In Plato's 'Phaedrus', there was a famous allegory about a charioteer controlling a pair of winged horses with very different characters. One of them, a mortal black horse, symbolized the impulses and appetites common to all of humanity. That was paired with an immortal and eternal white horse, that symbolized the positive spirit cherished by humans. As the two horses showed very different temperaments, it was up to the charioteer – who symbolized the rational mind – to control them and led their ways to a life of enlightenment. The chariot story is an allegory of Plato's theory of the soul. It is also interesting because the pair of contrasting horses points to an intellectual influence from a number of Presocratic philosophers collectively known as the Eleatic School. That included Parmenides of Elea, and his followers Melissus and Zeno.
The members of the Eleatic school were staunch rationalists. The ontology advocated by these thinkers were all speculative and rational, and their ideas were more abstract than the perceptions most people had regarding the universe in their times.
The remaining fragments of the poem by Parmenides can be considered the locus classicus of Western Metaphysics. The Presocratic philosopher was probably the first ever to propose a consistent account of the nature of reality. Parmenides wrote his poem in Homeric hexameter, chronicling the journey of a young man to meet a goddess, who the latter promised that she would tell about 'all things' to him. What she has shared with him, however, was an approach to arrive at the real knowledge of things.
The poem suggests that humanity can choose between 2 approaches to understand about themselves. The Way of Opinion (Greek: doxa) is to acquire knowledge by the action of seeming, and to know the world merely through the senses. In contrast, the Way to Truth (Greek : aletheia) is to acquire knowledge by the exercise of reason. The dialectal aspect of the 2 choices was evident: Parmenides was among the first thinker to distinguish rationally between appearances and reality, and proposed that what ‘appears to us’ is not necessarily equate what ‘is’.
Parmenides designated the metaphysical substance of his philosophy as ‘Being’. It was an unity, and some sources even stated that Parmenides proposed a spherical shape for that, which was indeed a good analogy for the idea of unity. Contrary to the human perceptions that there were motion and changes around us, the metaphysical substance for Parmenides was static, unchangeable and timeless. Parmenides’ metaphysics was revolutionary because the reality he has speculated was very different to the way humans perceived the world, through the application of the common sense. The speculative aspect of the Eleatic school, by the rigorous exercise of reason and logical deduction, would influence the future philosophers who took a rationalist approach to metaphysical issues.
Thus Parmenides’ system was a philosophical monism, which proposed only one type of metaphysical substance. His ideas denied the notion of plurality and void (vacuum). Parmenides asserted that his metaphysical substance of ‘Being’ was indivisible and continuous. These beliefs were in the starkest conflict to the later atomists, who accepted the presence of void and divisibility of matter. More important, the Eleatic philosopher denied the possibility of ‘non-being’, which he argued as logically impossible.
The teachings by the Eleatic school were important in Greek Philosophy because many subsequent thinkers would response to the questions posed by this school of thought. That included the development of various pluralist schools and challenges from the sophists of Classical Athens. Gorgias, an acclaimed sophist, wrote 'On What is Not', spoofing the Eleatic system. He challenged the metaphysical possibility of ‘Being’, and laterally denied the possibility of Divine or a first cause. The sentiment was not dissimilar from the agnostic or atheistic views by many other fellow sophists.
by Ed Law
Conatus Classics
