PHSC 105: History of Western Philosophy (Ancient)
PRE-SOCRATIC || ELEATIC SCHOOL
Parmenides and Zeno
Introduction: Beginning of Eleatic School
1. The conquest of Ionia by the Persian (546) led many to escape their own country.
2. Xenophanes was one of the emigrants who passed by Velia (Elea in GK).
3. Q: Did Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno form the Eleatic school? Properly speaking only
Parmenides and Zeno were natives of Elea. Nevertheless, Xenophanes is considered the
“theologian” of the school because of the character of his work which attacks polytheism and
contemporary idolatry while affirming unity.
Parmenides (515 BC)
1. Life and Person
a. Born in 515 BC in Elea, Gk colony in Southern Italy
b. Claimed/said to be a pupil of Xenophanes
c. Plato claimed that when he was around 65 y/o, he came to Athens where he talked and
debated with the young Socrates
d. Founded the Eleatic School – meaning he has followers, students
e. Produced the On Nature: Prologue, Way of Truth, Way of Opinion
2. Thoughts
a. Way of Truth
i. What is the way to the truth, the way that leads to the truth
ii. What is really real? What are the attributes, characteristics of reality?
1. The Mind as the Way to the Truth
a. The only object of the mind is being (what is, what exists, that
which exists)
i. Two possible objects of the mind: what does not exist, or
non-being, or that w/c does not exist; what exists, being or
that which exists.
ii. What does not exist cannot be the object of the mind
iii. The only object of the mind is what exists or being
b. There is identity btw what one is thinking (object of the mind) and
what exists (Being/Reality).
c. Criterion of Truth: Intelligibility/Rationality
i. What the mind could not conceive, whatever is unintelligible
or absurd to the human mind is not real
ii. The way to the truth is the mind
2. Attributes/Properties of the Reality, of what Exists
a. Uncreated and Unperishable
b. Unchanging
c. Immovable, Indivisible, Full, and One
d. Spherical
iii. The Being of Parmenides is a material reality since it is finitely extended and
bounded equally on all sides (spherical) though it is ingenerated, indestructible,
unchanging, immobile, one, and full.
b. Way of Opinion
i. Opinion (doxa) – appearance, what appears to us || distinct from the truth
(aletheia): reality as it is, being in itself as it is unveiled, unfolded before us
ii. The Objects of the Senses are Opinions
iii. Non-identity btw the objects of the senses and reality
iv. Objects of the senses could not be the Criterion of Truth
3. Significance
a. The birth of Ontology – the first to be interested in clarifying and understanding the
fundamental and universal property of things: Being, Existence, Is. He first studied being
qua being – ens qua ens
b. Distinction btw mind and the senses – distinguished the objective and subjective sides
Zeno of Elea
1. Life and Works
a. Nothing is known about him – no precise chronology
b. Born in Elea – 490 BC
c. Disciple of Parmenides
2. Thoughts
a. The need to defend Parmenides
b. Dialectics: the art of disputation or argumentation; systematic attempt to discriminate
truth from error
i. Take the thesis which has been
ii. Draw implications, consequences, conclusions from the thesis
iii. Show that the implications, consequences, conclusions either contradict each
other or contradict the thesis from which they were drawn
iv. Principle of Non-Contradiction, the principle w/c is absurd, is inadmissible or could
not be true
c. Arguments of Zeno
i. Runner in the stadium
ii. Achilles and the Tortoise
iii. The Flying Arrow
