Can someone help me with Parmenides?

Question

I can't seem to wrap my thoughts around Parmenides idea of "Being"....Parmenides says, in simple english, that only what can be thought can exist. Since nothing cannot be thought without thinking of it as something, then it does not exist. I understand this...so far.However, he then goes on to say that because of this, there is only Being. Uncreated, indestructible, eternal, indivisible and equally real in all directions. Got it...

Here comes the problem...if Being is equally real in ALL directions, then how does he arrive at the conclusion that motion is impossible? Motion is going from one being to its equal in the next step, no? Parmenides says, no, it is going from being to where being is not, and since there can't be such a place, there is no motion.

Answer 1

When I first read Parmenides' ideas, he seemed quite 'gone' to me. Now I think he was some kind of Descartes of the ancient Western world. Well, I might very well be wrong.

Now here's the thing. Parmenides is a logical guy. He does not say: "I think therefore I am." Instead, however, he seems to think: "We experience therefore existence exists." For the ancient Greeks, the stuff Existence ultimately consists of is a given, no matter what that stuff is or how they call it. For Parmenides it seems to be Being itself.

If there is Being (or Existence) all the way (in all directions) then Non-Existence cannot be within Existence, can it? And if there's no hiatus, gap, hole or the like within the continuous Being, how and where could it move?

The essence of reality (i.e. Being or Existence) is stuck in time and space. It does not move or change. All the movement and change we experience is merely an illusion. What we learn through senses is highly subjective (opinion). Reality (truth) is only accessible to reason.

Answer 2

I suppose you have to be sensitive to your meaning of motion.  I dont think parmenides would object that the manner in which things are can change, but they only change under and within being.  An important thing to remember with parmenides is his idea that "the same is for thinking as being" or something like that.  He's saying that even thoughts and wild fantasies that are not physically manifested in world you perceive are partaking the idea of being.  If you can think it, then it is.  It is part of being.  "Being is not" is an unfathomable vaccuum that cannot exist in our perception, even the conception of such a concept exists within being.  The conditoin of not being exists within the realm of being and necessarily so.  Being is such a foundational and ontological condition that nothing is without it, and since nothing can defect from this state, there is not motion in this sense.  Again, motion implies many connotations, and i do not particulariy like the way parmenides uses it here, because there are too many ways motion is perceived in our reality.  But reality never moves toward anything except being and so i guess there is no motion, whatever.