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Foreword

Although Parmenides probably wrote as early as the beginningof th 5th ntury bce, his work was still in irulation someleven centuries later, even if it was considered a rarity ()by then according to Simplicius (6th century AD).1 Since then,th txt of Parmnids, lik most of th tratiss writtn inancient times, has been on the list of works irredeemably lost.For several centuries, the only access to Parmenides philosophylay in the rare references to his work preserved in those of other

philosophers or ancient authors, references that were sometimesaccompanied by textual quotations (which lets us assume thatths authors had a opy of th original txt of ParmnidsPoem at hand).

The practice was eventually abandoned when, by the endof the 16th century, philologists like Henri Estienne and JuliusCasar Saligr gan to ronstrut th lost txt through amtiulous sarh and ompilation of th quotations sprad

throughout lassial tratiss. This pross argualy ulmi-natd in 1835, whn Simon Karstn sudd in gathringnineteen passages (one of them in Latin) from the lost originalto publish the most complete reconstruction. We now call thisst of 152 vrss Parmnids Pom. Thanks to th ffortsof these scholars, researchers now have an approximate (givenits fragmntary natur) ut faithful (givn its litral haratrbacked-up by the work of philologists and codicologists) version

of the original poem.

1 Simplicius, Comments on AristotlesPhysics, p. 144.


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Since then, weve been able to confirm that the adjectivesvnral and awsom, usd y Plato (Teaetetus, 183) to

describe Parmenides personality, were fully justified. Venerable,without doubt, since the four or five pages that constitute theomplt work of Parmnids today ar a rli that inspirsgreat respect and admiration, but also awesome, because anyonsintious rsarhr must approah th fragmnts withpraution and astutnss, kping in mind th for and thpower of those pieces of the text that will most likely never beknown in their integrity.

Thousands of works have been dedicated to the study of thePoem since the publication of Henri Estiennes Poesis Philosophicain 1573. From a formal point of view, significant progress hasbeen made in cleansing the text of impurities and erroneousreadings by the original sources, errors which were passed downand repeated until the arrival of Hermann Dielss version in 1897,which has been considered orthodox ever since. However, evenDils lvrnss did not prvnt him from introduing nw

anomalies to the misreadings transmitted by tradition.2Som qustions rtainly rmain onrning th formal

structure of the text, such as what position certain fragmentsmay hav oupid in th original. Th prsnt arrangmnt,which arbitrarily establishes fragment 19 as the end of the Poem,may not correspond with the original. As the purification of thetext continues, studies about the ideas conveyed by Parmenidesfind increasingly strong and clear grounds. Proof of this lies in

the remarkably high level of discourse reached by Parmenideanstudis ovr th last fw yars. Som titls may hav sapdus, but there have been at least thirteen books on Parmenides

2 In the last forty years it was possible to free verse 1.3 from the uncomfortable (incompatible with a trip carried out through a wayseparatefrom thehuman path), which had no manuscript authority (cf. A. H. Coxon, The Text ofParmenidesfr. 1.3, Classical Quarterly18 [1968], 69). The authenticity of(and not) in 12.4 has been confirmed (cf. David Sider, Confirmation of

Two Conjectures in the Presocratics: Parmenides B12 and Anaxagoras B15,Phoenix33, 1 [1979], 68). At the same time, it was possible to restore the origi-nal second (instead of) in 6.1, present in all the manuscript traditions ofSimplicius: (cf. Nstor-Luis Cordero, Les Deux Cheminsde Parmnide dans les fr. 6 et 7, Phronesis24 [1979], 1).


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published between 2005 and 2008.3 In addition, beginning in2004, an annual philosophical conference has been held in Ascea-

Vlia, whr Parmnids holds a privilgd pla.4 Morovr,since 2000, a prestigious publishing house (which is honoringus with the publication of these Proceedings) has been dedicatingits efforts to the dissemination of classical thought by invokingthe great Elean: Parmenides Publishing.

Worldwide interest in Parmenidean studies has also touchedthe austral end of the Southern hemisphere, and in November2007, the Centro de Estudios de Filosofa Antigua (CEFA)

of th National Univrsity of San Martn (Bunos Airs,Argntina), didd to ddiat an Intrnational Symposiumto the philosophy of Parmenides. Invited to participate in theevent were those main scholars who had published at leastonebook on Parmenides.5 Sixteen authors confirmed their partici-pation (two who were unable to attend nevertheless sent theircontributions).

Part I of th prsnt volum gathrs togthr th st of

papers presented at the Symposium, whose topics were dividedup based on the traditional structure of the Poem: one sectiondedicated to the exposition of the way of truth, and the otherto th dsription of th opinions () of mortals. This

3 Arnold Hermann, To ink Like God: Pythagoras and Parmenides(Las Vegas:Parmenides Publishing, 2004); Cordero, By Being, It Is(Las Vegas: ParmenidesPublishing, 2004); Massimo Pulpito, Parmenide e la negazione del tempo (Milano:LED Edizioni Univrsitari, 2005); Chiara Roiano, Becoming Being: On

Parmenides Transformative Philosophy(Sankt Augustin: Akademia Verlag, 2006);Fernando Santoro, Poema de Parmnides: Da Natureza(Rio de Janeiro: AzougueEditorial, 2009); Jan Bollak, Parmnide: de ltant au monde(Paris: Vrdir,2006); Jos Solana Dueso, De Logos a Physis: Estudio sobre el Poema de Parmnides(Zaragoza: Mira, 2006); Panagiotis Thanassas, Parmenides, Cosmos and Being(Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2007); Parmnides, Poema: Fragentosy tradicin textual, edited and translated by A. Bernab; introduction, notes andcommentary by J. Prez de Tudela; epilogue by N.-L. Cordero (Madrid: Istmo,2007); Sott Austin, Parmenides and the History of Dialectic: Tree Essays(LasVgas: Parmnids Pulishing, 2007); Waltr Frattii Il bivio di Parmenide(Siena: Cantagalli, 2008); Giuseppe Scuto, Parmenides Weg(Sankt Augustin:

Akademia Verlag, 2008); Nstor-Luis Cordero et al., Parmenide scienziato?, ed.L. Rossetti and F. Marcacci (Sankt Augustin: Akademia Verlag, 2008).4 Th onfrn is titld ELEATICA and is organizd y Livio Rosstti(Perugia University).5 See About the Contributors, pp. xiiixvi.


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rigorous partition was nevertheless an object of criticism and thesource of much debate as to its meaning. Panagiotis Thanassas,

for instan, disusss th dual strutur of th Pom and itsimpact on the traditional perception of Parmenides as a rigorousmonist. Jean Bollack found that the most satisfactory solutionto explaining the two parts of the Poem lies in considering the

whole and to show that one part, the definition of Being, actu-ally refers to the other as the projection of an organization of the

world, and that both terms correspond perfectly to each other.Other papers went deeply into the part of the Poem con-

cerning the opinions of mortals. Jean Frre proposed to restrictthe mortals to just certain people who were part of particularphilosophical schools, specifically the Pythagoreans. But mostpresentations examined the value of Parmenidean Physics asshown in this part of the poem. Giovanni Casertano discussedth spial status of Parmnids in th history of sintifithought, while Massimo Pulpito proposed to limit correct physi-al thoris to rtain passags of th Pom, whih would

a development of the formula . Alexander P. D.Mourlatos, on his part, was intrstd in som astronomialtheories that he considers to be breakthroughs. More radically,my own paper read all fragments referring to the physics as partof the speech on truth, because, given the not-true and deceptiveharatr that Parmnids attriuts to , Parmnidanphysics cannot belong to the opinions of mortals. This propo-sition therefore suggests a new rearrangement of the fragments.

The section of the Poem concerning the fact of being andits characteristics was the subject of Robbianos, Solana Duesos,Santoros, and Austins papers. Chiara Robbiano, answering thequestion What is Parmenides Being? found that Being is thefundamental unity of what-is and what-understands, the unitythat is also the condition for the possibility of human understand-ing. Jos Solana Dueso analyzed the relationship between logicand ontology, and proposed different arguments for a primarily

logial and only sondarily ontologial intrprtation of th of Parmenides (fr. 2fr. 8.50). Fernando Santoro foundin the of fragment 8 a genealogy of the idea of onto-logical categories. And Scott Austin affirmed that Parmenides


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absolute monism puts existence and essence into an absolutelymonistic Being as it joins levels in an ontological hierarchy that

other philosophers were later to separate.Two further contributions dealt an analysis of the notion of

thought. For Jos Trindade Santos the identity of thought andBing dominats Parmnids argumnt in th Way of Truthand persists in later relevant conceptions as Platonic and Aristotlian ativ intllt. Patriia Curd on hr partanalyzed the relation between thought and body, as suggestedby fragment 16, and saw that the mortal s error is to mistake the

passive experiences of sense perception for genuine thought aboutwhat-is, and hence fail to understand the true nature of what-is.

Arnold Hermann was interested in Parmenides heritage inPlatos Parmenides, and considers that the so-called parricideof th Sophist is only an hir. Finally, Barara Cassin askdthe question that every scholar silently asks himself: Is it pos-sible to translate Parmenides? The eventual conclusion is thatParmenides is lost in translation.

Th organizrs of th mting, whih was opn to thpublic, offered eight young and high-level Argentine research-rs (graduat studnts, profssors, or advand studnts) thopportunity to present a short paper in front of the prestigiousassembly of foreign authors. The exchange of ideas between themand their teachers was a very enriching experience. These eightpapers are included in Part II of the present volume.

Th Intrnational Symposiums suss would hav n

impossil without th support of two prstigious institutions:Parmenides Publishing (United States), and the HYELE Institutefor Comparative Studies (Switzerland), an institution whose namealludes to thepolisof Parmenides. The CEFA is greatly and deeplythankful to both institutions for their support.

Nstor-Luis Cordero

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