Parmenides, Venerable and Awesome

by Cordero, Nestor-Luis

• ISBN13: 9781930972339
• ISBN10: 1930972334
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-01-17
• Publisher: Parmenides Pub

Summary

Despite Parmenides' tremendous importance during his own lifetime and his perennial influence on philosophical thought ever since, the great Eleatic -- born circa 515 BCE and described by Plato as "Venerable and Awesome" (Theaetetus, 183e) -- had never been the subject of an international conference until 2007, when some of the world's most eminent specialists on Parmenides' philosophy convened for a multinational and multilingual Symposium in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The present volume offers a collection of the papers (translated, where applicable) presented at the conference, each advancing the respective scholar's current state of research on Parmenides and his Poem, "On Nature", often with far-reaching and sometimes controversial results. The topics discussed include the challenge of translation, the Poem's poetic form, its logical structure, the sequence of the fragments, the interpretation of "Aletheia" and "Doxa", what Parmenides meant by "mortals" the Poem's "physics" (especially Parmenidean astronomy), the various senses of Being and the role of thought, as well as Plato's relationship to Parmenides. In their different ways each contribution conveys a deep appreciation for the revolutionary nature of Parmenides' philosophy, and the collection as a whole bears witness to the fact that the study of Parmenides continues to yield rich and prolific scholarship -- perhaps today more so than ever. This book is intended for scholars and non-specialists alike, and will be of particular relevance to students of Ancient Greek Philosophy, Classical Studies, as well as philosophy and literature more generally.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vii
About the Contributors	p. xiii
On Parmenides
Existence and Essence in Parmenides	p. 1
From Being to the World and Vice Versa	p. 9
Parmenides-Scholar of Nature	p. 21
Parmenides Lost in Translation	p. 59
The Astronomical Section in Parmenides' Poem	p. 81
Parmenidean "Physics" is not Part of what Parmenides calls "¿ó¿¿"	p. 95
Thought and Body in Parmenides	p. 115
Mortals (ß¿o¿oí) According to Parmenides	p. 135
Parricide or Heir? Plato's Uncertain Relationship to Parmenides	p. 147
Parmenides, Early Greek Astronomy, and Modern Scientific Realism	p. 167
Parmenides and the Forms	p. 191
What is Parmenides' Being?	p. 213
Ta Semata: On a Genealogy of the Idea of Ontological Categories	p. 233
The Role of "Thought" in the Argument of Parmenides' Poem	p. 251
Parmenides: Logic and Ontology	p. 271
Parmenidean Dualisms	p. 289
Parmenides in the Tradition and Cognate Themes
Persuasion and Deception in Gorgias' Encomium to Helen. About the Powers and Limits of ¿ó¿o¿?	p. 311
Thought as Perception: Aristotle's Criticism of Parmenides in Metaphysics IV, 5	p. 319
The Father and the Sophist: Platonic Parricide in the Statesman	p. 331
"Thinking That I Did Something …": Apollodorus and Diotima's Teaching	p. 345
Megaric Philosophy Between Socrates' Influence and Parmenides' Ghost	p. 353
Plato's Sophist on Negation and Not-Being	p. 363
Parmenides and His Precursors: A Borgesian Reading of Cordero's Parmenides	p. 373
Aristotle on the Semantic Unity of the Parmenidean Being	p. 383
Index Locorum	p. 393
General Index	p. 403
Index of Greek Terms Discussed	p. 413
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