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BMCRBryn Mawr Classical ReviewBMCR 1999.06.21The Legacy of ParmenidesCurd, Patricia, 1949-, The legacy of Parmenides : Eleatic monism and later presocratic thought. Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1998. x, 280 pages ; 24 cm. ISBN 9780691011820 $45.00.Review byMonte Johnson, Philosophy, University of Toronto. mojohnso@chass.utoronto.caIf you are primarily interested in the Presocratics as analytical cosmologists, logicians, epistemologists, andscientific methodologists, then this book will be of great interest to you. If you are primarily interested in thePresocratics as enigmatic poets, prophets, healers, and law-givers, then it won’t.As should be obvious from the title, The Legacy of Parmenides is a very ambitious book. Curd undertakes athorough exposition of Parmenidean philosophy, from his influences to his immediate successors, while dealingwith most of the relevant post-war secondary literature (especially Owen, Barnes, Coxon, Taran, Kahn,Mourelatos, and Robinson). The book reads somewhat like a commentary, quoting, translating, and commentingon the Greek text, according to the traditional ordering of the fragments. (The secondary sources are for themost part treated in the very extensive footnotes). In addition to the exegesis of Parmenides’ poem, Curdprovides interpretations (as well as relevant texts and translations) of the Ionians, the Pluralists, Zeno, theAtomists, Melissus, Philolaus of Croton, and Diogenes of Apollonia. Specialists with an interest in any of thesefigures and movements will need to deal with Curd’s positions and will benefit from her survey of thecontemporary literature. On the other hand, the book is probably too technical (and expensive) to servestudents looking for an overview of the philosophical activity of Socrates’ predecessors.Throughout the book, Curd seeks to situate Parmenides firmly in the debates about cosmology that occurred inGreece from the sixth through the fourth centuries BC (p. 4, 27, 64, 95, 127-8, 217, 241). According to Curd, thestandard interpretation of Parmenides portrays him as an isolated figure, largely unprecedented and more orless ignored by his successors, at least until Plato’s ‘later’ dialogues (p. 3, 10-11, 27). This interpretation, whetheror not it is standard, is an extreme one and Curd’s is at the opposite end. She portrays the Pre-Socraticphilosophers as a tight-knit bunch with ample access to each other’s positions, engaged in a continuousdialectic, the results of which were invariably cumulative and progressive. There is something productive aboutthis methodological assumption: the texts mutually illuminate one another when their arguments are cast asentries into a huge metaphysical debate spanning multiple centuries and continents. But historical concernsthreaten to undermine such an endeavor, and so Curd asks the reader to accept her chronological assumptionsin exchange for the results of her interpretations (p. 15-18, 129, 19). The results are indeed impressive, and I willtry to summarize some of the more important of these after stating my main complaint with the book.Curd’s outlook assumes that cosmologists are Parmenides’ only opponents and audience. His writing isexclusively ‘philosophical’ in the sense that it addresses only cosmological and scientific concerns, and scientistsand cosmologists are the only people for whom he is writing. Is it not possible that Parmenides was alsoconcerned to address other poets, politicians, sophists, doctors, laymen, and priests, as well? Of courseParmenides and his fellow ‘Presocratics’ were philosophers, but they were not part of an organized or exclusivediscipline. What is fascinating to many of us about the Presocratic period is the total lack of consensus on whatconstituted philosophy, its ends, means, limits, possibilities, relation to other cultural spheres, etc. A centralquestion for Presocratic studies in general, and Parmenidean studies in particular, is: what were they doingwhen they do what we now call ‘philosophy’? In other words, what is philosophy? Curd’s approach seems to meto preclude any discussion of this issue. For she comes to the table with a preconception of what philosophy is,and uses that preconception to determine what is important in Parmenides and his predecessors andsuccessors.The most obvious influence on Parmenides is epic poetry. Parmenides wrote his poem in the style of Homer andHesiod and would have expected his audience to have been educated primarily by means of their poems. If hewas writing exclusively in response to, and for, other cosmologists, then why did he not write in their prosestyle? Xenophanes, who is often regarded as an influence on Parmenides, was a traveling bard and a performerof epic poetry as well as his own cosmological verses. There is strong reason to think that the epic poets,especially Hesiod, were Parmenides’ target, and that people versed as much in epic poetry as in Ionian sciencewere Parmenides’ intended audience. Heraclitus, whom Curd claims Parmenides probably read, explicitlyinveighed against the poets (fragments 40, 104, & 106). If Parmenides was in fact making a radical break withthe poetic tradition in favor of the newly developing philosophical one, then it seems likely that his argumentswould have been directed at the former at least as much as the latter. Curd abruptly dismisses this suggestion,which was originally Fraenkel’s, in a footnote on page 117. But this is certainly too hasty. Consider the followinglines of Hesiod:“the ready-voiced daughters of Great Zeus breathed into me a divine voice to celebrate things that shallbe ( τὰ ἐσσόμενα) and things that were aforetime ( τὰ ἐόντα)” (29, 31-32).“let us begin with the Muses telling of things that are ( τὰ ἐόντα) and that shall be ( τὰ ἐσσόμενα) andthat were aforetime ( πρὸ ἐόντα)” (36, 38).Compare Parmenides:“what-is ( ἐόν) is ungenerated and unperishable. Nor was it once ( ἤν), nor will it be ( ἔσται), since it isnow ( νῦν ἔστιν), all together” (fragment 8.3-5).The Hesiodic lines come in the proem of Theogony, which contains at least three distinct preludes (beginning atlines 1, 36, and 104). By comparison, the 32 lines of proem in Parmenides’ poem comprise at least a fifth of theextant lines. The proem(s) in the Theogony serve to establish the purpose of the poem and the poet’s sense of hisown authority and relationship to the truth. For Parmenides, concerned as he is with epistemological issues, thisis a fortiori so. But although Curd’s exegesis of the Parmenidean poem itself spans more than 100 pages, fewerthan 6 are devoted to the proem (except for a single footnote on p. 103). Curd admits “pessimism concerning theallegorical significance of the kouros‘s journey” (p. 20), but is confident that the rest of the poem can beinterpreted nonetheless because, “unlike other surviving pre-Parmenidean appeals to the Muses orrepresentations of divine inspiration, Parmenides’ inspired poem is a work of philosophy” (p. 20). Whatphilosophy is, at this point, is made explicit neither by Parmenides nor by Curd.There is something wrong with using one’s own conception of philosophy as a justification for eliminating asubstantial part of another philosopher’s text. Other commentators have advanced much more thoughtfulinterpretations of the proem, even in far less extensive studies. This is because the proem itself, and not just the‘rest of the poem’, is philosophical. Sextus Empiricus saw it that way; he offered a detailed allegoricalinterpretation of the poem as the best encapsulation of Parmenides’ entire philosophy ( M. VII.111ff.). Morerecently, commentators have used the evidence of the proem in arguments against certain interpretations ofParmenidean metaphysical or epistemological doctrines. A good example at hand is R. Waterfield’s review of G.Vlastos (BMCR 95.06.17); Waterfield refers to a number of studies of the proem that conclude that the kouros’sjourney is from light into darkness, in order to show that Parmenides could not have simply associated Nightwith ignorance. Another example is P. Kingsley’s recent book on Parmenides, which largely focuses on theproem ( In the Dark Places of Wisdom, Inverness, CA, 1999). So, despite her otherwise comprehensive survey ofthe contemporary literature, Curd all but ignores this important part of the debate about Parmenides. The resultis that we are left wondering whether or not Curd could possibly be right about Parmenides’ objectives, targets,and audience.But, if we take science and cosmology to be Parmenides’ exclusive concern, then Curd offers a very compellingreading of the rest of Parmenides’ poem (fragment 2 and following). Instead of rejecting the inquiry into nature,as he has often been thought to do, Parmenides seeks to “make it legitimate” (p. 27); thus his concern is “asmuch methodological as metaphysical” (p. 35). A legitimate cosmology is one that proposes “theoretically basicentities” or “natures” (p. 81, 97) which meet certain metaphysical and epistemological criteria (p. 35, 62, 67).These criteria are outlined in the aletheia as a series of tests. Cosmologies whose basic entities do not pass thetests are deceptive, examples include those of Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, and the one proposed by thegoddess herself in the doxa. Examples of cosmologies that might pass the tests are those of the pluralists(Anaximines, Empedocles, the Atomists, and Plato’s theory of forms as presented in the early and middledialogues). It might seem shocking that the material monists fail to pass Parmenides’ test, while those of thepluralists do. This is where Curd’s interpretation is most original and radical. She holds that Parmenides’ brandof monism is neither material (there is only one underlying matter) nor numerical (exactly one thing exists), butpredicational (each thing is only one thing). Thus pluralism is, in theory, compatible with Parmenides’ brand of(predicational) monism, because “it is possible for there to be a numerical plurality of entities each of which ispredicationally one” (p. 5).In fragment 2, Parmenides observes that there is a fundamental krisis between is ( ἔστι) and is-not ( οὐκ ἔστιand argues these designate two ‘routes’ that can be followed. The former is legitimate, the latter is not.According to Curd, there is no third or intermediate route; any attempt to think what is-not puts one on thenegative route. The two questions that have most puzzled commentators are: (1) What is the subject of the ἔστι(2) What is the sense of the ἔστι ? The standard interpretation holds that the subject is ‘whatever can be spokenor thought’, and the sense is existential; thus ‘whatever can be thought or spoken of exists’.Curd criticizes this solution, and offers her own interpretation. She suggests that the subject of the ἔστι is “whatit is to be the genuine nature of something” (p. 4). The sense of the ἔστι is predicational. Whatever a cosmologistproposes as a basic entity can be inserted as the subject of the ἔστι. The point is then to determine if the subjectmeets the criteria required by monistic implications of the predicational ἔστι. If not, then the cosmology ismetaphysically and epistemologically unsound. The criteria stem from the nature of what is. What is is neithermutable (generable, perishable, or divisible) nor incomplete. A basic entity is predicationally monistic, and thuscosmologically legitimate, only when it is immutable and complete. Thales’ basic entity, water, fails, because it isgenerated and destroyed (p. 70-71) and, more fundamentally, because it changes from water into not water(because, on Thales’ account, the fundamental entity changes from water into some phenomenal thing, p. 74).Anaximander’s apeiron gives rise to something that is both hot and cold, and so fails the test by changing intoboth what is (hot) and what is not (hot). All dualistic cosmologies fail the test, because they assume that afundamental entity can change into opposite things. The most explicit example of this is in Heraclitus’ doctrineof the unity of opposites. (I leave aside the question of whether we should actually interpret Heraclitus ashaving advanced such a doctrine. Some have argued that he did not, and that he is actually very close toParmenides on this very issue. But Curd presents a plausible, and in fact standard, interpretation of Heraclitus,one that serves as a perfect foil for her Parmenides.) Finally, the cosmology presented by Parmenides himself inthe doxa is the epitome of a deceptive dualism. The basic entities or principles of the doxa, light and night, aredualistic opposites (as curd argues, “enantiomorphic” opposites). Thus the doxa serves as a pedagogical tool: byapplying the criteria of the aletheia, one can determine the reason why this sort of explanation of the world, asit is presented to the senses, is false.The rest of Curd’s book considers the influence Parmenides’ poem had on his philosophical successors. Thefocus here is on the pluralists. In Anaxagoras, the chremata show themselves to be entities that meetParmenides’ criteria: they are neither generated nor destroyed, they are complete and unified, and they have astable and immutable nature (p. 154). Empedocles’ roots are Parmenidean entities, each with its ownunchanging nature, not subject to generation or destruction, even if the account of phenomenal change in termsof mixture and separation (and the dualism of love and strife) follows Parmenides’ model in the doxa. Now bothAnaxagoras and Empedocles argue for a plurality of basic entities, but do not make explicit arguments for apluralistic cosmology as such. For Curd, this counts as evidence for her interpretation of Parmenides as apredicational but not numerical monist. If Parmenides had been a numerical monist, then these laterphilosophers would have had to justify their pluralism. But their silence on this issue, and their adherence topredicational monism with respect to the basic entities, is for Curd positive evidence that Parmenides did notmean to argue that ‘exactly one thing exists’.We might pause to consider if this is sound methodology: does lack of a response in a subsequent thinker implythat the thinker accepts a predecessor’s argument? This is a particularly questionable inference when thesubsequent thinker’s work survives only in fragments. At any rate, Curd argues that, for Parmenides’ successorsat least, it does. See pages 8, 128, 171, 242.Some of the most interesting results turn up in Curd’s treatment of Zeno and the Atomists. Zeno’s paradox aboutdivisibility applies to any corporeal entity. It threatens the pluralistic accounts not because they posit anumerical plurality of entities, but because they posit corporeal entities as really existing. Curd has alreadyargued that a plurality of corporeal entities is consistent with Parmenides’ arguments so long as they arepredicational monads. Curd argues that Zeno’s arguments could actually be used against Parmenides’ accountinsofar as it allows for the real existence of corporeal entities (p. 177). So, on Curd’s account, the pluralists (whoare traditionally assumed to be in direct opposition to Eleaticism) seem to advance fundamentally Parmenideanpositions, while Zeno (traditionally taken to be the ‘faithful servant of Parmenides’ views’ — p. 171-2) might be acritic of the whole lot! Consequently, we need to revise our concept of Eleaticism to make room for criticaldevelopments within the school (p. 179). Curd’s account of the Atomists is more or less standard, since it servesher story well that a major motivation for Atomism was evidently to posit entities that avoid Zeno’s divisibiltyparadoxes and meet Parmenidean criteria for what-is. With respect to the void she argues that the Atomistsendeavored to show that it is real and exists, despite having no character of its own, and so tried to revise theParmenidean criteria for what-is (p. 197ff.).Melissus is a more radical monist than Parmenides, Curd argues, because he takes both numerical andpredicational monism to be a consequence of the rejection of generation and destruction (p. 209-11). Thus thetraditional interpretation of Parmenides applies rather to Melissus, and a comparison of the differencesbetween the two is further evidence that Parmenides himself was not committed to numerical monism. Curdnext deals with Philolaus of Croton and Diogenes of Apollonia. Here again Curd’s intention is to demonstratetheir concern to abide by the Parmenidean criteria for what is.Finally, Curd argues that Plato was “the last presocratic” (p. 228ff.) insofar as the theory of forms as presented inthe early and middle period dialogues conforms to Parmenidean criteria. This is most evident in the account ofthe form of beauty in the Symposium (210e6-211b5, Curd, p. 229). In a provocative, but severely underdevelopedargument, Curd claims that Plato’s criticisms of Parmenides in later dialogues, such as Sophist and Parmenidesmistakenly assume that Parmenides’ monism is numerical, and that this assumption had a pernicious influenceon all subsequent Parmenidean interpretation (p. 240). This argument is asserted but not developed, and Curdunfortunately does not deal with Plato’s arguments from the later dialogues in any detail. Although it isreasonable for the author to circumscribe her own area of concentration, the book seems incomplete withoutsome reference to Timaeus. The speech of Timaeus is effectively a Peri Physeos, complete with an invocation ofthe relevant gods, methodological prologue, theory of elements, cosmology, astronomy, psychology, humanphysiology, and embryology. All of these are topics with which Parmenides dealt in the second (presumablylonger) philosophical poem.This summary is intended to give readers of this journal a glimpse of the daring interpretations and far-reaching implications of Curd’s work. The reviewer only wishes that Curd would have also advanced aninterpretation of the poetic, religious, medical, and rhetorical aspects of Parmenides’ ‘philosophical poem’, forthese too constitute no small part of Parmenides’ legacy.

Review of P. Curd, The Legacy of Parmenides

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The Legacy of Parmenides

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