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The Hybris of Parmenides

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

Martha Husain
Martha Husain
Affiliation:
Brock University
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Extract

To speak of hybris in the case of Parmenides seems hardly justified. He is addressed by the unnamed goddess to whose abode he journeys as κoũρε, “youth” or “initiate”, hardly a term of great respect in Greek usage. He is guided on his path, i.e., he has not found it by himself, and he receives a truth he never claims as his own. Could a mortal show greater awareness of his limitations? Yet, in an oddly disturbing way the distinction between the divine and the human is obliterated—the worst kind of hybris for Greek thought and feeling.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , September 1983 , pp. 451 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1983

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References

1 For discussion of the meaning and implications of εἰδóια ϕια “knowing man”, see Bormann, Karl, Parmenides, Untersuchungen zu den Fragmenten (Hamburg, 1971), 61, 119,Google Scholar and Hölscher, Uvo, Parmenides: Vom Wesen des Seienden (Frankfurt, 1969), 70–72Google Scholar.

2 Fr. 8. 51–59 introduces “the aitherial flame of fire” and “dark night” as the basic cosmogonic opposites; cf. Fr. 9. These surely correspond to Night and Day of the Proem, both of which then belong to the Way of Seeming, i.e., to the temporal, spatial, differentiated doxa-world in which we live, and both are left behind once Parmenides passes through the gates. For other interpretations see Fränkel, Hermann, “Parmenidesstudien”, Göttinger Nachrichten (1930), reprinted in Wege undFormen Frühgriechischen Denkens (Munich, 1955), 157–197,Google Scholar and Furley, David, “Notes on Parmenides”, Exegesis and Argument, Phronesis Suppl. vol. 1 (New York, 1973), 1–15Google Scholar

3 Since the gates mark a fundamental divide, the distinction between altogether different dimensions, the protracted scholarly debate as to the geographical direction of Parmenides' journey is fundamentally misconceived. The transition from one dimension into another, from the realm of mortals to that of the divine as philosophy understands it, has no spatial direction. It is an “.upward” journey rather in the sense that the divine is beyond the human, greater and higher. For an excellent discussion and resolution of the “geographical” debate see Owens, J., “Knowledge and Katabasis in Parmenides”, Monist 62/1 (1979), 15–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Cf. Guthrie, W. K. C., A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1965), 9,Google Scholar and Cosgrove, Matthew R., “The KOYPOσ Motif in Parmenides, B I, 24”, Phronesis 19/1 (1974), 81–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 For a recent variant reading of εVκVκλεOξ, “well-rounded”, see Mourelatos, A. P. D., The Route of Parmenides (New Haven, CT, 1970), 154Google Scholar.

6 Heraclitus, Fr. 2, in Kirk, G. S. and Raven, J. E., The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1966), 188Google Scholar.

7 Plato, Euthypiuo 10 a-e.

8 Aristotle, , Metaphysics IV, 2Google Scholar.

9 Jaeger, Werner, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford, 1947; reprinted 1967), 91–98Google Scholar.

10 For arguments why the verb VOEIV should be translated as “thinking”, see Fritz, Kurt von, “Nous, Noein, and their Derivatives in Pre-Socratic Philosophy”, in Mourelatos, A. P. D., ed., The Pre-Socratics (New York, 1974), 23–85Google Scholar.

11 Guthrie, , A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 2, 20–26Google Scholar.

12 Fr. 2.5-8 and Fr. 8.8-9 argue that the path of not-being is altogether unthinkable since one could neither think nor speak what is not. And Fr. 6.1-2 reasons that only what can be spoken and thought can be. This seems to deny the very possibility of existence to anything not thinkable by a finite mind, since all these passages imply a reference to Parmenides' thinking.

13 Heraclitus, Fr. 45, Fr. 78, Fr. 102, Fr. 32, in Kirk, and Raven, , The Presocratic Philosophers, 182–215.Google Scholar Cf. Frankel, Hermann, “A Thought Pattern in Heraclitus”, in , Mourelatos, ed., The Pre-Socratics, 214–228.Google Scholar Cf. Mourelatos, , The Route of Parmenides, 44Google Scholar.

14 This is emphatically stated and re-stated by the goddess, Fr. 1.30; Fr. 6.4-9; Fr. 8.38-41; Fr. 8.50-52. Cf. Guthrie, , A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 2, 76Google Scholar.

15 For a beautiful discussion of the contrast of human and divine knowledge in Greek poetry and philosophy, see Snell, Bruno, The Discovery of the Mind, trans. Rosenmeyer, T. G. (New York, 1953; reprinted 1960), chap. 7Google Scholar.