Commentary

This fragment states the principle that underlies the whole argument of the poem: that being is necessary and that non-being cannot be spoken or thought. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield present the fragment as a prohibition on the very notion of what is not, and they note its role in ruling out the coming to be and passing away of things. Alexander Mourelatos argues in The Route of Parmenides that the verb must be understood as expressing a logical necessity, so that the claim about speech and thought is an argument rather than a psychological observation. Jonathan Barnes has pointed out that the Greek syntax can be read in more than one way, and that the translation here follows one reasonable interpretation among several. Richard McKirahan, in Philosophy Before Socrates, discusses the fragment as a key step in the Eleatic case against plurality and change. Patricia Curd emphasises that later philosophers, including Plato, took the principle seriously, and that the difficulty of speaking about non-being became a central problem in the dialogues. The rendering here is approximate, and the precise wording should be checked against the Greek text in Diels-Kranz or in the Kirk, Raven, and Schofield collection before any quotation.