The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic Monism and Later Presocratic Thought
Patricia Curd | 2004-09-15 00:00:00 | Parmenides Publishing | 309 | Greece
The Legacy of Parmenides examines Parmenides' arguments, considering his connection to earlier Greek thought and how his account of what-is could have served as a model for later philosophers. Curd also explores the theories of his successors, including the Pluralists (Anaxagoras and Empedocles), the Atomists (Leucippus and Democritus), the later Eleatics (Zeno and Melissus), and the later Presocratics (Philolaus of Croton and Diogenes of Apollonia). She concludes with a discussion of the importance of Parmenides' work to Plato's Theory of Forms. The Legacy of Parmenides challenges traditional views of early Greek philosophy and provides new insights into the work of Parmenides.
"The Legacy of Parmenides represents a milestone . . . of Parmenides' interpretation. It is full of ideas and tells a coherent story about Parmenides and early Greek thought." --Alexander Nehamas, Princeton University
"Professor Curd offers a genuinely original and possibly correct interpretation of the core thesis of the poem of Parmenides in a field so well worked over that saying something both new and true is profoundly difficult, this is a notable achievement." --Thomas M. Robinson, University of Toronto
"This will be a substantial book in the story of early Greek philosophy, and future writers on the tradition from Thales through Plato will not be able to ignore it without missing an important interpretive alternative. It will be of value to students of Presocratic philosophy or the Greek tradition, as well as to students of the scientific revolution, cosmology, the origins of logic, or comparative mysticism." --Scott W. Austin, Texas A&M University
PATRICIA CURD is professor at Purdue University where she works primarily in Ancient Philosophy. She is a co-editor of Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy, and is the editor of A Presocratics Reader.
Reviews
(I mean, among those that write seriously on Parmenides).
To be honest, I'm not sure. So:
STRONG POINTS: (1) The coverage of the book is extensive; it includes not only Parmenides but Anaxagoras, Empedocles, the Atomists (Leucippus and Democritus), Zeno, Melissus and some Plato. (2) Curd is modest and forthright: when she's not sure about some interpretation (even her own) she states the fact clearly. (3) She is thorough: the book is one of the most (or THE most) extensively footnoted I have ever read, and the notes are mostly not mere citations, but interesting in their own right.
WEAK POINTS: there's really only one, and it's that, for my taste, Curd's style is almost schoolgirlish, her impressive credentials notwithstanding. One would say she's writing her Ph. D. thesis. Also, and that's the other side of her thoroughness, she tends to be too interested (in fact as far as possible) in the literal side of things: what X really said. But that's the least interesting part of philosophy -or of literature for that matter-: it's a well-known fact that readers put much, much more into any text than what the author originally did/meant (assuming THAT was clear to him to start with). Thus, if Zeno's Stadium argument is based on the fact that he didn't understand relative motion, as Aristotle supposed, well, that's it; no need to read or cite Zeno today. But if instead Zeno wanted to show that the hypothesis of time being discrete leads to a logical contradiction, and that this, coupled with his arrow paradox, shows to him that a rational explanation of motion is impossible [a thing by the way Curd does't understand when she says (in Note 118 to page 172) that "The obvious possibility of motion (as reported by the senses) provides evidence that Zeno's arguments are unsound"], then THIS possibility is of the outmost interest (at least to me), and is the reason of the continuing interest in Zeno as a symbol, whether he meant it exactly or not. Likewise for what Parmenides might have meant by his apparent monism (as Curd carefully explores), and so on.
My doxa? If you're interested, but not terribly, in the Presocratics, buy this book. It's not overly difficult even for a layman (the Greek is invariably rendered into English, and I would qualify it as almost didactic), and it's thorough. If you want to dig, then supplement it with other, deeper scholars (Mourelatos, Vlastos, Cordero, Guthrie if you want a more philosophical and less philological approach, etc.). In any case it's not a bad addition to your shelves. Be aware, however, that the footnote density is such that you'll have to read it twice: once straight through, taking in only the text; a second time, once you have grasped what Curd has to say, again, but reading also the notes, which it would be a pity to miss, but which break the argument too much in a first perusal.
Reviews
This book doesn't rate a one. For contrast, do check out the highly positive review on Bryn Mawr's site
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2005/2005-06-05.html
I can't really add anything better to their review, but I'll identify a few points that grabbed my attention. Of especial interest is Chapter five dealing with Leucippus and Democritus - the framework of atomism as a response to, yet working within the Eleatic tradition. Books covering Democritean atomism are thin on the ground and this chapter is a welcome treat.
There is also a good deal of discussion of Eleatic influence on Plato, the author going so far as to identify him as the last of the Presocratics. This is a very well researched book, covering a broad sweep of study in a remarkably thorough and systematic way. Highly recommended reading.
Reviews
The biggest virtue of this book is that the author sees a major problem with the standard interpretation of Parmenides and his influence. Its biggest defect is that she ignores all the OTHER major problems with that interpretation.
The standard interpretation says that Parmenides was brilliant, he believed that only one thing existed, he had an enormous influence on his successors, and his philosophy received its first genuine refutation in Plato's Sophist. The problem that Professor Curd finds is that none of his successors ever produced any arguments against the second claim. They simply assumed that there was more than one thing, even though they seemed to accept other things that Parmenides had argued for. She then concludes that Parmenides did NOT believe that only one thing existed; instead, he believed that whatever exists can have only one nature. Yet, is it really likely that this is all that Parmenides believed? The author mentions the passage at Parmenides 128c-d where Zeno talked about how Parmenides had been ridiculed by others, but seems unconcerned by it, yet is it really likely that believing that everything has one nature would have elicited ridicule? Moreover, she seems unaware of the Commentary by Proclus, where he tells what these people said: "if being is one, then Parmenides and Zeno do not both exist at the same time" (619). Naturally, we don't know if Proclus was right about this, but Prof. Curd seems totally unaware of it. The reasonable conclusion is that Parmenides believed that only one thing existed. By going against this, Prof. Curd has taken us two steps backwards, even though she has taken us a step forward by pointing out a major flaw in the standard interpretation.
The big question for those who accept either the standard interpretation or Prof. Curd's revision of it is: Did Parmenides have an enormous influence on his successors? To see that he did not, it is sufficient to mention just a single name: Cratylus. Cratylus was a Heraclitean and paid no attention whatsoever to the strictures developed by Parmenides. People who accept the standard interpretation almost never say anything about Cratylus, for obvious reasons. Prof. Curd herself mentions him just once, in a footnote. But not talking about Cratylus will hardly make him go away.
In addition, here are just a few of the facts about the standard interpretation that I find troubling: Protagoras is said to have written a book refuting Parmenides, Plato hardly mentioned Parmenides in his early and middle periods, Aristotle did not record that Plato was influenced by Parmenides, Plato seems to have a refutation of Parmenides at Euthydemus 286a-d (which is long before the refutation in the Sophist), and finally, the movement begun by Parmenides DIED with Melissus. Why? Why would a viable and powerful philosophical movement just die?
I invite Prof. Curd or anyone else to give a convincing explanation of these points.
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