From the Beginning to Plato

122 PYTHAGOREANS AND ELEATICS
contradiction, but this is not evident at the start; it has to be shown by argument.
Once that has been done, the way that says ‘necessarily, it is’ is the only
remaining possibility. Accordingly, it is accepted as true by elimination, and its
consequences examined.
What then is meant here by ‘it is’ and ‘it is not’? First, what is ‘it’? In the
Greek, the verb esti stands alone, as Greek verbs can, without even a pronoun to
function as the grammatical subject. But unless Parmenides is making some
radical and improbable departure from ordinary practice, an intended subject of
discourse, of which ‘is’ and ‘is not’ are here said, must have been meant to be
readily supplied from the context. Unfortunately for us, the original context is
now partly missing. Between the promise of the goddess and the statement of the
two ways, some now lost stretch of text, probably not long, once stood. None the
less, what remains is sufficient for near-certainty as to the intended subject.
The ways are ‘ways of enquiry’. An enquiry, then, is presupposed as being
already afoot. What that enquiry is concerned with, is likely to be what the first
part of the goddess’s promise is concerned with: reality. It is true that the word
alētheiē nowhere appears subsequently in the subject place attached to the verb
esti. In the exploration of the true way that says ‘it is’, the subject of ‘is’ appears
sometimes, cloaked in the unspecific designation (to) eon, ‘that which is’. This
phrase, though, can be taken without artificiality as another, and metrically more
convenient, way of referring to alētheiē. (So taken, it involves a metaphysical
pun: see below on the meanings of the verb einai.)
This conclusion, that alētheiē, in the sense of ‘reality’, is the intended subject,
is central to the interpretation of Parmenides to be presented here. 9 It has been
reached by a simple yet powerful argument. It has yet to be subjected, though, to
a series of severe tests. A reconstruction of Parmenides deserves acceptance only
if it makes convincing sense of the whole of the surviving evidence.
The first test arises immediately. Can one make sense of an initial choice
between ‘necessarily, reality is’ and ‘necessarily, reality is not’? At this point, we
must also ask about the possible meanings of the verb einai (‘be’).
In general, it seems to make sense, whatever x may be, if one is making an
enquiry into x, to start by asking ‘is there any such thing as x or not?’ The
normal usage of the verb einai easily covers such a sense of ‘is’. In launching an
enquiry into alētheiē, understood in extension from Homeric usage in a ‘summed
sense’, as what would be jointly indicated by all true statements, Parmenides is in
effect asking, sceptically, ‘why do we have to suppose that there is any such
thing in the first place?’
Since this entirely normal and familiar use of einai fits the context so well,
there is no need at the outset to look for more exotic possibilities. 10 Later, though,
when the subject of discourse is referred to as ‘that which is’ (to eon), a different
use of the verb bears the logical weight. Another common use of einai is that in
which it means (said of possible states of affairs) ‘obtain, be the case’. If alētheiē
is thought of as a ‘summed state of affairs’, then to say that there actually exists
such a thing is just the same as to say that it is the case.