/lit/ - Literature

>>10711212
>THE ARGUMENTS OF ZENO OF ELEA
>THE PRECEDING CONSIDERATIONS implicitly contain the solution to all problems of the sort raised by Zeno of Elea in his famous arguments against the possibility of motion, or at least in what appear to be such when one takes the arguments only as they are usually presented; in fact, one might well doubt whether this was really their true significance. Indeed, it is rather unlikely that Zeno really intended to deny motion; what is more probable is that he merely wished to prove the incompatibility of the latter with the supposition, accepted notably by the atomists, of a real, irreducible multiplicity existing in the nature of things. It was therefore origi- nally against this very multiplicity so conceived that these argu- ments origiz~ally must have been directed; we do not say against all multiplicity, tc:lf it goes without saying that multiplicity also exists within its order>~s does motion, which, moreover, like every kind of change, necessarily supposes multiplicity. But just as motion, by reason of its character of transitory and momentary modification, is not self-sufficient and would be purely illusory were it not linked to a higher principle transcendent with respect to it, such as the 'unmoved mover' of Aristotle, so multiplicity would truly be non- existent were it to be reduced to itself alone, and did it not proceed from unity, as is reflected mathematically in the formation of the sequence of numbers, as we have seen. What is more, the supposi- tion of an irreducible multiplicity inevitably excludes all real con- nections between the elements of things, and consequently all continuity as well, for the latter is only a particular case or special