/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18715306]

I want to read about Parmenides, but I'm avoiding Plato's book like the plague since he has a reputation for writing fanfics, any recs for alternative options (in the form of books preferably)?

[Anonymous No.18715311]

>>18715306
How about you read Parmenides directly? Go read his fragments.

[Anonymous No.18715322]

>>18715311
Where do I find a collection of said fragments?

[Anonymous No.18715340]

>>18715322
They're usually bundled with other Presocratic fragments. I have the Patricia Curd Presocratics Reader. Technically not complete though (hence: it's a reader).

[Anonymous No.18715346]

>>18715340
does it include Heraclitus' fragments too?

[Anonymous No.18715367]

>>18715306
- Parmenides himself
- Plato's dialogue

This is what you should read. Plato makes it very clear when they stop talking about Parmenides' actual philosophy and when Plato is giving his own ideas, like quite literally Plato says it. He's also doing honour to Parmenides, seeing him as a spiritual forbearer, rather than rejecting him like a sophist.

[Anonymous No.18715466]

>>18715306
This guy is the most confusing of the pre-socratics by far and the one with the most argument about what the fuck he was on about. I still don't get what he was trying to say. It's not just eternalism and block universe.

[Anonymous No.18715477]

>>18715466
I think eternalism and block universe are pretty cool concepts if adopted into a psychological development/psychoanalytic frame, at least.

[Anonymous No.18715507]

>>18715477
I agree and I hold an eternalist view of time myself but this is a common oversimplification of Parmenides. His thought is weirder and more incomprehensible than that. He seems to imply that there isn't even multiplicity in this block, a total rejection of the senses, of reality itself.

[Anonymous No.18715513]

Pick up different books of translations of his poem. The introductions to these books have wonderful analysis and insight - and they have different translations which is absolutely essential.

This version by David Gallop is my favorite. The translation is just right in my estimation compared to many that I have read.

There are a dozen or so different translations you can find simply through a google search, but for discourse and analysis you should hunt down published versions of the poem with corresponding in-depth introductions. There are several "Pre-Socratics" compilations that have subsequent alternate translations and analyses that are worthwhile as well.

If you've gone through all of that and are as fascinate and enamored by Parminedes as I am then I would suggest cracking into people like Mourelatos and Curd.

[Anonymous No.18716261]

>>18715346
Yes. It's pretty good, has all the Presocratic fragments that people discuss regularly, it doesn't seem to me like anything important is missing.

[Anonymous No.18716275]

>>18715466
It's simple. He starts by asking what would be necessary for change to be possible. That requires what-is-not to change into what-is. That can't happen because Parmenides believes the what-is-not can't be thought, named, enter into relations of any kind at all, because it doesn't exist. So the what-is must remain unchanging always. Unfortunately he doesn't give an obvious reason why we should also believe synchronic difference (i.e. multiplicity, as opposed to diachronic difference, which is change) is impossible. He still seems to take it as a given, and then gives his arguments about why what-is must be a perfect homogeneous sphere.

[Anonymous No.18717511]

>>18715367
>Plato makes it very clear when they stop talking about Parmenides' actual philosophy and when Plato is giving his own ideas, like quite literally Plato says it.
Where?

[Anonymous No.18717578]

>>18716275
>He still seems to take it as a given, and then gives his arguments about why what-is must be a perfect homogeneous sphere.
This contradicts itself. If what-is is a unchanging homogeneous sphere then he is directly denying multiplicity, both in time and in space.

[Anonymous No.18717611]