“It is ungenerated and imperishable, whole, single, unmoving, and without end.”
— ParmenidesFragment B8, lines 3-4 (Diels-Kranz numbering), preserved in Simplicius; approximate English rendering, a paraphrase of a longer description
Commentary
This description of what is, the list of attributes that follows the line that it is, forms the core of Parmenides' account of being. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield argue that the list is a set of deductions from the initial premise that being cannot come from non-being and cannot cease to be. Alexander Mourelatos has stressed that these predicates are not offered as empirical observations but as necessary features of what can be thought, which is why the poem can deny change and plurality without appeal to the senses. Jonathan Barnes notes that the attributes are sometimes read as physical claims about a material plenum, and sometimes as purely logical claims about thought and speech, and that the debate continues. Richard McKirahan, in Philosophy Before Socrates, observes that the description of being as spherical and bounded, which follows in later lines, has been widely discussed as an image of completeness. Patricia Curd's account of the legacy of the poem emphasises its influence on Plato's theory of Forms and on Aristotle's treatment of unmoved reality. The English here is a paraphrase of a longer and contested passage, and it should be verified against the Greek before use.
Commentary
This description of what is, the list of attributes that follows the line that it is, forms the core of Parmenides' account of being. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield argue that the list is a set of deductions from the initial premise that being cannot come from non-being and cannot cease to be. Alexander Mourelatos has stressed that these predicates are not offered as empirical observations but as necessary features of what can be thought, which is why the poem can deny change and plurality without appeal to the senses. Jonathan Barnes notes that the attributes are sometimes read as physical claims about a material plenum, and sometimes as purely logical claims about thought and speech, and that the debate continues. Richard McKirahan, in Philosophy Before Socrates, observes that the description of being as spherical and bounded, which follows in later lines, has been widely discussed as an image of completeness. Patricia Curd's account of the legacy of the poem emphasises its influence on Plato's theory of Forms and on Aristotle's treatment of unmoved reality. The English here is a paraphrase of a longer and contested passage, and it should be verified against the Greek before use.