006 | Nothing Ever Changes (The mind-numbing philosophy of Parmenides)

The pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides believed that not only change, but also motion and even the many separate things we see cannot exist. That everything we perceive isn’t really there at all.

Transcript

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Welcome to the journey. What if I told you that nothing ever changes? And nothing has ever changed, and never will. You probably wouldn't believe me, and understandably so, because when looking around us, we can't deny all the change we're seeing. Moreover, in the last episode, we extensively explored the reality of change, as Heraclitus laid out in the Simile of the River, we never step into the same river twice. So if our senses show us change everywhere, all the time, how could anyone seriously claim that nothing ever changes? That nothing ever has and never will? The pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides believed that not only change, but also motion, and even the many separate things we see cannot exist, that everything we perceive isn't really there at all. Parmenides didn't arrive at these claims using the senses, which obviously tell a different story, but through something else. Reason. He argued that we cannot trust the senses for obtaining true knowledge of reality. Knowledge must be derived from reason. Using reason, Parmenides arrived at some very strange conclusions. Contrary to what Heraclitus believed, there can be no birth, no death, no movement, no becoming. There cannot be a river, nor can we step into it. What we see may feel real, but according to Parmenides, it cannot be. To most people, Parmenides' ideas sound absurd, but when you follow his reasoning, you might want to think twice about the world you've always assumed to be a certain way. He makes you doubt, he makes you wonder. In fact, his reasoning was groundbreaking at the time and profoundly influenced the course of Western philosophy. Parmenides is often considered one of the most important and certainly one of the most intriguing pre-Socratic philosophers. In this episode, let's explore the rabbit hole of Parmenides' philosophy and see how deep it goes. But here's a warning you may not come out the same person. This is Journey of Ideas. My name is Stefan, also known as Einzelgänger, and I'm taking you on a long trip. We're exploring the ideas of the many great thinkers of history, as well as the times and places in which they lived. Right now, we're at the very beginning of Western philosophy. This episode is available as an audio podcast on Spotify, SubStack, Apple, and several other platforms. To stay updated on all my content, subscribe to my newsletter on SubStack or journeyofideas.com. I hope you'll enjoy this episode. It's been a while since we visited the Ionian city of Ephesus, the birthplace of Heraclitus. Ancient Ionia was one of the cradles of Western philosophy, which is why we hang out there so often. Yet the philosopher we're going to explore on this trip was not from that region. Parmenides was from the Greek city of Elia in what is now southern Italy. From the deck, we see a coastal town with an Acropolis on higher ground and a lower city below. We see ships anchored near two small islands off the coast. The lands around Elia aren't very fertile, so the city has to survive by other means such as trade and assaulting of fish in special factories. Elia was said to be well governed, but beyond that, very little is known about the city, and even what is known may not be entirely reliable. As with Heraclitus, we know almost nothing about Parmenides's life. Diogenes Laertius, who wrote extensively about the pre-Socratics, claimed that Parmenides was a pupil of Xenophanes. He also mentioned that he was a wealthy man from a notable family. He was politically active and travelled to Athens in his fifties, where he conversed with none other than the great Socrates, who must have been still very young at the time. From this encounter, and knowing that Socrates was executed in his early 70s, Parmenides is thought to have been born around 515 BCE. He may also have been a Pythagorean, which makes sense, as Elia is said to have been home to Pythagoreans. He apparently even built a huge shrine for his teacher, Amenias, after he passed away. And this teacher may have been the one who inspired him to lead the peaceful life of a student. What this peaceful life really looked like, and what his daily routine was, or what exactly led to his revolutionary way of thinking, we don't know. But according to Diogenes Laertius, he composed only a single work. A poem, written in archaic Greek hexameters, in a style similar to Homer's Odyssey, a literary feat of heroic proportions, as David Gallop, author of a key academic work on Parmedides, calls it. Unfortunately, the poem has not survived in its entirety. Many fragments have been lost, but what's left is substantial enough to give us significant information about his crazy conclusions about reality and how he got there. But we must also accept the limitations that an incomplete work brings, which, quite sadly, is the reality of studying ancient philosophers. From what I've learned, I can say that Parmenides is widely considered insanely difficult to comprehend, yet also fascinating. His ideas are mind-numbing. His logic is complex, and following it can be quite a headache. I've spent the past few months trying to make sense of it. What struck me is how his ideas are so diametrically opposed to how we generally see the world, which is probably why people struggle to understand him. But I tried, went to Wonderland, and my world was never the same. The poem begins with a curious prologue, told from the poet's viewpoint, in which he departs from the ordinary world into an unknown realm. He didn't start this journey himself. He is taken without his consent by a group of maiden charioteers, known as the daughters of the sun, who came from the darkness to fetch Parmenides and take him to their world. Entering the gates where day and night meet, he leaves the realm of mortals and steps into a region that seems different and strange, almost beyond comprehension. A goddess welcomes him to her domain, reassuring him his arrival isn't an ill fate. He isn't dead or something. No, he has been summoned with a very specific purpose. Parmenides is about to learn something extraordinary. The truth. Because the world he has lived in his entire life is not what it seems. Everything his senses have ever shown him, no matter how real it felt, cannot be real. The goddess is about to reveal two paths to Parmenides, the way of truth and the way of seeming. The first is the unfiltered, uncompromised truth about existence. The second is what mortals usually accept as truth, but is misleading. The goddess cannot reveal the way of truth through the senses. She doesn't lift a curtain to show what the world really looks like. No, the way of truth is not revealed by perception, but through that one thing we humans possess that sets us apart from the rest of nature reason. The goddess is about to offer a path of thought, a strictly logical argument, carefully laid out in different steps, through which the truth becomes apparent. Come I shall tell you, and do you listen and convey the story, says the goddess, as she introduces two ways of thinking about reality. The first is that it is, and that it cannot not be. The second is that it is not, and that it must not be. These are the only two options she gives. It is either on or off, being or not being. There is no middle way. Something cannot both be and not be. The thing is, according to the goddess, one of these options is true and the other is false. The first way that it is leads to truth. The second way it is not, however, leads to nowhere. The goddess claims that is not is impossible. Something cannot not be. Moreover, we cannot even think about what is not. We cannot point it out, even if we tried. We can only think of what is. At this point you might object. I surely could think about things that are not. Let's start with ten million euros that are not in my bank account. Or how about the kids I don't have? And what about unicorns? What about fantasy worlds such as Middle Earth? I mean, these things are not, right? But I could still think about them. I could still picture them in my mind. But the goddess makes an essential remark, for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be. Thinking and being go together. They're coextensive. There can be no thinking without something that is. This doesn't mean that unicorns exist, or that Gandalf will be knocking on your door tonight, asking you to join the fellowship, or that if you think that there's ten million in your bank account, there suddenly is in some magical way. It means that whenever we think, there must be something we think about. There's content, there's an object of thought, regardless of whether or not it's fiction. Thinking never reaches what is not, but always concerns something that appears as being. A thought of a unicorn is not nothing. It's a thought of a unicorn, or at least that's how it appears to us. Nothing, however, cannot be thought of. Sure, we can think about nothing as a concept. We can talk about nothing, discuss what it could or should be like, but can we really imagine nothing? Try it, and you'll probably discover that thinking about or imagining nothing isn't possible. There's always something coming up, an image of emptiness, a large black space, maybe even an empty universe with some stars in the distance. And that's where the goddess is getting at. Nothing is inconceivable. We cannot know it, we cannot imagine it, we cannot point it out. As soon as we try, we're already treating it like something, and then we've already failed. It's a path that leads to nowhere. Thus, on what grounds can we assume that nothing exists? On what basis can we assume is not when it's obviously out of the question? So if we want to remain consistent with the idea that what is not cannot be, we cannot allow ourselves to think of anything that is not. Only what is. Because only what is can be. Neither from what is not shall I allow you to say or think, for it is not to be said or thought that it is not, as the goddess put it. Alright. But so what? What's the problem here? If nothing cannot exist, then everything else can, right? Isn't that exactly how we experience reality? Just a world full of things that well are So how could any of that not be real? How could, as Parmenides claims, things like birth, death, and movement not be if nothing cannot exist? Frankly, we have seen nothing yet. As to claim that what is not cannot be has severe consequences. Let's see how much deeper the rabbit hole goes. Nothing cannot exist. Big deal, right? I mean, if that were true, how does that really affect the world around us? How does it pose a problem to everything that quite obviously exists? According to the goddess speaking to Parmenides, if nothing cannot be, that is a big deal, and it does profoundly affect the validity of our sense perceptions. Moreover, she argues that when it comes to inquiring about reality, we cannot trust our senses. So how do we figure out what's real? The goddess claims there's only one answer reason. When we truly follow reason to its conclusion, we find that what our senses perceive cannot be real. Judge by reasoning the very contentious disproof that has been uttered by me, she says, referring to the deceptive world given to us by the senses. The world of the senses is pretty straightforward. You experience it in everyday life. You see day turn into night and night into day. In the morning you commute to work, you enter the office and get some coffee from the coffee machine. From the window you see cars passing by on the streets, and traffic lights turning from red to green. Everything is in motion and consists of many different forms. We might even go as far as to say that everything is always changing, as Heraclitus put it. I mean, it's very, very clear that we live in a world of plurality, diversity, becoming, and change. It doesn't matter which of our senses you pick, any of them registers it as such. But no, says the goddess, what you see is misleading. The change and multiplicity you perceive cannot logically exist. So you're telling me that eating breakfast, kissing my spouse goodbye, or simply breathing cannot exist? Who would come to such a silly conclusion? Parmenides. And to be honest, his reasoning is pretty sound. That's a shocking part of it. It was so groundbreaking at the time that the philosophers who came after him, including heavyweights Plato and Aristotle, had to grapple with it as they developed their own ideas about reality. Let me, as your humble, non expert, but reasonably informed guide, walk you through the strange world of Parmenides, where nothing is as it seems, because nothing cannot be, only what is, and what is is not at all what it seems to be. If that sentence made you dizzy, stuff is about to get worse. Now as we're standing on the deck of our ship, let's take a look in all directions. What do we see? A moving, ever changing body of water known as the sea. Let's take the sea as our object of investigation and see if Parmenides' logic leads to this wild conclusion that the sea, and not just this sea, but any sea, cannot exist. Now, first of all, let's consider the origins of the sea. I'm not a geologist, but from what I understand, the sea originates from within the Earth. Billions of years ago, the Earth was a piping hotball of magma with no water on its surface. But as it cooled, vast amounts of water vapor escaped from within, forming an atmosphere. As temperatures dropped further, millions of years of rain followed, gradually giving rise to the oceans and seas. So the sea we see before us is the result of a process that took billions of years. Now, here's the first major red flag from Parmenides' perspective, or rather the goddesses. Because if we accept this billion year process, we must also accept that there was a time when the sea did not exist. Before it was the sea, it was water vapor, before that, something else entirely. And here lies the problem. What is not cannot be. Either the sea is or it is not. It cannot come into being from something else, and certainly not from nothing. And there's another issue. The water vapor, the earth as a ball of magma we spoke of. Where are they now? In the past, you might say. So they are no longer here. But that too is not allowed. Because it implies that what once was is no longer, so is not. There are also problems on a more micro level. The sea itself is in constant flux. Even within a single day, the amount of change is remarkable. Waves rise and fall, currents shift, there's ebb and flow. These changes may seem small compared to the billions of years we just discussed. But according to Parmenides, even the smallest change is impossible. Change means something is added and something is taken away. And once that happens, it is no longer the same thing. It would mean that the sea, before it changed, is no longer. That the sea after the change once was not, and that the sea yet to come is not yet. All three, past, present and future, invoke what is not. And the moment you do, the goddess is not amused. But it's not just time and substance that's the problem here. It's space as well. A change like a wave can only occur if there is space to move into, and when it moves, it leaves a space behind. In both cases, there is an emptiness, an is not, which is not allowed. So the sea cannot exist because it implies becoming, perishing, change, an empty space. But what if the sea were a single monolithic, timeless, changeless thing? Something without a past or a future. Something that does not move but simply sits there, stretching between lands and continents. Would that be legit according to Parmenides and his goddess? No. Let's go deeper down the rabbit hole, the level where your brain may start to hurt a little. As you can easily observe, the sea has limits. It is here, around the ship, but not over there, where the land begins, which seems to apply that at some point the sea is not, and is not. You know where this leads to. But the problem goes deeper than boundaries and limits. It's that we treat the sea, and anything else for that matter, as a separate thing altogether. When we speak of the sea, we usually assign it some typical characteristics. The sea is wet, salty and emotion, for example. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as a large area of salty water, smaller than an ocean, that is partly or completely surrounded by land. But to define something is also to exclude. If the sea is large, salty, and surrounded by land, then it is not small, not fresh, and not surrounded by water. So by saying what the sea is, we also say what it is not, which means that we say that the sea is, but also in many aspects that it is not. We see the same problem in so-called dualities. Take wet and dry. If something is wet, like the sea, it is not dry. But if what is not cannot be, then such oppositions cannot exist either. So if becoming, change, perishing, empty space, and even distinction itself all depend on what is not, then not much of the world we experience through our senses can be real. And yes, that's a deeply unsettling, almost Suffocating realization. Because the idea of what is not, of non-being, is woven into the very fabric of our everyday experience. But if virtually everything our senses perceive cannot exist, what then does exist? What is reality? Hint. It's not a simulation. At least not according to the goddess, so it seems at least. Having eliminated every trace of non-being, only one possibility remains an eternal, fixed, indivisible, complete being. A being that simply is, and always has been. It never becomes something else. It does not change, it has no parts, no divisions, and it must be limitless too. Because if what is has boundaries, there must be what is not beyond them. So what would this reality look like? It's hard to imagine, isn't it? I don't think Parmenides even could, although he compared it to a perfect sphere. Not a literal one, because a sphere has boundaries, but more as a metaphor, the closest he could get to something uniform, without gaps or deficiencies. Whole, lacking nothing, and unchanging. But if you're like me, you may feel that, despite Parmenides' reasoning, something is off here. Because if reality is as the goddess describes, how can there be a goddess in the first place? How can she fetch Parmenides, take him to her domain, and share her knowledge with him? Wouldn't all of that be impossible? So doesn't the goddess in a way debunk herself? And was Parmenides aware of this? And if so, why did he make this whole argument in the first place? What is he up to? This is a problem scholars are still debating to this day. But the story isn't over yet. After the way of truth, the poem continues with the way of seeming, and this part may reveal more about Parmenides' intentions. As we have explored the correct way to learn about reality, the way of truth, we'll now look into the supposed wrong way to look at it, the way of seeming. Unfortunately, much of the text has been lost, leaving us with only a reconstruction based on what remains. The goddess has already made it clear that we mortals have it all wrong. The reality we perceive through our senses is deceptive, and any appeal to what is not leads us astray. Still, she seems to double down on a mortal way of seeing things. For some reason, she feels the need to clarify it in detail. Why? She tells Parmenides that she'll explain to him this entire faulty arrangement so that no mortal will outdo him. So it looks like she wants to protect Parmenides by arming him with a detailed understanding of the wrong way, so he can hold his ground when others try to prove him wrong or convince him otherwise. And let's face it, you're much stronger in a debate when you know exactly the faults of your opponent, right? In the way of seeming, the goddess presents the world as it appears to us. She describes opposites, such as the darkness of night and the lightness of day. These opposites, when combined, give rise to everything we experience. Something that may remind some of you of Heraclitus' worldview. The sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, and life itself exist within this framework of opposites. It is a world of plurality, change, becoming and perishing, and we distinguish things from one another, be it day and night, earth and sky, hard and soft, dry and wet, birth and death. And we name all these different appearances, including objects and beings, just to make sense of it all. Thus, according to men's opinions, did things come into being, and thus they are now. In time, they will grow up and pass away. To each of these things men have assigned a fixed name, says the goddess. Cool story, and it's probably close to the scientific view of that time. But it's false as far as the goddess is concerned. Now, scholars still wonder why she shared the way of seeming at all. Is it really meant to arm Parmenides against those who disagree with him? Or is there something else going on? Could it be that Parmenides as the author of the poem had some hidden intentions, revealed only to the more intelligent reader? As I'm no genius myself, I'm indebted to Professor Angie Hobbes, who outlines four interpretations about what Parmenides may have intended in her fascinating talk. We've already discussed two. The first one is that the goddess wanted to give Parmenides a compass to deal with his opponents trying to sway him. The second is that she doubles down on the wrong way to make sure her guest really gets it. That leaves a third and fourth interpretation. And here's where things get really, really interesting. As for the third interpretation, when exploring the way of truth and the way of seeming, we have learned that on the one hand, Parmenides presents a reality of permanent, unlimited oneness, and on the other hand, a reality of many forms, of change, of becoming, and perishing. The former is correct and the latter is misleading. But could it be that even though the way of truth is correct ontologically, the way of seeming also has its place within it? Could it be that there's this unchanging singularity within which different parts can nevertheless move, change, and transform without invoking what is not? If so, our sensory experience might not be entirely deceptive after all. Perhaps we can see it as a layer of reality we inhabit and experience, while behind it lies the eternal unchanging oneness that always is. But for something like this to function, some of our earlier reasoning needs to be revised, and the meaning of what is and what is not must be reconsidered. Let's turn to the fourth interpretation, one that's quite radical, as it pulls the rug out from under everything we've just built. Earlier, we considered the idea that the goddess might be contradicting herself. After all, the way of truth rules out almost everything we perceive. And yet, there is a goddess, and she uses language to talk to another being, Parmenides, who travels from one realm to another by chariot. It's a bit like saying I don't exist, even though the fact that you're here saying you don't exist proves that you do exist. And here's my own addition. Even reason, the very path the goddess claims leads to truth, relies on words, sentences, and arguments. Things that, according to her logic, cannot exist. So reason seems to reason itself out of existence. But is Permenides aware of the self-refutation going on here? And is the goddess aware? Because maybe he did it on purpose. Perhaps he wanted to show that the way of truth, taken to its extreme, leads to a dead end. It tells us little about the world. And if that's the case, the only thing we're left with is our senses. So does that mean the problem is solved and we have a happily ever after? Not really. Even though reason doesn't help us understand reality, the logic of what is and what is not still holds, and it conflicts with what our senses perceive. So both ways run into problems, and maybe that's what Parmenides wants to show us. We can inquire about reality in two ways, but there are problems with both. Good luck with that. And that means he leaves us with an open ending, only raising more questions. Like, what point did he want to make? That reality cannot be fully grasped, neither by reason nor our senses, and that trying is futile? So basically, that reality is simply unknowable? Or was he motivating us to look further? Unfortunately, we have no time machine that can bring us back to ancient Elia, so there's no way to visit him and ask. You can think what you want about Parmenides' ideas. Scholars consider him one of the most important figures of the Western philosophical tradition. David Gallup tells us that with this philosophical poem, Parmenides left a lasting legacy, not just for his followers, Zeno and Melissus, whom we'll talk about in the future, but on Greek philosophy as a whole and beyond. He should be viewed not only as the most original and important philosopher before Socrates, but as the first extant author deserving to be called a philosopher in a present-day sense of the word, wrote Gallup. Parmenides' way of thinking fundamentally changed the course of pre-Socratic philosophy set out by his predecessors, such as Heraclitus and Anaximander. Those after him had to deal with the challenge he posed, how to make sense of change, movement, and multiplicity without relying on what is not. This changing course is evident immediately in two pre-Socratic philosophers, known as the pluralists, who try to reconcile Parmenides' denial of change with the apparent reality of a changing world. I want to explore these philosophers in the future, but first I want to linger a little longer in the strange world of Parmenides. I didn't mention it yet, but Parmenides is said to be the founder of the Iliadic school of philosophy. Two significant pre-Socratic philosophers were part of this school and built upon Parmenides' ideas. Zeno of Elia and Melissus of Samos. The two came up with a series of arguments and paradoxes that defend the idea of the ungenerated, indivisible, changeless, motionless oneness. So we'll stay where we are in Elia for our next expedition. Even deeper into the rabbit hole. I hope to see you then. Thank you for listening.