“It is necessary to say and to think that what is is; for being is, but nothing is not.”
Parmenides · Eleatic
knowledgemind
Paraphrase or translation
Philosopher
Last reviewed:
Parmenides
c. late 6th–mid 5th century BCE · Eleatic · Ancient
Parmenides of Elea, in southern Italy, wrote in the late sixth or early fifth century BCE, and he wrote in verse. The poem survives in pieces. A goddess speaks, distinguishes a way of truth from a way of mortal opinion, and argues that what is must be thought and spoken, while what is not cannot.
Read more
From that stark rule he, or the goddess, draws a picture of being as whole, ungenerated, unmoving, and one. Change, difference, and coming-to-be start to look like confusion rather than features of the world. Plato's dialogues return to this challenge again and again, and Aristotle's physics is in part a reply. A pupil, Zeno of Elea, not the later Stoic, defended the master with paradoxes about motion.
Modern readers disagree about how far to push the poem: some hear a strict denial of the ordinary world, others a rule about what inquiry can coherently target. Either way, you are reading fragments quoted by people who already had a stake. There is no complete book on the shelf. There is a problem that organised the next century of Greek philosophy, which is why one dense fragment is enough to start and not enough to finish.
The poem survives in fragments quoted by later writers. The cards are DK 28 B2, B3, B6, and two stretches of B8, in standard English translations. Further lines of B8 were not sliced into extra mottoes.
Start here
Fragment DK 28B6, then a summary of B8.
B6 gives the rule about saying and thinking what is, and B8 is where the consequences, no birth and no motion, are drawn.
Quotations
“Come now, I will tell you the only ways of inquiry that are to be thought of. The one, that it is and that it is impossible for it not to be, is the path of Persuasion, for she attends on Truth. The other, that it is not and that it is needful that it not be, that I declare to you is a path entirely unable to be learned.”
Parmenides · Eleatic
knowledgemind
Paraphrase or translation
“For the same thing is for thinking and for being.”
Parmenides · Eleatic
knowledgemind
Paraphrase or translation
“There remains but one account of a way, that it is. On this way there are very many signs, that what-is is ungenerated and imperishable, whole, of a single kind, unshaken, and complete.”
Parmenides · Eleatic
knowledgechange
Paraphrase or translation
“Nor was it ever, nor will it be, since it is now, all together, one, continuous.”
Parmenides · Eleatic
changeknowledge
Paraphrase or translation
Key ideas
What is
Genuine thought stays with what is, because what is not cannot be pointed at or known.
No coming-to-be
If being cannot come from non-being, the real is ungenerated and does not perish.
A challenge to change
The poem makes ordinary change look like a failure of thinking, which Plato and Aristotle then had to answer.
Major works
Poem (fragments) (early 5th century BCE)
Hexameter verses survive only where later philosophers quote them, divided by editors into a Way of Truth and a Way of Opinion.
Common misreadings
- He is not saying, in a self-help tone, that you should ignore appearances and think positively.
- The poem's second part discusses the cosmos of mortal opinion, so he did not only write the bare rule about being.
Famous lines Parmenides never said
None of the lines this library files for Parmenides is marked Questionable or Misattributed. That is only a fact about these cards. It is not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.
FAQ
What is the best book to start with?
Fragment DK 28B6, then a summary of B8. B6 gives the rule about saying and thinking what is, and B8 is where the consequences, no birth and no motion, are drawn.
What is the most famous quote?
This library does not measure fame, and it does not rank lines by how often they are shared. The first line it files for Parmenides that is not marked Questionable or Misattributed is “It is necessary to say and to think that what is is; for being is, but nothing is not.” (Fragment DK 28B6, preserved in later quotations of his poem, Paraphrase or translation).
What is the most misquoted line?
None of the lines this library files for Parmenides is marked Misattributed or Questionable. That is a fact about these cards, not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.
What is one key idea, in a sentence?
What is: Genuine thought stays with what is, because what is not cannot be pointed at or known.