Earth and Stars in the Cosmology of Xenophanes

The doxography for Xenophanes of Colophon unambiguously attributes to him a theory that all the meteora, i.e. all \u27objects suspended above us\u27 or \u27objects seen in the sky\u27 are different types of clouds. My concern in this paper is with two sets of assumptions that are likely to have framed Xenophanes\u27 theory: a) assumptions concerning the size and shape of the eareth, and b) assumptions concerning the motions of the fixed stars

Mind\u27s Commitment to the Real: Parmenides B8.34ff

It is through an analysis of this passage that I can explain most clearly and directly a certain conception of the relation of mind to reality for which I also find evidence in other texts, in some of the characteristic aspects and themes of Parmenicles\u27 poem, and which I consider philosophically and historically important.

Nothing as Not-Being : Some Literary Contexts that Bear on Plato and on Parmenides

In the main Section of this paper I examine a certain characterizing use of meden/ouden and medeis/oudeis in pre-Platonic non-philosophical contexts. The passages discussed and analyzed offer cle.ar and suggestive illustrations of the assimilation of nothing or nobody to not-being. In the concluding Section I explore connections between that use and philosophical concepts,with particular reference to Plato\u27s doctrine of degrees of reality. The dialectic of being in classical Greek speculation focuses not on \u27What there is\u27 but on \u27what it is\u27 or \u27how it is\u27; not on existence but on physis, constitution, or form