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Parmenides' Reference

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Scott Austin
Scott Austin
Affiliation:
Texas A&M University
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Extract

First in the aether Parmenides places the morning star, which he believes to be the same as the evening star…

[the moon] always looking towards the sunshine

I shall not be concerned with the truth or falsity of these ascriptions, only with the fact that they are just the sort of thing that Parmenides could have said. Nor is an interest in Parmenidean reference new in the literature: Furth calls him a ‘hyperdenotationist’, and the word is apt on almost any interpretation.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , May 1990 , pp. 266 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1990

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References

1 Diels-Kranz A40a (Aëtius 2.15.4 [Dox. Gr. 345]) tr. Gallop. See Diogenes Laertius 8.14 (Diels–Kranz A40a also), where the same discovery is said to have been attributed by Parmenides to Pythagoras (but for two opinions, see Diels–Kranz Al, Diogenes Laertius 9.21–3).

2 Diels-Kranz B15. See also Diels-Kranz A42 for direct statements that, according to Parmenides, the moon gets its light from the sun.

3 See Furth, Montgomery, ‘Elements of Eleatic Ontology’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 7 (1968), 111–32Google Scholar, reprinted in Mourelatos, A. P. D., ed., The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, 1974), pp. 241–70.Google Scholar

4 These lines have been interpreted several ways (see Gallop, David, Parmenides of Elea: Fragments [Toronto, 1984], pp. 70–1).Google Scholar Here I follow Woodbury and others in reading τ π⋯ντ '⋯ν⋯μαοται which draws a connection between mortal contraries and reality without relegating the former to the status of being mere names. I follow Gallop in adopting Burnyeat's translation in 38–9. The quoted translation of the sentence as a whole is from my Parmenides: Being, Bounds, and Logic (New Haven, 1986), p. 165.Google Scholar

5 I thank Texas A&M University for research support; A. P. D. Mourelatos for first drawing my attention to these fragments; and the Editors for some further valuable suggestions.