From the Beginning to Plato

FROM THE BEGINNING TO PLATO 125
We must, then, disentangle here the result (7), that there is no false thinking or
saying, from the strong modal principle (8), that there are no unrealized
possibilities. They are, of course, akin; in both (7) and (8), there is a refusal to
have any philosophical truck whatever with any non-existent state of affairs. It is
principle (8) that also supplies what is obviously needed: an explanation of
Parmenides’ hitherto unjustified ruling-out of the ways ‘it is but might not be’
and ‘it is not but might be’.
Both principles, (7) and (8), are important for the rest of the poem as well. 13 In
the deduction of consequences from ‘it is’, principle (8) will have a central role.
Moreover, error, by principle (7), doesn’t consist in any ‘saying’ or ‘thinking’ but
in the constructing of fictions of some sort, apparent statements. The effect of
(7) is to force a new analysis of apparent falsehood, as will be seen later.
These two partial reconstructions may now be put together to make an overall
reconstruction of the rejection of ‘it is not’. The overall effect of the rejection of
the way ‘it is not’ is to establish that since there must be true thinking and
saying, there must be some objective reality. The first piece of text ((A) above) is
a sketch of this overall argument, using premisses (1) (2) (3). In reply to this
argument, a sceptic might question premiss (3): granted that thinking and saying
occur, why should it be that some thinking and saying must be true? 14 So
Parmenides engages with this objection in the further argument which terminates
in the second piece of text ((B) above). This argues that (7) there is no such thing
as false thinking and saying, and (8) there are no unrealized possibilities either.
On this reading, if Parmenides’ starting-point is like that of Descartes, and his
first task is to show that knowledge is possible, his next problem, having shown
that, is of a Kantian kind: given that knowledge and correct thought must be
possible, what if anything follows about the nature of things? With the premisses
(1), (2) and (3), he is able to show for a start that there must be such a thing as
reality. There must be something for the knowledge to be about, and of, which by
being so guarantees it. 15
The ‘Way of Mortals’
After rejecting the way that says ‘it is not’, the goddess mentions, as
unacceptable, yet another way, not previously mentioned:
Then again [I shut you out] from this [way], which ignorant mortals wander
along [or. construct], two-headed (for it is helplessness that steers the
wandering mind in their breasts); they drift along, deaf and blind, in a
daze, confused tribes: they accept as their convention that to be and not to
be is the same and not the same [or: that the same thing and not the same
thing both is and is not]; the path of all of them is back-turning.
(DK 28 B 6.4–9)
For surely it will never be forced that things that are not should be…