Quotation
Last reviewed:
“For the same thing is for thinking and for being.”
Parmenides · Eleatic · Ancient · early 5th century BCE
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading ties thought to what is: you cannot think a blank, so whatever is thinkable and whatever is are the same thing in the only sense the poem allows. A competing reading, common in modern citations, hears a claim that minds create reality, which the four Greek words do not say. The fragment is DK 28 B3, a single line preserved because later writers needed it. It sits between the two ways of B2 and the signs of B8. It is not a theory of consciousness. It is a reason the negative road fails. If thinking and being go together, then 'what is not' cannot be thought, which is the lesson of the neighbouring fragments. The brevity is the poem's style, not a complete epistemology.
Did Parmenides really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Diels-Kranz 28 B3. The Greek is four words, to gar auto noein estin te kai einai. English versions differ: 'the same thing is for thinking and for being', or 'thinking and being are the same'. The fragment is secure. The English is a translation.
Where it comes from
Fragment DK 28 B3
Approximate date: early 5th century BCE.
How to use it
A strategy slide that says 'if we can imagine it, it exists' is the modern misreading, not the fragment. He is blocking thought of what is not, not licensing every picture a team can draw. Use the line to ask whether a proposal still has an object once the slogans are removed.
A mindset reading
Short Greek is easy to recruit. The habit is to put the fragment back between the two roads and the signs, where it is an argument about what can be thought. Detached, it becomes a different sentence.
Understand the philosophy
B3 is among the shortest of the surviving pieces. The key identification is thinking and being, noein and einai. It supports B2's claim that the negative road cannot be learned, and it prepares B8's account of what the positive road is like. Translators disagree on the emphasis. They do not disagree that the line is his. It is not the longer fragment already filed here as B6.
- knowledge
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading ties thought to what is: you cannot think a blank, so whatever is thinkable and whatever is are the same thing in the only sense the poem allows. A competing reading, common in modern citations, hears a claim that minds create reality, which the four Greek words do not say. The fragment is DK 28 B3, a single line preserved because later writers needed it. It sits between the two ways of B2 and the signs of B8. It is not a theory of consciousness. It is a reason the negative road fails. If thinking and being go together, then 'what is not' cannot be thought, which is the lesson of the neighbouring fragments. The brevity is the poem's style, not a complete epistemology.
Did Parmenides really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Diels-Kranz 28 B3. The Greek is four words, to gar auto noein estin te kai einai. English versions differ: 'the same thing is for thinking and for being', or 'thinking and being are the same'. The fragment is secure. The English is a translation.
Which work is it in?
Fragment DK 28 B3 Approximate date: early 5th century BCE.