Parmenides · Philosophy
Parmenides’ ‘Way of Opinion’ - his account of the deceptive world of the senses - and the brilliant defence mounted by his pupil Zeno of Elea, whose paradoxes of motion and plurality turned the tables on common sense, showing that the world of the senses leads to contradictions of its own.
After the rigorous Way of Truth, Parmenides’ goddess turns to the second part of the poem: the Way of Opinion, or Seeming (doxa). Here she gives a detailed account of the sensible world - the world of change, plurality, and motion that the senses report - but she frames it from the start as deceptive: ‘Here I cease my trustworthy discourse and thought about truth; henceforward learn the opinions of mortals, giving ear to the deceptive ordering of my words.’ This is the world as it appears, not as it truly is - the realm of mortal belief, in which ‘there is no true belief,’ constructed by mortals out of the names they have given to things.
The Way of Opinion builds the apparent world out of two opposed principles or ‘forms’ - Light (or Fire) and Night - and from their mixture derives an account of the heavens, the stars, the moon, the origin of living things, and even human thought and reproduction. It was, by ancient report, a sophisticated cosmology, containing genuine astronomical insights (Parmenides may have been the first Greek to identify the morning and evening star as a single body, Venus, and to hold that the moon shines by reflected light). But all of it is presented under the sign of seeming: this is the best possible account of a world that, from the standpoint of Truth, is not ultimately real. Parmenides thus gives us two levels of discourse - the unshaken truth of changeless Being, and the ‘deceptive’ but best-possible account of the appearances - and insists we keep them sharply distinct, never mistaking the seeming for the real.
Parmenides’ doctrine - that motion and plurality are illusions - seemed so absurd to common sense that it invited ridicule. His devoted pupil Zeno of Elea came to his defence with one of the most ingenious strategies in the history of argument. Zeno did not try to prove directly that Being is one and motionless. Instead, he turned the attack around: he set out to show that the opponents’ position - the common-sense belief in motion and plurality - leads to contradictions and absurdities. If believing in motion and plurality lands you in contradiction, then (Zeno argued) that belief must be false, and Parmenides’ denial of motion and plurality is vindicated by default.
This is the opening of the lesson. The rest — the dialogue, the primary source, and the recall — is in the app.
You learned that Parmenides assigned the world of change and plurality to the deceptive ‘Way of Opinion,’ and that his pupil Zeno of Elea defended him with paradoxes (Achilles and the tortoise, the arrow) showing that motion and plurality - what the senses report - lead to contradictions. Explain the Way of Opinion an…
Leads to Zeno of Elea.
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