What I am Studying in my Ancient Philosophy Class…

 
 

Pasted from <http://www.google.com/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&hl=en&q=parmenides&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1280&bih=562>

 
 

PARMENIDES (515-445 BC)

All thought is conducted and mediated by language. Stretches thought, dependant on words, etc…

 
 

Reason he arrives at his conclusions… based on the conotations for the word "to be" based on Greek language…

 
 

"Thinking and the thought that it is are the same; for you will not find thought apart from what is, in relation to which it is uttered."

 
 

First philosopher to expressly tackle the concept "to be", thus founder of Ontology….

 
 

Met a young Socrates…

 
 

-to say the "table is white," we are predicating something about the table… (table has the quality of white..) but also, an existential statement is made… we forget that we say that the table IS! That is to say that the table exists!

 
 

The mystery that things are…

 
 

 

 
 

Nothing cannot be something!

 
 

"If there can be no coming into being and passing away, then there can be no Heraclitean flux!"

 
 

Parmenides says you cannot rely on sensory experience. You must rely on reasoning alone…

 
 

"In urging us to follow reason alone, Parmenides stands at the beginning of one of the major traditions in Western phil…. : RATIONALISM

 
 

Develops DIALECTIC…

 
 

Distinguishes between his famous WAY OF TRUTH vs the WAY OF OPINION

Way things truly are and the way they appear…

 
 

 
 

For him, what exists "is now, all at once, one and continuous."…. "nor is it divisible, since it is all alike; nor is there any more or less of it in one place which might prevent it from holding together, but all is full of what is."

 
 

[What is must exist "all at once." This means that time itself must be unreal, an illusion.]

"So 'what is' must exist all at once in a continuous present." (St. Augustine also uses this in his existence of God.)

 
 

APPEARANCE VS REALITY

 
 

 
 

 
 

PLATO -- more to reality than what we access with the senses…. The truly real cannot be accessed by senses but only through reasoning etc….

 
 

 
 

Going up to a higher perspective to see the unity of connectiveness… like going up in a plane and looking down on everything below…

 
 

The desire for this connectiveness is what drives Western thought (ontology)….

 
 

 
 

That which is, is!

 
 

 
 

For him, change means a transition from being to not being to being something else.!

 
 

Aristotle will resolve this problem with:

4 Concepts: of form, matter, efficient cause, and final cause