Parmenides

Parmenides was native of Elea, in southern Italy. His date is uncertain but it is said that young Socrates met him when Parmenides was 65 years of age. This makes his birth around 515 BCE. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy.The southern Italian & Sicilian philosophy was more related to mysticism unlike the Ionian philosophy which was scientific and skeptical in nature. Mathematics, under the influence of Pythagoras, flourished in Magna Gracie in southern Italy and was entangled with mysticism and was not scientific as it is today.

Parmenides was influenced by Pythagoras but the extent to this influence is conjectural. Parmenides is historically important as he is considered to be inventor of Logic but what he really invented was metaphysics based on Logic.

His doctrine is divided into two parts “the way of truth” and the “the way of opinion”. The Way of Truth discusses that which is real, which contrasts in some way with the argument of the Way of Opinion, which discusses that which is illusory. In his poem ‘In Nature’ he illustrates his doctrine .He considered the senses deceptive, and condemned the multitude of sensible things as mere illusion. The only true being is “the One” which is infinite and indivisible. It is not, as in Heraclitus, a union of opposites, since there are no opposites. He apparently thought for instance, “Cold” means only “not Hot”, and “Dark” means only “not light”. “The One” of Parmenides is different from “The God” we conceive because Parmenides considered the one as a material and extended, for he speaks of it as a sphere present everywhere, encompassing everything hence indivisible and indestructible. Heraclitus maintained that everything changes; Parmenides retorted that nothing changes. The essentials of his teaching as follow:

“Thou canst not know what is not-that is impossible-nor utter it; for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be”

“How, then, can what is be going to be in future? Or how could it come into being? If it came into being, it is not, nor is it if it is going to be in the future. Thus is becoming extinguished and passing away not to be heard of."

"The thing that can be thought and that for the sake of which the thought exists is the same; for you cannot find thought without something that is, as to which it is uttered.”

Bertrand Russell explains this argument as:

“When you think you think of something; when you use a name, it must be the name of something. Therefore both thought and language requires objects outside themselves. And since you can think of a thing or speak of it at one time as well as at another, whatever can be thought of or spoken of must exist at all the time. Consequently there can be no change, since change consists in things coming into being or ceasing to be”

Parmenides contends that, since we know what is commonly regarded as past, it cannot be really be past, but must, in some sense , exist now. Hence he infers that there is no such thing as change.

jahaaz ka panchi

मर कर भी मुझको कहाँ चैन आया,

पंछी हूं जहाज़ का वापस जहाज़ पे आया

गोश-ए-मुहब्बत ना सुने तल्खियाँ ज़माने की

दर पे संगदिल के फिर से लौट कर आया

[गोश-ए-मुहब्बत = deaf love; तल्खियाँ = bitterness]

इश्क-ओ-दर्द को लफ़्ज़ों में बयाँ रखा है  

पर  ख़त भेजूं  कैसे  कासिद आज नहीं आया

[इश्क-ओ-दर्द = love and pain; कासिद = messenger]

बड़ी उम्मीद से माँगा था खुदा से मैंने तुम्हे

रुसवाई के सिवा कुछ और ना हाथ आया

तलाशती है निगाहें मेरी तुम्हें इस शहर में

दहर में मुझे बस बियांबां ही  नज़र आया

[दहर = life; बियांबां = vacuum/emptiness]

 तंग-ए-दिल से कोई जीस्त गुरेज़ हुआ है आज

इस  हादसे से 'मुज़्तरिब' तू बहुत याद आया 

[तंग-ए-दिल =  troubled heart, जीस्त गुरेज़ = escape from life]

'मुज़्तरिब'

Xenophanes & Heraclitus

Xenophanes’ date is uncertain between c 570 - 475 BCE. He was from Colophon, a city in the region of Lydia, but lived most of his life in southern Italy. He lived in between the times of Pythagoras and Heraclitus. This is concurred as he alludes to Pythagoras and Heraclitus alludes to him.

Xenophanes philosophy shows a streak of skepticism. He satirized the polytheistic beliefs of the Greeks. He believed in one God and considered it as formless. He argued that if Horses and Cows could paint they would paint God as themselves just like Humans give a humanly form to god. The Ethiopian God is black and the Thracian god is blue eyed with red hairs. Xenophanes is often seen as one of the first monotheists, in the Western philosophy of religion.

His epistemology held that there exists a truth of reality, but that humans as mortals are unable to know it. Therefore, it is possible to act only on the basis of working hypotheses - we may act as if we knew the truth, as long as we know that this is extremely unlikely. This aspect of Xenophanes is the basis of Critical rationalism. Xenophanes can be considered the first amongst the rationalists.

Xenophanes ridiculed Pythagoras’ theory of transmigration. Xenophanes considered that all things are made up of earth and water.

Heraclitus flourished around 500 B.C. He was citizen of Ephesus in Ionia. Though an Ionian, he didn’t belong to the scientific schools of Miletus. From the solitary and melancholic life he led, and still more from the riddling nature of his philosophy and his contempt for humankind in general, he was called "The Obscure," and the "Weeping Philosopher." He was a mystic of different type. He regarded fire as the primordial substance. He is famous for his doctrine of flux and doctrine of strife.

Doctrine of Flux: The doctrine that everything is in the state of flux is most famous of Heraclitus.

“This world, which is same for all, no one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever living fire, with measures kindling and measures going out. The transformed fire are , first of all, sea, and half of the sea is earth, half whirlwind.”

Such a world, Heraclitus believed, is always in a state of flux.

“You cannot step twice into the same river ; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.”

Doctrine of Strife: This doctrine is about mingling of opposites to create harmony. “Men do not know”, he says, “how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is and attunement of opposite tensions, like that of bow and lyre”. His belief in strife is connected with this theory, for in strife opposite combines to produce motion which is in harmony. There is unity in the world, but it is unity resulting from diversity. This doctrine contains the germ of Hegel’s Philosophy, which proceeds by synthesizing of opposites. The metaphysics of Heraclitus, like that of ‘Anaximander’ is dominated by a conception of cosmic justice, which prevents the strife of opposite from ever issuing in the complete victory of either.

Heraclitus’s ethics is a kind of proud asceticism, very similar to Nietzsche’s. He regards the soul as a mixture of fire and water, the fire being the noble and the water being ignoble. The soul that has most fire he calls “dry”. “The dry soul is the wisest and the best”. It is pleasure to soul to become moist. It is death to soul to become water.