Parmenides does not in fact say "being is." The phrase (with its sundry tortured variations) is uttered by an unnamed goddess who addresses the poem's narrator. How can this be, if the poem bluntly argues that, since "being is," becoming is unthinkable and being is eternally one - pastless, futureless, and featureless? The answer begins in plain sight, on the surface of the poem, but this surface has been ignored all too often by readers who assume they already know what Parmenides stands for. Adluri's work stands out for the radicality of its argument, the subtlety of its interdisciplinary interpretations, and the forthright passion that motivates it.Īdluri's radical reading denies that Parmenides is the enemy of plurality and becoming. The series Continuum Studies in Ancient Philosophy currently includes no fewer than three books on the topic: Raymond Tallis' The Enduring Significance of Parmenides, Lisa Atwood Wilkinson's Parmenides and To Eon, and Vishwa Adluri's Parmenides, Plato, and Mortal Philosophy. We now even have Parmenides Publishing, which has printed or reprinted over half a dozen studies of the pre-Socratic to date. Despite the brevity of the fragments of his poem, supposedly titled On Nature ( Peri Phuseos), and the apparent simplicity of its central thought - "being is" - Parmenides continues to nourish speculation, historical research, and philological debate. Parmenides has survived the "parricide" committed against him in Plato's Sophist and in every philosophy of plurality and becoming.
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