• Mind Dough
    30
    Being alone is and nothing is altogether not. — Parmenides

    As I could not find any meaningful discussion about the contents of this quote, I am curios what you guys think Parmenides meant by it.
    I find myself inspired by his ways of thinking, and would like to learn more about it.

    My interpretation of the quote is simply "Being alone is" and "nothing is altogether not". Meaning being is all there is. Nothing is not a thing. But I am very interested to hear other interpretations, and the sentence is very open to it.
  • Sir2u
    3.2k
    But I am very interested to hear other interpretations, and the sentence is very open to it.Mind Dough

    It is impossible to be alone and nothing does not exist. Thus they are not.
  • tim wood
    8.7k
    It's a translation, so absent the Greek and a competent parsing thereof, it's a guess. The significance of the fact of translation should not be overlooked. For example, most of the New Testament is written in the Greek of the time, koine Greek, the more-or-less common language of the Mediterranean for about a thousand years. You would think that translating the Bible would be settled business, and free from error much less controversy. Not so, and some of the problems matter!

    In short, you can strain your brain with alternate readings of translations of Parmenides and miss the mark altogether because of the translation.

    Still though, it's a challenge. I read it (the translation) as, Being and only being truly is, [and] (the) nothing is not completely and entirely a nothing. In Heideggers' phrase, "Das Nichts nichtet." The nothing "noths."

    Heidegger has a lot to say about being, much from the Greeks. Not simple subject, and sensitive to translation, meaning it's good to have a guide through the material.

    Heidegger, The End of Philosophy, ISBN-13: 978-0226323831. The title means something other than what it appears to mean.
  • Cavacava
    2.4k

    Being alone is and nothing is altogether not.

    It is his way of clearing the decks, similar to how Descartes clears what is from what is not. What is not can't be thought, but what is can be thought, so then being or cogito.
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