The Eleatic School

Article 3. The Eleatic School

a) Xenophanes; b) Parmenides; c) Zeno of Elea;

d) Melissus of Samos. The Eleatic School takes its name from Elea, a Greek city in southern Italy, where Xenophanes, founder of the School, and Parmenides, its chief representative, lived and taught. The Earlier Ionians sought the original world-stuff. The Pythagoreans looked for a world-stuff that would account for the order, unity, and proportion of the universe. The Eleatics took up the question of the variety, multiplicity, and change observable in the world. They asked : “Is the world what it seems to be? Are there really many different things in it? Or is it a single substance which only appears to be multiple ? And is there really any such thing as motion and change?”

a) Xenophanes (about 570-480 b. c.)

Life: Xenophanes was born at Colophon, a city in Ionia. He is said to have studied under Anaximander. After much journeying he settled at Elea.

Works: Xenophanes was a poet, a sort of minstrel, who sang his doctrines in verse.

There exist parts of one of his poems, in which he expresses his opinions concerning the gods, and for this reason he is sometimes referred to in history as “The Theologian.” His philosophy is known from secondary sources, chiefly from Aristotle (4 century b. c.) and from the collection of Simplicius (6 century after Christ).

Doctrine: There is only one being. One is all, and all is one (monism). This unique being is God (pantheism). There is no becoming, i. e., no passing from cause to effect, no change, no motion. The multiplicity and variety observable in the world is an illusion. Xenophanes sometimes forgets his fundamental philosophy and discusses the multiplicity which it denies.

Remark: Xenophanes’ service to philosophy lies in the fact that he raised the question of being and becoming. The true philosophical ideas for which these terms stand were first grasped and explained by Aristotle (4 century b. c.)

b) Par menides (Born about 540 b. c.)

Life: Parmenides was born at Elea. It is said that he was a pupil of Xenophanes. He was an ardent student of philosophy, yet found time to take an active part in political affairs. He was the ablest and most celebrated of the Eleatics.

Works: Parmenides wrote a poem On Nature, in which he set forth his philosophical doctrine; 155 lines of this poem are extant. We learn much of Parmenides’ teaching from Aristotle (4 century b. c.)

Doctrine: All is being. We cannot even think of non-being, i. e., nothingness. For if we try to think of non-being, we are forced to conceive it as something, i. e., as being. Hence non-being is impossible, and to speak of it is silly. Being is one, eternal, unchangeable. The variety and change observable in the world is illusory. Multiplicity is likewise a deception. Still, we may profitably study the apparent variety, change, and multiplicity of the world. Parmenides makes such a study, and gives us his Cosmology and Anthropology of the Apparent, in which he sets forth what he would believe of the world and of men if he believed in multiplicity of being.

Remarks: Parmenides, like Xenophanes, is monistic, and, in consequence, pantheistic. He makes being a bodily thing. He teaches that sensation is illusory and that its testimony of the varied and multiple world is wholly untrustworthy. Still, he asserts the validity of thought, for he offers as true his system of philosophy, which is a product of thought, and besides he declares that being alone can be thought of, and is, in consequence, real. It follows that whatever can be thought of is real being. Here we discern a positive service rendered by Parmenides to philosophy-—the assertion of the validity of thought.

c) Zeno of El ea (Born about 487 b. c.)

Life: It is probable that Zeno was born at Elea. He was a pupil of Parmenides. Like his teacher, he was active in civic affairs. Accused—perhaps unjustly—of political conspiracy, he endured torture and death rather than disclose information harmful to others.

Works: Zeno wrote certain treatises, of which fragments are preserved in the collection of Simplicius (6 century after Christ). Our knowledge of the man and his doctrine comes largely from Aristotle (4 century b. c.)

Doctrine: Zeno of Elea held the doctrine of Parmenides, and his place in the History of Philosophy is due to his novel defence of that doctrine. He introduces the use of dialectic, i. e., of logical argument and connected reasoning. He spins out tricky arguments, one after another (eristic method), to show that multiplicity and change is impossible, and that our senses are not to be trusted in the evidence they give us of variety in the world. Thus he is a champion of Parmenides’ theory by indirection—i. e., he does not directly prove his position, but tries to show the absurdity of the contradictory doctrine. Zeno’s arguments are very famous. Here are specimens : Being is one; multiplicity is impossible. If you admit multiplicity in the world, you must admit a number at once finite and infinite—an obvious contradiction. For consider : a body —let us say a tree-—has parts, you say. There is a multiplicity of parts in a tree. Very well. Now a tree has its certain size, its shape, its determinate constituents. Thus it must have a certain, definite, limited number of parts to make it precisely the tree that it is. There is your finite number. But you can do more than divide the tree into these parts. You can divide each part into other parts, and each of these into other parts, and so on without limit, unto infinity. And there is your infinite number of parts in the tree. Thus, you see, you cannot admit multiplicity without involving yourself in a contradiction. There is no such thing as change. The most obvious form of so-called change is local motion or change of place. Such motion may be fairly taken as representative of change; and if local motion be proved impossible, it can be inferred that all change is impossible. Now, as a matter of fact, local motion is impossible. If a body could move from place to place it would have to traverse an infinity of space—a clear contradiction, since an infinity of space cannot be traversed. A body moving from one place to another would pass over one-half the distance to be covered before passing over the entire distance; it would cover one-fourth the distance before covering one-half; and one-eighth the distance before one-fourth; and one-sixteenth before one-eighth, and so on. In other words, the moving body would have to pass through an infinite number of fractions of the distance to be covered in order to cover the entire distance. But an infinite number, having no end, cannot be got through. Therefore, motion is demonstrably impossible.

Remarks: Zeno’s arguments are sophistries, i. e., arguments only seemingly valid. Aristotle demonstrated the fallacy of these arguments by distinguishing—as Zeno failed to do—- between actual and potential infinity. Zeno abused dialectic, but taught its use even while abusing it. His futile arguments—valueless in themselves—were of inestimable value in drawing the attention of subsequent philosophers to matters that required explanation, and to a method that needed to be appraised.

d) Mel issus of Samos (Born about 500 b. c.)

Life: It is probable that Melissus was born on the island of Samos, a part of Ionia. Like Zeno of Elea, he was a pupil of Parmenides. He was probably the Melissus who commanded the fleet of Samos which defeated the Athenians in 442 b. c.

Works: Melissus wrote a book On Nature or On Being, of which a few fragments are preserved in the collection of Simplicius (6 century after Christ).

Doctrine: Zeno of Elea had offered indirect defence of the doctrine of Parmenides; Melissus undertook the direct defence of the same doctrine. He offered positive argument to prove that being is one, eternal, and unchangeable. He went a step farther than Parmenides and made the explicit assertion that being is infinite. Since the idea of being was still a physical idea, this doctrine could mean only that being is a bodily mass of infinite bulk.

Remarks: Melissus rightly reasoned that, if being is eternal, it must be infinite; but he is illogical in deducing infinity of size or bulk from infinity of duration—i. e., eternity. Infinite bodiliness or size is really an impossibility, for it involves a contradiction—a fact which Melissus did not perceive. Melissus served the progress of philosophy by his insistence upon the problem of being, and his mistaken position in the matter was the occasion of the subsequent study which revealed the true doctrine.

Remarks on the Eleatic School. The Earlier Ionians and the Pythagoreans tried to explain the source and the constitutive causes of the world as they found it. The Eleatics did not take the world as they found it; they denied it. They did not seek origins and causes; they denied them. They taught that nothing originates or is caused, for there is no becoming. The world is not to be taken at face value, for it presents the illusions of variety, change, multiplicity. All is being. And being is one. Thus we perceive that the Eleatics were both monists and pantheists. Since the Eleatic idea of being meant the sum-total of bodily reality, we may characterize the pantheism of this school as materialistic pantheism. The service of the Eleatics to philosophy lies in the fact that they took a single view of the universe as being. While their notion of being was limited, and in so far erroneous, their method was a fundamentally correct one, and constituted a positive step in the direction of the achievement of the metaphysical concept of being—which concept is the root and basis of all true philosophical speculation.