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The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy

Page 32

by A. A. Long

Less clear, however, is the value or importance he assigned to information gained in sense perception. Fragment B55 – “The things of which there is seeing, hearing, learning, these I prefer” – has been seen as a testimonial to the value of sense experience (even though this reading is slightly compromised by the inclusion of the broader term “learning”). The point of the remark, on this reading, is that whatever else we will need to do in order to acquire knowledge of the logos, we must first seek out information about the nature of things through our sense faculties. Yet, strictly speaking, what is preferred in B55 are the “things of which” (hosôn) there is seeing, and so on, presumably the persons, places, and objects that populate the natural realm. Asserting a preference for these things (perhaps as opposed to trusting the opinions of recognized experts) is not precisely a testimonial to the value of sense experience itself.

  In fact, several fragments comment on how little in the way of a reliable grasp of the nature of things is obtainable from the senses:

  Bad witnesses are eyes and ears of those having barbarian souls. (B10)

  Uncomprehending, even when they have heard, they are like deaf people.

  The saying ‘absent while present’ bears witness to them. (B34)

  Thinking is an instance of the sacred disease, and sight is deceptive. (B46)

  While other fragments make it clear that the truth we are seeking to discover is not a perceptible feature of the world:

  An unapparent connection is stronger (or better) than the obvious one. (B54) Nature (physis) loves to hide. (B123)

  Fragment B51 provides some guidance as to how to acquire the sought-for understanding:

  They do not understand how, while differing from itself, it is in agreement with itself. There is a back-stretched connection like that of a bow or lyre.

  Grasping the nature of the “back-stretched connection” in the case of the bow and lyre would presumably involve coming to understand how each of their component parts (string and wooden frame or bow) contributes to the effective operation of the whole: the string must be pulled taut against the frame in order for either the bow or the lyre to do its job – if no antecedent tension, then no subsequent action. We must go through the same process of analysis if we are to discover the full significance of the larger reality; we must discover how each of the contrasting features of the natural world contributes to the effective operation of the whole. “Understanding how the opposites agree” will require gaining an appreciation of how the same phenomenon can have opposite qualities from different points of view (B4, 9, 13, 37, 82, and 83), or how it can have opposite qualities for the same observer in different respects (B12, 49a, 58–60, 91, and 103), or how opposites can represent the successive stages of a single process (B57, 88, and 126), or how they essentially depend on one other (B23 and 111).

  The frequency with which Heraclitus combines opposing qualities in his own paradoxical remarks suggests that he crafted his personal logos to reflect the larger logos, the complex hidden nature of the cosmos at large. The references to “the voice of the Sybil” (B92) and to “the lord whose oracle is at Delphi” (B93) point in the same direction: only those who are able and willing to think intelligently about what they see and hear, who can analyze a complex whole into its component opposing aspects and then link them together within a single operation, can hope to interpret either Heraclitus’ logos or the logos that is common to all things.

  Through his striking observations on the logos and hidden physis of things, and how these must be discovered, Heraclitus shifted the focus of philosophical interest in knowledge, away from the conventional view of wisdom as embedded in the teachings of revered poets and self-proclaimed experts, away also from the superficial awareness of the features of the world available to us through sense perception, and toward a theoretical understanding of the cosmos that is available to us through reflection on its complex but hidden nature.15

  IV. PARMENIDES

  At some point in the early decades of the fifth century B.C., Parmenides composed a poem whose form and contents fundamentally altered the course of Greek philosophical thought. While there are enormous interpretive difficulties in virtually all of the surviving fragments of Parmenides’ poem, at least three features can be identified that serve to set it apart from earlier philosophical discussions: (1) the high level of abstraction with which Parmenides discusses the nature of “what is” or “the existent” (to eon), (2) the orderly manner in which each possible way of thinking about “what is” is distinguished and evaluated, and (3) the degree of rigour with which Parmenides establishes each attribute of “what is.”

  Parmenides chose to preface the main account with a proem (DK 28 B1) whose features are of great importance for understanding the meaning of the account set out in succeeding fragments.16 The goddess makes it clear in the proem that the youth’s education will fall into two distinct parts. He will learn,

  Both an unshaking heart of very persuasive truth

  As well as mortal beliefs in which there is no true trust. (B1.29–30)

  The closely related ideas of persuasion and trust will appear on several occasions within the main account: the “it is” way of thinking about “what is” is identified as “the path of persuasion” (B2.4), the “strength of trust” will not allow anything to come to be from “what is” (B8.12), coming-to-be and perishing are driven off by “true trust” (B8.27–28), and “here I end my trustworthy account about truth” (B8.50). The “unshaking heart” promised to the youth in B1 also corresponds with the unshaking character of “what is” as it will be revealed to be (B8.4). In addition, the realm reached by the youth is so far removed from any region of the known world that it even lies beyond the usual distinctions: There are the gates of the paths of Night and Day … And the aetherial gates themselves are filled with great doors” (B1.11, 13). Since Night and Day are subsequently identified as the basis for all distinctions drawn by mortals (B8.53–59, 9.1–4), this feature of the proem appears to anticipate Parmenides’ account of “what is” as a single undifferentiated unity. In short, the “very persuasive truth” promised by the goddess at the outset can only be Parmenides’ account of “what exists” as an eternal, indivisible, unmoving, and unchanging whole.

  Nevertheless, two obvious features of the phenomenal world – light and darkness – also figure prominently in the proem. We hear about the Heliades or “Daughters of the Sun,” who escort the youth in his journey, and of a journey from the House of Night into the light. These details have often been read as symbolic representations of the fact that the youth is about to undergo an illuminating intellectual experience – a transition from philosophical darkness into the light. Yet both the grammar and sense of the phrase “into the light” link it with the Daughters of the Sun who have just left the House of Night, rather than with the youth himself.

  These early references to the light of the sun are naturally read as anticipations of the central role played by the sun in the cosmological account presented in B8.56, 9.1–3, 10.2–3, and 12.1–2.17 When, for example, the goddess concludes her preparatory remarks she predicts:

  Nevertheless you shall learn these as well, how the things thought to be Had to certifiably be, all pervading all. (B1.31–32)

  While in B9.3–4 we are told that the “all” must be understood in terms of the powers of light and night completely pervading one another:

  All is full of light, and obscure night together.

  Of both equally, since for neither is the case that nothing shares in them.

  In short, a number of the proem’s features suggest that the youth will learn the “very persuasive” account of “what is” as well as a sun-based account of the natural world “in which there is no true trust.”18

  Parmenides never explains in so many words precisely what knowledge consists in, or why existing mortal thinking fails to measure up to the high standards for knowledge, but several fragments provide helpful clues.

  As we have seen,
the discovery of the correct way of speaking (legein) and thinking (noein)19 about “what is” is associated with the attainment of complete conviction or persuasion. Achieving this condition is tied to the various arguments presented in B8 that establish that “what is” cannot possibly come into being, be destroyed, admit of division, or undergo change or development, arguments that Parmenides speaks of as “very many signs” (sêmata):

  … still single remains the account

  That it is; and on this route are very many signs

  That “what is” is ungenerated and imperishable;

  Whole, single-limbed, steadfast, and complete … (B8. 1–4)

  By contrast, one can neither know “what is not” (to mê eon)nor make it known to others:

  The other (way) – that it is not and properly is not –

  That I make known to you (phrazô) is a path wholly beyond learning,

  For you cannot know (ou gnoiês) what is not, for that is impossible,

  Nor will you make it known (phrasais). (B2.5–8)

  The rationale behind this claim, it would appear, stems from the impossibility of any parallel set of sêmata for “what is not.” Since “what is not” can never be said to be in any respect whatsoever (cf. B7. 1, “for never shall this prevail: that things that are not are”), it lacks any identifiable, teachable, or learnable features that might serve to define its nature and enable one to acquire and impart knowledge about it.20 In addition, B7 holds that the youth must discover the truth about “what is” by resisting the testimony of eye and ear and tongue (i.e., speech), and base his thinking instead on the “much-contested testing” (polyderin elenchon) of the possible ways of thinking about “what is” presented by the goddess:

  But do you restrain your thought from this way of inquiry

  Nor let habit force you, along this way of much experience,

  To ply your unfocused eye and echoing ear

  And tongue, but judge by discourse (logôi) the much-contested testing

  Spoken by me. (B7.2–6)

  While the logos on which the youth is directed to base his decision is probably the goddess’ “discourse” – the series of arguments she will set out in B8 – rather than any “faculty of reason,”21 becoming knowledgeable about “what is” is in any case a matter of resisting the pull of customary experience and reasoning one’s way through the arguments against coming-into-being and destruction, divisibility, movement, and change or development that run the course of B8.

  To sum up, the “it is” way of speaking and thinking about “what is” represents the knowledge promised to the youth by the goddess in so far as “it is” has been shown to be the one and only true, truly trustworthy, hence fully persuasive way of speaking and thinking about “what is.” In some respects, this way of speaking about knowledge would not have struck those listening to Parmenides’ words as a wholly peculiar idea: the same elements of a testing process, true speaking, identifying signs, and the attainment of complete conviction had already figured prominently in the most famous moments of discovery in all of Greek literature.22 (It would be hard to imagine a better way of demonstrating that the youth has acquired knowledge about “what is” than by showing that his grasp of its nature possesses all the usual hallmarks of knowledge.) But when the goddess claims that he must acquire his knowledge of “what is” through a process of reasoning, making no use of the information provided him by his senses, she places a premium on rational argument and reflection that is both novel and extremely influential.23

  Having now completed her account of how one should think about “what is,” the goddess announces:

  Here I end my trustworthy speech (piston logon) and thought

  About truth. Henceforth learn mortal opinions (doxas),

  Listening to the deceitful ordering (kosmon apatêlon) of my words.

  (B8.50–52)

  She proceeds immediately to explain that mortals have erred in distinguishing fire (or light) and dark night as entirely separate and independent opposites (B8.53–59). Scholarly opinion remains deeply divided on the significance of this phase of the goddess’s instruction, the “doxa section.” According to some accounts, the theory put forward in these fragments is not Parmenides’ own but merely a composite of the views currently held by other philosophers. Other scholars believe that the doxa presents Parmenides’ own views but only as a second-best explanation to the account he has just presented. An still others believe that Parmenides is supplying his students with a cosmological account he believes to be completely false, perhaps as a way of innoculating them against the appeal of all such ways of speaking, as is suggested by B8.60–61:

  All this arrangement I proclaim to you as plausible;

  So that no opinion of mortals shall ever overtake you.

  But when the goddess characterizes “all this arrangement” as “plausible” (eoikota), she can hardly be referring to the erroneous conception of mortals just mentioned – for their view is hardly plausible at all (cf. B8.54: “that is where they have gone astray”). Her plausible arrangement can only be the combined light-night based cosmology that will be presented in B9–12, 14, and 15. Here, I think, it is difficult to suppose that Parmenides is not committed in some degree to the truth and knowability of the views he is putting forward. In B10, for example, the goddess describes the exercise in cosmological instruction in terms that unmistakeably connote knowledge:

  And you shall know (eisêi) both the nature (physin) of the aither

  And all the signs (sêmata) in the aether…

  And you shall learn (peusêi) the wandering works of the round-eyed moon

  As well as its nature (physis)… (B10.1–2, 4–5)

  In addition, when she explains (in B9) that “all is full of light and night together … since for neither is it the case that nothing shares in them,” she speaks as one fully cognizant of the lessons concerning “what is not” presented in B2–8. There is some reason, then, to view her account as a credible cosmology purged of the errors that have infected all previous mortal thinking, one fully consistent with the conception of “what is” set out in fragments B2 to B8.24

  Clearly, there would be no implication of falsehood present in her characterization of the “arrangement” as eoikota (likely or probable). Forms of the expression are used by philosophers from Xenophanes to Plato to refer to an account that is being put forward as true even though it cannot be known with complete certainty.25 And although “no true trust” has routinely been regarded as synonomous with “false,”26 “lacking in true trust” at B1.30 contrasts only with “an account that yields an unshaking heart of very persuasive truth.” Clearly, it is possible for an assertion to be regarded both as true and as less than “very persuasive.” Not even the deceptiveness of the arrangement of the goddess’ words (kosmon emôn epeôn apatêlon) should be taken as a declaration of their out-and-out falsehood (indeed, a patently false account of the cosmos would hardly deceive anyone).27 Rather, “deceptive” here in B8 is the correlate of “no true trust” at B1.30; both signify that no account of the cosmos, not even the one Parmenides is now putting forward, can be trusted completely – as can the account of “what is” just presented, the account in which “true trust” drove off all coming into being and passing away (B8.28–30). We have some warrant, therefore, for regarding the distinction between the two phases of the goddess’s instruction, with the attendant distinction between achieving “true trust” and mere “likelihood” or “plausibility,” as an attempt to mark off two distinct forms of knowledge. Since the first of these is concerned with a set of propositions whose truth can be proven through the use of logical argument, while the second focuses on the nature of things we encounter through sense experience, Parmenides’ account may be described in more modern terms as a pioneering attempt to distinguish a priori from empirical knowledge.

  V. EMPEDOCLES

  In the generation after Parmenides, Empedocles composed a poem28 in which he invited his “mu
ch-remembering Muse” to “drive her well-reined chariot from the place of reverence” (DK 31 B3) and “stand by as a worthy logos of the blessed gods” (B131) was being unfolded. If these phrases had not yet identified Empedocles’ effort as a direct reply to Parmenides, B17.26 would have removed all doubt: “But you listen to the venturing of an account that is not deceptive” (logou stolon ouk apatêlon). While Parmenides had denied the possibility of unshaking conviction with respect to the nature of things in the physical realm, Empedocles commands his disciple, Pausanias, to “know (isthi) these things clearly (torôs – ‘piercingly’), having heard the story from a god” (B23.11). At the centre of Empedocles’ philosophy is the view that the cosmos consists of four uncreated and indestructible elements (earth, air, fire, and water) together with two alternating forces (Love and Strife), with everything else that exists resulting from the combining or separating of these elements in varying proportions. Thus, while there may be no coming into being or destruction in any absolute sense (for much the same reasons that Parmenides presented), we can nevertheless understand how individual (composite) bodies can be created or destroyed, move about, or display qualitative change.

  Empedocles also speaks in standard Parmenidean terms when he urges his student to:

  Know (gnôthi) as the trustworthy items (pistômata) of our muse command,

  By dividing up discourse (logoio) in your inward parts. (B4.2–3)

  as well as to meditate “deep in his thought organs”:

  For if, pushing [my words/ideas] deep down in your crowded thinking organs,

  You gaze on them in kindly fashion, with pure meditations,

 

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