Parmenides, ανηρ πυθαγορειος. Monistic idealism (mentalism) in archaic Greek metaphysics Текст научной статьи по специальности «Языкознание и литературоведение»

A. V. Lebedev

PARMENIDES, ANHP nYOArOPEIOS. MONISTIC IDEALISM (MENTALISM) IN ARCHAIC GREEK METAPHYSICS1

Парменид, ANHP nY0ArOPEIO£. Монистический идеализм (ментализм) в архаической греческой метафизике.

1. Проблема. Физикалистская интерпретация онтологии Парме-нида восходит к позитивистской реакции на гегельянство и немецкий идеализм в историографии античной философии в конце 19-го века. Эта интерпретация сопряжена с непреодолимыми трудностями. «Теория» о том, что мир представляет собой неподвижную и невидимую глыбу мертвой материи не имеет ни философского, ни научного, ни религиозного смысла. Почему Парменид связывает эту глыбу с религиозным понятием Дике и представляет как религиозное откровение? Есть только одна возможность вернуть поэме Парменида философский смысл: принять всерьез античную традицию о пифагореизме Парменида и истолковать его метафизику как монистический идеализм (ментализм) или имматериализм.

2. Античная биографическая традиция о принадлежности Парменида к Пифагорейской школе, его учитель-пифагореец Аминий.

3. Пифагорейские элементы в Алетейе и Доксе. Парменид признавал бессмертие души и элементную трансмиграцию скорее, чем животную реинкарнацю.

4. Предлагаются три новых чтения в тексте Проэмия: 1) читай navrn <яо>тп^ в B 1.3; 2) s-onsiOs®; атрекес; в B 1.29; 3) xpflv §окф,юс; isvai вместо sivai в B 1.32. Первое исправление обнаруживает связь между образом крылатой колесницы души в Платоновском «Федре» и полетом Куроса. Предлагается идентификация анонимных богинь: богиня пути в B 1.3 и богиня откровения в B 1.22 - одна и та же Алетейя, персонификация Истины.

5. Атрибуция Пармениду незамеченного дословного поэтического фрагмента vop^n uyinro^n «Дева Горних Ворот», цитируемого Проклом (Сирианом).

6. Реконструкция оракульного (Аполлоновского) метафорического кода в Проэмии. Путешестие к истокам экстраординарного знания как поездка (полет) в оракульный храм (феория), но не в земной, а в небесный, где прорицает небесная Пифия - сама Истина.

7. Элементы аллегории в Проэмии. Интепретация Секста отчасти верна. Сходство и различие с образом возничего в «Федре». Мотивы «полета ума через Вселенную» и апофеоза философа.

1 The earlier draft of this paper was presented at the 4th Biennial Conference of the International Association for Presocratic Studies (IAPS) held at the Aristototelian University of Thessaloniki on 30 June - 4 July 2014.

8. Пифагорейское происхождение употребления термина «Але-тейя» в особом эсхатологическом значении пренатальной и загробной обители душ.

9. Структурный параллелизм бинарных оппозиций «бытие/небытие» в Алетейе и «свет/ночь» в Доксе обнаруживает доктрину имматериализма: Ночи, то есть тела, не существует. «Пустота» на языке пифагорейца означает не то, что у физиков, а прямо противоположное: отсутствие сознания, тело. Лингвистическая ошибка смертных как корень возникновения иллюзорного мира множественности.

10. Доктрина монистического идеализма или имматериализма прямо утверждается Парменидом в В 3 и В 4. Опровержение позити-вистких интерпретаций

11. Прямое свидетельство аутентичных фрагментов подтверждается консенсусом косвенной античной традиции.

12. В основе парменидовского образа сферы Бытия, которую «держит» Дике, лежит пифагорейский символ «незримого Солнца Правды», известный Гераклиту и Платону в «Государстве».

13. Поэма Парменида написана в жанре «Священного слова Пифагора». Аполлоновский Курос, от лица которого ведется повествование, - это Пифагор, а не сам Парменид. Пифагорейская легенда о Пифагоре как летающем боге, Аполлоне Гиперборейском. Полет Пифагора на Олимп - эпохальное событие в истории человечества, принесшее освобождение от страха смерти и страданий земной жизни.

14. Три «пути» поэмы как история философии: Путь бытия - божественная философия Пифагора (монистический идеализм), путь небытия - философия ионийцев (монистический натурализм), диалектическая попытка синтеза двух школ «двухголовыми» - философия Гераклита, нарушающая закон противоречия. Это ответ Парме-нида на оскорбления его учителя Пифагора в книге Гераклита.

15. Этическое и психологическое измерение метафизики Парме-нида: сфера бытия как символ для медитации и парадигма «безмолвия» (^оихш) мудреца.

16. Влияние Парменида на философию природы 5 века равно нулю. Атомистика не имеет к элеатам никакого отношения и возникла в результате внутреннего развития ионийской «естественной истории». Напротив, его влияние на Платона было огромным.

17. Хронология Парменида. Дата Аполлодора (акмэ ок. 500 г. до н. э.) - единственное прямое историческое свидетельство, подверж-даемое всей косвенной традицией. Встреча Сократа и Парменида в проэмии платоновсого «Парменида» - не историческое событие, а «встреча» в учении Платона сократовской этики и элейской метафизики.

Приложение: обсуждение значения публикации нового фрагмента из «О благочестии» Филодема. Характеристика «первого бога» Пар-менида как «лишенного души» не инофрмативно, а является полемическим опровержением.

Ключевые слова: архаическая греческая метафизика, монистичес-кй идеализм, ментализм, Парменид, Пифагор, пифагореизм, апофеоз философа.

Ti 5s npo; Aio;; d^nOroc; Kvnaiv Kai Kai yux^v Kai ^povnoiv ^ pa5i©; neiaOnaopeOa x© navxeX©; ovxi ^ napeivai, Zflv awo ^poveiv, aXXa aepvov Kai

ayiov, vow ouk exov, aKivnxov eaxo; eivai;

VISITOR: But for heaven's sake, are we going to be convinced that it's true that change, life, soul, and intelligence are not present in that which wholly is, and that it neither lives nor thinks, but stays changeless, solemn, and holy, without any understanding?

THEAETETUS: If we did, sir, we'd be admitting something frightening". (tr. N. White)

Plato, Sophist 248e

1. Introduction. The origin of the physicalist interpretation of Parmenides in the late 19th century positivist (over)reaction against Hegel and German idealism. Summary of the main arguments in support of the ancient view of Parmenides.

The title of this paper, «Parmenides, ANHP nYOAWPEIOZ», has not been invented by the author, it has been «discovered» in ancient source and constitutes a quotation. In his description of Elea Strabo calls Parmenides and Zeno av8ps<; nuBayopsioi. Pythagorean philosophy is characterized by the radical dualism of the body and the soul, as well as by the ontological and axiological primacy of the soul over the body, of the spiritual over the corporeal. Until the late 19th century Parmenides was commonly regarded as a forerunner of Plato and as «father of idealism». In 1892 John Burnet proposed a physicalist interpretation of Parmenides' being and polemically renamed him «the father of materialism». In the preface to the third edition (1920) Burnet makes clear his anti-Hegelian and anti-idealist stance: «When the first edition of the Early Greek Philosophy was published, twenty-eight years ago, the subject was still treated in this country from a Hegelian point of view, and many of my conclusions were regarded as paradoxes. Some of these are now accepted by most people...» (Burnet 1930: V); «Parmenides is not, as some have said, the "father of idealism"; on the contrary, all materialism depends on his view of reality» (Burnet 1930: 182) . Burnet did his best to expurgate all possible traces of idealism and speculative metaphysics from Parmenides and to present all Early Greek philosophy as a forerunner not of German idealism, but of the

Popper (2009) is strongly influenced by Burnet.

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British empirical science . He disbanded the Eleatic school, this bastion of idealism, by making Xenophanes a satirical poet rather than theologian, he got rid of Heraclitus' divine logos by making it a trivial word for «discourse», he explained Parmenides' mystical journey to the abode of gods as a real travel in a chariot to other Italian cities (in the company of Heliades, «daughters of the Sun» and with «blazing axis»!), he reinterpreted Parmenides's fr. B 3 on the identity of Being and Mind as a positivist platitude that the object of thought must be real etc. Although Burnet's book is virtually forgotten nowdays, its theoretical heritage is still alive. In the first half of the 20th century (and even later) it was a standard reference book Preplatonic philosophy and influenced the «Presocratic philosophers» of Kirk-Raven-Schofiled that became standard in the second half of the 20th century. Burnet did not use himself the term «Presocratics», he used the correct term «Early Greek philosophy», but his work more than any other contributed to the emergence of the persistent stereotype of «Presocratics» as naturalists and cosmologists not interested in anthropology, ethics and political philosophy.

To avoid misunderstanding we wish to state clearly our methodological principle: when we conduct historical-philosophical research, it really does not matter whether the results of our investigation will agree or disagree with anything Hegel, Wittgenstein or Karl Marx said about ancients. All this is irrelevant for the reconstruction of ancient thought and should be relegated to the history of its reception. As a matter of fact, the claims of German idealists and their followers in the 19th century about Parmenides and Plato as the fathers of the idealist tradition in Western thought (and similar claims of bishop Berkeley before them) were not totally unfounded, as was not unfounded Hegel' aknowledgement of his debt to Heraclitus' dialectical logic (see e.g. Gersh & Moran 2006). But to avoid vicious circle we do not intend this as an argument in favour of our interpretation of Parmenides and we do not need such argument since the ancient evidence supporting our thesis is overwhelming. The denial of the existence of idealist (mentalist) tradition if early Greek metaphysics is due to the pseudohistorical evolutionism, Platonocentrism and the misleading modern term

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With regard of the most Ionian physiologoi Burnet actually was right, he was wrong about Heraclitus and Italians.

«Presocratics», three persistent stereotypes in the historiography of Greek philosophy (see Lebedev 2009 and 2013 refuting Burnyeat 1982).

The physicalist interpretation of Parmenides' being involves insurmountable difficulties. What might be the purpose of a «theory» that the real world is a changeless mass of dead matter? Why was it presented as a divine revelation? Why would Dike, the personified Justice and concomitant of Zeus (a religious notion for any Greek in archaic times), hold this strange object in the «bonds of limit» and what would happen if she released it? Why did the real materialists of the ancient world, the Epicureans like Colotes, ridicule Parmenides as immaterialist? How could Plato (who scorned materialists) find in his poem extraordinary Pa0o^ and proclaim its author ^eya^ and ai§oio^? How could all ancient philosophers (who had in their hands the complete text of Parmenides) from Plato to Plotinus be mistaken about the nature of Parmenides' being? The followers of Burnet's physicalist interpretation avoid even to pose, let alone to answer these question. In our view there is only one possibility to make philosophical sense of Parmenides' poem: to take seriously the ancient tradition on his Pythagorean background and to interpret his metaphysics as monistic idealism or immaterialism. The sphere of Being described in the Aletheia is not a lump of dead matter, but the divine Sphairos of the Western Greek philosophical theology known from Xenophanes and Empedocles, conceived as pure Nous (Mind) which is the only true reality. The identity of Being and Mind is explicitly stated by Parmenides in fr. B 3, Zeller's and Burnet's interpretation is grammatically impossible and never occurred to any ancient reader. «What-is», conceived as a sphere of divine light endowed with consciousness, is also the invisible «Sun of Justice» (the Sun that «never sets»), an archaic idea known to Heraclitus and imitated by Plato in the allegory of the Sun in the Republic. Night (the symbol of body and corporeal matter) does not exist, it is an empty name resulting from a linguistic mistake of mortals who misnamed the absence of light as a separate substance. The Kouros of the Proem is not Parmenides himself, but an Apollonian image of his venerated teacher Pythagoras whose soul ascended to the celestial temple (oracle) of gods in a winged chariot and received there an oracular revelation from Aletheia herself, a great gift to humanity that liberated men from the veil of ignorance and fear of death. The

first part of Parmenides' poem was not just an exercise in speculative metaphysics concerned with problems of motion and plurality, but a handbook of philosophical theology and practical psychology with ethical and political implications: the attributes of the divine absolute are paradigmatic for the personality of an ideal citizen abiding to law (Dike) and a warrior who has no fear of death and pain, since he knows that his soul is immortal and his body is just a «shadow of smoke» (окга Kanvon). The immobility of the divine Sphere is not a physical theory, but an image for meditation, a psychological paradigm of the ataraxia and tranquility (hesychia) of the wise who has eradicated all passions and has assimilated his psyche to god following Pythagoras'command cnou Beroi.

2. Ancient tradition on Parmenides' Pythagorean affiliation and background.

The inclusion of Parmenides in Jamblichus' catalogue of Pythagoreans (V.P. 267) would be of little importance alone. But the tradition is much older. According to Sotion ap. D.L. 9.21 Parmenides' teacher was a Pythagorean Ameinias, son of Diokhaitas: Parmenides followed him more than Xenophanes (^a^ov ^Ko^onBn^ev), was converted by him to ^ouxia and after his death erected to him a heroic shrine (qproiov). One need not accept as a verbatim quotation the ingenious reconstruction of the epitaph from this monument by Hermann Diels4, but there are indeed traces of poetic language in Sotion's report, so it may be based on a genuine epitaph composed by Parmenides. The term ^ouxia 'calm' (of the soul) or 'silence' seems to mean more than just tranquillitas animi or vita contemplativa as opposed to political activity (so DK ad loc.). It alludes to the Pythagorean ¿xe^uBia and therefore implies that Parmenides became a regular member of the Pythagorean brotherhood and devotee of pto^ ПиВауоргю<;. Parmenides' own bios, as well as his nomoi, became later proverbially famous: in the Tabula Cebetis (test. 119 Coxon) the ancient sage who dedicated the pinax and sanctuary to Kronos was adherent of the «Pythagorean and Parmenidean life», ^oyroi ка! epyroi HuBayopeiov Tiva ка! nap^eviSeiov ptov г^п^юкю^. Of primary importance is the evidence of Strabo who in his description

4 DK I, 17, n. 27 nappsviSn; Aioxaixa Apsiviai siaaxo pvflpa, / o; xs piv s; aspv^v npornpansv ^auxinv.

of Elea mentions as her glorious citizens Parmenides and Zeno, av8ps<; ПиВауоргюг, and attributes to them the subsequent swo^ia of the Elean politeia5. The unusual phrase av8ps<; ПиВауоргюг does not seem to be attested elsewhere (teste TLG). This is not a familiar language of Diadochai or doxography. Strabo apparently uses a historical source, presumably the same as for the foundation of Elea by the Phoceans (Timaeus of Tauromenium?). Parmenides and Zeno during their lifetime may have been known to their compatriots as av8ps<; ПиВауоргюг. When the Eleatic stranger in Plato's Sophist says that то 'E^saxiKov eOvo^ started from Xenophanes «and even earlier» (ка! exi npoxspov) he probably alludes to Pythagoreans like Ameinias and maybe to Pythagoras himself.

3. Pythagorean elements in Aletheia and Doxa. The opposites and the doctrine of transmigration

Seven of the ten pairs of opposites in the Pythagorean Table of opposites6 are attested (as terms or as concepts) in Parmenides' poem.

(1) Pythagorean лгра^ ка! ansipov. Cf. Parmenides B 8.26 ^sya^rov sv nsipaoi Sso^rov, 8.31 nsipaxo^ sv Sso^oioi, 8.42 nsipa^ nti^axov. The infinite (ansipov) is not mentioned as such, but the infinity of being is denied by xsxs^so^svov (B 8.42).

(2) Pythagorean фао^ ка! окото^. The whole of Parmenides' Doxa is based in the fundamental opposition фао^ ка! vu^ (B 9, cf. B 8. 56-59).

(3) Pythagorean appsv ка! B'qAu. Cf. Parmenides B 12.5-6 aposvi B'qAu, B 17, test. 124-126 Coxon7.

(4) Pythagorean §s^iov ка! apioxspov. Cf. Parmenides B 17.

(5) Pythagorean sv ка! n^^Bo^. Cf. Parmenides B 8.6 sv. The opposition of one and many is conceptually fundamental for the relation between Aletheia to Doxa.

(6) Pythagorean ^ps^ouv ка! ^vo^^^ov. In Parmenides immobility (immutability) and motion (change), like one and many, are fundamental characteristics that distinguish the worlds of Aletheia and Doxa respectively.

5 Str. 6.1 (p.252) = 28 A12 DK = test. 103 Coxon.

6 Arist. Metaph. 986 a 23 sq. = 58 B 5 DK.

7 On the peculiarities of Parmenides' conception of male and female in relation with hot and cold see Journée 2012.

(7) In the Pythagorean Table of opposites the last pair xexpayrovov ка! 8тгро^пк£? are geometrical symbols for xanxov ка! exepov. Parmenides conceives the light or etherial fire as «self-identical» element, i.e. immortal and indestructible (B 8.56-57). Earth, on the contrary, is negatively marked: Parmenides describes her with some disgust as a dense, heavy and «unknowable» element. This can be best explained on the ground of the Pythagorean doctrine that the corporeal or material substance (apeiron) is unknowable because it lacks peras and therefore is indefinite.

Alcmaeon of Crotonon explains the origin of plants by two basic principles: the Sun is their father, and Earth is their mother8. Exactly as in Parmenides' Doxa, the celestial fire is the active (male), and Earth passive and nourishing (female) element. Alcmaeon was not an «orthodox» Pythagorean, but he addressed his work to Pythagoreans and shared some fundamental Pythagorean doctrines, like the divinity of Heavens (which was abolished in the Ionian peri physeos historia) and the immortality of soul. There is one often neglected fundamental difference between the Milesian (Ionian, except Heraclitus) and Pythagorean - Eleatic conception of opposites. In Ionian science the opposites (like hot and cold, dry and wet) are axiologically neutral and descriptive. In the Pythagorean Table of opposites they are axiologically marked, peras correponds to agathon, and apeiron to kakon. The difference is as great as that between science and religion. Parmenides in the Doxa borrows a lot from Anaximander's cosmology, but he adapts it to the Pythagorean axiological dualism.

The doctrine of the transmigration of the souls is attested for Parmenides in Simplicius' paraphrase in Phys. 39, 18 sq. (after B 12-13) ка! ха^ уоха<; ne^neiv лохе ^ev гк xon г^фа^оп^ гц то агг§8^, лохе 8г avan^X-iv ф^с™, «[Aphrodite] is sending souls now from the invisible realm into visible, now the other way around»9. Transmigration does not necessarily imply reincarnation (in animals

8 Lebedev 1990.

9 This text cannot be reduced to a paraphrase/interpretation of B 16, as Burkert rightly observes (Burkert 2008: 25 n.63, contra Mansfeld, 1965: 166 ff.). The passage on souls does not speak about sexes, copulation and birth, B 16 does not speak about souls, visible/invisible realms and travel up and down. asiSs; is hapax in Simplicius, but it is not a poetic word, either. Is it a prosaic rendering of Parmenides' epic word asiSsXov? In Platonists it occurs in the allegorical etymology of A'i'Sn; which, in turn, is connected with the Pythagorean idea of Diesseits-Hades.

or plants): Heraclitus believed that the souls travel up and down by the road avro катю between heaven and earth, but he did not accept reincarnation. There is no evidence for (animal) reincarnation in Parmenides, either.

4. Three new readings of the text of Proem. The relation of B 1. 1-3 with the myth of the chariot of the soul in Plato's Phaedrus. Identification of anonymous goddesses.

Scholars who have interpreted the trip of Kouros as a katabasis have been misled by a false «parallel» with a passage in Hesiod's Theogony (v. 740-757) which locates «the dwelling of dark Night» in the Netherworld10. Mythological names in the texts of Greek philosophers usually do not have the same referential meaning as in the epic tradition11. For example, In Philolaus' cosmography (44 A 16) "ОАицяо^ was the name of the caelum empyreum, not of the mount in Thessaly or a general term for heavens, and Hestia stands for central fire. All mythological names in Heraclitus have a new «philosophical» meaning distinct from epic usage. It seems likely that Pythagoras and ancient Pythagoreans before Philolaus accepted the geocentric model of the cosmos of Anaximander while rebuilding and modifying it in detail. In this model the earth became a tiny body in the center of the Universe, leaving no place for traditional Hades. Therefore the Pythagoreans identified Hades with the sublunar region relying on the etymology Ai'Sq^ «invisible»; this concept of Diesseits-Hades is attested both in Empedocles and Heraclitus. The phrase 8ю^ата nukto^ in Parmenides B 1.9 has this new Pythagorean meaning, not the old epic one. So the earthen region of mortals is the starting point of Kouros' travel, and the destination is the «Gates of Day and Night» which are described by epithet with local meaning аШгргаг, i.e. «high in the aether», i.e. celestial. A trip from earth to heavens can only be a flight. Since Coxon has convicingly demonstrated that аотп in B 1.3 is not a

10 Mansfeld 1964: 238; Burkert 2008: 6 ff.; Palmer 2009: 54 ff.

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In Lebedev 2010: 101 ff. I argue that the use of Homeric hexameter and epic language by the Western Greek philosophers was not so much a continuation of epic tradition, as a reform of it: the content of the traditional form presented a totally new philosophical picture of the world replacing the antiquated one of the poets.

MSS. reading, but (an unfortunate) conjecture of Diels, we propose the following reading of v.3:

Saipovo; ц каха navxa <ло>т^г ферег siSoxa фюха. '[the road] of goddess who carries the man of knowledge by flight across the Universe [lit. «all things»] '.

Пох'л is a Homeric word attested in Odyssey 5.337: Leucothea, feeling compassion for Odysseus' troubles, transformed herself into a diving-bird and «ascended from sea by flight» (пох^г avsSnoaxo Xi^vn^), then sat on the raft. Lexicographers gloss the word as пх^ог^, sometimes as op^q. In Aratus the constellation of Cygnus «flies like bird» (nox^v opviBi гогкю^ ... фёргхаг), noxq again is combined with the same verb as in Parmenides (фвргоВш,).

Since the word noxq is regularly associated with the flight of birds and wings (in Hymn. Mercur. 544 nox^ioi is v. l. for nxepnyeooi), the chariot of Kouros should be envisaged as a winged chariot, and so the similarity with Plato's comparison of the soul with nnonxepov ка! ^vio^o^ in Phaedrus 246 a 3-b 4

becomes striking. The connection was recognized already by

Hermias, In Platonis Phaedrum 122, 19 ff., and by some modern

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scholars, Hermann Diels and Paul Natorp among others .

In fr. B1.29 we have two divergent MSS readings, one «metaphysical» гпкикХш^ ахрг^г^ and one «epistemological» evneiBeo^ ахргкг^. Mourelatos (Mourelatos 2009: 155 ff.) has convincingly argued for the superiority of evneiBeo^ over the linguistically questionable гпкикХ'п^ (instead of regular гпкикХо^), but one who accepts this reading, should combine it with ахргкг^. To begin with, the heart that does not tremble, an unmovable heart, is a dead heart. Pace Verdenius, ахргкг^ is a lectio difficilior. This Ionic and poetic word disappeared from colloquial usage together with the Ionic dialect and since then was known only to scholars. On the contrary, the word ахрг^г^ will be easily understood by any modern Greek. Herodotus never uses Attic акрфг<;, only ахргкг^. In Parmenides the word conveys the concept of the «precise» or «exact» knowledge as opposed to the uncertainty of doxa, it is semantically close to the more familiar xo оафё^ (cf. Xenopan. B 34.1).

12 Diels 2003/1897: 22; Natorp 1903: 72. Palmer 1999: 18 ff. convincingly criticizes modern sceptics.

^psv A^nOsin; sunsiOsoc; атреке^ ^xop

'both the unmistakable heart of the well-persuasive Truth'.

Finally in v.32 of the Proem we propose to read

XP^v SoKip®; isvai14 5ia navTo; navrn nsprovrn.

«But nonetheles you should also learn this as well:

How you should plausibly recite things-that-seem-to-be, while going in detail through the totality of things [i.e. explaining the Universe]»

The words ^avBavs koo^ov s^rov snsrov anaxn^ov B 8.52 echo the end of the proem ^aBqosai ю? та Sokowto ... isvai «you will lean how to utter (or «to recite in verse») what-seems-to-be». In B 8.52 the goddess fulfills her promise in B 1.31-32.

EvrceiBq? is mostly used of persons, not of things, so sunsiB^ A^qBein is conceived by Parmenides as a personification of Truth, as a goddess. A conjecture lies at hand that by this name the revealing goddess refers to herself. In the lost Theogony of Epimenides of Crete in his mantic dream also performed an anabasis to Heavens and heard divine ^oyoi from A^qBsia ка! А(кп (3 B 1 DK). And since the road of the goddess (daimon) mentioned in B 1.2 carries Kouros to the revealing goddess who is the goal of the trip, it seems likely the the goddess of the road (v.3) and the revealing goddess are one and the same. The «road of Aletheia» alluded to in v.3 is the divine philosophy of Pythagoras.

5. «The Maiden of the High Gates» (у^цфп tyirci^n) - a neglected verbatim quotation from Parmenides' poem in Proclus.

Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, 640, 39 = T 165 Coxon sKsivo §8 npsoPuTiK^^ dvai Siavoia? KaBopav, ка! ou§8 avBpronivn?, sv toi? norq^aoi фпогу, a^a vu^n? u^inu^n? two?. «To understand that august doctrine requires the intellect of an older man, and indeed an intellect more than human, as he [= Parmenides] says in his poem, and rather that of a "nymph of the high gates"» (translation of Klitenich Wear slightly edited).

13

The word «heart» here has a connotation of «hidden essence».

14 isvai scripsi, sivai codd. The meaning is 'utter' or 'recite', LSJ, q.v. I, 2, especially isvai snsa Il. 3.221. The words pavOavs Koapov sprov snsrov anmn^ov B 8.52 echo the end of the proem paO^asai юс; та SoKouvrn ... isvai

It is hard to understand why this quotation has not been included in the collections of Parmenides' fragments (contra Coxon, p.280). Proclus (Syrianus) explicitly quotes the phrase у6^фп<; ПушиХ^ «Numph of the High Gates» from Parmenides «poems»: sv norq^aoi clarifies that he quotes from the poem, not from Plato's dialogue, and introduces a verbatim quotation, not just an opinion. The word xivo^ also points to quotation: when used appositively with mythological or famous names it marks a figurative or proverbial expression as in 'НракХ^ хк; 'he is a real Heracles!' (Aristoph. Ran.38) or AnXiou xivo^ Seixai коХи^вптои. This quotation indeed is a part of dactylic hexameter with a first spondaic foot: — / - uu / -. The phrase, teste TLG, seems to be absolute hapax, and the word nyinuXn does not occur elsewhere in Proclus or Syrianus. Someone who is unwilling to recognize this phrase as a verbatim quotation from Parmenides, will carry the burden of proving that Proclus or Syrianus for unknown reason ascribes to Parmenides a poetic quotation which he composed himself ad hoc skillfully imitating Parmenides' meter and style. Nu^ai.. .Koupai Aio^ aiyioxoio is a Homeric formula15, nymphs as goddesses have normally names ending with ('Оргшбг^, 'YaSet;, Ла^ушбг^ etc.), so 'HXiaSe^ Koupai in Parmenides are also vu^ai, Maidens of the Sun. Note that nyinuXn in this quote is not a personal name (her name is AXnBein) and should not be printed with a capital.16 Parmenides was fond of compound epic epithets like vuKx^ae<; (B

I -7

14), угибофа^ (of Moon) , n§axoppiZo^ (of Earth, B 15a), so why not у6^фп(<;) nyinuXn^)? The epithet exactly corresponds to the aiBepiai (scil. nuXai) in B 1.13, the «gates that are high in the sky» or «high in the aether». The «Maiden of High Gates» in Parmenides would fit both Dike, who guards the celestial gates, and the revealing goddess (Aletheia) who sits behind the gates in the celestial temple of the gods. Proclus (Syrianus) identifies her with divine intelligence superior to human mind, this points rather to the revealing goddess. In any case the epithet nyinuXn supports the celestial destination of Kouros' flight and constitutes an additional

15 Hom.Il.6,420; Od. 6,105;6,122; 9,154;13,356;17,240; Hesiod,fr. 304 vüp^ai eûrcXoKapoi, Koüpai Aioç aiyiöxoio.

16 Contra Klitenic Wear (2011) 215 n.1 and Coxon (2009) 199. McKirahan ibidem 198 mistranslates "a certain nymph Hypsipyle".

17 This is wrongly printed by Diels under «Falshes» B 21. ^euSo^a^ç is a poetic word and cannot be part of Theophrastus' own lexicon.

refutation of all hypotheses that interpret Kouros' trip as katabasis. Presumably, the quotation comes from the last verses of the Doxa and constitutes a concluding remark, something like «&? ^axo ... vu^n uyircuAn» - «So spoke ... the maiden of the High Gates»18.

6. The oracular (Apollonian) metaphorical code of the Proem: the quest for divine knowledge as a consultation trip (theoria) to the celestial oracular temple and the prophecy of the celestial Pythia named Aletheia.

The key to the understanding of the metaphorical language of the proem is provided by what we call the oracular (or Apollonian) metaphorical code. The flight of Kouros (also Apollonian figure, see section 13 below) is conceived as a theoria. The destination is not Delphi, but the celestial temple, inhabited by living gods, not by agalmata, and the prophesizing Pythia is not a mortal woman, but the Truth herself. The epithet rcoAu^n^ov in v.2 alludes to many ^avxiKai19. On the mantic associations of rcox'q, flight of birds as good or bad sign, see above. The bronze gates and «stone threshold» (Aaivo? otiSo?) are typical not for ordinary houses, but for temples. In both instances of this phrase in Homer (1l. 9.404 and Od. 8.80) it is associated with the temple of OoiPo? AnoAArov and HuBro. The revealing goddess takes the right hand of Kouros (Se^iov is always a good sign in Greek manteia) and starts prophesizing herself without being asked: this was known as HuBia auxo^axiZei and was also regarded as good omen. Note that the word Si^n^i? also may be connected with the mantic metaphorical code. Al^n^i sometimes is applied to the interpretation of oracle, in Heraclitus s^erouxov (B 101) may have a mantic connotation and allude to the thesis o yap vou? sv ^iv Geo?20.

Two false parallels with epic tradition have misled many intetrpreters of Parmenides, the one with Odyssey 1.3 and the other with Hesiod's description of Tartarus in the Theogony 744 ff. The first is based on the false and impossible reading aoxn in Parmen. B 1.3, the second on the misunderstanding of the Pythagorean

18

The possibility did not escape the notice of Burkert 2008: 12, though he leaves the matter unresolved.

19 «prophetic sayings» LSJ, s.v. I 1.

20 The mantic connotation of this word in Heraclitus was first pointed out by Nietzsche.

symbolism of «Night» in Parmenides the Pythagorean and the erratic katabasis hypothesis. Parmenides and Hesiod are divided by the 6th century scientific revolution in Miletus which brought to light the geocentric model of the cosmos in astronomy. There is no place for Tartarus in Parmenides' geocentric cosmos, and the sphericity of earth is incompatible with Hesiodic «roots» of Gaia conceived as a tree. There is indeed a Homeric Vorlage of the description of the Gates of Night and Day in B1.11 ff., but it is found in the Iliad, 5.748 ff.

^pn 5s paoxiyi Go©; enepaiex' ap' innou; auxopaxai os nmai pukov oupavou ac; s%ov izpai, x^ snixsxpanxai psyac; oupavoc; OuAupnoc; xs ^pSv avaK^ivai tcukivov vs^oc; ^5'sni0sa0ai. x^i pa 8i'auxa©v KsvxpnvsKsac; S%ov ircrcou^.

The guardians of the heavenly gates to Olympus are Horai. In Hesiod's Theogony 901 ff. they are daughters of Zeus and Themis, and their names are Euvopin, AiKn Kai Eip^vq. These gates are compatible with Parmenides' astronomy: in B11.2-3 Sa%axo<; oAupnoc; must refer to the sphere of fire axs^avn) inside the firmamentum (xo

axspsov similar to wall, xsi%ou<; SiK^v 37). Cicero describes it as follows «Parmenides... coronae simile efficit, axs^av^v apellat, continentem ardorem lucis orbem, qui cingit caelum, quem apellat deum...»21.

In the doxography (28 A 37) the Sun and the Milky Way are explained as spiracula of fire (avanvo^ xon nupo^), and the Milky

Way as the Isles of the blessed is a well attested tenet of

22

Pythagorean eschatology . What we see as Milky Way are tiny windows in the adjacent sphere of dark «air» through which the divine celestial fire emits light. It is conceivable (as one possibility) that the gates of Olympus in Parmenides are located in the Milky Way region which is the destination of the flight of Kouros. Another posssibility, suggested by Heliades leading the way, would be the region of the Sun. In the Pythagorean akousmata the Isles of the blessed are also identified with the Sun and the Moon . Parmenides knew the work of Heraclitus, and in Heraclitus Apollo was

21 Cic. Nat. deor. 1.11.28 = 28 A 37 DK

22

Burkert, Lore and science, 367. Porphyr. De antro, 28; Numen. fr. 32. 35 Des Places. Possible allusion in Orphic lamella 5 (not in 26), Graf -Johnston (2007) 128-129.

23 Iambl. VP 18.82 xi eoxiv ai paraprov v^aoi; ^Xio^ Kai aeX^vn.

24

identified with the Sun . According to D.L. 9.22 first humans in Parmenides anthropogony were born from the sun ^Aiou nproxov ysvsoBai25.

7. Elements of allegory in the Proem. Similarity and differences with the image in Phaedrus. Motives of the flight of the mind trough the Universe and of the apotheosis of philosopher.

In a typically Pythagorean manner eschatology, epistemology and ethics are fUsed together in the Proem. Pace Burkert, there is nothing specifically «Platonic» or «Christian» in the metaphysical, moral and epistemological symbolism of light and darkness26. Like Jungian archetype it is omnipresent in Eastern and Western mythologies, religious symbolism and metaphysics. It is attested centuries before Christ and Plato in the Pythagorean table of opposites where фю? ка! окото? are correlated with ayaBov ка! KaKov, and the whole cosmology of Parmenides' Doxa is based on Lichtmetaphysik. On the referential level of meaning Parmenides' Proem indeed describes the transition of the philosophical (г!8ю?) mind from the realm of darkness to the realm of light, from falsehood to truth, from the world of suffering to eternal bliss. Plato has not invented the dualism of the two worlds, he took it over from Pythagoreans and Parmenides together with the doctrine of immortal soul, anamnesis and transmigration. Parmenides' Proem should be seen as a source and contextual frame not only for the winged chariot of the soul in Phaedrus, but also for the whole Phaedo (only the disembodied mind regains the full power of knowledge) and two of the three analogies in Republic VI-VII (the «Sun of Justice» and «The cave»).

Once we accept that Plato's image of the winged chariot in Phaedrus derives from or is based on Parmenides' proem, a question arises how much of the Platonic imagery can be attributed to Parmenides. The subject has been discused in an important article of Max Latona (2008) with fresh arguments against the denial of allegorical elements in Parmenides' proem and striking parallel from

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Katha Upanishad. Latona compares also the Pythagorean Golden

24 Heraclit. fr.12-13 Probabilia; Lebedev 2014: 247-250.

25

Unless the corect reading is e^ iA6o;, cf. DK ad loc.

26 Burkert 2008: 23 «diese platonisch-christliche Symbole».

27 Katha UpanishadI.3.3-9 «Know the self [atman] as a rider in a chariot, / and the body, as simply the chariot... etc. The man who has understanding

verses that combine the image of the mind as charioteer, apotheosis of philosopher and astral immortality in four final verses GV 68-71. p. 98 Thom: ...Kpivrov ка! фра^ви ёкаота / ^vio^ov yvro^qv oT'qoa? KaBtinspBsv apioT^v. / ^v S'anoAsiya? ойца s? aiBep'sAsuBepov sABni?, / eoosai aBavaro?, Bso? а^Ррото?, оикгтг Bvnro?. Pvro^n

О Й

may be used here as a substitute for voo? for metrical reasons , so here, as in Plato, the mind is a charioteer. Plato remakes rather than mechanically borrows Parmenides' image and adapts it to the tripartite soul of the «Republic» which it would be hazardous to ascribe to Parmenides. Parmenides does not distinguish good and bad horses like Plato, nor specifies their number, they all tamed and intelligent (лоАбфраотог). The basic affinity between Platonic and Parmenides' image is the idea of mind taming the passions and of pure reason presiding over the senses . Sextus' allegorical interpretation is sometimes far-fetched and yet it captures some essential points correctly: Adv.Math. VII. 112 sv toutoi? yap о Пар^ву(§п? inrcou? ^sv фпагу aurov фёрг™ та? aAOyou? rq? yuxq? ор^а? те ка!

9 Г ^ Л С» Л \ Л ' ? С» Л ** С* Г Г Г\ \

opsqsi?, ката ог T^v noA^n^ov ooov тои oai^ovo? nopsusoBai T^v ката tov фlA6ooфov Aoyov Bsropiav, o? A6yo? npono^nou Sai^ovo? rponov sn! T^v anavrrov o§nysi yvrooiv... The «route of goddess» is indeed the route of Aletheia, i.e. of Pythagorean philosophy. Note that Sextus' paraphrase is based on the original uncorrupted text of B 1.3 in which navra was used absolutely in the sense of «all things» or «Universe»; this supports our reading and once again rules out the conjecture аотп. Sextus interpretation of two wheels as ears is far-fetched, but the association of ra^ai HAiaSs? with seeing is plausible (with possible intentional ambiguity of корп 'girl' and 'pupil of the eye'). After release from the body and the realm of night (sublunar world) the soul of a Pythagorean removes the mist over the eyes (a^Ati?) and perceives reality clearly without distortion: this is alluded in the «taking off the veils» from the heads of Kourai in B 1.10.

The proem of Parmenides is the the earliest known instance of the philosophical motive «the flight of mind through the Universe»

(vijnana) resembles Parmenides eiSoxa 9©xa. His senses are under control, / Like the good horses of a chariot driver» (quoted by Latona 2006: 206).

28 Pvropn, rather than voo;, is the regular word for mind in Hippocratic corpus. In Heraclitus fr.140L/B 41 DK it is the divine cosmic mind that steers the Universe.

29

Both ideas are familiar to Heraclitus around 490 B.C.

that had a long history from archaic times to the Late antiquity and could take different forms from expression of genuine ecstatic experience to a protreptic in character commonplace extolling the power of reason and philosophical knowledge. It can be used on its own, but in Parmenides it is interwoven with another persistent motive - that of apotheosis of philosopher or becoming god30. The second of these motives is earlier attested in the final section of Heraclitus' book which speaks of ^eiZove^ ^oipai of heroes and the wise whose «dry souls» after death ascend to heavens and become commensals at the symposium of gods possibly merging into the

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purest aither of the sun region .

8. The Pythagorean origin of the eschatological use of Aletheia as a mystical name for the prenatal and post-mortem abode of the souls.

In Empedocles B 121 AXnBeia<; Xei^rov is the celestial paradise, the original abode of disembodied souls. It is opposed to Xei^rov 'Axn^, the earthen region conceived as Hell. In Hierocles' paraphrase the souls leave the meadow of Aletheia and enter mortal bodies under the influence of «impulse of moulting» (op^ пхерорри^овю^). The opposite impulse of «growing feathers» (лхгрофта) should be the one that brings them back . We have seen that the word noxq restored in Parmenides B 1.3 is explained by lexicographers as nx^oi^ or op^q «onrush» and is contextually associated with wings (пхгриуг^). Whether Plato, Phaedrus 248b A^nBeia^ neSiov derives from Empedocles (as Diels-Kranz I, 374 think) or from a common Pythagorean source cannot be established with certainty, but in any case the original source is old Pythagorean

30 On this topic see Macris (2006), Hermann (2004), Miller (2011).

31 Heraclit, fr. 159 and 159 A Leb. The symposium which according to Heraclitus (ap. Aristot. fr.50 Gigon = 22 b13 DK) one should attend without Poppoproi xaip£lv is the symposium of gods on heavens as becomes clear from Epictet. Enchir.14.1 and the neglected verbatim fragment of Heraclitus fr. 159A about ayaOoi (the wise) who join the symposia of other ayaOoi (the gods) without invitation. The image of Sibyl fr. 160L is a metaphor of divinization of Heraclitus through the eternity of his philosophical logos. The anecdote aboutthe self-deification of Heraclitus in Epist. IV, 2,18 Taran is based on Heraclitus' book.

32 Plato, Phaedrus 246d né^UKev ^ nxepoù ôûvapiç xo épPpiOèç ayeiv avro kxX. echoes Parmenides' description of the heavy (corporeal) element as épPpiOéç.

since this eschatological use of Aletheia is closely tied to the transmigration myth which was not invented by Empedocles. Additional evidence is provided by the so called «Orphic» (or rather Pythagorean) graffiti on bone plates from Olbia (last quarter of the 5th B.C.) . We reconstruct the following table of opposites from three plates:

Bio; Oavaxo;

Eip^vn noAepo;

AA^Oeia WoSo;

The soul possesses eternal life, the body is liable to death. The soul rests in peace, the body is immersed in the world of war of opposites, the soul belongs to the realm of Truth, and the body to the realm of Falsehood, it is an illusion, a OKia Kanvou. On the verso of the plate with opposites yux^ - oro^a there is a symbolical drawing of a square with diagonals. It seems that the Olbian chersmologue, who may be identical with the diviner Pharnabazos known from other Olbian graffiti (Lebedev 1996), knew the symbolical representation of the soul as square ascribed to Pythagoras:

Lydus, De mensibus, 2,9 yu^a yap avBprorcou, ro? nuBayopa?

V V r ? f\ r

s^n, soxi xsxpayrovov opBoyroviov.

Square is also a symbol of xatixov or a^spioxo? otioia corresponding to immortal soul in the Table of opposites quoted by Aristotle in Metaphysics Alpha 986a 22.

9. The structural parallelism of the basic oppositions in Aletheia and Doxa reveals the doctrine of immaterialism. The meaning of «empty» and «full» in Parmenides. The linguistic mistake of mortals.

The materialist interpretation of Parmenides' Being relies on the misinterpretation of the non-being (or kenon) as absence of body, and the consequent identification of sov with body or material substance. But Parmenides never and nowhere states that xo sov is corporeal. The basic opposition of the Aletheia (being vs. non-being) exactly corresponds to the basic opposition of Doxa (Light vs.

33

Editio princeps: A. S. Rusjaeva 1978. An important addition to the editio princeps in VDI was made by J. Vinogradov 1991: the word aropa as an opposite of yux^. It is this pair of opposites that makes the plates philosophically interesting and proves their connection with Pythagoreanism.

Night). Light (or celestial fire) is the active, weightless (¿Xa^pn) and thinking element, Night is the «heavy», dense, corporeal substance, hence Aristotles' rendering yq, which is essentially correct. Light and Darkness are roughly the soul and the flesh of the sensible cosmos. There can be little doubt that Being of the Aletheia corresponds to the Light in Doxa, and Non-Being of Aletheia corresponds to the Night in Doxa. This was correctly understood already by Aristotle who equates the basic oppositions of Aletheia and Doxa and correlates what-is with fire and what-is-not with earth in GC 318d7 roorcsp nap^sviSn; Xeysi, to ov Kai to ^ ov ^aoKrov sivai nnp Kai yqv. This means that - exactly as in the Olbian graffiti - the body is ysnSo;, an illusion and a non-entity. Exactly because Parmenides is an idealist in metaphysics and identifies being with mind, by «emptiness» he means not the empty space of Democritus, but the absence of what-is identical with mind, i. e. he means body which is composed of «night» or what-is-not. In B 4 the goddess instructs Kouros to «contemplate» all «absent» parts of reality, i.e. bodies composed of «Night», as being «present», i.e. to fill all dark spots with light. The world will again appear as a continuous sphere of light. The fragment should be relocated to the end of Doxa: the goddess reminds Kouros that the cosmology of Doxa he just heard is based on a hypothesis that Night (matter) is as real as Light (mind). But KaT'aXqBsiav this assumption is mistaken. Thus the philosophy of Parmenides is a radical form of immaterialism and monistic idealism.

The idealist interpretation of Parmenides' Being also solves the riddle of Plato's identification of matter with space (x®pa) in Timaeus 52a 834. Such identification makes sense and becomes intelligible only within Pythagorean and Eleatic conceptual framework. Plato's dualism of form and matter derives from the Pythagorean dualism of peras and apeiron. These were originally geometrical concepts: peras corresponds, e.g. to the shape of a square, and apeiron to the «empty space» enclosed within it. Since it lacks a shape of its own, it cannot be an object of thought, we can only «dream» about it (npo; o Kai ovsiporcoXon^sv pXsrcovTs;, Tim. 52a 11). This is the continuum that is divisible si; ansipov. Peras, on the contrary, is indivisible. Platonic form and matter thus correspond to the indivisible and divisible substance of Pythagorean

34 On different approaches to this see Algra 1995: 76 ff.

metaphysics which denote spiritual (soul) and the corporeal (body). Exactly as in Parmenides, the body is kenon, i. e. a receptacle of the shape (soul).

One of the strongest arguments in favour of the monistic idealism (immaterialism) as the core metaphysical doctrine in Parmenides is provided by the cryptic remark of goddess in В 52-53

рорфа; yap KaxsOsvxo 5ш yvropa; ovopaZeiv-

x®v piav oti xpe®v saxiv - sv Si nsnAavnpevoi siaiv 'They have decided35 to name two forms,

One of which they should not [have named] - in which they are mistaken...'

The word yvro^a? emphasizes that the dualistic conception of the world does not correspond to objective reality, but exists only in the thought of mortals and is based on false judgment. The goddess ascribes to mortals a kind of naive realism (they believe that the world is as it appears through the senses), her own epistemological position with regard of the physical world is something like subjective idealism or anti-realism. This false judgment was forever fixed in two separate names in the ordinary language, of which one (xrov ^iav) has been posited by mistake, because it denotes nothing. This implies that one of the two names is not empty, but captures something real. So, according to Parmenides the phenomenal world of plurality is a result of a linguistic mistake of mortals. This doctrine of linguistic idealism is also attested in Heraclitus' grammatical analogy between the Universe and speech or text (logos), in which the separate opposites correspond to «letters», their combinations - to syllables (аиААаугг^), and all cosmic syllables and «names» (cf. гпп ка! груа) are integrated in «this Logos» (= visible Universe) which is one ката фио™ and лоААа in the doxastic imagination of the hoi polloi36. There can be little doubt that the «mistaken» name is Night, and the one that captures something real is Light. Night is not a separate substance, but the absence of Light. Here we find a historical antecedent of the Aristotelian distinction between ^орф'л and охгрп^г?. Note that in Parmenides too, of the two opposites involved in change only one

35

Or, reading yvépaiç, «they have laid down in their minds two forms for naming».

36 On the grammatical (alphabet) analogy in Heraclitus' logos fragments see Lebedev 2017 and Lebedev 2014-2, 61-69 and 103-110.

denotes ^op^, whereas the other is just a marker of its absence. In the Pythagorean Table of opposites «darkness» (okoto^) is correlated with ansipov, the Pythagorean name for matter and ever-flowing corporeal substance. Body is a OKia like those shades on the wall of the cave in Plato's adaptation of the Orphic-Pythagorean symbolism.

10. The doctrine of monistic idealism or immaterialism is directly and explicitly stated by Parmenides in fr. B 3.

... to yap awo voeiv ¿GTiv T£ Kai eivai.

From ancient times to the late 19-th century all philosophers and scholars have always understood this as «for it is the same to think and to be», i.e. «thinking and being are the same thing», taking vosiv Kai sivai as grammatical subject, and to ... auTO ... soTiv «is the same» as predicate. This is indeed the most obvious and natural meaning of the Greek text. And since the identity of thought (mind, consciousness, awareness) and being is the classical doctrine of idealism, ancient and modern, Parmenides was commonly regarded as «the father of idealism». It was Eduard Zeller who for the first time proposed a syntactically (and philosophically) different interpretation: «denn dasselbe kann gedacht werden und sein», i.e. «for the same thing can be thought and be» (Zeller 1919: 687 n.1). According to Zeller, soti means s^soti, and the two infinitives are used as «datives» with final meaning. This reading eliminates «idealism» from Parmendides' text and turns it into a positivist platitude, namely that the object of thought must be something real. Zeller' interpretation was accepted by Burnet in EGPh and through his influence has become widely accepted in the English-speaking

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literature on Parmenides . The ancient interpretation, however, has been defended and retained by Diels-Kranz, Mario Untersteiner, Gregory Vlastos, Charles Kahn, Marcel Conche, Ernst Heitsch,

"3 o

Cordero among others . Zeller's interpretation is grammatically im-

37 Burnet 1930: 173 note 2, Guthrie HGrPh II 14, Taran 1965: 41; Mourelatos 1999: 75, n.4 etc.

38

DK I, 231 «Denn dasselbe ist Denken und Sein» (this is Kranz' translation, Diels in the 4th edition has «Denn das Seiende denken und sein ist dasselbe»). Vlastos 1953: 168; Kahn 1969: 721; Long 1996: 134 ff.; Conche 1996: 88; Persuasive criticism of Zeller's interpretation in Heitsch 1995: 144 ff.

possible and should be rejected without hesitation. His translation «gedacht werden» requires passive vonB^vai, not active vosiv. And besides, vosiv is a transitive verb, but sivai is not. How can anxo at the same time be the object of vosiv and the subject of sivai? Some scholars have proposed a modified version of Zeller's reading taking soxi simply as «there is», not as «it is possible», and translating: «for the same thing is there for thinking and being»40. But this is still a forced interpretation, and the Greek, being construed grammatically in this way, cannot mean «the same thing is there for thinking (of)», either. If we admit that to anxo is indeed the subject (which is unlikely) and sot! means simply «is», to auTO will be the subject, not the object of the active vosiv, i.e. the text will mean «one and the same thing exists in order to think (i.e. to be thinker) and to be». Does it make any sense?

The traditional rendering of Parmenides' vosiv as «to think» is a simplification that narrows to logical thought the meaning of the

39

O'Brien (Aubenque, O'Brien, Frére 1987, I: 20) tries to solve this difficulty by citing alleged parallels from Homer and Aristotle, but all quotations, interesting as they are, do not provide a single instance of the (supposed) construction at issue, i. e. two infinitives (joined by Kai) with «dative» meaning, one transitive and another intransitive. The passages quoted by O'Brien contain either a single infinitive with dative meaning, or two infinitives which are subjects, i. e. have no dative meaning.

40 So Barnes 1979, I: 157 and note 4; Curd 1998: 49; Coxon, McKirahan 2009: 58 ; Fronterotta 2007: 10. The translation in KRS 1983) 246 n.2 and O'Brien in Aubenque, O'Brien, Frère 1987, I: 19 differs from this modified version only in rendering voeiv as «to be thought» or «for being thought» rather than «for thinking». Graham 2010, I, 213 while recognizing that «the most obvious translation would be «thinking and being are the same thing», nevertheless rejects it on the ground that «the metaphysically extreme idealism... seems anachronistic without antecedents» (ibid. I, 236). Objections to this in Lebedev 2013. Palmer 2009: 118-122 gives a useful survey of different views. Palmer dismisses the traditional (ante-Zellerian) interpretation of B 3 on the ground that such thesis is an «utter nonsense» (p. 119). There are many theories in ancient philosophy and science that from the point of view of modern academic philosophy or science would appear to-day as «utter nonsense», but this is not a good reason to deny their historicity. The identity of Being and Mind was asserted by many idealist philosophers from antiquity to the 20th century both in Western and Oriental philosophy. But the strange theory of being conceived as a lifeless lump of invisible solid matter ascribed to Parmenides by Burnet and his followers is indeed an «utter nonsense», since it makes no sense absolutely, either in philosophy or science, or religion. Such doctrine is unparalleled in the history of the world philosophy.

term which covers a wide spectrum of cognitive faculties and mental states from intellectual intuition to perception (including sense perception), to thinking, to internal states of consciousness like dreaming or being awake41. A more precise rendering of voo? would be «consciousness, awareness», and of vosiv as «to become aware of», «to perceive», «to realize». Accordingly fr. B 3 can be translated as «For awareness (perception) and being are one and the same thing», i.e. «I am aware of x» implies «x is», and in turn, «x is» implies «I am aware of x».

Parmenides' main thesis displays a certain affinity both with Berkeley's esse percipi and the Indian formula of subject/object identity tat tvam asi (etymologically identical with Greek xo§8 to sooi). It seems to be based on one of the fundamental principles of Greek epistemology to o^oiov xroi o^oiroi yiyvrooKsoBai42. What is perceived by mind is mental (pure light), what is perceived by organs of the body (= «Night») is contaminated and distorted by «Night».

The lines B 8.34 ff. should be interpreted in the same way, as asserting the intelligible nature of the objects of mind:

Tarnov 5'eaxi voeiv xe Kai ouveKev eaxi vonpa.

'The same thing is to perceive and what causes perception'.

11. The idealist (mentalist) interpretation of Parmenides' theory of being is not only directly stated in two verbatim fragments, but is also confirmed by all external ancient evidence.

All ancient authors who quote B 3 (Clemens, Plotinus, Proclus) unanimously understood it as asserting the identity of thought and being. There are reasons to believe that Plato and Aristotle also regarded Parmenides as idealist (i.e. someone who asserted the mental nature of Being) and read B3 in the same way (Contra Taran 1965: 198). To begin with, Plato would have never declared Parmenides «great» (nap^sviSn? o ^eya? Soph. 237a), if Parmenides had an extravagant doctrine that reality is a changless bulk of

41 More accurately, Coxon 2009 renders «conceive», Kahn and Heitsch «to know», «Erkennen». In B16 vooç refers to the changing states of consciousness (awakening and sleeping, i.e. seeing light or darkness) caused by the internal prevalence of the phaos or nyx elements in man. Noeiv is used of perception in Xenophanes B 24.

42 This was suggested by Vlastos 1953: 168.

lifeless dead matter. There can be little doubt that Plato regarded Parmenides as a «friend of ideas» in the great battle of the materialists and their idealist opponents. Aristotle, too, understood Parmenides' One as immaterial. In Metaph. A 5. 986b 18 he contrasts Parmenides' conception of One with that of Melissus as то ката Xoyov sv with то ката nX^v43. In Aristotle's usage Xoyo^ opposed to nXn denotes the formal cause, therefore Parmenides' sv, i.e. то eov, according to Aristotle, is immaterial. Not only ancient friends and sympathizers of Parmenides, but also his enemies regarded him as an idealist. The Epicurean Colotes accused Parmenides of denying the reality of the external world (Parmen. test. 113-117 Coxon).

Melissus B 9 explicitly and unambiguously asserts that the Eleatic eov is incorporeal (ашца ^ exsw). When Euclides of Me-gara identified Parmenides' sv with Socrates' то ayaBov, he hardly concieved it as a mass of dead matter, rather he correctly interpreted the Eleatic One as a divine absolute endowed with mind.

12. The Pythagorean symbol of the «invisible Sun of Justice» as the basis and the source of Parmenides' description of the eternal Sphere of Being guarded by Dike in Aletheia. The theological dimension of Parmenides' Aletheia.

There was a proverbial Greek wisdom about «the eye of Justice» that sees everything, гот™ А(кп^ офВаХ^о^ o^ та navB' opa44. There was another popular idea of Greek Volksglaube about the «All-seeing Sun», "HXio<; л^олтп<; (Aeschylus, Prom. Vinctus, 91). Combining these two images into one some Greek moralists (supposedly Pythagoreans) invented the idea and image of the «invisible Sun of Justice» that no sinner can escape, neither in this, nor in the other world45. This moral and religious idea-symbol is attested in Heraclitus c. 490 B.C. то ^ Snvov поте пш^ av тц XaBoi «How could one escape /the light/ that never sets?»46. Plato's analogy of

43 Palmer 2009: 222 mistranslates ката Xoyov as «in account». For Xoyo; opp. u^n in Aristotle (о ката то si5o; Xsyopsvo; Xoyo;) see Bonitz, Index Aristotelians, 434b 53 ff, cf. b 32 ff.

44 Trag. adesp. 421, Dionys. I Trag. fr. 5, Philemon fr. 246 Kock etc.

45 The phrase тл; AiKaioown; ^Xio; (of Christ or God's Logos) occurs innumerable times in Church fathers. Their main source seems to be Septuaginta: Sap. Sol. 5.6 etc.

46 fr.152L = B 16 DK; cf.

the Sun in the Republic 508b illustrating the Idea of Good, i.e. the source of AiKaiocuvn, elaborates on this traditional symbol. The structural parallelism between the basic oppositions in Parmenides' Aletheia and Doxa discussed above suggests that the Sphere of Being in Aletheia was conceived as a Sphere of divine thinking light. In Parmenides B 8.14, 26,31 it is AiKq (aka AvayKq) that holds the «bonds» and imposes the Pythagorean «limit» (rcspa?) on Being (note that in the Pythagorean table of opposites rcspa? is auoxoixov, i. e. consubstantial, with ayaBov and ^ro?).

Burnet not only turned one of the the greatest idealists of antiquity into «father of materialism», but he also disbanded the traditional «Eleatic school» denying Xenophanes' relation with Elea and proclaiming him a poet and satirist, not a serious philosopher. The reason for this is obvious: Xenophanes' monotheistic theology was at odds with the positivist and materialist paradigm that Burnet was trying in his EGPh to impose on most Preplatonic philosophers. We have published two neglected fragments of Xenophanes on God both of which are echoed in MXG (Lebedev 1985-2; 2000). This proves that MXG contains genuine thoughts and arguments of Xenophanes (expressed in late language, of course) and this allows us to bring Xenophanes back to Elea: Xenophanes was a Proto-Eleatic, and so his theology cannot be separated from the doctrine of to sov in Parmenides. Parmenides avoids the word Geo? in speaking about supreme reality, but so does Heraclitus (who speaks about to oo^ov) and Plato who uses in Politeia the term to ayaBov. Two other Western Greek philosopher-poets, Xenophanes and Empe-docles, conceive the supreme being as a sphere and pure thought

AH

(voo?, ^p^v isp'q) . All three belong to the same (typically Italian) tradition of theological thought the source of which in all likelyhood is Pythagoras of Samos.

Plat.Crat.413b o pèv yàp xiç ^naiv xoùxo eivai ôiKaiov, xov ^Aiov...

T "> r /«v 9 5 Ç» A Ç» ^ y ? ?

KaxayeAa pou owoç aKouaaç Kai eproxa ei ouoev ôiKaiov oipai eivai ev xoïç avOpénoiç éneiôàv o rçAioç Sup.

47 On the difficult question of the relation between «holy Mind» and Sphairos in Empedocles see two different approaches of Primavesi (2006) and Rangos (2012).

13. The identity of Kouros in Parmenides' Proem. The Pythagorean legend of Pythagoras' flight to heavens, Apollo Hyper-boreios and the divine Kouros.

The trip of Kouros in the Proem is narrated in first person. On this ground it has been commonly assumed that Kouros is the author of the poem, i.e. Parmenides. But is it plausible that a 60-years old (or so) lawgiver from Elea described himself as a «boy» (коиро<;) and claimed that he flew to heavens and was deified? The image of Копро^ displays some Apollonian features on the one hand48, and some features that resemble the image of Pythagoras in the biographical tradition, on the other. According to Mattusch, the earliest bronze hollow-cast statues of Apollo of the Kouros type were made on the island of Samos where the great artists Rhoikos and Theodoros worked (Mattusch 1988: 59). Young Pythagoras is described as о гк ко^лтп? «the one with long hair from

Samos», a transparent allusion to Apollo акгрогко^п? (Il. 20.39, Hymn. Apoll. 134 etc.). This «proverb» is cited by Jamblichus V.P. 6.30 (cf. 2.11) precisely in connection with his apotheosis and divine glory: ка! ^гта Trov Berov tov HuBayopav Хогпоу катпрШ^ош ю^ ayaBov Tiva Saliva ка! фlXavBрroп6тaтоv, ог ^sv tov nuBwv, ог §8 tov 'YпгрPоргrov AnoXXrova, ог §8 tov naiava, ог §8 Trov t^v

лл г с» r <r " Л Л VM

oeX^vnv кaтоlко'uvтrov oai^ovrov sva, аХХо1 §8 aXXоv Trov 'OXu^nirov Berov фпцд^о^те^ ei; ЮфгXгlav rat snavopBrooiv тоП Bvnтоu Рюи [X^v^^] sv avBpronwfl ^орф^ фav^val тоц тбте, iva

Л 9 С» г > Л ' л v г

то т^^ 8noal^оvía^ те кal фlXоoофía^ oroT^pwv svauo^a xapi^nTai т^ BvnT^ фпоа, оп ^гй^ ayaBov опте ^XBsv опте ^ei поте §ropnBsv гк Berov [§ia топтои тоП ПuBay6роu]. §юпгр sti кal vuv ц пaроl^ía tov гк 2а^ои ко^лт^ гп! тф oг^vотdтф Зшкприттгъ Pythagoras was believed to be incarnation of Apollo Hyperboreios, a flying god, and he could fly on the arrow of Abaris over rivers, seas and impassable mountains like Kouros of Parmenides49.

Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi. Something that is hard to imagine in the case of a mortal like Parmenides, is quite possible for

48 On Apollo as Kouros see Burkert, Greek religion, p. 143. Archaic statues of Apollo of the kouros type: LIMC 7-9. 38 Apollo as kouros in vase-painting LIMC 5-6.

9 Jambl. V.P. 28.136 аШроРатпс; 5s то Аваргбо;, отг ара о!атф той sv YnspPopsoic; AnoXXrovo; бюрпО^тг ашф snoxotipsvo; лотарой; те каг леХауп каг та а^ата Sispaivsv, aspoParav трол^ т™а, onsp unsvonoav каг ПuОаy6раv лsлovОSvаl ктХ.

a semi-god like Pythagoras. The figure of Kouros stands for Pythagoras conceived as a flying Apollo Hyperboreios. Pythagoras with his «ascent to heavens» is extolled by Parmenides as the greatest sage who brought from above as a divine gift for humanity the doctrine of the immortal soul and its original home in the eternal divine Sphere of mental light. In similar mythopoetic terms Plato extolls Prometheus, i.e. Pythagoras who brought from heavens the idealist metaphysics of peras and apeiron (Phil. 16c). The first person language can be explained on the assumption that Parmenides, following the Pythagorean rule to ascribe everything «to that man» (eivai yap navxa ¿Keivou той av§po?) , wrote his poem in the form of a hieros logos by Pythagoras. Just as the disciples of Socrates after his death started writing Socratic dialogues, so the disciples of Pythagoras used the conventional form of Pythagoras' «speech» (logos). This convention was imitated by Ovid in «Metamorphoses» XV. Our hypothesis can be supported by the fact that the same astronomical discoveries are ascribed in the Hellenistic doxography to Pythagoras and Parmenides which means that in Hellenistic times Parmenides poem circulated also under the name of Pythagoras50. This was in all likelihood noticed by Calli-machus ap. D.L. 9.23 ка! §oKei прюто? n^ropaKsvai tov afoov eivai "'Eonepov Ka! Фюoфopov, ю? фпо ФaPюpívo? ...oi §8 HuBayopav. KaAAi^a^o? §8 фпо1 ^ eivai a^Tou то noi^^a. «[Parmenides] is regarded as the first who detected the identity of the Evening and Morning star, some attribute this to Pythagoras, but Callimachus denies that the poem is written by him [i.e. by Pythagoras]». Callimachus noticed this in his «Catalogues». It was easy to establish the authorship of Parmenides by quotations in Plato and Aristotle.

50 D.L. 8.48 = 28 A 44 DK first use of the term kosmos; D.L. 8.14 = A 40a identity of Evening and Morning star; 28 A 48: theory of optical rays. We suspect that the doxa on necessity ascribed to Pythagoras in Ps.Plut. Placita philosophorum 884E ПиОауорас; avayK^v ёфп яергкегаОаг хюг коарюг is based on Parmenid. B 8.30 кратер^ yap AvayK^ ктА. The man of extraordinary knowledge, av^p лергюага siS®;, in Empedocles fr. B 129 commonly identified with Pythagoras, was also identified with Parmenides (D.L.8.54).

14. The three ways as history of philosophy: The way of Being (Aletheia) refers to the philosophy of Pythagoras (monistic idealism), the Way of Non-Being to the Ionian peri physeos historia (monistic naturalism) and the «two-headed» philosophers to Heraclitus.

The initial contraposition of two ways, the way of being (following Aletheia) and the way of non-being (the object of which can be neither known nor expressed), has been always interpreted as logical and methodological. We are not going to deny this, however there are indications in the text of the poem that this fundamental antithesis is not only logical, but also historical, i.e. the different ways refer not only to different methods, but also to schools which them represent. First of all it seems surprising that Parmenides with such pathos insists that the way of non-being is impossible. His tone is apparently polemical, but who on earth ever claimed that the subject of inquiry should be «what-is-not»? Since the way of being is explicitly associated with Aletheia, a term heavily laden with Pythagorean connotations, it would be reasonable to suppose that in this case again Parmenides speaks as Pythagorean, so ordinary words have unusual meanings accessible only to г18отг?. If the way of being refers to the philosophy of Pythagoras, then its opposite should refer to the Milesians and the Ionian naturalism. According to Plato's philosophical «gigantomachy» (Sophist 246 a4 - 246 c3), the «materialists» deny the existence of anything incorporeal, whereas their opponents, «the friends of ideas» literally try to annihilate matter reducing it to processes. In other words, for Italian philosophers matter is a kind of non-being. If so, Parmenides' insistence on the non-existence of то ^ gov is not trivial at all: it is an argument in support of immaterialism. Fragment B 3 which, as interpreted above, formulates the doctrine of immaterialism, logically follows after B 2. After refuting the Milesians Parmenides in B 6.4 with sarcasm attacks the «two-headed» philosophers who support the third way - a compromise between, or a synthesis of the two original. There can be no doubt that this is polemic against Heraclitus. naAivTpono? ксАгиВо? is a quotation from Heraclitus and refers to the о§о? avro катю, the constant cyclical change of opposites.51 Heraclitus attacked Parmenides' teacher Pythagoras, the

51 Heradit.fr.29L/B 51 DK; 50L/B 60 DK (Lebedev 1985-1).

father of the «way of being» idealist metaphysics accusing him of

ГЛ

worthless polymatheia, plagiarism and mischief . In our edition of Heraclitus we propose the following new reading and interpretation of Heraclitus' invective against Pythagoras fr. 22L/129 DK:

ПиОауорп; Mvnoapxou iaxopinv ^GKncsv avOpronrov раХшха navxrov каг sniXs^apsvo; Таашои та; аиуурафа; snoi^aaxo sauxou аофг^ яоХираОг^, какохехуг^53.

'Pythagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, practiced gathering information beyond all men and, having read the writings of Taautos /= Thoth/, claimed as his own wisdom /what was really/ much learning and con game'.

Like Herodotus and Isocrates, Heraclitus believed that Pythagoras got his wisdom from Egypt 54, but he is more specific: Pythagoras «read» the writings of god Thoth, the source of all wisdom and sciences by which hieroglyphic inscriptions on stone stelai are probably meant. This reading is confirmed, among other parallels, by Plato's Philebus 18b where the Pythagorean philosophy of peras and apeiron, the basis of all technai including alphabet writing and mathematics, is the gift of god Thoth to humanity, as well as by a reminiscence in Jamblichus, De myst.I,1 ката ха^ 'Ep^on паХага^ ох'лХа^, а^ nXaxrov ка! ПиВауора^ Siavayvovxe^ ф1Хоооф!ау ouveox^oavxo55. Johan Thom has shown that Theophilus of Antioch and Hermias in «Irrisio» knew from doxography the tradition about Pythagoras' journey «up and down» (avro кахю) that may go back to a Pythagorean Hieros logos56. This journey, combining anodos with katabasis, was conceived as a flight of mind through the Universe. In the preceding text Theophilus asks: Theophil. Ad. Autolyc. 3.2 Ti

52 fr. 21-23 Leb. = B 40, 129, 81 DK.

53 eniXe^apevoc; Taarnou scripsi : ¿KXe^apevo; xarnac; Diog. Cf. Herenn. Philo fr. 4 Jacoby navxe; Se xa; a^oppa; napa xou Taarnou XaPovxec; e^uaioXoynaav.

54 Herod. 2.123 = 14 test.1 DK, Isocr. Bus. 28 = test. 4 DK. The Zalmoxis story in Herodotus 4.95 looks as a parody or a peritrope, polemical inversion, of the original anti-Pythagorean story in which Pythagoras «steals» alien wisdom from Getai athanatizontes and their cult of real god Zalmoxis. In the version of Hellespontian Greeks «heard» by Herodotus. Zalmoxis is comically transformed into Pythagoras' slave.

55 In Aristoxenus fr.23 Wehrli Pythagoras' advances in mathematics are also juxtapposed with the inventions of the Egyptian god Thoth/Hermes.

56 Thom 1989: 299-308. Theophil Ad Autolyc.3.7 nuOayopa; Se, xoaarna poxO^aa; nepi Oerov Kai x^v av© Kax© nopeiav noinaapevo;, eaxaxov opiZei ^tiaiv...

л ? г f\ г л 'ТЛ л г Л

yap юфгАпо&у O^npov ouyypayai tov lAiaKov noAe^ov^^ HuBayopav та a§uxa ка! 'HpaKAsou? ox^Aai; This comes from a long list with names o Hellenic writers and philosophers and their works or doctrines. The «shrines» are probably the grottoes of Egyprian priests and the Pillars of Heracles are obviously a distortion of 'Ep^ou ах^Ааг (Thom 1989: 302). Theophilus apparently quotes this from the same doxographical source in which Pythagoras «journey up and down» was connected with the source of his wisdom, the hieratic inscriptions of Thoth-Hermes in Egypt. Heraclitus' invective against Pythagoras probaly comes from the epistemological proem of his book in which he developed the theory of cosmic logos or liber naturae as the only source of true wisdom contrasted with poetic fables, polymatheia of physiologoi and stolen alien wisdom like that of Pythagoras. Heraclitus claims that he «read» (^Kouoe) «this logos» i.e. the visible book of nature and received his theory of the harmony of opposites directly from the cosmic god (represented by Apollo). Parmenides, av^p nuBayopsio?, not only refutes Heraclitus' thesis of coincidentia oppositorum in B 6.4-9, he also intends his proem as a reply to the allegations of Pythagoras' plagiarism in Heraclitus' proem. Let us remember that Parmenides' proem is conceived as a «speech (logos) of Pythagoras», and this speech is intended not only (primarily) as a travel to the source of extraordinary knowledge and a revelation wonder story (analogous to Hesiod's meeting with Muses on Helikon or Epimenides' dream in a cave with ascent to Olympus), but also as an apology of Pythagoras against accusations of his opponents: No, I did no go to Egypt in search of alien wisdom, I flew across the Universe with the power of my mind to the abode of immortal gods and I learned everything, both the divine knowledge of the noetic One, and the human knowledge of the sensible world of Duality and change, from Aletheia herself.

Parmenides replies to Heraclitus defending his teacher with passion and indignation. His understanding of Heraclitus' metaphysics is perfect. Heraclitus' philosophy grosso modo was indeed an attempt to reconcile Ionian naturalism and Italian teleological mentalism (harmony of cosmos) by identifying nature

57 Fragments 1-36 in our edition Lebedev (2014) with commentary pp.256314 and Introduction 59-71,103-114; also Lebedev (2017).

with god, stability with change in a pantheistic system58. Parmenides refutes this attempt as based on the illogical confusion of dvai and yiyvsoBai, as a violation of the law of non-contradiction.

15. The ethical dimension of Parmenides' metaphysics.

Unlike the classical German idealism the Ancient Greek idealism of the archaic and early classical period (Pythagorean and Eleatic) was not just an intellectual movement and had no romantic stamp. It served practical - both ethical and political - purposes, its aim was education of ideal citizens and ideal warriors59. Life in the new Greek colonies of the West was full of dangers and the polis required heroic and ascetic ethics from its citizens in order to survive. 60 The Eleatic doctrine provided a necessary spiritual discipline for this both by placing the One above the many (thus subordinating the individual to the community) and by teaching that pain, suffering and death are not to be feared because our bodies are non-entities, a OKia Kanvou. A Pythagorean or Eleatic warrior would face death without fear because he knew that if he is killed, his immortal soul would suffer no harm, on the contrary it would be embraced by the sphere of divine Light and he would enjoy eternal bliss (xsprcvov 8%£i ptoxov 36 B 4 DK). Now we can better understand the connection between Parmenides' philosophy and his role of nomothetes. We can better understand why a professional military man, admiral Melissus, was an ardent adherent of the Eleatic doctrine. And again we can better understand why the biographical tradition depicts Zeno as a legendary hero who is indifferent to pain and overcomes the fear of death. Typologically Pythagorean and Eleatic ethics prefigures the Stoic spiritual discipline of endurance and eradication of emotions (drcdBsia)61.

58 This is argued in extenso in Lebedev 2014-2 and Lebedev (2017).

59 On early Pythagorean ethics see Huffman (2006).

60 A perfect understanding and precise exposition of main differeneces between the Ionian and the Italian traditions we find in Malcolm Schofield's introduction to the "Philosophy in the West" in KRS, 213.

61 On the connection between the Stoic philosophy and military mind see Sherman (2005). On the eradication of emotions in Greek thought in general Sorabji (2000).

16. The impact of Parmenides' thought on the subsequent Greek philosophy. Some doubts on the validity of the term «pluralists».

If our reading of Parmenides' poem is correct, the common view (since Reinhardt 1916) of Parmenides as a central figure in the history of Preplatonic philosophy whose criticism of preceding cosmological speculation allegedly is responsible for the shift of paradigm in the philosophy of nature and the appearance of the so called «pluralist» systems (Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus) turns out to be mistaken62. Parmenides' impact on Greek physics of the 5th century was nil. On the contrary his influence on Plato was profound and underestimated, he indeed was the nax^p of Platonism. His version of idealism (immaterialism) was more radical than that of Plato in the Timaeus, though typologically the dualism of the Timaeus can be compared with Parmenides' Doxa, and the monistic idea of Agathon in the Republic with Parmenides' Aletheia.

The atomism of Democritus63 has nothing to do with the Eleatic doctrine of being first of all because the atoms of Democritus are not composed of pure thought and consciousness (vóo^), as Parmenides' то éóv. Greek atomism was the result of the natural internal development of the Ionian tradition, namely of the mechanistic tradition of Anaximander and Anaxagoras which already recognized the corpuscular structure of matter. Democritus modified Anaxagoras' theory of matter by making the corpuscules (spermata) indivisible and lacking secondary qualities. Anaxagoras' philosophy of nature is a synthesis of Anaximander's mixture theory of matter (Lebedev 1988) and Heraclitus' concept of providential cosmic mind (rvró^n)64. Some common elements in Empedocles and Parmenides can be explained by their common Pythagorean background. Empedocles was much more influenced by Heraclitus from whom he borrowed his cyclical cosmogony.

The term «pluralists» is ambiguous and may lead to the confusion of two different typologies: metaphysical, relating to the

62 For a comprehensive treatment of the subject with doxography of modern opinions see Palmer 2009. See also Curd 1998 with remarks of M ourelatos 1999.

63 Following Epicurus we do not accept the historicity of Leucippus.

64 We emend B 41 as follows: ev to go^ov enioTaaOai- Pvropnv oin ¿KuPepvnoe navTa 5ia navT©v «to recognize only one Wise Being: that Mind which alone steers the whole Universe». The Stoics translated the archaic Ionic word into Hellenistic Greek as npovoia.

kinds of reality, and physical relating to theories of matter and the number of elements. All ancient metaphysical systems can be roughly divided into three basic types: 1) naturalistic monism (Ionians, atomists)65, 2) dualism (Pythagoreans, Plato) and 3) idealistic monism or immaterialism (Parmenides, Plotinus). This has nothing to do with the problem of the number of elements and the structure of matter. E.g. Democritus was a naturalistic monist. He admitted infinite number of atoms, but regarded them all as one 9601?. Empedocles and Anaxagoras in this classification should be rather treated as metaphysical dualists, since they recognized two different kinds of being: corporeal (passive) and incorporeal (active)66. Theories of matter should be classified in a different way: continualist theories of single stuff with transfomational theory of change and theories of mixture with mechanistic synkrisis/diakrisis theory of change67. The term «pluralists» (oi xa rcoAAa Asyovxs?) derives from the ancient debate about «one and many», but this is very archaic language. Bernard Williams was puzzled (and rightly so) about the precise meaning of this ancient problem (Williams 2006: 5). It seems that two different problems are confused already in our ancient source. In many passages the question nooa xa ovxa concerns the number of elements, i.e. physical theories of matter68. But in passages where e.g. Aristotle speaks about the specific Eleatic sv and the «One-and-All» (sv Kai nav) doctrine and the denial of plurality, the problem is metaphysical and concerns the kinds of reality. This metaphysical monism, according to Aristotle, was first introduced by Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic school (rcproxo? svioa?), and not by Thales, as in the case of theories

65 We avoid the term «materialism», since the authentic term of the early philosophers was physis, not hyle. But «idealism» is essentially authentic ancient term (cf. Plato's oi x©v ei5©v ^iAoi) and therefore quite appropriate in the study of Greek metaphysics.

66 Anaxagoras' Nous may have been conceived as very thin physical substance rather than Cartesian res cogitans, but it was immaterial in the sense of not being passive material out of which bodies were made. It was aoropaxroxaxov in Aristotle's words De an.405a 27 (applied to Heraclitus soul-anathymiasis).

67 The distinction was made by Aristotle in Phys.187a 12 ff. On this topic see Graham 2006.

68 E.g. Plato, Soph.242d = 22 A 10 DK; Isocr.XV 268 = 36 A 6 DK; Arist.Phys. 187a 12 = 12 A 16 DK etc.

of elements69. Unlike some modern scholars, Aristotle was well aware of this distinction: according to him in his metaphysics

7П

(Aletheia) Parmenides was a monist but in his physics (Doxa) he posited two elements. This type of metaphysical «monism» is equivalent to what is known nowdays in modern philosophical terminology as «monistic idealism», and the denial of noXXa in this context is equivalent to immaterialism, not to a single-element theory of matter (like that of Anaximenes). John Burnet was a distinguished classical scholar whose complete edition of Plato is still of use after more than hundred years. But he ignored this important philosophical distinction and therefore mistook Parmenides' metaphysical monism for naturalistic (elemental) monism of the Ionian type. The extravagant theory of imperceptible, solid and forever immobile dead matter (that fills the Universe like a mega-atom of Democritus) he ascribed to Parmenides could never occur to any Greek philosophical mind. It would be rejected a limine as absurd by both camps of philosophers engaged in the eternal gigantomachia according to Plato's Sophist 246 a4 - c3, both by oi Trov dSrov ф(Хог (who denied the very existence of matter) and by their opponents, the stubborn materialists and physiologoi who could not imagine physis without motion and change. Both of them would also immediately point out the absurdity of assertion that a huge solid material body escapes our notice and cannot be perceived by the senses.

17. The date of Parmenides

The only direct and explicit chronological evidence on the date of Parmenides found in the extant ancient sources is that of Diogenes Laertius in his life of Parmenides: Parmenides flourished (waZe) in the 69th Olympiad, i.e. 504/1-501/500 B.C.71 Diogenes does not mention his source, but it is commonly attributed to

"7 "7

Apollodorus' XpoviKa. Apollodorus' date does not square with the proem of Plato's Parmenides which depicts a meeting and conversation between 65-years old Parmenides and «very young» (офо8ра

69 Contrast. Arist. Metaph.986b 18 sq.= 21 A 30 DK on Xenophanes as the

"first monist" with Metaph.983b 17 = 11 A 12 DK on Thales as propounder of the first single-element theory of matter. 0 Прютос; eviaac; about Xenophanes implies that Parmenides was also eviZ®v or Sswspo; eviaac;.

71 D.L. 9.23 = 28 A 1 DK.

72

The source is identified as Apollodorus' Xpovixa by Jacoby (1902) 232.

V80?) Socrates. Since Socrates (born 469 B.C.) was «young» around 450 B.C., Parmenides' date of birth that can be deduced by

H'X

inference from the Platonic text (so we are told) is 515 B.C. From the time of Scaliger some scholars have favoured Pato's date, but Diogenes/Apollodorus' date was still defended in the authoritative work of Zeller who denied the historical value of the Plato's proem to a fictitious conversation and pointed out to other «historische

HA

Unmöglichkeiten» and anachronisms in Plato74. It was John Burnet in his «Early Greek Philosophy» (1892) who redressed the balance in this debate in favour of Plato's late date. Burnet denied the accuracy of Apollodorus' date on the ground that it «depends solely on that of the foundation of Elea (540 B.C.), which he had adopted

n с

as the floruit of Xenophanes» . Some scholars suspected that Apollodorus' date is based only on the synchronism with Heraclitus76. In this case, as in many other cases, Burnet influenced two authoritative works of the second half of the 20th century, namely Kirk-Raven-Schofield and Guthrie's «History of Greek philosophy», which, in turn, exerted profound influence on the mainstream of the English-speaking historiography of Greek philosophy. As a result of

• HH

this the late date of Parmenides has become commonly accepted ,

no

despite some sceptical voices . However, Zeller's doubts were not unfounded. Burnet's arguments are inconclusive. There is no evidence that Apollodorus ever adopted the date of the foundation of

HQ

Elea as a floruit of Xenophanes . On the contrarry , there is a conflicting evidence which speaks against Burnet's conjecture: we are told that according to Apollodorus Xenophanes was born in 40th Olympiad (620/617 B.C.) and was still alive at the time of Cyrus

73 Plato, Parmen. 27a ff., cf. Theaet.183e, Soph.217c = A 5 DK.

74 Zeller-Nestle (1963) II/1, 681 note.

75 Burnet (1930) 170.

76 Diels, Rh.Mus. XXXI, 34 ff.; Cerri (1999) 52.

77 Kirk-Raven-Schofield (1983) 240; Guthrie, HistGrPhil (1965), II, 1-2; Taran (1965) 3-5 (accepts Plato's date, but denies the meeting); Coxon (2009) 40; Palmer (2016) does not even mention Apollodorus and the earlier date.

78 Graham (2010) Part I, 234 following Mansfeld (1964) admits that Plato's 25 years difference in age betweem the teacher and the disciple may also be schematic.

79 The words каг ^кра^е ката x^v s^nKoax^v 'ОАорягаба in Diogenes Laertius 9.20 are not quoted from Apollodorus, the source is unknown, contra Jacoby FgrHist 244 fr. 68 (b).

and Darius80. This is not a «distortion» of sources by Clement (pace Guthrie loc.cit.), since it finds correpondence in Sotion's date of Xenophanes quoted by Diogenes in 9.19 Kax'Ava^avSpov ^v. Sotion's view that Xenophanes was «contemporary» with Anaximander (611/610 - after 547/546 B.C.) comes very close to the date of Parmenides ascribed by Clement to Apollodorus (the mention of Darius being the only minor point of divergence). This «ancient» date of Xenophanes is undoubtedly mistaken: Xenophanes' date of birth is firmly attested by his autobiographical elegy (546+ 25 = 571 B.C.). Whether Apollodorus (as quoted by Clement) was misled by Sotion, or both of them depend on a common source, cannot be established and is of little importance for the present discussion of Parmenides' date. Important is the fact that Burnet's attempt to invalidate Apllodorus' date of Parmenides by pointing to its alleged dependence on artificial chronological «combination» is ill-founded. That the meeting of 65-years old Parmenides with young Socrates in Athens at Great Panatenaia in the middle of 5th century is an obvious anachronism has been noticed already by Athenaeus who rejects with idignation the whole story: Socrates was so young that he could hardly converse with Parmenides, let alone propose and understand such arguments; the rumor about Zeno as eromenos of Parmenides is an «utterly disgusting» lie81. Macrobius in the proem to Saturnalia asks for a «literary licence» to compose fictitious speeches and cites in support a series of fictitious and an-chronistic conversations in Plato starting with the classical example, the meeting of Socrates and Parmenides in the homonymous dialogue . Both Athenaeus and Macrobius are independent from each other and from Diogenes. What is disgusting falsification of history for Athenaeus, is for Macrobius an acceptable literary device

80 Apollod. ap. Clem. Alex. Strom. 1, 64, 2 = Jacoby FrGrHist 244 F 68 (c).

81 Athen. XI. 505F nappeviôni pèv yap Kai éXOeîv eiç Xoyouç tov toù nXaxrovoç L©Kpâxnv poXiç ^ ^XiKÎa auyxrapeî, oùx raç Kai xoiornouç eineîv Kai àKoùaai Xôyouç. to ôè navxrov axsxXiéxaxov Kai <^8u6éaxaxov> to eteeîv ... oxi naiôiKa yeyôvoi nappeviôou Z^vrov o noXix^ç aùxoù.

82 Macrob. Sat. I1,1,5-6 (p. 5, 13 sq. Willis) quod licito fieri Platonis dialogi testimonio sunt. quuippe Socrate ita Parmenides antiquior, ut huius pueritia vix illius adprehenderit senectutem, et tamen inter illos de rebus arduis disputatur etc. Macrobius continues citing Socrates' conversation with Timaeus (quos constat eodem saeculo non fuisse) and conversation of Protagoras with the childern of Pericles Paralus and Xanthippus who «multo ante» died from the plague.

approved by the great Plato. But both agree that such conversation is ruled out by the relative chronology. Thus we have a consensus of three independent ancient authors supporting the early date of Parmenides. The meeting of Parmenides and Socrates in Athens is a quasi-historical visualization of the convergence in Plato's thought of two dearest to his mind intellectual traditions, those of Socratic ethics and Eleatic metaphysics: the Western Greek meaphysical idealism is indeed a perfect match and an ideal foundation for dialectical ethics, and the result of their marriage was Plato's own theory of ideas83.

Burnet claimed that additional support of «Plato's direct statement» concerning Parmenides' visit to Athens can be found in the text of Parmenides' proem, «especially as Parmenides himself speaks of visiting "all towns"» (Burnet 1930: 169). But the reading návx'áoxn has no support in the MSS. and is impossible even as emendation since the route of Kouros' is án'ávBpónrov гкхо? náxou 1.27 (see Coxon, p. 271 and note ). We point out this just to remind that the communis opinio on the date of Parmenides is partly based on a fanciful interpretation of a long ago antiquated text.

The difference between the (historical) Apollodorus' date and the (ahistorical) Plato's date of Parmenides is about 30 years. This is significant not only from the point of view of chronology and biography. The early date makes Parmenides an archaic philosopher, i.e. active for the most part of his life in the archaic period of Greek philosophy (before 480 B.C.), a contemporary of the first generation of Pythagoreans in the late 6th century84. The late date pushes him towards the early classical period (after 480 B.C.) and makes him a senior contemporary of 5th century thinkers like Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Protagoras and even of the young Socrates. The archaic features of his thought, such as an appeal to the divine revelation as a source of the extraordinary knowledge, the fundamental distinction between the human (inferior) and divine (superior) knowledge (abolished by Protagoras' homo-mensura principle and the Sophistic Enlightenment that made all knowledge human), the out-of-body experience and the «flight» of the disembodied soul to the Gates of

83

Incidentally, is Parmenides'criticism of the theory of ideas a sign that this marriage is in trouble and that a divorce or rather a patricide is imminent in the forthcoming "Sophist"?

84 Theoretically, Parmenides may have met and "heard" Pythagoras. This is not as impossible as his meeting with Socrates in Athens.

the Heaven, the Pythagorean metaphysical and eschatological symbolism of light and darkness etc. can be better understood in the intellectual context and sociocultural milieu of Magna Graecia in archaic period.

Appendix 1. Philodemus on the «first god» of Parmenides.

Christian Vassalo (2016) has published an important addendum to the Epicurean theological doxography from Philodemus De pietate which deals with Parmenides' theogony and what Philodemus describes as the «first god». We will confibe ourselves to what might raise some questions about our interpretation of Parmenides metaphysical theology above. After the mention of "E]proxa in line 12 the coherent text starting from line 28 reads: P. Herc. 1428, fr. 13, 28-35 soik[s 8]^ tov is nproxov [0]sov ayu^ov

IV r ' 1 r f A r "\"\ ? A IV ^ A

noisiv, t[ou^] is ysvvro^svou^ uno toutou ia ^sv ama tok; naOsoiv toi^ nspi av0pro[nou^ 'it seems that he considers both the first god inanimate as well as those that are generated by him, some of which are the same as human passions...'. By «first god» Philodemus most probably means to gov of the Aletheia, not the Aphrodite who is a kind of demiuorgos in the Doxa. By the gods «generated by him» the phenomenal gods of the allegorical Theogony in Doxa are meant. Some of them are personifications of human pasions, like Eros and Eris, the second group (not covered by the extant text) may include stars and cosmological entities. Does the characterization of the «first god» as a^u^o^ provide support to the physicalist interpretation of Parmenides Being? By no means! To begin with, soiks indicates that what follows is a «plausible interpretation» of Philodemus. All this terminology (nproio^ 0so^, a^u^o^) is not authentic. Especially suspicious looks the assertion that the phenomenal gods of the Doxa are «generated» by the «first god»: generation is prohibited in the realm of Being by elenchos. In the only extant authentic fragment of Parmenides' theogony it is Aphrodite (and not the sv or to gov) that «devised Eros» ^ni^aio "Eproia (and not «generated»), i.e. the authentic language is creationist, not genealogical. The two categories of «born» gods in Philodemus correspond exactly to Cicero, ND 1.11.27, but there is no mention of «first god» in Cicero. Epicureans never held Eleatics in great respect. Colotes ridiculed Parmenides accusing him of eliminating the physical world together with great cities of Asia. The

tone of Cicero's doxography is sharply polemical. Its purpose is to demonstrate the absurdities of Parmenides' theology. There is little doubt that ayu^oç (which correponds to neque sensum in Cicero) is also a polemical inference rather that objective report or quotation. God by definition is an immortal living being. But since Parmendides «first god» does not move, he is inanimate, and therefore not he is not a god at all. The text adds nothing to our knowledge of Parmendies' philosophy, but is interesting for the history of reception and school debates in 1st century B.C. It also demonstrates that то éôv in Parmenides' Aletheia was commonly regarded by ancient readers as a theological notion, something that stubborn followers of Burnet still are reluctant to recognize. And last, but not least, it is interesting for the prehistory of the distinction between лрюто<; 0eôç (àKÎvqToç) and ôeuTspoç 0eôç §n^io0pyôç (KivqTÔç) in Middle Platonists: Platonic doxography of Arius Didymus (earliest attestation), Philo Alexandrinus, Numenius.85 Philodemus must have been older that Arius Didymus by several decades and so can hardly be influenced by Middle Platonists. A conjectute lies at hand that either this distinction existed in the Platonic tradition earlier or that the Middle platonists may have «discovered» it in Parmenides. In a sense it is there, indeed. However, in Parmenides the polytheistic theogony belongs to the deceptive world of Doxa, in other words it is illusionary as are illusionary the many gods of the crowd.

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A. V. Lebedev. Parmenides, ANHP nY0ATOPEIO£. Monistic idealism (mentalism) in archaic Greek metaphysics. Abstract

1. The problem. The physicalist interpretation of Parmenides' concept of being derives from the late 19th century positivist overreaction to Hegelianism and German idealism in the historiography of Greek philosophy and involves insurmountable difficulties. What might be the purpose of a «theory» that the real world is a changeless mass of dead matter? Why is it presented as a divine revelation? There is only one possibility to make philosophical sense of Parmenides' poem: to take seriously the ancient tradition of his Pythagorean background and to interpret his metaphysics as monistic idealism (mentalism) or immaterialism.

2. Ancient biographical tradition on Parmenides' Pythagorean affiliation and background.

3. Pythagorean elements in Aletheia and Doxa. The doctrine of elemental transmigration rather than animal reincarnation is attested for Parmenides.

4. We propose three new readings of the text of the Proem. Read: 1) navxa <no>x^i in B 1.3 «by flight»; 2) sunsiOs®; ахрекес; in B 1.29; 3) XPflv SoKip®; ievai «to recite» for sivai in B 1.32. The relation of B 1. 1-3 with the myth of the chariot of the soul in Plato's Phaedrus 246a. The anonymous goddess of the road and the revealing goddess is the same, the personified Aletheia.

5. Attribution to Parmenides of a neglected verbatim fragment vop^n 'oyinoXn 'the nymph of High Gates' quoted by Proclus (Syrianus). Hypsipyle is not a personal name, but refers to the goddess Aletheia.

6. The oracular (Apollonian) metaphorical code of the Proem: the quest for divine knowledge as a consultation trip (theoria) to the celestial oracular temple and the prophecy of the celestial Pythia named Aletheia.

7. Elements of allegory in the proem of Parmenides. Sextus' interpretation is to some extent correct. The motive of the «flight of the mind through the Universe» and the apotheosis of philosopher.

8. The Pythagorean origin of the eschatological use of Aletheia as a mystical name for the the original abode of the souls before their incarnation in mortal bodies.

9. The structural parallelism of the basic oppositions in Aletheia and Doxa reveals the doctrine of immaterialism: what-is of the Aletheia correponds to the «light» of Doxa, what-is-not of Aletheia to the «Night» of Doxa. Consequently, «night», i.e. body does not exist. The meaning of «empty» and «full» in Parmenides. The linguistic mistake of mortals results in the phenomenal world of plurality.

10. The doctrine of monistic idealism or immaterialism is directly and explicitly stated by Parmenides in fr. B 3.

11. The idealist (mentalist) interpretation of Parmenides' theory of being is not only directly stated in two verbatim fragments, but is also confirmed by all external ancient evidence.

12. The Pythagorean symbol of the «invisible Sun of Justice» as the basis and the source of Parmenides' description of the eternal Sphere of Being guarded by Dike in Aletheia. The theological dimension of Parmenides' Aletheia.

13. Parmenides' poem is concieved as a «hieros logos» of Pythagoras. Therefore the Kouros of the Proem is Pythagoras, not Parmenides himself. The Pythagorean legend of Pythagoras as flying god, Apollo Herboreios.

14. The three ways as history of philosophy: The way of Being (Aletheia) refers to the philosophy of Pythagoras (monistic idealism), the Way of Non-Being to the Ionian peri physeos historia (monistic naturalism) and the «two-headed» philosophers to Heraclitus.

15. The ethical dimension of Parmenides' metaphysics: the sphere of Being as a symbol for meditation and a paradigm for the hesychia of the wise.

16. Parmenides' impact on the 5th century philosophy of nature was nil, his influence on Plato was profound. Some doubts on the validity of the term «pluralists».

17. Apollodorus' date of Parmenides is better supported by all evidence, the meeiting of Parmenides and Socrates in Plato' dialogue is anachronistic.

Appendix: Philodemus on the frist god. Philodemus' description of Parmenides' «first god» as «inanimate» is polemical and does not support the physicalist interpretation.

Keywords: Archaic Greek metaphysics, monism, monistic idealism, mentalism, Parmenides, Pythagoras, Pythagoreanism.