Zeno of Elea · Philosophy

Against the Many

Beneath the famous paradoxes of motion lie Zeno’s arguments against <em>plurality</em> - against the belief that there are many things at all. If reality is divided into many, he argued, each thing must be both infinitely large and infinitely small, both limited and unlimited in number - contradictions that, he claimed, leave only Parmenides’ undivided One.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Zeno’s arguments against plurality (which underlie the motion paradoxes, since motion needs many places and times) try to show that &lsquo;the many&rsquo; is contradictory: if there are many things, each must have parts; if those parts have size and are infinitely many, each thing is infinitely large;…

Leads to Democritus.

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