Foreword

Although Parmenides probably wrote as early as the beginning of the 5th century bce, his work was still in circulation some eleven centuries later, even if it was considered a rarity () by then according to Simplicius (6th century AD).1 Since then, the text of Parmenides, like most of the treatises written in ancient times, has been on the list of works irredeemably lost. For several centuries, the only access to Parmenides philosophy lay in the rare references to his work preserved in those of other philosophers or ancient authors, references that were sometimes accompanied by textual quotations (which lets us assume that these authors had a copy of the original text of Parmenides Poem at hand). The practice was eventually abandoned when, by the end of the 16th century, philologists like Henri Estienne and Julius Caesar Scaliger began to reconstruct the lost text through a meticulous search and compilation of the quotations spread throughout classical treatises. This process arguably culminated in 1835, when Simon Karsten succeeded in gathering nineteen passages (one of them in Latin) from the lost original to publish the most complete reconstruction. We now call this set of 152 verses Parmenides Poem. Thanks to the efforts of these scholars, researchers now have an approximate (given its fragmentary nature) but faithful (given its literal character backed-up by the work of philologists and codicologists) version of the original poem.
1

Simplicius, Comments on Aristotles Physics, p. 144.

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Since then, weve been able to confirm that the adjectives venerable and awesome, used by Plato (Theaetetus, 183e) to describe Parmenides personality, were fully justified. Venerable, without doubt, since the four or five pages that constitute the complete work of Parmenides today are a relic that inspires great respect and admiration, but also awesome, because any conscientious researcher must approach the fragments with precaution and astuteness, keeping in mind the force and the power of those pieces of the text that will most likely never be known in their integrity. Thousands of works have been dedicated to the study of the Poem since the publication of Henri Estiennes Poesis Philosophica in 1573. From a formal point of view, significant progress has been made in cleansing the text of impurities and erroneous readings by the original sources, errors which were passed down and repeated until the arrival of Hermann Dielss version in 1897, which has been considered orthodox ever since. However, even Diels cleverness did not prevent him from introducing new anomalies to the misreadings transmitted by tradition.2 Some questions certainly remain concerning the formal structure of the text, such as what position certain fragments may have occupied in the original. The present arrangement, which arbitrarily establishes fragment 19 as the end of the Poem, may not correspond with the original. As the purification of the text continues, studies about the ideas conveyed by Parmenides find increasingly strong and clear grounds. Proof of this lies in the remarkably high level of discourse reached by Parmenidean studies over the last few years. Some titles may have escaped us, but there have been at least thirteen books on Parmenides
In the last forty years it was possible to free verse 1.3 from the uncomfortable (incompatible with a trip carried out through a way separate from the human path), which had no manuscript authority (cf. A. H. Coxon, The Text of Parmenides fr. 1.3, Classical Quarterly 18 [1968], 69). The authenticity of (and not ) in 12.4 has been confirmed (cf. David Sider, Confirmation of Two Conjectures in the Presocratics: Parmenides B12 and Anaxagoras B15, Phoenix 33, 1 [1979], 68). At the same time, it was possible to restore the original second (instead of ) in 6.1, present in all the manuscript traditions of Simplicius: (cf. Nstor-Luis Cordero, Les Deux Chemins de Parmnide dans les fr. 6 et 7, Phronesis 24 [1979], 1).
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published between 2005 and 2008.3 In addition, beginning in 2004, an annual philosophical conference has been held in AsceaVelia, where Parmenides holds a privileged place.4 Moreover, since 2000, a prestigious publishing house (which is honoring us with the publication of these Proceedings) has been dedicating its efforts to the dissemination of classical thought by invoking the great Elean: Parmenides Publishing. Worldwide interest in Parmenidean studies has also touched the austral end of the Southern hemisphere, and in November 2007, the Centro de Estudios de Filosofa Antigua (CEFA) of the National University of San Martn (Buenos Aires, Argentina), decided to dedicate an International Symposium to the philosophy of Parmenides. Invited to participate in the event were those main scholars who had published at least one book on Parmenides.5 Sixteen authors confirmed their participation (two who were unable to attend nevertheless sent their contributions). Part I of the present volume gathers together the set of papers presented at the Symposium, whose topics were divided up based on the traditional structure of the Poem: one section dedicated to the exposition of the way of truth, and the other to the description of the opinions () of mortals. This
Arnold Hermann, To Think Like God: Pythagoras and Parmenides (Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2004); Cordero, By Being, It Is (Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2004); Massimo Pulpito, Parmenide e la negazione del tempo (Milano: LED Edizioni Universitarie, 2005); Chiara Robbiano, Becoming Being: On Parmenides Transformative Philosophy (Sankt Augustin: Akademia Verlag, 2006); Fernando Santoro, Poema de Parmnides: Da Natureza (Rio de Janeiro: Azougue Editorial, 2009); Jean Bollack, Parmnide: de ltant au monde (Paris: Verdier, 2006); Jos Solana Dueso, De Logos a Physis: Estudio sobre el Poema de Parmnides (Zaragoza: Mira, 2006); Panagiotis Thanassas, Parmenides, Cosmos and Being (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2007); Parmnides, Poema: Fragentos y tradicin textual, edited and translated by A. Bernab; introduction, notes and commentary by J. Prez de Tudela; epilogue by N.-L. Cordero (Madrid: Istmo, 2007); Scott Austin, Parmenides and the History of Dialectic: Three Essays (Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2007); Walter Fratticci Il bivio di Parmenide (Siena: Cantagalli, 2008); Giuseppe Scuto, Parmenides Weg (Sankt Augustin: Akademia Verlag, 2008); Nstor-Luis Cordero et al., Parmenide scienziato?, ed. L. Rossetti and F. Marcacci (Sankt Augustin: Akademia Verlag, 2008). 4 The conference is titled ELEATICA and is organized by Livio Rossetti (Perugia University). 5 See About the Contributors, pp. xiiixvi.
3

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rigorous partition was nevertheless an object of criticism and the source of much debate as to its meaning. Panagiotis Thanassas, for instance, discusses the dual structure of the Poem and its impact on the traditional perception of Parmenides as a rigorous monist. Jean Bollack found that the most satisfactory solution to explaining the two parts of the Poem lies in considering the whole and to show that one part, the definition of Being, actually refers to the other as the projection of an organization of the world, and that both terms correspond perfectly to each other. Other papers went deeply into the part of the Poem concerning the opinions of mortals. Jean Frre proposed to restrict the mortals to just certain people who were part of particular philosophical schools, specifically the Pythagoreans. But most presentations examined the value of Parmenidean Physics as shown in this part of the poem. Giovanni Casertano discussed the special status of Parmenides in the history of scientific thought, while Massimo Pulpito proposed to limit correct physical theories to certain passages of the Poem, which would be a development of the formula . Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, on his part, was interested in some astronomical theories that he considers to be breakthroughs. More radically, my own paper read all fragments referring to the physics as part of the speech on truth, because, given the not-true and deceptive character that Parmenides attributes to , Parmenidean physics cannot belong to the opinions of mortals. This proposition therefore suggests a new rearrangement of the fragments. The section of the Poem concerning the fact of being and its characteristics was the subject of Robbianos, Solana Duesos, Santoros, and Austins papers. Chiara Robbiano, answering the question What is Parmenides Being? found that Being is the fundamental unity of what-is and what-understands, the unity that is also the condition for the possibility of human understanding. Jos Solana Dueso analyzed the relationship between logic and ontology, and proposed different arguments for a primarily logical and only secondarily ontological interpretation of the of Parmenides (fr. 2fr. 8.50). Fernando Santoro found in the of fragment 8 a genealogy of the idea of ontological categories. And Scott Austin affirmed that Parmenides
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absolute monism puts existence and essence into an absolutely monistic Being as it joins levels in an ontological hierarchy that other philosophers were later to separate. Two further contributions dealt an analysis of the notion of thought. For Jos Trindade Santos the identity of thought and Being dominates Parmenides argument in the Way of Truth and persists in later relevant conceptions as Platonic and Aristotelian active intellect. Patricia Curd on her part analyzed the relation between thought and body, as suggested by fragment 16, and saw that the mortals error is to mistake the passive experiences of sense perception for genuine thought about what-is, and hence fail to understand the true nature of what-is. Arnold Hermann was interested in Parmenides heritage in Platos Parmenides, and considers that the so-called parricide of the Sophist is only an heir. Finally, Barbara Cassin asked the question that every scholar silently asks himself: Is it possible to translate Parmenides? The eventual conclusion is that Parmenides is lost in translation. The organizers of the meeting, which was open to the public, offered eight young and high-level Argentine researchers (graduate students, professors, or advanced students) the opportunity to present a short paper in front of the prestigious assembly of foreign authors. The exchange of ideas between them and their teachers was a very enriching experience. These eight papers are included in Part II of the present volume. The International Symposiums success would have been impossible without the support of two prestigious institutions: Parmenides Publishing (United States), and the HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies (Switzerland), an institution whose name alludes to the polis of Parmenides. The CEFA is greatly and deeply thankful to both institutions for their support. Nstor-Luis Cordero

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