The history of the study of Parmenides’ poem after the fourth century B.C. is in part the history of the text, which has been discussed in Section 1 above. It remains to outline the reputation of his philosophical views, so far as the evidence permits, after the radical criticism of Plato and Aristotle.
The Sceptics of the third and second centuries B.C. professed to derive their philosophical practice not only from Xenophanes and Zeno (Diog. Laert. ix, 72) but also from Parmenides. Arcesilaus’ custom of arguing on
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both sides of a question and refusing to commit himself to either διὰ τὰς ἐναντιότητας τῶν λόγων [‘on account of the contradictions of the arguments’] (id. iv, 28) clearly descends in fact from Zeno’s dialectical criticism of the physical world, and so from Parmenides’ physi cal dualism and characteri- sation of human beings on the third way (fr. 5, 4) as ‘knowing nothing’. Plutarch expressly names Parmenides among the earlier philosophers whose authority Arcesilaus was in the habit of invok ing, to the exasperation of his critics, for his doctrines of ἐποχή [‘suspension of judgment’] and ἀκαταληψία [‘the impossibility of cognitive impressions’] (t. 94). Cicero, probably here citing Antiochus of Ascalon, likewise names Parmenides in ascribing the same habit also to Carneades and his followers (t. 100), and mentions him again in defending the habit himself (t. 101). That Parmenides was cited as authority since the earliest days of Scepticism is guaranteed by verses placed on the lips of Xenopha nes by Timon (fr. 59 D):
ὡς καὶ ἐγὼν ὄφελον πυκινοῦ νόου ἀντιβολῆσαι ἀμφοτερόβλεπτος · δολίῃ δ᾿ ὁδῷ ἐξαπατήθην πρεσβυγενὴς ἔτ᾿ ἐὼν καὶ ἀμενθήριστος ἁπάσης σκεπτοσύνης · ὅππη γὰρ ἐμὸν νόον εἰρύσαιμι, εἰς ἓν ταὐτό τε πᾶν ἀνελύετο · πᾶν δ᾿ ἐὸν αἰεὶ πάντῃ ἀνελκόμενον μίαν εἰς φύσιν ἵσταθ᾿ ὁμοίην. [‘that I too, looking in both directions, ought to have gained a share of clever intelligence, but being elderly and careless I was deceived by a deceptive path away from total doubt; for wherever I might direct my intelligence,
it returned to one and the same totality; and all that is always ended up in every way reduced to a single, uniform, stationary nature’]. Though these lines were spoken, as Sextus Empiricus asserts, by Timon’s Xenophanes, they are expressed in language which is unmistak- ably Parmenidean. Xenophanes is represented as lamenting his failure to achieve the complete, sceptical understanding, which considers both sides of every question, and his deception, owing to his early date, by a treacherous way. The allusion to Parmenides is clear in the adjective ἀμφοτερόβλεπτος [‘looking in both directions’], which echoes the βροτοὶ εἰδότες οὐδὲν … δίκρανοι [‘mortals with no understanding … two-headed’] of fr. 5, in the inverted contrast of a false way leading to monism with the πυκινὸς νόος [‘clever intelligence’] of complete scepticism, and especially in the term ἐόν. Timon’s surviving express de scription of Parmenides in
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fr. 44D (t. 93), like that of Melissus (fr. 45D), commends him similarly as a partial but imperfect sceptic.
The Stoic exegesis of Parmenides’ prologue preserved by Sextus Empir icus (t. 136) shows only a superfi cial comprehension of his meaning, whether or not it derives from Posidonius. The latter’s recognition of Parmenides’ place in the history of geography (t. 99) reveals however an awareness of the serious intention of his physics, which appears also in the doxographic summaries and in Favorinus, Soranus, Galen and others. The same awareness appears in Plutarch’s defense of Parmenides (t. 113) against the Epicurean Colotes’ inclusion of him in his general onslaught on all non-Epicurean thinkers, not excepting Epicurus’ forerunner Democritus. Colotes followed Aristotle in maintaining that Parmenides argued fallaciously, and elabo- rated Aristotle’s assertion that he and his followers ὅλως ἀνεῖλον γένεσιν καὶ φθοράν [‘eliminated generation and perishing altogether’] (t. 20) into the accusation that he ‘abolish ed fi re, water, cliffs and the inhabited cities of Europe and Asia’ and ‘made human life impossible’. In reply Plutarch justly insists on the system atic and positive character of Parmenides’ cosmology, but he misses the ontological force of the criticism, when he denies that Parmenides’ thesis that Being is one entails ‘the unqualifi ed abolition of everything’ and thinks that Colotes is suffi ciently answered by the Platonising assertion that Parmenides ‘abolishes neither sensible nor intelligible nature but assigns to each what belongs to it’.
A serious interest in Parmenides’ metaphysics reappears after the Peri- patetic criticism fi rst in the Neoplatonists. Plotinus, who understood fr. 4 as asserting the identity of Knowing and Being, alludes to it several times in the context of his identifi cation of the one Mind with Plato’s Being. The multiplication of this by its union with Otherness, while itself remaining one, Plotinus illustrates by citing Parmenides’ assertions that Being is ‘all together’, ‘for being is in contact with being’ (t. 146). Parmenides’ char- acterisation of Being as motionless Plotinus understands as referring to phy sical motion and as not excluding the activity which belongs to Mind (t. 144); similarly he understands Parmenides’ comparison of Being to a sphere as illustrating its all-inclusiveness and the fact that knowing is not external to it but within it (ib.). Plotinus thus discriminates Parmenides’ Being, which he associates with the life of eternity (t. 142), from the Platonic αὐτὸ τὸ ἕν [‘the One itself’]. He admits that Parmenides in his poem (as opposed to ‘Parmenides in Plato’) did not make the distinction, so occasioning the criticisms alluded to by Plato’s Zeno that he made the One many (t. 144).
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The same identifi cation of Parmenides’ ἐόν [‘Being’] with Plato’s ἓν ὄν [‘One Being’] and dis crimination of it from Plato’s αὐτὸ τὸ ἕν [‘the One itself’] or τὸ κυρίως ἕν [‘what is strictly One’] occurs regularly in later Neoplatonism. Proclus accepts it from his master Syrianus (tt. 174 ad fi n., 179, 183) and it appears likewise in Damascius and Simplicius (tt. 200-201, 213), all of whom show themselves inferior in historical understand ing to Plato, who correctly represents Parmenides as treating the One itself as identical with Being (t. 5). Plotinus’ observation that Parmenides’ Being is many as well as one is also repeated by Syrianus (tt. 162, 164) and elaborated by Proclus and his successors. Proclus’ attempt to fi nd Plato in Parmenides leads him here again into clear misinterpretation. After quot ing fr. 2 and fr. 8, 25 and 44 as evidence that Parmenides thought of τὸ ἐόν as plural as well as singular, he continues: ‘in all these passages Parmenides shows that he assumes that there are many intelligibles and an order among these of fi rst, middle and last, and a unity of them which is beyond expression; he is thus not unaware of the plurality of the things there are, but considers the whole of this plurality as proceeding from the One Being, in which is the source of what there is, its focus and the hidden Being from which all the things which there are receive also their unifi cation … Parmenides is aware that the intelligible plurality proceeds from the One Being and that prior to the many beings stands the One Being upon which the plurality of intelligibles converges. Parmenides is thus far from over throwing plurality in every sphere by his thesis of the One Being, since he manifestly posits a plurality of beings among intelligibles themselves, while whatever being the many have he bestows on them from the One Being. He is with good reason satisfi ed to regard this as cause and it is in this sense that he calls Being one’ (t. 172). Proclus’ assertion in this paragraph that Parmenides maintains the existence of a plurality of intelligibles distinct from τὸ ἐόν, i.e. in effect that the terms which Parmenides predicates of it are names of ὄντα [‘Beings’] (cf. also tt. 171, 176), ignores the fundamental diffi culty in the Journey of Persuasion pointed out by Plato and Aristotle and amounts to the attribution to Parmenides of a version of the theory of Forms. Proclus commits a further error when he paraphrases Parmenides’ comparison of Being with a sphere as τὸ σφαιρικὸν εἶδος … καταφάσκει τοῦ ἑνός [‘affi rms the spherical form of the One’] (t. 178) and speaks of him as ‘calling Being a sphere’ (t. 181). It is only a step to the further assimilation of Parmenides to Plato in the words ‘it is clear that he will describe the knowing which belongs to Being as spherical motion’ (ib.). Nevertheless, although Proclus attempts to turn Parmenides into a Neoplatonist and shows no interest in
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the detail of the physical section of his poem, he quotes from him with a freedom which reveals complete familiarity with the text and a sense of his signifi cance as a historical as well as a Platonic fi gure.
Proclus’ pupil Ammonius the son of Hermias has little to say of Parmen- ides in his extant writings. He quotes one line (fr. 8, 5), clearly from memory, in a mistaken form (t. 188) which is reproduced by his pupils Asclepius (tt. 189, 191), Philoponus (t. 194) and Olympiodorus (t. 198), none of whom appears to have read the original text of the poem. Philop onus goes out of his way to contradict those who supposed that Parmeni des’ cosmology ‘did not represent his own views but those of people in general’ (t. 193), as Simplicius corrects Alexander on the same point (t. 207). Philoponus’ earlier belief, acquired perhaps from Ammonius, that Parmenides could not have regarded fi re as effi cient and formal cause (t. 195), he retracted later (t. 196) in favour of the express assertion of Aristotle to the contrary.
The fullest account of Parmenides’ philosophy since Aristotle, and the fi rst to attempt a serious historical assessment, is that of Simplicius. In the general summary with which he accompanies his citation of the whole of Parmenides’ account of the authentic way of enquiry (t. 213) Simplicius includes a short discussion of the Platonic and Aristotelian criticisms. Plato’s discussion in the Sophist he characterises as made from the level of ‘the intellectual and articulated order’ (τοῦ νοεροῦ καὶ διακεκριμένου δια- κόσμου [‘the intellective and separate ordering’]). It is from this posterior order, in which the Forms are distinct from one another, that we ascribe the distinct predicates to the Being in which they are indistinguishably united (t. 211) and which is itself posterior to the Platonic One. Similarly Simplicius suggests that Aristotle’s criticism, in so far as it is based on logi- cal division, is inapplicable to Parmenides’ Being, which he relates (tt. 209, 213) to the unmoved mover of metaph. Λ. Par menides’ comparison of Being with a sphere Simplicius treats (t. 213) as a poetical and mythical locution. Although he avoids Proclus’ error with regard to this, in treating as the names of separate Forms the terms which Parmenides predicates of Being his view is open to the same criticism as that of Proclus, with which it is in principle identical. Nevertheless Sim plicius shows a clearer comprehen- sion than anyone since Eudemus of the logical issue when he (mistakenly) maintains (t. 211) that Parmenides had made the distinction of subject and attribute, and contrasts his view with that of the Megarians, who sup- posed that the predication of different terms of one subject would entail the separation of the subject from itself. Par menides’ failure to formulate the distinction he ascribes simply to his early date, οὐδὲ γὰρ ἦν οἰκεῖον τὸ
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κανονικὸν τοῦτο τῆς τῶν ἀρχαίων βραχυλογίας [‘since this logical practice did not suit the brevity of speech used by the ancients’] (ib. ad fi n.).
In his anti-Peripatetic stance (tt. 205, 207) on the question of the effi cient cause in Parmenides’ cosmology it seems likely that Simplicius misunder- stood Parmenides’ meaning (see n. on fr. 12, 3).
Simplicius’ systematic application of the Neoplatonist rule of under standing earlier thinkers sympathetically (εὐγνωμόνως) leads him to give an unduly Neoplatonic interpretation of Parmenides’ thought. On the other hand it is the basis of valuable criticism, including his justifi ed complaint (t. 205) against Aristotle’s captious understanding of Parmenides’ terminolo gy in a physical sense; above all it is the ground of his quotation of the large fragments of the poem, without which our understanding of Parmenides would be conjectural and rudimentary.
For just over a thousand years Parmenides was cited as a philosophic authority. In his own century his poem both revolutionised the study of physics and metaphysics, which it distinguished for the fi rst time, and provided the foundation for the relativism and agnosticism of the sophists. His investigation of the sense of the verb ‘to be’ and associated attempt to argue rigorously was the precursor of both Platonic and Aristotelian logic. His treatment of Being as substantial was developed by Socrates and Plato into the theory of Forms and lies recognizably, as Simplicius remarked, behind Aristotle’s theology. The Sceptics of the third century B.C. and later appealed to his criticism of the sensible world for support, while on the other hand an awareness of his originality as a physicist is shown by various writers from Posidonius to Galen. Finally the reverence for him expressed by Plato ensured that he was still read and cited in support of the revival of Platonic metaphysics and contemplation from the third to the sixth centu ries of the Christian era.