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Parmenides

Parmenides' life spanned the first half of the 5c. B.C.E. (Brief on-line accounts are available at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and also here.) According to Plato's Parmenides, Parmenides and his follower Zeno conversed with the young Socrates (presumably about 450 B.C.E.) Large segments of his poem in hexameters has survived. In it he tells of a visionary journey through the portals of the day & night to learn from the goddess about truth, opinion, and false belief. (Click here for an on-line selection of fragments. Parmenides may be regarded as the first philosopher of logic. In principle, there should be three options: [what] is [necessarily] is, [what] is [necessarily] cannot be, and [what] is both is and is not (may or may not be, comes to be and perishes.) The second option is absurd, illogical, unthinkable, inexpressible. The first contains all truth, but we mortals have come to describe things as if generation and change were possible. James Dye provides an on-line summary of Parmenides' Argument.
Given that [what] is, is, and cannot not be, we can learn the true marks of true being: it is one, unchangeable, imperishable, without beginning or end, unique, indivisible, perfect, spherical and without parts. Nothing else makes sense. Therefore what we speak of and describe are opinions only; we are decieved by names and appearances.
Having taken this austere lesson to heart, Parmenides' instruction continues. He is instructed in the way of opinion, and sets out, at considerable length, the most plausible or persuasive cosmology available to mere mortals.
Parmenides is the first Western philosopher to consider the logic of the verb "to be." His account raises important questions that later lead to discussions of the differences among the is of identity (" The morning star is the evening star"), the is of attribution ("Socrates is short" does not identify Socractes with shortness), and the is of existence ("There are cows, although there are no chimeras.") (There can also be a fourth meaning of is: the is of "is true" or "is so.") The third of these is in many respects the most puzzling. When (if ever) does reference imply the existence of the thing referred to? Or to turn the matter around, what exactly is it that we are referring to when we say of something that it does not exist? In later technical language, this leads to the question whether logic entails an ontology, the study of being or what is. (Medieval Indian logicians developed elaborate tensed categories of real and imaginary attribution and its ontology: "anterior non-existence of elephant in potting shed" to refer to a state of affairs prior to the elephants entering the shed and "posterior non-existence of elephant in potting shed" to refer to the state of affairds after the elephant had been driven out.)
The issues that we date back to Parmenides, therefore, touch on the vexed questions of contrary-to-fact conditionals. Human thought has this remarkable capacity to imagine states of affairs, to hypothesize alternatives. This capacity is one of our key tools. Other animals are stronger, better hard-wired to defense and evasion tactics, more adaptable. But we can consider possibilities. What is it that we are thinking about when we are thinking about something that either used to be but is no more, might be but isn't yet, could be (or have been) but never will be?. The questions of logic unleashed by Parmenides thus also generate the logical modalities: possible, actual, necessary. Imaging alternatives is essential to planning and projecting and to remembering. It becomes, therefore, a key element in the analysis of how we think and what we can know.
Parmenides' rejection of the second way ("What is cannot not be") is the earliest formulation of the Law of Contradiction. Together with Zeno he developed perhaps the first formal proofs in Western thought, and he opened the way to speculation about types or levels of knowledge. (The way of truth aspires to absolute knowldege; his cosmology under the way of opinions or mere names suggests the notion of relative truth, subject to the standard of utility.)
To repeat: Parmenides himself did not think through all the implications of these difficult problems, but the formal study of the philosophy of logic can be traced to his investigations and that of his colleagues, Melissus and Zeno.

Pericles

Philip II

Philip of Macedon (372-336B.C.E.) was King of Macdonia from 359 until he was assassinated as he planned a campaign of the combined forces of the Macedonians and Greeks against Persia. His famous son Alexander the Great took up that challenge, building on Philip's solid diplomatic and military achievements. He unified Macedonia (then as now no simple matter) and succeeded, by long effort of statesmanship and military threat, in unifying the Greeks and the Macedonians. He recognized the achievements of Greek culture and did much to encourage Greek learning and arts in Macedonia. His name led to a word in our vocabulary thanks to the "philipics" of Demosthenes, the nationalistic Athenian orator and politician who led the unsuccessful opposition to Philip and his Athenian allies (see Isocrates.)

Philo

Philolaus

of Croton or Tarentum

Pisistraus

Athenian from an aristocratic family who led one of three rival factions in the early 6c. B.C.E. political struggles. In 561 he seized power and declared himself tyrant, having won the support of many of the newly enfranchised former peasants from the surrounding countryside to the north. He held power for about five years until he was expelled, but he returned in 546 with an army of mercenaries and continued to rule as tryant until his death in 527, when he was succeeded by his sons. He enjoyed wide public support, having managed to placate all but the most intractable of the nobility while winning the support of the merchants, tradesmen, and peasants who shared in the high rates of economic growth and increasing prosperity of the city. During his tyranny "democratizing" tendencies took firm root in Athens. He is also famous for what we might call "foreign policy," both economic and military.

Revised September 21, 1996

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