Pre-Socratic Wonder

Parmenides

Παρμενίδης

c. 515 – after 450 BCE · Elea, southern Italy

Founder of the Eleatic tradition, Parmenides wrote a philosophical poem in which a goddess reveals two paths: the way of truth and the way of mortal opinion. His argument that what is cannot come from what is not shaped all later Greek metaphysics.

Key ideas

Reason, not habit of the senses, should judge what is real
Nothing comes from nothing
Being is one, whole and unchanging
The distinction between truth and opinion

Passages

Paraphrase

In his poem, Parmenides argues that what is cannot arise from what is not, nor pass away into nothing; we can neither think nor say that nothing is.

Parmenides, On Nature, DK B8 (cf. B2, B6)

Paraphrase

The goddess warns the traveller not to let habit drive him along the road of aimless eyes and echoing ears, but to judge the disputed matter by reason.

Parmenides, On Nature, DK B7

Paraphrase

For thinking and being are the same: a much-debated line suggesting that what can be thought and what can be are bound together.

Parmenides, On Nature, DK B3

Paraphrase and reference awaiting verification against the source.

The meaning of this fragment is contested among scholars.

Pre-Socratic Wonder (6th–5th c. BCE). The first Greek thinkers asked what the world is made of and how change and permanence fit together, turning myth into open inquiry.