Parmenides

Parmenides lived at Elea, a Greek colony on the west coast of southern Italy. If Plato’s dialogue Parmenides is to be trusted, he visited Athens in old age, around 450 BCE, with his pupil Zeno, and met the young Socrates there; this places his birth around 515 BCE. Later tradition says that he gave his city its laws.

He set out his philosophy in a poem in hexameters, of which about a hundred and fifty lines survive, many of them copied by the sixth-century commentator Simplicius. In its opening, the young narrator is carried by a chariot to a goddess, who promises to teach him both the unshaken heart of truth and the opinions of mortals.

The Way of Truth argues that what is not can neither be nor be thought; so what is cannot have come to be or pass away, cannot be divided, and cannot move or change. Being is whole, one and complete, like a well-rounded sphere. The second part of the poem, the Way of Opinion, gives an account of the world as it appears to the senses, which the goddess declares deceptive. Zeno defended his teacher with paradoxes showing the absurdities of motion and plurality, and Plato’s later dialogues wrestle with Parmenides’ challenge, honouring him as a “father”.