PARMENIDES AND THE ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE

Philosophical Inquiry, 2008

Abstract: This essay intends to show that ontology only rises in Parmenides’ poem and how it does. This means that Parmenides is the founder of the ontological model in Greek and Western philosophy, a conceptual model which has surmounted and incorporated the henological model of Parmenides’ predecessors and contemporaries becoming dominant in the following centuries. Such a deed is linguistically achieved through the unprecedented strong nominalization of the singular neuter present participle and of the infinitive of the Greek verb ‘to be’, that is, the strict nominalized sense of ‘to eon’ (‘what-is’) and ‘to einai’ (‘being’), as well as their respective antonyms. Such linguistic aspect of Parmenides’ poem is grounded on his philosophical conception of being here called ‘tautological monism’, a conception which has a metaphysical side, asserting the necessary identity of being, and an epistemological side, postulating as an imperative and ideal criterion for truth and knowledge the identity between being and thought. This interpretation is defended (i) in showing that these strong nominalizations must be sharply distinguished from the weak nominalization of the plural neuter participle of the Greek verb ‘to be’, namely: the expression ‘ta eonta’ (‘the things-that-are’), used in the pre-Parmenidean Greek language at least since the time of Homeric poems. Moreover, it is defended (ii) through a careful analysis of the metaphysical and epistemological aspects of the tautological monism within the poem, and through a reply to two possible objections against this reading. Further, this hypothesis is defended (iii) indicating some reasons in the post-Parmenidean philosophy that hindered us to see the inexistence of ontological concepts and problems before Parmenides’ poem. Finally, it is corroborated (iv) through a critical survey of two recent views on Parmenides’ monism, which intend to see it as compatible with some kind of pluralism, as well as in indicating at the final pages a contemporary perspective through which we can suitably understand Parmenides’ use of modal notions in his groundbreaking foundation of the ontological model.

2024

This rather playful overview of the text, Aborted Modernism: From Parmenides and Plato to Descartes and Husserl, and from Aristotle and Kant to Free and Russell, is probably not as elegant as studies conducted by professional philosophers. In it I re-propose the same arguments by extending some and introducing others that are not included previously. What I find disturbing in many scholars interested in Parmenides is their insistence on the immobility of being proclaimed in the eighth fragment of the poem, while others try to dismiss an intent to establish on purpose an intrinsic link between immobility and true knowledge. There is not a single valid argument provided by Parmenides for the alleged immobility of what really is, and often the arguments put forward in the defense of such interpretations are the conclusions drawn in regards to Zeno's paradoxes. Another point of concern for me is the relationship between Descartes' meditations and the above mentioned immobility of being. First of all, the pinnacle of Descartes philosophical stance is the dismissal of the objectivity of the sensorial affections, and Husserl is even more categorical in his assessment on the nature of the representations with which the transcendental ego operates. In second place, how one is supposed to square the objectivity of being with the subject with which Descartes identifies himself? In both, the meditations and the Discourse on the Method are argued only two different realities which cannot be dismissed: the eternal and perfect being in the face of an almighty God, and an imperfect, in relation to something different than itself, thinking subject. One of the central arguments in the text Aborted Modernism is that the concept that dominated the philosophical debate for twenty-five centuries is nothing but a spurious employment of an universal indicator as the verb to be, and that the fortune of Parmenides and his assessment of reality is based on a tautological scheme. The reason for my rejection of a long compromised ontological tradition is the fact that the adjective 'non generated', which lends legitimacy to what is intrinsically true and objective, is a disingenuous recurrence of the distinctive trait employed previously to indicate the difference between what can, and what cannot be indicated with a meaningful proposition, which one tautological or contradictory proposition are not, because the qualifying term is either missing or incompatible with the subject of the proposition. What I mean with this is, that at first, both being and non-being are introduced tautologically, and then one of the two alternative options is dismissed, because it cannot be qualified by any means, unlike the substantiated form of the verb to be, by means of the procedure concerning the many signs scattered alongside the legitimate footpath of inquiry.

Mélanges en l’honneur du Professeur Jean-Marc Trigeaud, 2020

In this article we reconsider Parmenides' Parricide, which is notoriously thought to have been accomplished by Plato, and show that is not based on strong reasons but on the alleged undeniability of experience. Instead we think that such undeniability is only formal, being based on an extrinsic denial which requires that which is denied. Moreover we show that those who oppose the unity of being, which is its absoluteness-as Parmenides maintains-, to the multiplicity of entities do not consider that they are not disposed on the same level, so that their opposition is untenable. Since the One (Being) and the Many (non-being) are on different levels, one can understand the level of being as emerging beyond the universe of determination (finite being), which is that which Parmenides identifies with non-being.

2024

The article analyzes Heidegger's critique of Aristotle's bipartite approach to being and entities in the genesis of Western metaphysics. Heidegger challenges Aristotle's analysis, arguing that the integration of entities as a whole and particular entities inphysis led to a disregard for ontological difference. The German philosopher proposed that the bifurcation of being resulted in the metaphysical tradition becoming an "ontotheology." In contrast, Heidegger, through phenomenological hermeneutics, reintroduced the question of being, emphasizing the understanding of beings through the pre-logical way Daseinexists in the world, without relying on an eternal and immutable foundation

The following text was presented at the IH' ΣΥΜΠΟΣΙΟΥ ΚΛΑΣΙΚΩΝ ΣΠΟΥΔΩΝ (04th of June of 2022), at the University of Ioannina, Greece. There, I presented my thesis project outline (which still is a work in progress), which has as its main objective to study how Plato’s Parmenides structure seems to introduce the dialogue into the topic Gorgias discusses in his On not being. In spite of the dialogue being referred to as having two main parts, we may also divide it in four main moments: i) the preamble (126a-127a), which offers the context in which the dialogue takes place; ii) a conversation between Zeno and Socrates concerning the writings of the first one (127b-130a2); iii) another conversation between Parmenides and Socrates about his initial postulation of the forms (130a3-137c3), and iv) an exercise of establishing hypotheses and testing their consequences between Parmenides and Aristotle (who would go on to be one of the thirty tyrants). In this sense, our aim is to propose a reading of the dialogue that considers the three last moments in parallel with the three affirmations of the On not being (On not being, §1; Adv. Log. I, 65), namely, that i) it is nothing; ii) if it is the case that it is something, then it would be incognizable; and iii) if it is the case that it is something and that it is cognizable, then it would not be expressed plainly through the lógos (in the sense of speech).

Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 1983

One of the goals of a certain brand of philosopher has been to give an account of language and linguistic phenomena by means of showing how sentences are to be translated into a "logically perspicuous notation" (or an "ideal language" -to use pass~ terminology). The usual reason given by such philosophers for this activity is that such a notational system will somehow illustrate the "logical form" of these sentences. There are many candidates for this notational system: (almost)ordinary first-order predicate logic (see Quine [1960]), higher-order predicate logic (see Parsons 1970]), intensional logic (see Montague [1969Montague [ , 1970aMontague [ , 1970bMontague [ , 1971), and transformational grammar (see Harrnan ), to mention some of the more popular ones. I donor propose to discuss the general question of the correctness of this approach to the philosophy of language, nor do 1 wish to adjudicate among the notational systems mentioned here. Rather, I want to focus on one problem which must be faced by all such systems -a problem that must be discussed before one decides upon a notational system and tries to demontrate that it in fact can account for all linguistic phenomena. The general problem is to determine what we shall allow as linguistic data; in this paper I shall restrict my attention to this general problem as it appears when we try to account for certain words with non-singular reference, in particular, the words that are classified by the count/ mass and sortal/non-sortal distinctions.

Electronic Antiquity, 1994

L. Giovannetti (ed.) The Sustainability of Thought: an itinerary through the history of philosophy, Bibliopolis, 2020

Southwest Philosophy Review 31.1, 2015

This essay explicates the primary interpretative import of B1: 31-32 in Parmenides poem (On Nature)—lines which have radical implications for the overall argument, and which the traditional arrangement forces into an irreconcilable dilemma. I argue that the “negative” reading of lines 31-32 is preferable, even on the traditional arrangement. This negative reading denies that a third thing is to be taught to the reader by the goddess—a positive account of how the apparent world is to be “acceptably” understood. I then suggest that a rearrangement of the fragments would make more sense overall, while further supporting the “negative” reading as more natural and coherent. In particular, the rearrangement dispels the objection that, if mortal opinions were not true, why would Parmenides include such a lengthy false account of the apparent world--an account which explicitly denies the conclusions of the earlier section, ‘Truth’?