A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval PhilosophyCushman, Herbert Ernest
Philosophy
A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval Philosophy
Cushman, Herbert Ernest
Philosophy -- History
These propositions look very abstract, and make us believe that we are
to plunge immediately into a kind of German idealism. But Parmenides
leaves us in no doubt that he is one of the hylozoists of his time.
Being is indeed thought, but Being is also matter. We may therefore
amend our equation to _Being_ = _Thought_ = _Matter_. Being is what
fills space, and all Being has this and only this property. All Being
is therefore exactly alike, and there is only one, single Being. There
are no distinctions in Being. By not-Being Parmenides means empty space
or that which is not material. So that Parmenides’ assumption of Being
as the cosmic substance means this: all that exists, including thought,
fills space; and all that does not exist does not fill space.
Being, the cosmic substance, is one, eternal, imperishable, homogeneous,
unchangeable, and material. When men see the world as it really is,
when they see its cosmic substance, they see it to be one continuous
material block. The world is not made up of parts with intervals of
nothing between them, but it is a solid, homogeneous whole. The cosmic
Being is a timeless, spaceless Being with no distinctions. The form of
Being is spherical. It is cosmic-body and cosmic-thought. This is the
assumption of Parmenides, which is so self-evident and so cogent to him
that he does not attempt to prove but only to explain it.
(2) =Other Things than the Cosmic Substance (Being) have no Real
Existence.= If Being is space that is filled, not-Being is empty space.
However, empty space has no existence. But the existence of a plural
number of things depends upon the existence of empty spaces between
them. Furthermore, the motion of things and the change of things depend
upon the existence of empty spaces in which they can move and change.
Since empty space is not-Being and has no existence, the plurality of
things and the motion and change of things have also no existence. They
are illusions. The nature-world, with its richness of qualities and
variety of motions, before the logic of Parmenides “folds up its tents
like the Arabs and silently steals away.”
This logical drawing out of one of the aspects of the Milesian
conception of the cosmic matter has a curious result. The Milesians and
Xenophanes sought to explain by the cosmic substance the many nature
changes. But when in the hands of Parmenides the cosmic substance is
all of reality, then there is no reality to the changes. Consequently
the concept formed for the explanation of change has so developed as
to deny the existence of change. The cosmic substance excludes all
origination and decay, all space and time differences, all divisibility,
diversity, and movement. There is only one real, all else is illusion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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