Parmenides of Elea (/pɑːrˈmɛnɪdiːz ... ˈɛliə/; Greek: Παρμενίδης ὁ Ἐλεάτης; fl. late sixth or early fifth century BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia (meaning "Great Greece," the term which Romans gave to Greek-populated coastal areas in Southern Italy).
He is thought to have been in his prime (or "floruit") around 475 BC.
Parmenides has been considered the founder of metaphysics or ontology and has influenced the whole history of Western philosophy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, which also included Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos. Zeno's paradoxes of motion were to defend Parmenides' view.
Parmenides, authored a difficult metaphysical poem that has earned him a reputation as early Greek philosophy’s most profound and challenging thinker. His philosophical stance has typically been understood as at once extremely paradoxical and yet crucial for the broader development of Greek natural philosophy and metaphysics.
Parmenides's Quotes:
- "Everything that exists has always existed. Nothing can come from nothing. And something that exists cannot become anything either."
- "Change is an illusion."
- "You must learn all things, both the unshaken heart of persuasive truth, and the opinions of mortals in which there is no true warranty."
- "Do not let habit, born from experience, force you along this road, directing aimless eye and echoing ear and tongue; but judge by reason the much-contested proof which I have spoken."
- "Let reason alone decide."
- "The reason will end up being right."
- "Music that does not describe something is nothing but noise."
- "War is the art of destroying men, and politics is the art of deceiving them."
- "The universe, for those who knew how to embrace it from a single point of view, would not be, if I were allowed to say it, more than a single fact and a great truth."
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