THE ELEATICS.
1. RELATION OF THE ELEATIC PRINCIPLE TO THE PYTHAGOREAN.—While the
Pythagoreans had made matter, in so far as it is quantity and the
manifold, the basis of their philosophizing, and while in this they only
abstracted from the determined elemental condition of matter, the
Eleatics carry the process to its ultimate limit, and make, as the
principle of their philosophy, a total abstraction from every finite
determinateness, from every change and vicissitude which belongs to
concrete being. While the Pythagoreans had held fast to the form of
being as having existence in space and time, the Eleatics reject this,
and make as their fundamental thought the negation of all exterior and
posterior. Only being is, and there is no not-being, nor becoming. This
being is the purely undetermined, changeless ground of all things. It is
not being _in_ becoming, but it is being as exclusive of all becoming;
in other words, it is pure being.
Eleaticism is, therefore, Monism, in so far as it strove to carry back
the manifoldness of all being to a single ultimate principle; but on the
other hand it becomes Dualism, in so far as it could neither carry out
its denial of concrete existence, _i. e._, the phenomenal world, nor yet
derive the latter from its presupposed original ground. The phenomenal
world, though it might be explained as only an empty appearance, did yet
exist; and, since the sensuous perception would not ignore this, there
must be allowed it, hypothetically at least, the right of existence. Its
origin must be explained, even though with reservations. This
contradiction of an unreconciled Dualism between being and existence, is
the point where the Eleatic philosophy is at war with itself—though, in
the beginning of the school—with _Xenophanes_, it does not yet appear.
The principle itself, with its results, is only fully apparent in the
lapse of time. It has three periods of formation, which successively
appear in three successive generations. Its foundation belongs to
_Xenophanes_; its systematic formation to _Parmenides_; its completion
and partial dissolution to _Zeno_ and _Melissus_—the latter of whom we
can pass by.
2. XENOPHANES.—Xenophanes is considered as the originator of the Eleatic
tendency. He was born at Colophon; emigrated to Elea, a Phocian colony
in Lucania, and was a younger cotemporary of Pythagoras. He appears to
have first uttered the proposition—“every thing is one,” without,
however, giving any more explicit determination respecting this unity,
whether it be one simply in conception or in actuality. Turning his
attention, says Aristotle, upon the world as a whole, he names the unity
which he finds, God. God is the One. The Eleatic “One and All” (ἒν καὶ
πᾶν) had, therefore, with Xenophanes, a theological and religious
character. The idea of the unity of God, and an opposition to the
anthropomorphism of the ordinary views of religion, is his starting
point. He declaimed against the delusion that the gods were born, that
they had a human voice or form, and railed at the robbery, adultery, and
deceit of the gods as sung by Homer and Hesiod. According to him the
Godhead is wholly seeing, wholly understanding, wholly hearing, unmoved,
undivided, calmly ruling all things by his thought, like men neither in
form nor in understanding. In this way, with his thought turned only
towards removing from the Godhead all finite determinations and
predicates, and holding fast to its unity and unchangeableness, he
declared this doctrine of its being to be the highest philosophical
principle, without however directing this principle polemically against
the doctrine of finite being, or carrying it out in its negative
application.
3. PARMENIDES.—The proper head of the Eleatic school is Parmenides of
Elea, a scholar, or at least an adherent of Xenophanes. Though we
possess but little reliable information respecting the circumstances of
his life, yet we have, in inverse proportion, the harmonious voice of
all antiquity in an expression of reverence for the Eleatic sage, and of
admiration for the depth of his mind, as well as for the earnestness and
elevation of his character. The saying—“a life like Parmenides,” became
afterwards a proverb among the Greeks.
Parmenides embodied his philosophy in an epic poem, of which we have
still important fragments. It is divided into two parts. In the first he
discusses the conception of being. Rising far above the yet unmediated
view of Xenophanes, he attains a conception of pure single being, which
he sets up as absolutely opposed to every thing manifold and changeable,
_i. e._, to that which has no being, and which consequently cannot be
thought. From this conception of being he not only excludes all becoming
and departing, but also all relation to space and time, all divisibility
and movement. This being he explains as something which has not become
and which does not depart, as complete and of its own kind, as
unalterable and without limit, as indivisible and present though not in
time, and since all these are only negative, he ascribes to it, also, as
a positive determination—thought. Being and thought are therefore
identical with Parmenides. This pure thought, directed to the pure
being, he declares is the only true and undeceptive knowledge, in
opposition to the deceptive notions concerning the manifoldness and
mutability of the phenomenal. He has no hesitancy in holding that to be
only a name which mortals regard as truth, viz., becoming and departing,
being and not-being, change of place and vicissitude of circumstance. We
must therefore be careful not to hold “the One” of Parmenides, as the
collective unity of all concrete being.
So much for the first part of Parmenides’ poem. After the principle that
there is only being has been developed according to its negative and
positive determinations, we might believe that the system was at an end.
But there follows a second part, which is occupied solely with the
hypothetical attempt to explain the phenomenal world and give it a
physical derivation. Though firmly convinced that, according to reason
and conception, there is only “the One,” yet is Parmenides unable to
withdraw himself from the recognition of an appearing manifoldness and
change. Forced, therefore, by his sensuous perception to enter upon a
discussion of the phenomenal world, he prefaces this second part of his
poem with the remark, that he had now closed what he had to say
respecting the truth, and was hereafter to deal only with the opinion of
a mortal. Unfortunately, this second part has been very imperfectly
transmitted to us. Enough however remains to show, that he explained the
phenomena of nature from the mingling of two unchangeable elements,
which Aristotle, though apparently only by way of example, indicates as
warm and cold, fire and earth. Concerning these two elements, Aristotle
remarks still farther that Parmenides united the warmth with being, and
the other element with not-being.
It is scarcely necessary to remark that between the two parts of the
Parmenidean philosophy—between the doctrine concerning being and the
doctrine concerning appearance—there can exist no inner scientific
connection. What Parmenides absolutely denies in the first part, and
indeed declares to be unutterable, viz., the not-being, the many and the
changeable, he yet in the second part admits to have an existence at
least in the representation of men. But it is clear that the not-being
cannot once exist in the representation, if it does not exist generally
and every where, and that the attempt to explain a not-being of the
representation, is in complete contradiction with his exclusive
recognition of being. This contradiction, this unmediated juxtaposition
of being and not-being, of the one and the many, _Zeno_, a scholar of
Parmenides, sought to remove, by affirming that from the very conception
of being, the sensuous representation, and thus the world of the
not-being, are dialectically annihilated.
4. ZENO.—The Eleatic Zeno was born about 500 B. C.; was a scholar of
Parmenides, and the earliest prose writer among the Grecian
philosophers. He is said to have written in the form of dialogues. He
perfected, dialectically, the doctrine of his master, and carried out to
the completest extent the abstraction of the Eleatic One, in opposition
to the manifoldness and determinateness of the finite. He justified the
doctrine of a single, simple, and unchangeable being, in a polemical
way, by showing up the contradictions into which the ordinary
representations of the phenomenal world become involved. While
Parmenides affirms that there is only the One, Zeno shows in his
well-known proofs (which unfortunately we cannot here more widely
unfold), that the many, the changing, that which has relation to space,
or that which has relation to time, is not. While Parmenides affirmed
the being, Zeno denied the appearance. On account of these proofs, in
which Zeno takes up the conceptions of extension, manifoldness and
movement, and shows their inner contradictory nature, Aristotle names
him the founder of dialectics.
While the philosophizing of Zeno is the completion of the Eleatic
principle, so is it at the same time the beginning of its dissolution.
Zeno had embraced the opposition of being and existence, of the one and
the many, so abstractly, and had carried it so far, that with him the
inner contradiction of the Eleatic principle comes forth still more
boldly than with Parmenides; for the more logical he is in the denial of
the phenomenal world, so much the more striking must be the
contradiction, of turning, on the one side, his whole philosophical
activity to the refutation of the sensuous representation, while, on the
other side, he sets over against it a doctrine which destroys the very
possibility of a false representation.