Quotation
Last reviewed:
“It is necessary to say and to think that what is is; for being is, but nothing is not.”
Parmenides · Eleatic · Ancient · early 5th century BCE
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that genuine thought and speech must stay with what is, because 'what is not' cannot be pointed at, and what is turns out whole and unchanging. A competing reading treats the poem as a rule for inquiry rather than a denial that the everyday world shows up at all. The lines come from the Way of Truth in a hexameter poem we have only in pieces, quoted by later philosophers. Plato will spend decades answering them.
Did Parmenides really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. The poem survives in pieces quoted by later philosophers. Translations of this fragment differ because the Greek is grammatically stark.
Where it comes from
Fragment DK 28B6, preserved in later quotations of his poem
Approximate date: early 5th century BCE.
How to use it
A parking appeal that rests on 'there was nothing there' needs a positive claim: which bay, which sign, which time. Vague absence feels like an argument and often is not one. Ask what, in the scene, is actually being asserted before the story about what was missing takes over.
A mindset reading
Not every profound-sounding denial is a thought. Some sentences cancel the subject they would need in order to mean anything. The habit is to test whether a claim still has an object once the word 'nothing' is removed.
Understand the philosophy
Parmenides is answering mortals, including people like Heraclitus, who talk of change and difference. 'What is' is his key phrase: whatever can be thought without slipping into non-being. He argues that this must be one, ungenerated, and still. The fragment is a rule of thinking before it is a picture of the landscape.
- knowledge
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that genuine thought and speech must stay with what is, because 'what is not' cannot be pointed at, and what is turns out whole and unchanging. A competing reading treats the poem as a rule for inquiry rather than a denial that the everyday world shows up at all. The lines come from the Way of Truth in a hexameter poem we have only in pieces, quoted by later philosophers. Plato will spend decades answering them.
Did Parmenides really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. The poem survives in pieces quoted by later philosophers. Translations of this fragment differ because the Greek is grammatically stark.
Which work is it in?
Fragment DK 28B6, preserved in later quotations of his poem Approximate date: early 5th century BCE.