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Anaxagoras in Response to Parmenides

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David J. Furley
David J. Furley*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

Introduction

“What reason is there to suppose that those who did know Parmenides’ poem necessarily thought that he had raised a real problem which they must try to deal with? Empedocles, perhaps also Anaxagoras, knew the poem, but they pursue a very different kind of philosophy from Zeno and Melissus: why, then, must we suppose that they are seeking an alternative answer to the problem posed by Parmenides, and that their ultimate material elements are to be seen as modifications of the Eleatic ἓν έόν?“

These rhetorical questions, taken from M. L. West's recent book, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient, make a useful starting point for this inquiry. They are, of course, what the grammar books call “repudiating questions“: the answer hoped for is “no reason“. The argument with which Mr. West goes on to support his negative implication is not likely to convince many students of the Presocratics. He determinedly makes light of Parmenides’ chains of argument, apparently on the ground that “these were not the actual stages of Parmenides’ thinking” — as if Parmenides ought to have been writing his intellectual autobiography instead of a philosophical argument.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 2: New Essays on Plato and the Pre-Socratics , 1976 , pp. 61 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1976

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