2, 78).(3)" (p. 1)

(1) According to Burnet, "this fragment of the theory of knowledge which was expounded in the second part of the poem of Parmenides must be taken in connection with what we are told by Theophrastus in the 'Fragment on Sensation.' " J. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (reprint, New York, 1957) p. 178, note 1. Many interpreters of Parmenides' poem follow Burnet in assigning B16 to the second part. See also W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1965), p. 67; L. Tarán, Parmenides (Princeton, 1965), pp. 253-63; J. Mansfeld, Die Offenbarung des Parmenides und die menschliche Welt (Assen, 1964), p. 175 ff.; and U. Hölscher, Anfängliches Fragen (Göttingen, 1968), p. 112 f.; G. Vlastos, "Parmenides" Theory of Knowledge," Transactions of the American Philological Association 77 (1949): 66-77, argued that B 16 is part of Parmenides' doctrine of sense perception, not of his theory of knowledge.

Finally, an interpretation of this fragment as Parmenides' views on sensing and knowing has been offered by H. Fränkel, "Parmenidesstudien," Göttinger Nachrichten (1930): 153-92, especially 170 and 174. See also H. Fränkel, Wege und Formen frühgriechischen Denkens (Munich, 1955): 173-79.

In Anfängliches Fragen, Hölscher also maintains (p. 113) that Parmenides' teaching in B16 concerns ". . . Erkenntnis im allgemeinsten Sinne . . . . , ohne zwischen Wahrnehmung und Denken, zwischen Trug und Wahrheit zu unterscheiden."

(2) This thesis is not wholly new. It is proposed, for example, by J. H. M. Loenen in Parmenides, Melissus, Gorgias (Assen, 1959). He writes (p. 58): "As to the place of fr. 16 we can by no means be sure that this really formed part of the doxa. On the contrary, there are good reasons for holding that fr. 16 belonged to the first part." My reasons for assigning B16 to the first part are, however, different. Moreover, we do not agree concerning particular details or the interpretation of Parmenides' poem as a whole.

(3) The expressions "that which is," "Being," and "existence" are used interchangeably in this study without any attempt to give them a more precise meaning. "That which is" is a translation of the substantive participle used occasionally in the fragments, e.g., B4, 2 and B8, 35. The most convincing interpretation of Parmenides' thought is that of G. E. L. Owen, "Eleatic Questions,'' CQ 54 (1960): 84-102.

According to him, the subject of Parmenides' poem is "what can be talked or thought about" (pp. 94-95).

I have accepted Owen's general interpretation for the purpose of this study.
———. 1972. "Plutarch and Parmenides." Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies no. 13:193-208.

"Although Plutarch is not a major source for interpretation of Parmenides' poem, he preserves several fragments: B1.29-30; B8.4; B13, B14 and B15, the last two of which would otherwise be lost.(1) He also makes observations on Parmenides' style and thought, and relates one biographical incident.(2) Scholars of Plutarch and Parmenides are divided, however, on at least two problems: (I) What was the extent of Plutarch's knowledge ofParmenides, e.g. did he possess a copy of the complete poem, or was he working with second-hand sources such as compendia ?(3) (II) How reliable and worthwhile is his interpretation of Parmenides?" (p. 193)

(...)

"A summation of Plutarch's treatment of Parmenides is now in order. First, Plutarch shows interest in Parmenides' biography, relating one incident possibly derived from Speusippus' Περι φιλοσόφων.

Secondly, he shows interest in Parmenides' poem, and his observations are probably based on first-hand acquaintance with it. This seems especially so since Parmenides is mentioned with other ancient authors whom Plutarch knew well, and in his travels and study at some major cities of the ancient world, e.g. Athens, Plutarch could easily have had access to a copy of the poem. Further support for attributing to Plutarch direct knowledge of Parmenides' text is found in his discussion of B13 at Amat. 756E-F and his quotation of B14 and B15, not found in other sources. Thirdly, Plutarch seems familiar with both parts of Parmenides' poem. Although his discussion is Platonic in emphasis, his interpretation is not wholly unwarranted by the evidence.

Parmenides does seem to have been the first thinker to make some kind of distinction between the 'sensible' and 'intelligible' worlds, even though the terminology is not his. At least the things perceived by mortals do not have the characteristics Parmenides ascribed to τό εον. Fourthly, there are no clear indications that Plutarch's quotations are inaccurate. Some difficulties, especially in connection with B8.4, can be explained by a copyist's carelessness or Plutarch's tendency to paraphrase Parmenides, possibly from memory. In any case, rather than positing a use of compendia by Plutarch (for which there is no evidence), it seems more plausible to maintain Plutarch's reliance on notebooks based on his direct acquaintance with the poem.

Last, and perhaps most important, it would be erroneous to presume that Plutarch's quotations from and references to Parmenides are wholly disinterested. Several are found in anti-Epicurean and anti-Stoic contexts, a phenomenon which suggests, if nothing more, that Plutarch considered Parmenides an ally of the Academy." (pp. 207-208)

(1) The list of quotations in W. C. Helmbold and E. N. O'Neil, Plutarch's Quotations (Baltimore 1959) 53-54, is incomplete: B1.29-30 at 1114D-E and B8.4 at 1114c are not included.

(2) The Adv. Colot. has extended discussion of Parmenides' philosophy, and the biographical note is at 1126B. Remarks on Parmenides' style are at Quomodo adul. 16c-D, De rect. rat. aud. 45A-B, and De Pyth. or. 402F.

(3) Discussing the doxography on the moon in De fac. orb. lun. 929A-F which includes Parmenides, A. Fairbanks wrote: "it is quite possible that Plutarch was using some Stoic compendium which quoted freely from the earlier philosophers." See "On Plutarch's Quotations from the Early Greek Philosophers," TAPA 28 (1897) 82.
———. 1972-1973. "Parmenides and outis in Odyssey 9." The Classical Journal no. 68:178-180.

"At the end of his "Odyssey 9: symmetry and paradox in outis" (CJ [Classical Journal] 6 [1972] 22-25), M. Simpson draws attention (n. 10, 25) to the possible relevance of Parmenides' thought to the outis passage (Od. 9.366-460), remarking that "the paradox appears to contradict Parmenides' premise, 'That which is, is, that which is not, is not.' "

He also states that his note would be an "unnecessary digression if Eric A. Havelock, in 'Parmenides and Odysseus,' HSCP [Harvard Studies in Classical Philology] 63 (1958) 133-143, had not argued the importance of the Odyssey to Parmenides." Thus Simpson queries Havelock: "... what would Parmenides have made of the central episode in Odysseus' narration of his adventures, the one which at once reveals the hero at his most Odyssean, and contradicts the major premise of Parmenides' philosophy?"

My purpose is, not to reply on behalf of Havelock, but to argue: (a) that Simpson has probably misinterpreted Parmenides, and (b) that the Polyphemus episode does not appear to contradict Parmenides' philosophy; on the contrary, it may illustrate it.

In any case, nothing in the fragments of Parmenides' poem evokes or recalls this adventure of Odysseus, though Parmenides' familiarity with it need not be doubted.!1)" (p. 178)

(1) 1 Parmenides' poem clearly belongs in the epic tradition; there are also motifs common to it and the Odyssey, as well as many formulaic parallels noted by H. Diels in his Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker⁸ I (Berlin 1956). See Havelock, "Parmenidesa nd Odysseus," and A. Mourelatos, The route of Parmenides (New Haven 1970), p. 1-46, esp. 17-25.
Hintikka, Jaakko. 1980. "Parmenides' Cogito Argument." Ancient Philosophy no. 1:5-16.

"Parmenides held that the only thing we can truly say in philosophy is "is" or, in a more idiomatic but also more misleading English, "it is," éstin. Even though this main thesis of Parmenides turns out to have more consequences and more interesting consequences than it might at first seem to promise, our first reaction to it is likely to be one of puzzlement. How can a major philosopher hold such an incredible, paradoxical view? The purpose of this paper is to make Parmenides' thesis understandable. I shall argue that, notwithstanding the paradoxical appearance of Parmenides' thesis, it is in reality an eminently natural consequence of certain assumptions which are all understandable and which can all be shown to have been actually subscribed to by Parmenides. Furthermore, Parmenides' assumptions are arguably not incorrect, either, with one exception. They are all of considerable historical and systematic interest."

(...)

"Parmenides' first and foremost assumption is easier to formulate in terms of conceptual models or paradigms than in the form of an explicit premise. This model amounts to conceiving of thinking as a goal-directed process that "comes off'' or "realizes itself" in its objects.

I shall first show how this conceptual model explains Parmenides' conclusion, and only afterwards return to my grounds for ascribing it to Parmenides and also return to its background and its corollaries in his work." (p. 5)
Hoffmann, Herbert. 2001-2002. "Symbol and essence in Parmenides' teaching of the two ways." Hephaistos no. 19-20:131-139.
Hoy, Ronald C. 1994. "Parmenides' Complete Rejection of Time." Journal of Philosophy no. 9:573-598.

"Parmenides is often credited with discovering the category of timeless truths, and he is sometimes praised or blamed (along with Plato) for asserting that what is real can transcend time.(1)

But besides positing a timeless reality for eternal truths to be about, Parmenides finds fault with beliefs about time and argues that time is not real: if temporal thoughts are inherently contradictory then reality cannot be temporal. In claiming time to be contradictory,

Parmenides stands first in a line of philosophers (including Plato, Kant, andJ.M. McTaggart) who find something unreal about time.

(...)

In this paper, I shall suggest it is wrong to interpret Parmenides' position as hinging mainly on semantic issues centered on reference.

I shall show how commentators who do so fail to do justice to his complaints about time. Instead, I shall reconstruct Parmenides' worries in terms of the recent conflict between "tensed" and "tenseless" views of time. From this perspective, Parmenides offers an early proscription on the contradictory beliefs that dog any metaphysics based on temporal becoming. It will also become clear how complete Parmenides' rejection of time was: why, for other reasons, he could not accept even the tenseless view, and why he should be suspicious of attempts to read him as discovering a new kind of "eternity." (pp. 573-574)

(1) See, for example, G.E.L. Owen, "Plato and Parmenides on the Timeless Present," in A. Mourelatos, ed., The Pre-Socratics, Gaarden City: Anchor/Doubleday, (1974), pp. 271-92.
———. 2013. "Heraclitus and Parmenides." In A Companion to the Philosophy of Time, edited by Dyke, Heather and Bardon, Adrian, 9-29. Malden: Wiley-Blackwewll.

"Once upon a time, two giants of the ancient Greek world expressed contrary views of time – views so fundamental and provocative that they continue to resonate in contemporary debates about the nature of time. Neither Heraclitus nor Parmenides wrote explicit theories of time. Instead, they wrestled with a basic philosophical problem: do our ordinary, “common sense” beliefs accurately represent reality, or do they distort it for the convenience or flattery of mere mortals? Both rejected in harsh terms many common beliefs. Both put forward alternative radical metaphysical views. What makes their claims important for later students of time is that Heraclitus and Parmenides each fastened upon some problematic aspect of the temporality of the world, and they each made what bothered them central to their dramatic rejection of common beliefs. Importantly, they focused on different features of the human experience of time as the source of metaphysical error. In their different ways, they articulated views of time so different and provocative that philosophers and scientists can fi nd themselves still wrestling with the same issues, and, in effect, taking sides. Or so the story has been going for about 2500 years." (p. 9)

(...)

"Parmenides ’ rejection of time is complete. Using the admonitions of the goddess he can reject Heraclitus ’ fl ux – what is given in perception harbors contradictions. And the common mortal belief that there is a metaphysical distinction between past, present, and future – plus passage between them – is also exposed as two-headed and backward turning." (p. 21)
Hrachovec, Herbert. 2011. "“... goaded perhaps by Parmenides” – Preliminaries to a Platonic Problem." Coceptus no. 40:53-69.

Summary: "Donald Davidson, in his Truth and Predication, suggests that Plato’s concern with “gluing together” subject and predicate in assertive sentences might be traced back to Parmenides. Taking his lead this paper discusses the connection, proceeding in three steps.

A short overview of the literature on Parmenides’ fragment B2 will be given and a Davidsonian move to reduce the complexity of the hermeneutical situation will be proposed. Secondly, given this reduction, a Parmenideian tableaux will be put forward and compared to our present understanding of elementary propositional and predicate logic. This will provide the basis for the concluding discussion of Plato’s characteristic transformation of Parmenides’ dictum into the bundle of arguments that give rise to the problem of the unity of propositions."
Hubert Jr., Maritn. 1969. "Amatorius, 756 E-F: Plutarch's Citation of Parmenides and Hesiod." The American Journal of Philology no. 90:183-200.

"The Parmenides verse [Fr. 13] and the Hesiod passage [Theogony, 116-22)] were previously paired by Phaedrus in Plato's Symposium (178B) and by Aristotle in the Metaphysics (I, 4, 984b 23-30), and in this paper my primary concern will be to demonstrate that when Plutarch composed his appeal to Parmenides and Hesiod he was under the influence of both Plato and Aristotle but that he was slavishly bound to neither." (p. 184, a note omitted)
Huffman, Carl A. 2011. "A New Mode of Being for Parmenides: A Discussion of John Palmer, Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 41:289-305.
Hülsz Piccone, Enrique. 2013. "Some comments on L. Gemelli Marciano's 'Lezioni eleatiche'." In Eleatica Vol. 3: Parmenide. Suoni, immagini, esperienza, edited by Rossetti, Livio and Pulpito, Massimo, 149-158. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.
Hummel, Ralph P. . 2004. "A Once and Future Politics: Heidegger's Recovery of the Political in "Parmenides"." Administrative Theory & Praxis no. 26:279-303.

Abstract: "Can it be that the modern perspective on politics, policy-making, and administration is so inbred that we are disabled from envi sioning alternatives? Martin Heidegger thought so. The present au thor attempts to give an initial insight into what may be the controversial German philosopher's hidden opus on "Politics" as it revives the relationship between the polis and truth."

The science of politics studies necessities; the philosophy of politics studies freedom." (p. 279)

(...)

"By looking at Greek politics, we are offered a way of looking at politics that transcends the bare ruined practices of our day. Because the Greeks were in the modem sense "unpolitical," Heidegger warns that "No modem concept of 'the political' reaches far enough for us to grasp the essence of the polis" (1982, p. 135; 1992, p. 91).(15) We can focus in two statements for a summary of his findings on the polis. These, however, are no more than an obligato to the permanent theme: The Greek polis is the place where what is, things and beings as they are (Seiendes), can be seen as emerging from the relation with Being (Sein), as that which grounds existence, and human existence (Dasein). The two statements: "Polis is the polos, the pole, the place around which turns, in a peculiar way, all that appears as what exists for the Greeks" (1982, p. 132; 1992, p. 89). And:

The polis is the place of the essence of the historical human being, the where wherein the human being as zoon logon echon [the being that has the word(16)] belongs, the where from where only he is fitted with the fittingness into which he is fitted.(17) (1982, p. 141; 1992, p. 95" (p. 288)

(15) Ibid., "Kein moderner Begriff 'des Politischen' reicht zu, um das Wesen der polis zu fassen." (Heidegger uses the Greek alphabet for polis and other terms to remind us that they must be thought not in modem but in Greek.)

(16) Heidegger, in this characterization of the living being that blossoms into itself through possession of the word, rejects later translations of zoon = animal. He argues this neglects the nature of living being as the blossoming and self-revealing associated with physis. He rejects as well logos= ratio; zoon logon exon = animal rationale. Similarly, logon = word only if seen from a peculiar Roman point of view (1982, p. 100 and pp. 103, 113, 115; 1992, p. 68 and pp. 69, 77, 78). For Heidegger's discussion of the unfolding of physis: his "Vom Wesen und Begriff der physis -- Aristoteles, Physik B, 1" in Wegmarken, 2nd edition (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1978), pp. 237-299.

(17) " .. . das Wo, von woher allein ihm zugefuegt wird der Fug, in den er gefuegt ist." Heidegger develops the concept here translated as fittingness, that which becomes or befits Man, in a German neologism "Fug" and out of the Greek dike, usually rendered as justice (1982 and 1992, C § 6 b).

References

Heidegger, M. (1982). Parmenides (Vol. 54). Gesamtausgabe, IL Abteilung: Vorlesungen 1923-1944. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

Heidegger, M. (1992). Parmenides. (A. Schuwer & R. Rojcewicz, Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Husain, Martha. 1983. "The Hybris of Parmenides." Dialogue no. 22:451-460.

"To speak of hybris in the case of Parmenides seems hardly justified. He is addressed by the unnamed goddess to whose abode he journeys as Koupe, "youth" or "initiate", hardly a term of great respect in Greek usage. He is guided on his path, i.e., he has not found it by himself, and he receives a truth he never claims as his own. Could a mortal show greater awareness of his limitations? Yet, in an oddly disturbing way the distinction between the divine and the human is obliterated—the worst kind of hybris for Greek thought and feeling.

To charge Parmenides with hybris is paradoxical, to say the least, and yet perhaps illuminating. The philosopher's hybris has none of the traditional connotations of doing violence or injury to somebody out of wanton insolence and overreaching. On the contrary. His quest for enlightenment is sanctioned by divine power, by righteousness (θέμις) and justice δική(), and marked by almost complete self-effacement. And yet it contains features that would be clearly recognizable as hybris to traditional Greek thinking, and some of its results may well be seen as destructive. The Greek notion of hybris, overweening pride, connotes above all a failure of man to maintain its opposite, proper pride, i.e., to understand and occupy his proper and rightful place in the cosmos. That place is defined for man most significantly in terms of his relationship with the divine, and therefore the Greek awareness of hybris points to the ever-present danger of a disturbance in this relationship. To charge Parmenides with hybris is then to charge philosophy with being double edged, a new source of enlightenment but also a new source of danger.

Transposing this notion from traditional Greek culture to philosophy may illumine how all ways of being human are perilous." (p. 451)
Hussey, Edward. 1972. The Presocratics. London: Duckworth.

Contents: Preface VIII; 1 Introduction 1; 2The Milesians 11; 3 Heraclitus 32; 4 Pythagoras and the Greek West 60; 5 Parmenides and Zeno 78; 6 The Age of the Sophists107; 7 Cosmology from Parmenides to Democritus 127; 8 Conclusion: the Study of the Presocratics 149; Notes156; Maps: Black Sea, Aegean, Levant VI; Ionia 12; Magna Graecia 62; Index 165-168.

On Parmenides see pp. 78-99 and 128-130.

"Parmenides is the first Presocratic of whose thought we still have a nearly complete and continuos exposition in his own words. That this is so is due entirely to one man, the Neoplatonist scholar Simplicius. In his commentary on the Physics of Aristotle, written early in the sixth century A.D., Simplicius quotes large extracts from the poem of Parmenides, in illustration of Aristotle’s remarks on it, expressly because, as he says, the book had become scarce. It is therefore almost possible to approach Parmenides in the way intended by Parmenides himself; this chapter will follow that way as far as it can be established.

It is worth noticing that Parmenides expressed his thought in hexameter verses. This was not an odd or ridiculous thing to do, as it would be if a modem philosopher wrote in verse. Verse was still appropriate, and felt to be appropriate, for any pronouncement intended to be particularly memorable. Written books existed, and many states displayed their laws and decrees publicly in writing; yet the habit of relying on the written word was not widespread or of long standing. An educated man was one who had things by heart, and verse is more easily memorised than prose." (p. 78)
———. 2006. "Parmenides on Thinking." In Common to Body and Soul: Philosophical Approaches to Explaining Living Behaviour in Greco-Roman Antiquity, edited by King, R. A. H., 13-30. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Parmenides fr. 16 Diels-Kranz, notoriously, presents a tangle of textual and syntactic problems. This paper starts by by-passing these problems (though it eventually returns to them). The aim is to explore the possibility of a certain kind of reading of Parmenides' account of "mind" and "thinking" (νοός, νόημα, φρονέειν) here.

In the rest of section 1, I consider the archaic (principally Homeric) usage of the words for "thinking" and "mind". Section 2 outlines the proposed reading of Parmenides' theory in the light of these linguistic considerations.

Section 3 grapples with the greatest problem for that reading: the apparently contradictory testimony of Aristotle. Here it is necessary to use the rather different testimony of Theophrastus, and a general hypothesis about Aristotle's reading of the "materialistic" psychology of his predecessors.

Section 4 considers the earlier theories of "perception of like by like", of which Parmenides' is one. I aim to show that these can be understood as involving an "inner model". Finally, section 5 returns to Parmenides fr. 16, and shows how it may be read as an example of an "inner model" theory of mental activity." (p. 13)
Hutchinson, Gregory O. 2020. Motion in classical literature: Homer, Parmenides, Sophocles, Ovid, Seneca, Tacitus, Art. New York Oxford University Press.

Chapter 6: Parmenides, On nature, pp. 191-214.

"Parmenides’ creation is an extraordinary adventure in philosophy, but it is also a poem. The poetry is not regrettable ornamentation: it is a potent means to the compelling expression of the thought.

(...)

The poem consisted of: a an account of the narrator’s chariot ride and meeting with a goddess; b and c her speech, an account of the whole cosmos, as it is in reality (b), and as it is in mortal opinion (c). It is a striking aspect of the poem that a presents a metaphorical journey by chariot with remarkable vigour; b presents the process of arriving at truth through roads that are eliminated and followed (similarly the introduction of (b + c)); b presents reality as unmoving; c offers a world full of motion.

The idea that motion is unreal, that reality is immobile, is not a passing detail in the exposition of b. Parmenides is drawing on important ideas of Xenophanes about god, as the language shows: so Xenoph. B 26.1 = D19.1 αἰεὶ δ᾿ ἐν ταὐτῶι μίμνει κινούμενοϲ οὐδέν, ‘he always remains in the same place, entirely unmoved’, cf. A 28.977b8–20 = R6.9–11, A 31.6–7 = R4 last para. Parmenides seems to be pointedly contradicting Anaximander and Anaximenes, who are said to have spoken of eternal motion. His followers Zeno and Melissus took his thought up with energy." (p. 1919, two notes omitted)
Hyland, Drew A. 1998. "Reiner Schürmann's Parmenides: Of Unbroken Non-Hegemonies " Research in Phenomenology no. 28:243-258.

"Shortly before his death, Reiner Schurmann [1941-1993] brought to completion his remarkable magnum opus, Des Hégémonies brisées,(1) “Broken Hegemonies.”

(...)

"Because the book is only recently published, as yet only in French, and because it is almost 800 pages long, I shall take rather more time than usual in setting out as accurately as I can the fundaments of Schurmann’s interpretation of Parmenides before turning to some remarks on the philosophic issues raised by that interpretation. Accordingly, the structure of this article will be as follows: after some introductory remarks, I shall, in part I, set out as best I can Schurmann’s interpretation of Parmenides. I shall from time to time make comments on very specific textual issues as they arise, but I shall limit my comments to the specifics of those texts. Then, in part II, I shall raise and discuss some of the broader philosophic issues raised by Schurmann’s thought-provoking interpretation.

I might best prepare the reader for the striking originality of Schurmann’s interpretation of Parmenides by beginning with a word of clarification about my title. If we were to take as our standard some version of the orthodox interpretation of Parmenides (Parmenides as advocating a changeless, eternal, perfect, one Being and that alone, thereby denying all change, becoming, motion, or time; thus the father of the notion of a changeless, eternal Being of some sort), then indeed, Parmenides may have established a hegemony which has been, or perhaps still needs to be, broken. Or perhaps, Schurmann himself breaks that hegemony through his radical deconstruction of that orthodox interpretation. For in any case, the Parmenides that Schurmann reads is certainly no broken hegemony, because it is not a hegemony at all, at least not in the sense of establishing a single, exclusive, dominant and domineering law. As a final prefatory remark, let me indicate in advance how much I appreciate the originality of Schurmann’s interpretation. Unorthodox interpretations of a thinker that leave that thinker far behind by straying again and again from the text or by focusing only on a few lines of the text, those that suit one’s interpretation, are easy; unorthodox interpretations such as Schurmann’s that are accomplished by the most faithful adherence to the text as a whole and its spirit are always the most thought-provoking and challenging." (pp. 243-244)

(1) Reiner Schurmann, Des Hégémonies Brisées (Mauvezin: Trans-Europ-Repress, 1996) [English translation: Broken Hegemonies, Bllomington: Indiana University Press, 2003].
Ionescu, Cristina. 2019. On the Good Life: Thinking through the Intermediaries in Plato's Philebus. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Appendix: The Philebus's Response to the Aporiai of Participation from the Parmenides, pp. 145-156.

"As indicated already in chapter I, there is some overlap between the concerns raised in the three puzzles of the Philebus 15b–c and the aporiai of participation spelled out in the first part of the Parmenides. Just as I suggested in the closing of that chapter that the Philebus implicitly addresses the three puzzles regarding the intelligible monads, I want now to suggest that the Philebus addresses also implicitly the aporiai regarding participation that are mentioned in Parmenides 128e–130a. A comprehensive

treatment of either the aporiai of participation themselves or of the ways in which the Philebus implicitly addresses them is beyond the boundaries of this Appendix. I only aim to sketch here some hints for the direction that a study dedicated to these issues could take. In what follows, I discuss briefly each one of the six aporiai and then suggest what I envision to be the direction of a response based on the Philebus." (p. 145)

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