Parmenides Quotes on Knowledge
Parmenides of Elea (c. 515 BC) wrote a single hexameter poem in two parts, The Way of Truth and The Way of Opinion, of which substantial fragments survive. The Way of Truth deduces, from the principle that what-is is and what-is-not is not, that being is one, ungenerated, indivisible, immobile, and complete — the entire apparent world of becoming, motion, and plurality being therefore an illusion of mortal opinion. The argument frames the entire subsequent Western metaphysical tradition: Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and the medieval scholastics each work out their own positions in part as responses to the Parmenidean challenge, and the modern dispute over presentism, eternalism, and the metaphysics of change can be read as a continuation of the same problem.
Quotes
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Attributed to Parmenides:
“It is necessary to speak and to think what is; for being is, but nothing is not.”
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“You must learn all things, both the unshaken heart of persuasive truth , and the opinions of mortals in which there is no true warranty.”
Frag B 1.28-30, quoted by Sextus Empiricus , Against the Mathematicians , vii. 3; Simplicius , Commentary on the Heavens , 557-8; Proclus , Commentary on the Timaeus I , 345 -
“Frag B 1.28-30, quoted by Sextus Empiricus , Against the Mathematicians , vii. 3; Simplicius , Commentary on the Heavens , 557-8; Proclus , Commentary on the Timaeus I , 345”
You must learn all things, both the unshaken heart of persuasive truth , and the opinions of mortals in which there is no true warranty. -
“Frag. B 2.2-6, quoted by Proclus , Commentary on the Timaeus I , 345”
The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this is the path of persuasion (for truth is its companion); the other, that it is not and that it must not be — this I say to you is a path wholly unknowable. -
“Frag. B 3, quoted by Plotinus , Enneads V, i.8”
For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be. -
“It is indifferent to me where I am to begin , for there shall I return again.”
Frag. B 5, quoted by Proclus , Commentary on the Parmenides , 708 -
“Frag. B 5, quoted by Proclus , Commentary on the Parmenides , 708”
It is indifferent to me where I am to begin , for there shall I return again. -
“Frag. B 7.1-2, quoted by Plato , Sophist , 237a”
Never will this prevail, that the things that are not are — bar your thought from this road of inquiry.