{"_index":"sire","_id":"889","_score":null,"_source":{"id":889,"authors_free":[{"id":1309,"entry_id":889,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":215,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Kerferd, George B.","free_first_name":"George B.","free_last_name":"Kerferd","norm_person":{"id":215,"first_name":" George B.","last_name":"Kerferd","full_name":"Kerferd, George B.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1158138547","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1310,"entry_id":889,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1311,"entry_id":889,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":139,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Robinson, Howard","free_first_name":"Howard","free_last_name":"Robinson","norm_person":{"id":139,"first_name":"Robinson","last_name":"Howard ","full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/172347122","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Aristotle\u2019s Treatment of the Doctrine of Parmenides","main_title":{"title":"Aristotle\u2019s Treatment of the Doctrine of Parmenides"},"abstract":"In his De caelo (3.1, 298b 14\u201324 \u2014 28 A 25 DK), Aristotle makes a strange and puzzling statement about Parmenides and the Eleatics. But before we discuss this in detail, it will be best first to give a translation of the context as a whole, with the relevant statement italicized, and to consider the way in which he is there classifying earlier thinkers. The passage reads as follows:\r\n\r\n\"Perhaps the first question for consideration is whether generation is a fact or not. Earlier searchers after wisdom concerning reality differed both from the accounts which we are now offering and from one another. Some of them abolished generation and destruction completely. Nothing that is, they declare, is either generated or destroyed; it merely seems to us that it is so. Such were Melissus and Parmenides and their followers, and these men, although in other respects their doctrines are excellent, are not to be regarded as speaking from the point of view of natural science. For the existence of certain entities that are neither generated nor subject to any kind of change is a matter not for natural science but for a different and higher study. These men, however, since they supposed there was nothing else at all apart from the existence of things perceived and on the other hand were the first to contemplate some such (unchanging) entities as a prerequisite for any knowledge or understanding (gn\u00f4se\u00f4s \u00ea phron\u00ease\u00f4s) as a result transferred to sensible objects those accounts which come from the other (higher) source (t\u00f4n ekei then logous). Others again, as if from set purpose, came to hold the opposite opinion to that held by these men. For there are some who say that nothing in the world is ungenerated, but all things are subject to generation, and that when generated some things remain indestructible and others are again destroyed. This view was held above all by Hesiod and his followers, and thereafter by the first natural philosophers. These say that all other things are in process of being generated and flow, and nothing is stable. But there is one thing only which persists, from which all these other things are produced by natural transformations. This seems to be the meaning intended by Heraclitus of Ephesus and many others. But there are some who suppose that all body also is generated, combining it out of plane surfaces and separating it again into such planes.\"\r\n\r\nAristotle\u2019s classification here would seem at first sight to be threefold:\r\n\r\n Those who deny all generation and destruction as mere illusions.\r\n Those who say nothing is ungenerated but everything comes to be, although once generated, some things are exempt from destruction while others are again destroyed.\r\n Those who would generate all solids from geometrical shapes or planes.\r\n\r\nBut there is an obscurity about the second group, said to be led by Hesiod and his followers, with whom are to be associated \"the earliest natural philosophers.\" The reference to Hesiod must surely be to his doctrine of Chaos, which was the first to come into existence (Theogony 116) and from which, in due course, all other things arose. Grouped with him are the earliest natural philosophers (hoi pr\u00f4toi physiolog\u00easantes), which suggests to us at first reading the Ionians. But in this case, Aristotle would be saying, for example, that the water of Thales itself came into existence before other things were generated from it. This seems in conflict both with the usual view of the Ionians in antiquity and also with what seems to be their characterization in the following two sentences, which describe a doctrine according to which there is a single substance persisting through the various transmutations that produce phenomena.\r\n\r\nA resolution of this problem is propounded by Simplicius in his commentary on the passage. He takes the words hoi pr\u00f4toi physiolog\u00easantes to refer to those whom Aristotle elsewhere calls hoi pr\u00f4toi physiolog\u00easantes (Metaphysics 983b28), namely Orpheus and Musaeus. This opens the way to the view that the Ionians are first referred to in the sentence following next after hoi pr\u00f4toi physiolog\u00easantes, which begins with the words hoi de. The result is to divide Aristotle\u2019s second class into two, producing a total of four, not three, classifications. This was indeed what Simplicius intended, as can be seen in his statement tetrach\u00ea dieile tas peri genese\u00f4s doxas (In De caelo, 556.3). These will then be:\r\n\r\n No generation at all.\r\n All things are generated, and some of these things then persist permanently.\r\n Most things are generated but not the primary substances.\r\n All bodily things are generated from ungenerated geometrical entities.\r\n\r\nWhatever may be the correct analysis of what Aristotle is saying here, there can be no doubt that he places the Eleatics in category (1)\u2014no generation at all. But a major difficulty arises from his statement that for the Eleatics there is nothing else apart from things perceived and that they applied to things perceived the concepts appropriate to unchanging entities, which belong to a different field altogether.\r\n\r\nOn the whole, this statement seems to have provoked irritation rather than interest or respect, and it is commonly dismissed as mistaken. Harold Chemiss, writing in 1935, says that here:\r\n\r\n\"The Eleatic doctrine is rejected as unphysical. But the origin is differently explained. The Eleatics were the first to see that knowledge requires the existence of immutable substances; but, thinking that sensible objects alone existed, they applied to them the arguments concerning objects of thought. Aristotle derives this account by a literal interpretation of Plato, Parmenides 135b-c. But cf. Sophist 249b-d.\" [introduction p. 1-3]","btype":2,"date":"1991","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/8A6Irhi7CRu4EpE","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":215,"full_name":"Kerferd, George B.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":139,"full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":889,"section_of":354,"pages":"1-7","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":354,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Blumenthal\/Robinson1991","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1991","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1991","abstract":"This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution.[official abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/jxVlK6YghFkMcPK","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":354,"pubplace":"Oxford","publisher":"Clarendon Press","series":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Aristotle\u2019s Treatment of the Doctrine of Parmenides"]}