Parmenides: New Perspectives

Parmenides is one of the most widely studied and controversial early Greek philosophers. This edited collection examines Parmenides’ modes of argument and their legacy, his poetics and intertextuality, and the relation between different parts of his poem. It also presents new research into Parmenides’ poem from a range of scholarly traditions; together the essays show that we must fundamentally change our conception of the manner in which Parmenides communicated with his readers, the division of his poem, and his reasons for dividing it.

Parmenides: New Perspectives challenges widespread assumptions, such as that Parmenides left his readers to grapple with the enigmatic poem unaided, that the poem is divided into three parts, and that the first part--the proem--should be interpreted as allegory. Against this it is argued that Parmenides wrote exegetical comments on his own poem, and the proem echoes representations of deities and the cosmos in previous poetry in order to subvert them and open a new world for poetic expression and intellectual inquiry. Collectively this volume showcases some of the most thought-provoking contemporary scholarship on Parmenides.

Chapter 5 of this work is available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International open access licence. This part of the work is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations

A.G. Long, Professor, School of Classics, University of St Andrews, Barbara M. Sattler, Chair of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Ruhr-University Bochum

A.G. Long is Professor at the School of Classics at University of St Andrews. He is the author of Conversation and Self-Sufficiency in Plato (2013) and Death and Immortality in Ancient Philosophy (2019). Long edits the book series Key Themes in Ancient Philosophy and is the Managing Editor of the journal Phronesis.

Barbara M. Sattler taught at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Yale University, and the University of St. Andrews, before taking up the chair of ancient and medieval philosophy at Bochum. She is the author and co-editor of many books including The Concept of Motion in Ancient Greek Thought (2020) and Philosophy of Mathematics from the Pythagoreans to Euclid (forthcoming).