Parmenides represents a significant rupture in the development of early Greek thought. Where the Milesians, particularly Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, enquired into the γένεσις and φθορά/ὄλεθρος (the emerging and perishing) of τὰ ἐόντα (what-is), Parmenides brought τὸ ἐόν (Being) into the region of the ἕν (One); συνεχές (cohering), ἀγένητον (without emerging), and ἀνώλεθρον (without perishing). Charles Kahn (1969: 702) once asked, “what problems did Parmenides inherit from his predecessors to which his own doctrine of “Being” might be a response?” We might ask, though, to what extent was Parmenides responding not to the established problems of his predecessors but to the emerging problem of his successors, the Sophists?
In Parmenides’ poem, the goddess Ἀληθεία initially alludes to two ways of inquiry (ὁδοὶ διζήσιος). On the First Way, the διζήσιος concerns ὅπως ἔστιν, the “how it is” of “what-is” (Being – ἐόντα) (DK 28 B2 1-2). The Second Way, the goddess warns, that which could not possibly be, ὡς χρεών ἐστι μὴ εἶναι – non-Being, is impassable to humans. The goddess then reveals to Parmenides the perils of a Third Way, the way of δόξα. The way of δόξα is the way that unknowledgeable humans (εἰδότες οὐδέν) generally proceed, which they forge for themselves (πλάττοναι), their heads at once here and at once there (δίκρανοι) (DK 28 B6 4-6). Humans do not lack νόος, the capacity to apprehend, but along this Third Way a waylessness (ἀμηχανίη) sets in that disorientates their alignment (ἰθύνειν) and, led by an ignorance of the way, produces errancy.
The problem of δόξα did not materialise with the emergence of the Sophists in the fifth century. In the early sixth century, Thales warned of the insecurity of δόξα as a mode of knowing: οὔ τι τὰ πολλὰ ἔπη φρονίμην ἀπεφήνατο δόξαν (Many opinions do not produce wisdom) (D.L 1.1.35). Through Xenophanes the distinction between and problematisation of knowing and seeming was made explicit (DK 21 B34), but it was Parmenides who laid the groundwork for both the Sophistic priority of δόξα over ἀληθεία (truth) and Plato’s eventual confrontation with δόξα in the fourth century that would be so decisive for the development of Western thought.
In many ways, the fifth century can be characterised in terms of the growing priority of δόξα over ἀληθεία in Greek thought that endures until Plato. The early Sophists, most notably Protagoras and Gorgias, made tremendous strides in redirecting philosophical reflection away from considerations of the world toward interpretations of the πράξις of human affairs. Possibilities of moral and political knowledge, truth and falsity, justice and injustice, and rhetoric became explicit themes of investigation according to how things seem (δόκει) to the observer. Plato’s confrontation with the Sophists aimed at the re-priority of ἀληθεία over δόξα by a) reconfiguring Sophistic διαλέγεσθαι as a methodological dialectic that is a working out of the Ideas and their connection, and consequently b) elevating the ἀγαθόν (good) beyond being (ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας) as the highest Idea. Through Plato and later Aristotle, the groundwork for Western philosophy as metaphysics was accomplished. This workshop aims at re-posing the question of the relation of Parmenides and the Sophists in terms of the nature of the relationship itself and in the context of Plato’s eventual confrontation with both in his determination and establishment of metaphysical thought.
Programme
Thursday 3rd November
Chair: Stephen Makin
14:00-14:40 R.J Barnes (Wabash College) – A Sicilian Sense of Humor? Epicharmus, Gorgias, and the Eleatics
14:40-15:20 Enrico Piergiacomi (Max-Weber-Kolleg of Erfurt) – The Necessity of Persuasion: Gorgias’ Eleatic Rhetoric
15:20-15:40 Break
Chair: Laurence Hemming
15:40-16:40 Keynote Paper 1: Rachel Barney (University of Toronto) – Parmenides, Zeno, Protagoras, and the History of Dialectic: Parmenides 127a-30a
16:40-17:10 Break
Chair: Aaron Turner
17:10-17:50 Daniela Brinati Furtado (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais) – It is Not a Matter of Being
17:50-18:30 Mattia Cardenas (Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia) – “Truth” and “Truth-Telling”: Gorgias and the Impossibility of Eleatic Truth
18:30-18:50 Break
Chair: Aaron Turner
18:50-19:50 Keynote Paper 2: Daniel W. Graham (Brigham Young University) – The Eleatic Revolution and the Sophists
19:50 Finish
Friday 4th November
Chair: Aaron Turner
13:20-14:00 Aidan Nathan (University of Sydney) – Peithōand Parmenides
14:00-14:40 Jack Kelleher (King’s College London) – Being and Otherness: Plato’s Auseinandersetzung with Parmenides in the Sophist
14:40-15:20 Ian Campbell (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) – Eristic and Eleaticism in Euthydemus of Chios
15:20-15:40 Break
15:40-16:40 Keynote Paper 3: Stephen Makin (University of Sheffield) – Roundtable Discussion: Why did Gorgias take the trouble to write On What Is Not?
16:40-17:10 Break
Chair: Laurence Hemming
17:10-17:50 Aaron Turner (Royal Holloway, University of London) – In the Shadow of Parmenides: Thucydides and the Crisis of Truth
17:50-18:30 Mark Sentesy (Pennsylvania State University) – Are Parmenides’ “Signposts” Features of Being?
18:30-18:50 Break
Chair: Aaron Turner
18:50-19:50 Keynote Paper 4: Kathryn Morgan (UCLA) – Mortals and the Rhetoric of Paradox
19:50 Finish