Being and Some Philosophers: Parmenides

What’s so interesting about a bunch of Greek guys from 2500 years ago? As one of my friends back home put it so succinctly, “Why should I care about a bunch of old dead white dudes?” After all, they didn’t even have access to the technology we have today. They didn’t have the ability to travel all over the world and collect data. They didn’t have modern science. Despite this, I want to suggest that they had something far more important – philosophically inclined intellects, and the ability to reason.  

One of the most interesting figures of the Pre-Socratics is Parmenides, who is famous for denying the reality of change. I think Parmenides is somewhat of an interesting thinker, particularly because of his account of being, and we can gain quite a deep insight into reality from him. For Parmenides, being is identity. Being is, and all that does not share in being is not. At once we are struck with confusion – what could this possibly mean, and is it anything more than a vacuous quip? 

It is not so easy to understand the radical nature of Parmenides’ ideas, and it takes some philosophical reflection. There are four crucial points that need to be taken to understand Parmenides’ account of being. 

• Being his radically opposed to what we experience in everyday life.
• Being and existence are equivocated or identical for Parmenides. 
• What we say exists does not share in the attributes of being, so our experience of existence is illusory.
• There is no way to speak of existence as separate from being for Parmenides. 

Let us begin by deploying one long argument that can be constructed from his works. 

Argument One

P1: Being is and non-being is not.

P2: We cannot conceptualize what is not.

SC1: We can only conceptualize being. 

P3: Being cannot come from non-being, i.e., something cannot come from nothing

P4: A cause of being would have to first be, and something destroying being would have to also be. 

P5: Being cannot vanish into non-being

SC2: Being is uncaused, or has no beginning and it has no end, and is thus eternal.

P6: Change comes from something that is not yet. (Recall that we cannot conceptualize what is not.)

SC3: Change cannot occur.  

P7: Division presupposes change. 

SC4: Being cannot be divided.

C: We encounter only a full sphere of being that is one and changeless.  

If the argument works then we have a startling conclusion: being is radically unlike anything we experience in our everyday lives. But this conclusion raises many more mysteries than it solves. Why is being at all? How can the seeming contingent things in our experience add up to a seemingly necessary thing that is being in total? How can being be so contrary to what we experience? 

The next argument will help us to shed light on how Parmenides treats the phrase “Being is,” which may be able to shed some light on the mysteries just encountered.  

Argument Two

AP: We can only speak of that which is.

P1: Being is all there is.

P2: Non-Being is not

SC: We can only follow the path of being. 

P3: Reality is.

C: Being must be identical with reality.  

P4: Existence is. 

C: Existence must be identical with being.

To quote Gilson’s reflection on this “What lies at the bottom of Parmenides’ doctrine is this fundamental truth, that, however we look at reality, we fail to discover in it anything more important than its very existence.” The fact that being is, is of the utmost importance to Parmenides, and it should be for us as well, for if being were not, then we would not be. 

We can now interpret “Being is” as the equivocation of existence and being. This next argument we can discern from Parmenides is the drawing out of the implications of his identification of being and existence. This is the key Parmenidean move. Once being has been identified or equivocated with existence, then anything that does not share in the attributes of being from the first argument does not share in existence, and we must disregard it as illusory.   

Argument Three

P1: Existence = Being

P2: Being = One

SC1: Existence = One

P3: The things of our experiential existence are to be many.

SC2: The things of our experiential existence are illusory.

P4: We have no experience of the attributes of being, e.g., oneness, fullness, eternal

C: The reality which we see is an illusion and we can only say that reality belongs to the philosophical idea of being is.  

The conclusion of Parmenides’ account is being is twofold. The existence of our everyday experience is illusory, and all reality reduces down into simple being. Here, we learn that to equivocate being and existence is to trap ourselves in the worst of philosophical paradoxes. But there is more. Not only does the existence of common sense things like distinct substances and change dissolve into unity and immutability, there is no room to even speak of existence, as all that we experience as existing has been shown to be illusory.