Parmenĭdes
(
Παρμενίδης). A Greek philosopher and poet, born of an
illustrious family about B.C. 510, at Elea in Lower Italy. He was held in high esteem by his
fellow-citizens on account of his excellent legislation, to which they ascribed the prosperity
and wealth of the town; and also on account of his exemplary life. A “Parmenidean
life” was proverbial among the Greeks (Cebes,
Tabula, 2). Little more
is known of his biography than that he stopped at Athens on a journey in his sixty-fifth year,
and there became acquainted with the youthful Socrates. He is the chief representative of the
Eleatic philosophy. Like his great teacher, Xenophanes, he also formulated his philosophical
views in a didactic poem,
On Nature (
Περὶ
Φύσεως), the form of which was considered inartistic (
Acad. ii.
74). According to the proëm, which has been preserved (while we only possess
fragments of the rest), the work consisted of two divisions. The first treated of the truth,
the second of the world of illusion; that is, the world of the senses and the erroneous
opinions of mankind founded upon them. In his opinion truth lies in the perception that
existence is, and error in the idea that non-existence also can be. Nothing can have real
existence but what is conceivable; therefore to be imagined and to be able to exist are the
same thing, and there is no development; the essence of what is conceivable is incapable of
development, imperishable, immutable, unbounded, and indivisible; what is
various and mutable, all development, is a delusive phantom; perception is thought directed to
the pure essence of being; the phenomenal world is a delusion, and the opinions formed
concerning it can only be improbable. The best edition of the fragments is that in Karsten's
Philosophorum Graecorum Reliquiae (Amsterdam, 1835). They have
been rendered into English hexameter by T. Davidson (
Journal of Speculative
Philosophy, St. Louis, 1870), and paraphrased in prose by Courtney in his
Studies in Philosophy (1882). See
Philosophia.