Parmenides of Elea | Thought, Being, and Monism | Philosophy Core Concepts

hi this is dr. Gregory Sadler I'm a professor of philosophy and the president and founder of an educational consulting company called reason IO where we put philosophy into practice I've studied and taught philosophy for over 20 years and I find that many people run into difficulties reading classic philosophical texts sometimes it's the way things are said or how the text is structured but the concepts themselves are not always that complicated and that's where I come in to help students and lifelong learners I've been producing longer lecture videos and posting them to youtube many viewers say they find them useful what you're currently watching is part of a new series of shorter videos each of them focused on one core concept from an important philosophical text I hope you find it useful as well in looking at the fragments of the ontological or metaphysical poem by Parmenides of Alea that we do possess one of the key themes it's very important for the history of philosophy that arises is the inter relation between thought and generally that's expressed here in terms of knowing the activity of thinking and being a knight to be and and for Parmenides these are actually going to turn out to be the same and and I don't think you can say the same thing because that sounds as if there's many things and these to happen to be the same thing for Parmenides ontologically or metaphysically there's only one there's only it can you call it one thing there's only one reality everything else is false or non-being or you know a becoming that is is also a lie so you know there's some paradoxes that arise in how though the poem is itself articulated given that that's the case but one of the the key ideas that he's putting forward is what we call monism this notion that at bottom or you know ultimately everything is one reality everything is the same thing and you could say anything that doesn't fit into that would actually not have any being at all strictly speaking it should be unimaginable or unsayable and he does kind of hint at that at different points but he also does contrast two different paths and so the one path the true or trustworthy path of being the one that the goddess is revealing to him and saying that mortals generally aren't on this path because they think that there really is becoming and there's motion and change and multiplicity of things the true path of being says that being is non being is not and it asserts that it's wrong to say that non being is it's also wrong to say that being is not or that something is not and that being could change in any way that's there later on in the poem so there's these two paths that are laid out for him and he's advised to use thought as a way of judging between these two ways ultimately of thinking or you know you could say thinking well and thinking poorly thinking the right way thinking in ways that go astray right and the ways that go astray rely on our habits and our sense is pure thought is what's required in order to fully understand the option between the two paths in front of him the path of being the true path and the path of non-being or becoming or illusion or or lies however you want to put it so thought is you could say the instrument or the the ability that allows us to formulate this problem in the first place a problem of thinking and it's also what gives us access to being itself if we follow the right path according to those again that Parmenides has laid out so that's one way of understanding the relationship between thought and being right being in that case would seem to be you know ontological II prior it's it's there and then here comes the thinking person and while they can see being as such and you know being would be just fine without the thinker because being is and it's not gonna like you know go out of existence if there's no thinker that's one way to look at it but Parmenides is actually going further he's saying being and thought are actually the same they're not something different so this implies that thought is not just thinking being has sort of at a distance from it thought is how being grasps itself and so we are invited you know in the poem to join in on this by traversing the same path that Parmenides lays out for himself in the mouth of this goddess who could be the same thing as just our minds as well so here we want to think about a few key passages that I have here in in Greek and I'll tell you the Greek and then we'll talk about some possible translations of it so thought as being itself in fragment 3 which is very short he says toga Otto know Ain esteem 2 chi ni sono Ain is the the infinitive for think right to to think or the act of thinking and ni is being that's the verb for to be to to actually exist to to have being and the sum of these things like Takei and and dot or those are these sort of particle words God or means thing like so therefore or you know hey look at this and you know Kai means and so togehter Alto for it's the same Auto means the same toe out oh the same thing so you know look here this is the same thing what's the same thing these two things that are connected by the the verb here s Dean s T is the same verb as ni and they both refer to being alright so being is actually showing us that thinking and being in the infinitive are the same thing you could you could translate it as four it is the same thing to think and to be or you could translate it and more generally thinking and being are the same right or you could say are identical or they're not different from each other there's a lot of different ways you could you could frame this but what is it asserting their thinking and being not different from each other thinking is if it's real genuine authentic thinking is showing us how things are including about that very same thinking right or you might say turning it on the other side being to be is to think so that being thinks itself he goes on and he says that this is in fragment for what can be said and what I'm saying fragments I mean from the deals fragmented for the for Socratic er what can be said leg gain there's the word to speak or to say and thought must be so now he's not saying that everything that we can say every verbal formula we can come up with is therefore existing as such you know like the unicorn poked me in the eye with his horn no unicorns right so I'm not getting poked in the eye with a horn just because I said it because the probe is no here's what can be said and thought what can true maybe thought what can be thought through is exists as being so a little bit later in the long section which is fragment 8 he will say two other things about this connection between thought and being and they're both actually in the same you know section so he says how tone destino aim to Chi hoon ik n SD no mo so we've got two different thought words here no aim this activity of thinking and then we have no way m'a that which is thought right and so what is he saying there again we have a tone it's the same thing 2-out own right desti this is the same thing what is the same thinking and no Hoonah ken is a composite of two words hennequin that on account of and then hole here that on account of which there is thinking or we can say that thought and the object of thought are the same thing what is the object of thought being so thought and what is being thought by thought ie being those are the same thing this is another way of framing it but it's going a little bit more into precision saying whatever it is that we are you know taking in and thinking about that is thought the activity of thought so that's a nice way to translate it this translation here has here we go you want to find that section you yeah you the same thing both can be thought and is that which enables thinking right that's a little bit more obscure actually but but it's not a bad way of thinking about it that which we can think about that's the enables there he follows up by saying you gotta renetto Altos and whole parry Pfau steamin on s teen he'll race ace tono Wayne very fancy Greek phrase there right so the the we could actually turn it around and start here pure ace ace and the Oh God right ooh God for you will and you will not discover your race this is the word that we get heuristic from you will not discover or find tone owain thinking you will not find thinking without or not in the presence of a now to a loom toasts you will not find it outside of something that has being Altos is is the in here the participle right and whole pantry FASTA Meno Nestene so this is coming from the the verb to to to articulate to speak write and hold pity fosston men on has seen that in which we can express something so it's translated here as a little bit you know less literally you will not find thinking apart from what is on which it depends for its expression now what depends on what for its expression in it kind of goes both ways thought depends on what is in order to articulate itself in order to say itself but being also needs thought to express it so there's this really interesting complex relationship of two things that are asserted to be the very same thing thought and being in these sections in Parmenides poem it's not so simple as to just say well thought and being same thing there is a matter of articulation there's a matter of sort of interdependence II there's a matter of reflexivity that's involved there if we sort of read between the lines and call out what has to be the case in order for this to really make sense so this is a profound insight if it's actually true by per minute ease in his poem the identity or unity of thought and being you

Channel: Gregory B. Sadler

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Length: 14min 1sec (841 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 11 2019