Zeno of Elea · Philosophy

The Defender of the One

Zeno of Elea wrote his famous paradoxes not for their own sake but to defend his master Parmenides, who held that reality is a single, changeless One and that plurality and motion are illusions. Zeno’s strategy was to show that the common-sense belief in ‘many things’ leads to absurd contradictions - so the One must be true.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Zeno of Elea was the pupil and defender of Parmenides, who taught that reality is a single, unchanging One, and that plurality and motion are illusions of the senses. Zeno’s paradoxes were weapons in this defence: each is a reductio ad absurdum showing that the common-sense belief in ‘many thing…

Leads to Parmenides.

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