What do we know? That sounds really weird to say, sometimes, when most of us seem to be constantly learning, and perhaps not self-aware enough of how we process and acquire our knowledge. Certainly most of us don’t venture into the little crevices of deep thinking to consider this. 

No worries, this is what philosophers are for.

In one of my earliest articles for The Philosopher’s Shirt, I shared how Socrates tells us that we don’t really know anything. He explains, through Plato, that no matter how wise you think you are, you really know not really anything at the end of the day. Now that’s humility.

However, epistemology predates Socrates by a bit, with one of the biggest names in the Presocratic game, Parmenides of Elea (working around the late 6th or early 5th century BCE). Parmenides completes our picture, opposing Heraclitus’s view of the world as flux.

The Oneness of Knowledge and Everything

Like most of the other Presocratic philosophers, we have very little left of Parmenides’s work, which is a shame, because he wrote in verse. That’s right, instead of just doing philosophy in prose or dialogues like everyone else, Parmenides got fancy and wrote his in poems.

What remains are fragments retold through others, as in Heraclitus and the other Presocratics. But what we get is amazing!

In his poem, Parmenides, a lot like Dante, writes some self-insert fiction. He starts off describing how he’s guided on a really cool chariot to an unnamed goddess, who imparts some wise words to him, which he, being the generous guy he is, relays to us. It’s all incredibly fancy, but he’s got some important things to say.

One of the first things the goddess tells him, he says, is that:

Come now, I will tell you–and bring away my story safely when you have heard of it–

the only ways of inquiry there are for thinking: 

the one, that is and that is not possible for it not to be, 

is the path of Persuasion (for it attends upon Truth),

the other, that it is not and that it is necessary for it not to be,

this I point out to you to be a path completely unlearnable,

for neither may you know that which is not (for it is not to be accomplished).

nor may you declare it.

--

Parmenides of Elea, via Proclus, Commentary on Plato’s Timmaeus and Simplicitus Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (lines 3-8), from A Presocratics Reader 1st ed., Ed. Patricia Curd, Trans. Richard D. McKirahan

We’ve got a lot to unpack here. First of all, I want to note two things. Ancient Greek is a far different language from modern English. I do not read Ancient Greek with any fluency and almost fell over when we were taught basics in undergrad, but I want to give Parmenides some slack here. Also, we need to hold the idea that this fragment is two pieces from the works of later writers, squished together to make sense, and translated by a person who definitely reads Ancient Greek, but is probably translating more for it to make sense to a philosophy student than for it to look like the next Edgar Allan Poe.

So let’s give this poem some leeway before we snark on Parmenides. No Snarkmenides.

Secondly, since it is a poem, some of what Parmenides means is kind of obscured by flowery language, that comes up even in the translation after translation. So what does he mean?

Being One with Your Greek Self: Parmenides and the Universe

When we spoke about Heraclitus last time, we showed that for this philosopher, everything is in a state of flux. The way the universe works is just a constant back and forth that is cyclical, and it’s never the same, even after you put your foot in some running water.

For Parmenides, there is a different way of seeing the universe. The universe for Parmenides, unlike Heraclitus, who considers these false dichotomies that are constantly warring but part of the same thing, is just what is. Which sounds really weird, again, but let’s look further into this, because it bears in epistemology as well as cosmology, the study of the universe.

Things either are or they are not. You can know everything that is, because that is all there is. You can’t know what is not because it just isn’t. There is a simplicity to this, but it’s also pretty annoying to think of if you think of it for too long. With this idea, Parmenides seems to suggest there is, at the end of the day, a finite limit to knowledge and the universe.

But you’ve got it wrong if you’re thinking that. Because there can be an infinite universe and even infinite possible knowledge. But what simply is not, is not. It’s kind of like how people tend to say that we don’t know what it will be like after we die. That knowledge is inaccessible. It’s just not there. No one has corpsed it up and come back to tell the tale.

Even this is an approximation, though, because Parmenides isn’t merely talking about empirical knowledge. He’s talking about everything. Everything is one, because it either is, or it isn’t. It either exists, or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, then it is inaccessible.

Mindblowing yet simple, I know. Edgelord(lady?) I was in undergrad, I much preferred Parmenides over Heraclitus, as he seemed to be hiding some grand knowledge in verse, and as a budding poet (I won the college-wide contest twice, darn it!) I had a lot of respect for that.

Therefore, everything that exists is one. It either is or it isn’t. The chaos and flux Heraclitus suggests is not a thing. It’s just all here. What is not here is not here. Everything is eternal, unchanging. In a way, it’s a good way to shrug a lot of worry away. A calm knowledge that it just is.

A Message from Markus: Can You Paint an Idea?

We commissioned a painting for this series. It's by my mother-in-law, Gabriele Lauschke, and the idea came from a fairly simple question I asked her over dinner: could an idea be painted? Not a place. Not an object. An idea.

The Full Painting, No More Waiting

Here's the painting we've been referencing throughout this series, explained in full. Left half is Heraclitus, moving water, ships, a village that never settles into fixed lines, even the pottery in the foreground sits at odd angles like it's mid-slide. Right half is Parmenides, the same water crystallized into faceted shapes that don't move, spirals folded into a loop with no start and no end.

Same disagreement as part one. Nobody wins, that was always the point, two positions that can't both be right, sharing one frame.

If you want to support the work behind this series, the shop's the best way, this print included or anything else that catches your eye.