Is there any point in reading Heraclitus and Parmenides?I have a book with fragments and testimonies of Pre-Socratics but its all so sparse and obscure that surely people are just imposing their own frameworks on what little fragments exist.
>>24885241There's over a hundred fragments of Heraclitus, including, apparently, the opening to his book. Parmenides' fragments are substantial, possibly making up the full introduction, almost all of the Way of Truth, and large fragments of the Way of Opinion. Only the latter section has obvious gaps. No one's really sure how long Heraclitus' book was, but ancient testimonies about it seem to bear out that it had an enigmatic character to it, and it doesn't seem to have been written as a straightforward treatise, so the fragments, when read altogether, might reflect pretty well the character of his book.
>>24885287To add, you can also check out the following lecture transcripts that go over both authors and make clear both what sense can be drawn from them, what is wholly speculative, and how and why they were received the way they were in the tradition.https://www.academia.edu/129463895/Seth_Benardete_Heraclitus_Seminar_1998https://www.academia.edu/129463935/Seth_Benardete_Parmenides_Seminar_2000
>>24885241Read GWF Hegel’s analysis of the presocratics to truly get it if it helps. Parmenides’ big takeaway is that everything is this thought thinking itself into existence and Heraclitus is sort of like a proto-Big Banger - his idea is everything started as this undivided one but then motion and change came along and one day everything shall return to one. They were the first true metaphysicians to question not only how time and movement work but what their place is in existence.
>>24885287>but ancient testimonies about it seem to bear out that it had an enigmatic character to it, and it doesn't seem to have been written as a straightforward treatise,“I loved the parts in Heraclitus I understood and agree with. I also loved the stuff that I didn’t understand.” - Socrates
>>24885294Polybus’ treatise the Nature of Man is an ancient text also worth visiting as secondary resource on the Eleatics. Polybus argues in the opening paragraphs that so long as everything is constituted as an indivisible whole that the makeup of the whole doesn’t matter since everhthing is one uniform material anyways, thus both Eleaticism and Atheism are the same because they claim everything to be of one material. Really his part was trying to take aim at Thales and Zeno and alll these men who took Monism in their own direction calling everything Fire and Water. You can read Nature of Man by Polybus here-https://archive.org/details/hippocrates04hippuoft/hippocrates04hippuoft/page/4/mode/1up
The Nature of Man is interesting to me as criticism of the Ionian school of philosophy (essentially calling people like Thales and even Heraclitus who called everything fire - to be the same as Eleatics). I also like it for the implication that atheists, Ionians and Eleatics may as well be all the same in their taking everything as a uniform material.>>|. He who is accustomed to hear speakers discuss the nature of man beyond its relations to medicine will not find the present account of any interest. For I do not say at all that a man is air, or fire, or water, or earth, or anything else that is not an obvious constituent of a man; such accounts I leave to those that care to give them. Those, however, who give them have not in my opinion correct knowledge. For while adopting the same idea they do not give the same account. Though they add the same appendix to their idea—saying that “what is” is a unity, and that this is both unity and the all—yet they are not agreed as to its name. One of them asserts that this one and the all is air, another calls it fire, another, water, and another, earth; while each appends to his own acconnt evidence and proofs that amount to nothing. The fact that, while adopting the same idea, they do not give the same account, shows that their knowledge
>>too is at fault. The best way to realise this is to be present at their debates. Given the same debaters and the same audience, the same man never wins in the discussion three times in succes- sion, but now one is victor, now another, now he who happens to have the most glib tongue in the face of the crowd. Yet it is right that a man who claims correct knowledge about the facts should maintain his own argument victorious always, if his knowledge be knowledge of reality and if he set it forth correctly. But in my opinion such men by their lack of understanding overthrow themselves in the words of their very discussions, and establish the theory of Melissus“Overthrow themselves and establish theory of Melissus”See? He is glibly calling all Monists Eleatics. Heraclitus isn’t different at all from Parmenides except in their ideas of the mechanics of how motion and time work which are but trifles. This text of Polybus is also interesting to me as it is secondary commentary on presocratics from a man of that era (Polybus was son in law to Hippocrates iirc so roughly 400 BC).
Heraclitus is beautiful.
>>24887698True. Also bump
