Parmenides, another attempt at my own obsession?

Question

I think I've been going at it all wrong. I let "motion" become the focus, and its not. Being is....so lets leave motion aside, and work on the real pit of my problem.

Being....I've gone exhaustive over the poem in which being is the focus. I think I may have it. Being isn't related to the human experience. It can't be...part of, but not its entirety. Humans, who veil their existence with reliance on their senses to define reality, are missing the entire point. The reality of our senses is only a small and insignificant portion of the greater reality...the reality of being. Its inspiration, intuition,belief...those things we have no concrete proof of...that are the core of being. They are being....that's why Parmenides says it is infinite, uncaused, equally real in all directions....because it can't be limited by humans. In investigating man within the natural world, within the cosmos, humans tend to limit. We limit time, space, everything we do is contained and set into distinct frames of reference...unwittingly, we have left out, forgotten or outright denied that we are but a small part of the infinite nature of existence. Mans appearance in the "scheme of things" was always a part of reality. It didn't change it, didn't negate it, didn't influence it. That is why, once we have said something is, we cann;t then say that it isn't...because we have acknowledged the reality, we cannot then make it unreal.

Have I, finally, come as close as I will ever be? Or am I still missing something?

Answer 1

Parmenides is an idiot.  As is Plato. As is Locke. As is Marx.

Stick with Heraclitus, Socrates, Hobbes, & Rand.

There is an objective reality governed by the Logos.

Our limited senses react to this and we make our best guess how to manage our energy to the purpose of survival/reproduction.

This is 'being'.

Waste all the time you like wandering around in Plato's froufrou heaven of perfection & forms.   If won't help you get a job or a mate.

Sure, we are but a small part of the infinite cosmos.  So what?  Is the fate of bacteria dying on the far side of the universe going to change because you 'care' so much?

You whine that the Cosmos lacks compassion your neurosis?  Jeez. What does dwelling on the fact you're small get you? The only thing you can do is be important to yourself.

Answer 2

A very interesting read! Have you read any Sarte, especially "Being and Nothingness"? It seems a lot of what you say relates closely to some of his points.

I agree totally with your emphasis on "inspiration, intuition, belief..." but I think we need to be careful not to completely disregard our senses. They are, ultimately, the only tools we are furnished with by which we form our intuitions and beliefs. Everything we believe, at the end of the day, is answerable to some sense percept eventually. Without our senses the world is nothing to us.

I also like your thoughts on our insignificant place in relation to a vast universe but I'd tend perhaps to say that these are ultimately unfullfilling? We have, as Sarte of course takes us, a huge power to change our existence and world. As he says, we have our existence and then we MAKE our essence. I think if we constantly mulled over how pathetic we are compared to the cosmos, then we find ourselves spiralling into an unhealthy minded angst where all of our actions are fruitless and destined for nothing. We should enjoy and live for the moment, comparable with nothing else, because that IS our life. Nothing else matters. What care have I for a remote and distant universe if I had no senses or I didn't exist at all?

You say that we don't "change", "negate", or "influence" any of it but that is not my intention. I am living for me and my existence. My world is not in a grand cosmos, floating idly on a rock around a sun where my actions will come to dust. My world is my thoughts, beliefs and emotions.

Or is that exactly your point?

Answer 3

Still properly missing something, aidan402. Consider the inconvenient vestigial features encountered almost everyday that cause wonder for those receptive to thinking. For example, someone at my workplace was quite vexed by the ostensible dance elements in the Olympic performances of male (less so, female) gymnasts, in the floor exercise. Well, think of the trouble this person would suffer upon viewing the Gymnopaedia! The ancient world that Parmenides belonged to is going to be a difficult pill for the vast majority of moderns to swallow. This is especially true for the language of the ancient Greeks prior to the development of a formal grammar. A leap into Parmenides' world is going to require the chunk of flesh that Phoenix Quill DARE NOT forfeit.

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There are some aphorisms that helped me reckon with impenetrable ontological duality. Socrates: I know that I know nothing. This I believe to be a profound and dynamic  theoretical reply to Parmenides' logoi. With a real philosopher

(as compared to pseudophilosophers) the theory must be lived. From the objective position this looks ironic. But as a motivation for an individual thinker, it is an excellent way to escape the inherent (and strangely puzzling-see below) given quiescence that characterizes the ontological advance made by both Heraclitus and Parmenides.

Think about Socrates' aphorism. He implies two totalities separated by an insurmountable abyss: the totality of what he grasps mentally, subjectively, as the self-evident "I know" v. the "nothing" that follows when a locus, an object, is placed in front of the self-evident "I know". One could say this is why we are stuck with the awful cliche, "Pre-Socratic Philosophy": because Socrates' logoi easily surpasses any previous logoi in its linguistic sophistication, so much so that it makes Socrates appear to be the sole progenitor of what we now lump under the heading "University".  Unlearning the sophistication that University life bestows does indeed strike me as "illogical". Now if you understand that, you may fully appreciate Socrates' craftiness, which so many like Quill take for granted. If you want to get into the room with Parmenides or Heraclitus, you'll first have to go through (completely and thoroughly through) the door made (invented, having his stamp-likeness) by Socrates.