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Department of the Classics, Harvard University

Genesis and Motion in Parmenides: B 8. 12-13Author(s): Scott AustinSource: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 87 (1983), pp. 151-168Published by: Department of the Classics, Harvard University

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GENESIS AND MOTION IN PARMENIDES: B 8.12-13

SCOTT AUSTIN

HE emendation T70 for p' in Parmenides, fragment 8, line 12,

proposed by Karsten,' has been adopted by (among others) Rein-

hardt, Taran, Stokes, and, most recently, Barnes.2 And yet, while there

is no compelling reason to make the emendation, there are several goodreasons why one should not make it. I want to claim that the unemended

poem already does what the emendation is supposed to allow it to do. I

also should like to venture some observations on Parmenidean method

and on his use of the key concepts of change and motion.

Lines 12-13 are part of Parmenides' demonstration (B 8.6-15) that

being does not come to be or perish. This passage is the earliest we have

from Western philosophy to contain a sustained, demonstrative argu-ment for the existence of something real and unchangeable. Lines 6-15read as follows with the unemended line 12:

... Ttva yap ywvvavL77aEatLTro6;7rr,- rO0•v'6q0 v; o6T.) K La'6VrTO9daa•

daOat"L'U 8 voELEv01ydp 0aTrv oU8' vo'rTdv

aEUTtrTWSO9K Eat7. "T

8 ClVt~L

aV XpEOSpgEV

Io aUTIpov77rpo"d v,T70"o

lq8EVS9dapStLEvov, %v;

0TWS 777rari17rav7TEAEvatPEWVCarTVOt•t.0o8E' 7OT' EK 7'7 EOdVTO9SEc/flE)L 7TLUTLOS G'XS

ylyvE~Oaalt 7Trap'a"Td"

TOt0•LtVEKEV

OU6TEyIEEvEOaLOT oAAvaOatL'V7K•EL"KraAaaaa 7rE'8r•7lv,

15 'AA'E'XEL'

1S. Karsten, Parmenidis Eleatae Carminis Reliquiae (Amsterdam 1835).

2 K. Reinhardt, Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie(Bonn 1916) 40 ff. Leonardo Tarain, Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Com-

mentary, and Critical Essays (Princeton 1965) 95-102. Michael C. Stokes, Oneand Many in Presocratic Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass. 1971). Jonathan Barnes,The Presocratic Philosophers, I, Thales to Zeno 188-190 (London 1979). Refer-ences to these works by author's last name only.







152 Scott Austin

(In what follows I shall use "what-is" and "being" interchangeably as

names for the Parmenidean idv.3) The lines might be rendered as fol-

lows: "For what birth would you seek for it? Toward what, from whatdid it grow? Nor will I (the goddess) allow you to say or to think: 'from

what-is-not'; for there is no saying or thinking as to how it is not. And

what sufficient reason would impel it to come to be later or earlier,

starting from nothing? In this way it ought either to be altogether, or

not at all. Nor will the strength of Trust ever permit something besides

what-is to come into being out of what-is-not. For this reason Justice

allowed (it) neither to come to be nor to perish, releasing her bonds;

instead, she holds." Without the emendation, lines 12-13 read "Nor will

the strength of Trust ever permit anything besides what-is to come to beout of what-is-not." With the emendation, the lines would read "Nor

will the strength of Trust ever permit anything besides what-is to come

to be out of what-is."4 One important element of support for the emen-

dation comes from the feeling that, without it, Parmenides' argument is

not complete; let me turn, then, to the immediately preceding lines, in

order to begin to see whether this is so. I hope the excursion will not be

too long.

3 Throughoutthis article I shall

usuallybe

takingit for granted that Parme-

nides' expression to eon refers to a single thing whose name is being. There are

several critics for whom this equation is not at all obvious. Mourelatos (The Route

of Parmenides, New Haven 1970) allows to eon to stand for any of a possible

multiplicity of subjects of knowledgeable discourse, and Jonathan Barnes, in an

important recent article ("Parmenides and the Eleatic One," Archiv fiir Ge-

schichte der Philosophie 61 [1979] 1-21), agreeing in part with Friedrich Solm-

sen's recent questioning of the validity of the Platonic tradition, has suggested

that Parmenides might not have been a monist. While I do not have space to

argue here that Parmenides was in fact a monist, the textual points I make in this

article go through just the same even if Parmenides' "being" could have covered

a multiplicity of entities. Lines 36-38 then say, with regard to any of these

entities, that no one of them can give rise to another.I also agree with Tarain that "oiv' in line 7 can be explained without the need

of a corresponding omr' in line 12" (p. 98; see also pp. 101-10-I2). See also Stough,

P. 97, n.15.

4 For the history of how these lines were construed, see Tarain, loc. cit. Barnes

crystallizes the discussion by setting up the following possibilities for the une-

mended text (p.189): "In the last phrase, rt may be either subject or complement

of ylyvEo8aL,and a3rd may refer either to 'what is' or to 'what is not'. Thus the

manuscript text yields four readings: (i) 'From what is not, it is not possible for

anything to come into being apart from what is'; (ii) 'From what is not, it is not

possible for anything to come into being apart from what is not'; (iii) 'From what

is not, it is not possible for it to become anything apart from what is'; (iv) 'Fromwhat is not, it is not possible for it to become anything apart from what is not.' "I am going to defend (i) as the sense we ought to see in this passage. But it is

worth noting here that the passage is interestingly ambiguous.







Genesis and Motion in Parmenides: B 8.12-13 153

Barnes rightly notes that (iii) and (iv) are unintelligible in context. He then

objects to (ii) as follows (p. 189): "If we construe 'from' in the generator sense,

then we can conjure an argument out of (ii): 'If O' does not exist and O' generates

O, then O does not exist.' But I doubt if that argument is Parmenidean: first, the

very notion of the generation of nonentities is remote from Parmenides' thought;

second, (ii) interprets 'from' in the fashion which raises problems for the rest oflines 5-21; and third, (ii) has no bearing upon destruction."

I shall comment in the body of this article on the issues raised by Barnes'second and third criticisms. On the first, however, as Stough ("Parmenides' Wayof Truth, B 8.12-13," Phronesis 13 (1968) 91-Io7) would point out, Parmenideswould not in (ii) be discussing the generation of nonentities so much as sayingthat there could be no offspring of a generation from nothing, and so ruling outsuch a generation for what-is. More, then, would be needed in order to discard

(ii). Stough attempts to reconstruct the fragment on the basis of (ii), and in theprocess gives the reading some credibility. However, in the desire to argueagainst (i) and the emendation and to show that (ii) suffices, Stough is led toclaim that Parmenides does not discuss the generation of anything from some-

thing existing. Nevertheless, as I try to show in the body of this article, lines

36-38 do discuss the generation, from what-is, of something existing but otherthan what-is. (Stough takes the lines to discuss a different situation, namely the

generation, from what-is-not, of something existing but other than what-is.) And

yet, if there is a generation from what-is in lines 36-38, then it is possible thatlines 12-13 discuss the possibility that Stough finds in 36-38. In fact, as I shall

argue below, this possibility must be found in 12-13, otherwise the poem's argu-ment

against generationwill not be

complete.This is

my argument against (ii), towhich Stough would reply that the assertion I find in 12-13 would seem to haveto do more with proving the uniqueness of what-is than with arguing againstgeneration. To this I would reply that the generation, from what-is-not, of some-

thing existing but other than what-is, is indeed a kind of coming-to-be. Thus

Stough's argument that there is no discussion of coming-to-be from what-is is, I

think, undercut by 36-38, and this means that 12-13 cannot have the meaning(ii). (Unless, of course, one takes nr more broadly than Stough does, to includeboth what-is and something existing, but other than what-is. In that case the

emendation, which Stough also argues against, would again be destructive.)Barnes, is, however, also too quick in rejecting (i), the coming-into-being of

something besides what-is out of what-is-not. He says: "(i) is impotent as an

argument against generation and cannot constitute an argument against destruc-tion." I shall agree below that lines 12-13 do not furnish an argument againstdestruction, while claiming that this does not count against the reading of (i).However, it is not immediately clear why Barnes says that (i) is "impotent as an

argument against generation." It certainly states, at any rate, that nothing besides

being can come from nothing, and this would seem to be the statement that acertain sort of generation is impossible. Does Barnes mean that the generation in

question would, if (i) is adopted, be a generation, not of being, but of somethingelse? This would be no reason for rejecting (i), even if it were immediately clearthat this "something else" would have to be nothing. Does Barnes then mean that

(i) does not argue its point, but merely states it? This is surely no objection to a

reading of a Parmenidean line. Where is, and what could be, the proof of rraiv Trrtvdtzoiov in B 8.22 ? Of aavrov in B 8.48 ?

At any rate, of the interpretations available of the manuscript reading, it seemsthat (i) has the best chance of making sense.







154 Scott Austin

In lines 7-9, it is clear that Parmenides' argument is directed against a

coming-to-be of what-is from what-is-not. Lines 9-I iare ambiguous,

and, I shall submit, deliberately so. One might paraphrase: what Needurged it (i.e., what-is) on to come to be later or earlier, beginning (as it

would in this case) from nothing? And line i i says something to the

effect that one has to choose between being altogether or not at all. Now

there are at least three components of meaning in 9-Io:

.T 8' 'v 1LLV aCLPEoa EWpUEV

aTEpOV77rrpOaOEV,0tt/l778EV6

'PpeIzEVOV,

6v;

As distinguished by Stokes,5 they are the following. "YUTIpov 77rpoOaEv

might mean "later rather than sooner" (i, following Burnet), or (2) "at

one particular moment, either later or sooner" (following Diels and

Kranz) or (3) "What necessity might ever have caused it to grow, start-

ing from nothing ?" (Stokes). What-is cannot need to come to be at some

particular time, because, given the nature of the time series, there are

always many other particular times. Now (2), if I read it right, presup-

poses (i), and (3) presupposes (2). The first asks why it should come to

be at this time rather than at that time, later rather than sooner, or, for

that matter, sooner rather than later. The second asks why it should

come to be at some particular moment, either later or sooner. (The

question "later or sooner than what ?" arises in this context, but the fact

that it has no answer is part of the reason why there is no need for

what-is to come to be at all.) If (2) does not mean the same thing as (i),then it says, "Given that there is no principle of choice between mo-

ments, as is shown by (i), why should some particular moment be

chosen? And, given the situation in (2), (3) asks why what-is should

come to be at any time, either later or sooner; since no particular

moment can be singled out, why should any moment be singled out?

(Notice the play here as between negation applied to each of many

particulars, and negation applied to all of them indiscriminately.) It is

not necessary to suppress (i) and (2), as Stokes would have us do, in

order to allow lines 9-Io also to have meaning (3); the meanings are

related, and there is a natural progression from (i) to (3); all are, I think,

present. The point of the passage is that they are all present.

Lines 9-I1, then, involve the rejection of a coming-to-be of what-is

from nothing at some particular time. This is the context in which lines

5 Stokesi24.








I2-13, the lines in which the emendation is proposed, occur. Tarain

objects to the unemended text as follows:

Parmenides, having already said in lines 7-8 that Being cannot come

from non-Being and in lines 8-11 having proved why it cannot, would

not in line 12 say "nor can it come from non-Being." It will not do to

argue that what Parmenides says in lines 12-13 is different from what

he says in lines 7-II, namely that lines 7-1I say that Being cannot

come from non-Being, whereas lines I2-13 mean that the force of

conviction will not permit "anything" to come from non-Being.

(This "anything" is the rLof the Parmenidean text.) Tarain continues:

For what to Parmenides could "anything" be? Not non-Being, for he

has already asserted that non-Being is ovt karbv ot~& vordrov not avail-

able for discourse or for thought]; not Being, for he has already

proved that this cannot come from non-Being; and not some tertium

quid, for he has already proved to his own satisfaction that there can be

no tertium quid (7 7ra"p7rav7rEAdvat

Xp•Ev

Eartv-

o;xt) [for a discussion of

these lines, see below] . . . Furthermore the object of inquiry here is,as has been announced in lines 6-7, the possibility of an origin for

Being, not for anything else.6

But, I say, if 7rdp7ravrTEAvat pEdvL tV TV oXIt' does not rule out a tertium

quid - something existing, but not identical with what-is - then this

reason for the emendation does not hold. For then there will still be

room in lines i2-13 for the discussion of the coming-to-be of a tertium

quid out of what-is-not, and it is such a coming-to-be which is discussed

in the unemended text, the text I propose that we retain. What do the

words of line i i mean, and what do they rule out? The line contains the

wordo•T•wS,

"thus," or "in such a case," and so might (as Mourelatos

has noted7) comment globally on the facts about what-is, i.e., not only

on the immediately preceding lines 9-Io, but also on the denial of a

coming-to-be of what-is from what-is-not in lines 7-9. So one cannot

assume that the line functions only in the temporal context of the sur-

rounding argument; line 11 might also be saying that what-is must be

6 Tarain 95-96.

Mourelatos, Route Ioi.







156 Scott Austin

fully or completely to begin with, if it exists at all (i.e., spatially as wellas temporally) and so cannot come to be (i.e., temporally).8

Note, however, that the line is embedded in a temporal context, and so- though it might be an ontological principle which would apply also towhat is (metaphorically) spatial, it is not easy to say (as Mourelatos9

does) that it is what is picked up by &dE',"since," in 7rL7rrdivUTv0fobov,

"since it is all similar," in line 22.

The line clearly asserts that there is no allowed middle groundbetween complete being on the part of what-is, and no being at all. The

line thus addresses the context of the immediately preceding lines 9 and

io. What-is cannot come to be at some particular (later or earlier) time

in such a way as to fail to be 7rraLrrav,.e., to be sempiternally, eternally,or atemporally, whichever you prefer.We can tell this by examining the possible ways of fitting the line

together. ox(t, hanging at the end of the sentence, seems to compel us

into a syntactical "everything or nothing" situation. But we can still tryto see at what point in the first part of the line a word negation mightfall. (Here I borrow suggestions from A. P. D. Mourelatos and E. D.

Francis.) Is the opposition between rrciprravnd ov drra"krrav?o, because

ov 7rrapTrravould be the same asUT•Opov

7 rrpdaO~v nd because Parme-

nides is making the point that theaITEpov-Trpdoa0v

situation correspondsto neither half of the "all or nothing" disjunction. Is the oppositionbetween 7rrEAEvand

/p'7TEAEvat? r is it between XpEov and ovtxPEOv?

These two come to the same thing, since XpEwvat pt ITErrAEvats the same

as oVXPEWVUrT7rrTEAEvat.The line, then, says: either what-is must be completely or what-is

must not be at all. But it is very important to realize that what-is is the

subject of the line. Xp`ioof line 9, which is a line about what-is, is picked

by XpEdv"n line 1i, and there is nothing in the context to suggest that

anything other than what-is is being discussed or contemplated until we

get to line 13.But this, pace Tarain, is in no sense the ruling out of a tertium quid

between being and non-being - something that would exist without

8 It is not part of the present inquiry to take a stand on the relation of the eonto time. A full or complete being on the part of what-is, a not being subject to

temporal variations, starts, or stops, would seem to mean that it is eternal, or

sempiternal, or exists atemporally. Critics have attempted to choose among these;see G. E. L. Owen, "Plato and Parmenides on the Timeless Present," Monist 50(1966) 317-340, repr. in A. P. D. Mourelatos, ed., The Pre-Socratics: A Collec-

tion of Critical Essays (New York I974) 271-292. See also W. Kneale, "Timeand

Eternity in Theology," Proc. Arist. Soc. n.s. 61 (I960-6I) go, and M. Schofield,"Did Parmenides Discover Eternity ?" Arch. Gesch. Philos. 52 (1970) 113-135.

9 Mourelatos ioi.








being identical with the what-is - it is the ruling out of a tertium quid

(namely, coming-to-be at some particular time) between not being at all,

and being apart from time in whichever of the three senses one prefers.

Consequently the possibility that something besides what-is might come

to be out of what-is-not has not been ruled out by this point in the

argument (certainly not by 6-9 which, as Taran says, discuss a coming-to-be of what-is, not of something besides it), and so there is, perhaps,need to discuss the possibility, if only in order to reject it. Why not in

lines 12-13 ?The strangeness noticed by Taran1o of having a3rdo, "it" in 13 refer,

not to a closely preceding iE•dvTos ("out of what-is-not") in line 12, but

to an understood Tr ~Ev, "what-is," does not by itself justify an emen-dation, since it is possible to make sense out of the passage as it stands.11

But the strongest argument raised in favor of the emendation is that,unless it is made, Parmenides will have failed to discuss an important

possibility, without which his denial of coming-to-be would not be com-

plete: namely the coming-to-be of something besides what-is out of

what-is. There is also another reason why it might be thought desirable

to have this possibility discussed before line 13: lines 6-13 do not dis-

cuss a possible destruction of what-is, even though imperishability is

asserted in the signpost list

(&vdaAEOpov,ine 3) and announced, as if it had

been proved by then, in line 14. Stokes12 thinks that a tacit refutation of

destruction would be contained in the denial that something besides

what-is would come to be out of what-is; "destruction" on his reasoning"must indeed be the turning of what-is into something besides Being,that is, into what-is-not." Barnes has a similar view.13 And it would be

nice to find some refutation of destruction before 14.So let me now discuss these two elements of support for the emen-

dation. They go in different directions. First, it is claimed that the

emendation allows us to see Parmenides deny the coming-to-be from

being of something existing besides being (Taran); second, it is claimedthat the emendation allows us to see Parmenides deny that Being could

turn into what-is-not and be destroyed (Stokes, Barnes).I claim that the possibility - of a coming to be from what-is of

something besides what-is - is discussed in the poem, but later, in

36-38, and discussed there under the rubric of Klv-qLsrather than that of

yEVEas. The line is usually translated this way,14 and yet the conse-

10 Tarain96.

1Most such pronouns in the poem refer to what-is; the exception is B 8.46.12 Stokes 132.13 Barnes 189-19o.14 E.g., Mourelatos 170, Stokes 136.







158 Scott Austin

quences for B 8.12-13 have not, so far as I know, been noticed. This is

the possibility that Tarain finds in the emended line 12. I claim also that

it is only by retaining the manuscript reading d'K k VdTOs that we canfind Parmenides rejecting all of the a priori reasonable possibilities for

coming-to-be. This is what Taran thinks can only be done by making

the emendation.

Lines 36-38 read as follows in one of Simplicius' versions (Phys.

86.31-87. I),with Preller's addition of (e) after gar:

...ov yp(% ) ETLV E"•TaL"AAo

7TrpE"eTOO~0'VTOS, 7T•

"r

'Y~EMoi-p' E•7TE&8qEV

oivAovKLVr)TOv' E"•'Eva . .

Another version is (Simp. Phys. 146.9-1 1)

?

.. OV' ELXpvo9 E"aUTWV7EGTraL

"AAo TrrplE o• •0'VTros, 7TE'Tr' yOEMoEp' '7T•&•qUEV

ovAovKLvr)rTOv' E/IEvaL,

a text objected to since Diels on the grounds that the phrase ovS' Ed

Xpovos,s Taran says, "does not make sense in the

context."15As far as I

am concerned, the reading ov'&v dp jqarEUTLVEaUaLfor the whole of 36 is

acceptable. Either way, though, the point of lines 36-38 is going to be

that there will never be any other besides what-is, since Doom bound it

to be whole and immovable. This sense is clearly in both versions.

Moreover, this sense is what the lines need to have, since, in order to

support what immediately precedes them in lines 33-35, they need onlyto rule out the possibility that there is or might be a subject of discourse

other than the do'v.6 The present proposal, then, will take account onlyof the following facts about lines 36-38 which, it seems to me, are

15 Tarain i28-129. The extra rripe is here deleted in both versions.16 "You will not find thinking without being . . . for there . . . is no ... other."

Barnes (Arch. Gesch. Philos. [1979] 12-14) comments interestingly on these lines,and on the adequacy of Preller's reconstruction. (I am not here concerned to

dispute the claim that the lines are not necessarily monistic.) Barnes says: "Per-

haps e estai was originally a marginal record of a variant for esti, and the text was

something like: ouden gar et'esti noesai, or: ouden gar et'emmenai estin" (p. 13

n.44). Here the point of the lines is still that no other besides what-is is available

(for being or for thought) because Moira bound it, etc., and this point emerges

clearly from Barnes' two possibilities as well as from the corrupt versions in

Simplicius. The present explanation of why the next lines (37-38) support line 36is, then, undamaged by the confusing situation in 36, except for what I say about

future being.








independent of the question how the text of 36 originally sounded: (i)the lines say that no other besides what-is could ever arise out of what-

is; (2) the lines say that (I) is true because Doom made what-is wholeand immovable.

It is worth noting that this is a somewhat peculiar statement for Par-

menides to be making here. First, it is hard to see why Being's whole-

ness and immovability should guarantee its solitariness; surely there

could be many whole and immovable solids. Second, it is hard to see

why, at this late point in the poem, he is still discussing a possible future

being (and consequently, one must suppose, a possible future coming-

to-be) on the part of something other than the dov. One would have

thought that the proof against coming-to-be was completed by the endof line 21; indeed, the emendation is proposed in order to allow us to

find a complete such proof before that line. So why would Parmenides

dredge up the question again in 36-38, if, indeed, that is what he is

doing there ?

In 36-38, the reason why there neither is nor ever will be any other

besides what-is, is declared to be that Doom constrained it to be whole

and immovable. Why are "whole and immovable" supposed to supportthe claim that no other exists now or will exist later? "Whole" by itself

might be supposed not to support "no other exists now or ever," since,someone might say, what-is could perhaps be a whole even if there were

another whole, and the other could also be whole. Even if what-is could

not be a whole if there were two separate existing things (that is, if

"what-is" meant, in part, "whatever is") this would leave "immovable"

without an independent contribution to make, since "whole" would

then, all by itself, be ruling out the existence of another. What, then, if

anything, doesaKtVqT0ov, "immovable," add to the meaning of the claim

being made here ? dK&770Tovhas no independent contribution to make

unless KL'Vrqauould include the egress of something from something, like

the splitting of an amoeba, as well as egress in the sense of change of

place, of something's moving out of its own place. That is, the addition

of aKLV&T0ovhere, if it means anything, tells us that this something other

than what-is, if there were to be such a thing later on, is being imaginedto come to be out of what-is, as the language (TrripETVo) dvroS) suggests.If the other were being imagined to come out of what-is-not, then there

would be no point in saying that what-is isaK&lrqT70.

Now the "will be"

(present in both readings) informs us that Parmenides is considering the

possibility that such an other might be in the future but not in the

present. But then it would have had to come to be, and presumablyeither from what-is or from what-is-not.

CanaKLVqT70v

have this meaning at this point in the poem? The earlier







16o Scott Austin

aKLVtT70V in 26 looksback to the signpostdrpEtLESof 4 and could have todo either with qualitative change, or with change of place, or both in line

26. That it means at least change of place is guaranteed by Trd7rov AaJdo-ELw,

"to changeplace" n 40-41.17 That &KLvT70ovules out changeof placein 26 is also shown by Ta'TOv 7T'I 7TaVT• E

LE•OVKaO'avrTO7EKEi7aLin 29:

"the same and remaining in the same place, it stays by itself." Here I

agree with Stokesis that, in this line, "The themes . . [Stokes means

the themes of qualitative and locomotive change] are inextricablymixed." But I do not see why Stokes19 says that

aKIvIqT0V in 37 would be

ruling out primarily qualitative change, especially in view of the remark

I just quoted from him. The reason he gives for a qualitative aKL~7qTV n

37 is that this is required if daKLv/70ovs there to exclude "the futureexistence of anything other than Being." I don't understand why what

both Stokes and I find in these lines - the coming-to-be of a new entity,a new logical subject - would be primarily a qualitative change; nor do

I understand why &Klvrq70v ould have to be qualitative here in order to

rule out such a coming-to-be, nor how it could be qualitative here but

locomotive in 26, especially since (as I shall try to show below) the terms

tend to widen in meaning, not narrow, as the poem goes along. And line

29, which immediately precedes a description of what-is as "bonded" in

line30,

is, on Stokes's own reading, a combination of spatial and quali-tative language.

As line 29 helps to show, change in place - in Parmenides as in Zeno- is thought of as egress from one's own place.20 We learn from 22-30

at least that what-is does not move out from its own place as a whole.

What I suggest is that, in 36-38, we hear something new, namely, that

another whole does not move out from it - or, equivalently, that part of

it does not move off and start living on its own as a whole in its own

right. "Whole" and "immovable" would, then, each separately work

against the existence of an other; being would not be whole because

there would be two things, separate from one another. And if such another were ever to come out of what-is, then being ("being" now names

'17Contra Stokes 136 and G. E. L. Owen ("Eleatic Questions," in R. E. Allen

and D. J. Furley, eds. Studies in Presocratic Philosophy, II, 63 (London I975).Lines 40-41 contain a negative catalogue of what is earlier proved in the poem:"to come to be and to perish," "to be and not to be at all," "to change place,"and "to change in bright color," this last perhaps looking forward to the per-

spectival neutrality of what-is in 42-49. Consequently &K&/L'VOVn 26 should mean

at least change of place.is Stokes 312 n.96 to 137.

'19Ibid. 138.20 For the Homeric evidence, see Mourelatos, Route 117-119.








only one of the pair, which is just what Parmenides thinks is wrong)would not be "immovable."

It will be objected thatdK•lro70v

is now being represented as meaning,in 38, more than what it did in 26. But dKvv/70ovn 26 occurs in the

context of two other alpha-privative predicates, avapXov and 5r1ravurov,

"not starting up" and "not stopping." The context is at least that of

motion as a whole across space. What-is cannot move like a ball alongthe sidewalk - in particular, it cannot start moving or stop moving.Thus the meaning of &KLv7T70Vn 26 is narrowed by the context, and there

is no reason why the context of 36-38 should not widen its meaning.21

Moreover, it is Parmenides' usual practice to widen the meaning of

terms as he goes along. The y',ve~s and JAE0poswhose denial helps torule out&KlvqT70Vn 26-27 are not the

yevE'•oaLand

JAAvoa0af 13-15,since the latter (13-15) do not involve change of place - or, if they are

already such as to rule out change of place by 13-15, then, since this

meaning is not part of their (purely temporal) immediate context in

6-15, their denial in 13-15 is not to be taken as excluding all their

senses, since there would then be nothing further to add in 26-32. Either

way, they widen in meaning. The present scheme will have the advan-

tage of providing an underlying rationale for what seems on the surface

to be a fluidity of meaning in

&KlV770Tv,

and in yE'VE~s (yEviE'aL) and

'AEOpos ('AAva0aL).

Consequently it is all right for the&KvqT)0ov in 38 to be wider in extent

(covering the emergence of a new entity as well as the locomotion of the

old) than the one in 26. And both oJAov andd•KvtqT0V

contribute to the

denial that what-is itself has offspring, a denial which first occurs in

36-38. It remains whole, i.e., no part of it moves out or runs away like a

baby kangaroo; and it is not subject to the sort of KI-qLg which means

the movement of something out of its own former place. This wideningof oiAov and

&Klvq70ov does not occur until 36-38, which therefore say

something new even as they recapitulate what went before. And this ishow Parmenides argues. His method is only occasionally syllogistic andconsists much more in the expansion of the same kind of argumentthrough different, and wider, contexts. The poem defies formalization;its procedure is essentially dialectical, as Furth has suggested.22

21 That dKL'V-rovn 26 stands in this logical relation to &vapXov rravcrrov is madeplausible by the fact that triadic patterns in similar logical relations occur severaltimes in fragment 8. A more general term is followed by two more specific terms,

opposedto each

other,with

SaLp7rdv.

..L6iAAov

.. XELOpdEPOVn 22-24, and withKtL77idvTo.

... .arEpov 77rpOc8Evn 7-10.

22 Montgomery Furth, "Elements of Eleatic Ontology," Journal of the Historyof Philosophy 6 (1968) 1i1-132, repr. in Mourelatos, The Pre-Socratics 241-270.







162 Scott Austin

That 36-38 are to be read, in part, as Moira's (Doom's) denial of

egress, is reinforced by the fact that one's uotpa, one's mortal lot, is in

Homer that from which one cannot escape.23 The fragment containsfour pictures involving fetters and bonds, of which this is the fourth:

what-is does not have free rein to come to be or to perish (13-15); birth

and death have been driven far afield (27-28); what-is is held bound

inside the bond (30-31) and now, I suggest, part of what-is (or another

what-is) does not escape in 36-38. Without such an explicit denial of the

coming-to-be of something besides what-is out of what-is, Parmenides'

refutation of mortal opinions would not be complete, since otherwise

many atoms could be or be generated out of what-is.

I am suggesting, at any rate, that lines 36-38 contain thealternative of

the coming-to-be of something besides what-is out of what-is which

Taran rightly desires to find in the poem, and that the words o"Aov and

aKLrqT70o are used here in a way in which they could not have been used

before line 26, after Parmenides seems to declare that he has refuted the

dreaded jAE6pos. There is therefore no need to emend lines I2-13 in

order to find this alternative in the poem. Moreover, the emendation has

the very consequence that Taran tries to avoid by adopting the emen-

dation, namely, that the text then lacks an important component in the

argument. On the present reading of 36-38, and without the emendation

in line 12, we can set up a complete dissection of all reasonable forms of

coming-to-be, as follows. (i) The coming-to-be of what-is out of what-

is-not is ruled out in 7-I 1; (2) the coming-to-be of something other than

what-is out of what-is-not is ruled out in 12-13; (3) the coming of

something other than what-is out of what-is is ruled out in 36-38; (4) a

coming-to-be of what-is-not out of what-is would make no sense, pace

Stokes, who finds the "turning of what-is into something besides Being"

in the emended line 12.24 Stokes then says that this "something besides

Being" would have to be "nothing." Thus he finds an argument against

perishing in these lines: he thinks that they say that being does not turn

into nothing. But the nothing here would have to be ;lu8EV,"nothing" =

TO j4 idov "Non-Being") in line 7; Parmenides would not use7t,

"some-

thing," as an explicit reference to nothing!25 There is no refutation of

perishing here, even with the emendation. Of course what, on the pre-

sent interpretation, the argument (in 12-13 and in 36-38) establishes is

that there is nothing for such a Lt o refer to, but this is still in the

process of being established in 36-38; it is ironically presupposed only in

23 Iliad 6.488: poipav S'o~ "rtvdieL• vypE'vov •l•LvaEadvSpcv.24 Stokes 132.25Above, n.II.








42-49, when Parmenides raises as a serious question (46-47) the possi-

bility that nothing might stop being from reaching its limits, as if it were

nobody that the Cyclops were afraid of. A turning of what-is into some-thing (rL) that does not exist is, in Parmenidean terms, 7wrvaros

oA•0Opos,since there is nothing to turn into. This is perhaps why he does not

discuss it and does not need to. (More on this later.) (5) The coming of

what-is-not out of what-is-not is not really anything at all, as Barnes has

noted.26 (6) Finally, a coming of what-is out of what-is either makes no

sense (since, if it is already, it cannot come to be as a whole), or is to be

read as (3), as the coming of something which is, but which would be

other than what-is, out of what-is. Parmenides has the distinction

between "what-is" (as a name for the one d'v) and "something thatexists" (TL, "something," &AAo,"an other") as a name for somethingwhich might be supposed to exist but be thought capable of not beingidentical with the io'v, but he does not need to use the distinction, exceptto reject the possibility, just mentioned, that there might be something

existing but other than the oneiov.27

If one accepts the Karsten emendation with Taran and others, then

alternative (2) above will be missing, and alternative (3) will be given

twice, in 12-13 and in 36-38. The emendation thus subtracts an alterna-

tive in the poem's treatment of the metaphysical possibilities, which is

just the consequence it was intended to avoid.

But the following objection will immediately arise. It will be asked: if

the coming-to-be of something besides what-is out of what-is is reallynot discussed until lines 36-38, then why does Parmenides behave in

lines 26-28 as if yE'VELSand 6AEOpos ave already been ruled out, a ruling-out which is surely complete at least by the end of 21, which begins with

a triumphantro•,

as if announcing a logical conclusion, and after which

he begins a new subject, the treatment of inhomogeneity in lines 22-26 ?

Someone might ask: given this apparent ring of finality in line 21, is it

really reasonable to suppose that 36-38 do anything more than repeat

(though perhaps from a more inclusive perspective) what has been

shown by the end of 21 ? After all, passages of reiteration and conclusion

(15-18, 34-36, 38-41) are scattered throughout the elenchus. And, it will

be suggested, if this is so, then perhaps we do need the emendation in

line 12, even in spite of all of the foregoing considerations.

My reply is that Parmenides seems to use yE'VEa~sand (what we mightcall) KlVqrULS9omewhat differently. FrvEULs, before line 21, seems solely to

mean what we might call absolute coming-to-be, the coming-to-be

26 Above, n.4.

27 See n.3 for references to a nonmonistic Parmenides.







164 Scott Austin

(either of what-is or of something else) from bare nothing, in the une-

mended text. Later, in 26-30, a connection between yEV~EUsand Klvr)qLSs

drawn in the lines

avTrdpKlWr7TOVLEyaAWV 7TEpaUL6E•/_,V

EUTtLV vapXov TravaTrov, ETELYEVE••

KaLOIAEOpO9

TI7AEJt'A' •

7T:AaXOqaav,aITWUE E'7TUTtL9aXdvq76i

In order to support the denial of the possibility of KLv;3gL, as it does in

these lines, y•vEats must be wide enough to cover that sort of coming-to-be involved in change of place, i.e., the coming-to-be in a different place

of something that used to be somewhere else. And yet this wider mea-ning of yE'vEat is in no way found in lines 6-2i as they stand. Thus we

are not really under the gun, i.e., either the ring of finality in 21I

is meant

to announce the demise only of absolute coming-to-be, or we do not

have to do all our refuting ofy•E'VEa•

before the end of 21, in spite of the

ring of finality. So we need not be in haste to emend in order to finish by

then.

Finally, what I earlier called the coming-to-be of something besides

what-is out of what-is, is found in 36-38, but there it is not called

yEv•aEs;

it is called

Klvr)ts,or would be if Parmenides used the word,

since the reason why no other ever comes to be is that what-is is oJAov

aKlVr)TOV.Thus there is no evidence that Parmenides liked to call such a

coming-to-be, a yEaELs. All the less reason to emend line i 2 in order to

find there denied the coming (perhaps not yEvEtas, but Klv-rqLsn the

sense of the egress of a part from a whole, or of a second whole from the

original place of the first whole) which is comfortably denied so much

later, in 36-38. Moreover, the 7pTe Toi) id'vros of 37 might be more

suited to carry this meaning than the nrap'az-do f 13, since the latter can

mean mere juxtaposition ("besides," "alongside") and the former could

perhaps mean something like "from out of what-is," as well as "along-side what is."28 A being besides what-is which sprang from (EK) nothing

(as in the unemended line i 2) would naturally be described as being

"besides" or "alongside"(r7apd)

what-is; but one which leaped out from

28 The restriction ofydvo~os

to a coming-to-be out of what-is-not is also noticed

by Stough (96-98). Untersteiner (Parmenide [Florence 1958] CLII note 130) alsodraws a distinction betwen yEVEcLSnd KLVoLSo,or different reasons.

LSJ do not give "from out of" as a sense for TripEe,ut I find it hard to believe

that the sense of EK + genitive is not also being heard here. However, I think that

the stronger argument for the present reading of 36-38comes from the

meaningof oulon and akineton. These have no function unless they rule out egress. All I

require is that Irapdiand iardpapan mean "besides" in either meaning of the

American word.








There is an interesting further issue here. As Mourelatos notes (Route i31

n.41), the Aristotelian tradition, from Theophrastus on (see Diels-Kranz A28 =

Simplicius Phys. I I5, 11), taking a hint from the master (Aristotle Phys. Gamma

6, 207a9 and ff) summarizes Parmenides' ontology by means of the following

paralogism:

7r rapa7 OVVLjoKV.

7TOK OVV Ev.ev apa TO Ov.

(roughly) what is, besides being, is not (a) being; what is not being is nothing; so

being is one.

One may (with Mourelatos) have doubts about the accuracy of this attempted

precis of Eleaticism and still find the use of para interesting here.

In American colloquial usage, at any rate, "beside(s)" can mean "in additionto, over and above" as well as "next to, physically alongside." This flexibility of

meaning corresponds well to the description of rapa' + accusative given in LSJ.Now Mourelatos, following Cornford, takes the 7rap' abT6 in line I3 in the spatial

sense, and thus sees I2-13 as ruling out the accretion of something, from what-is-

not, to what-is (and also, then, to what-is-not, since, if what-is grows by accre-

tion, it expands "into" what-is-not, or trespasses upon it). And the Aristotelian

tradition views Parmenides as saying that anything 7rapa Tvbv will not be 6v, and

so will be ofi'v. Are we to take the meaning of rrapc here, or its function in the

paraphrases of the Lyceum, as clues to the significance and role in Parmenides'

argument of the rapc' n line 13, and possibly also of the rrip~e Toi0 4'vroS in line

37?First of all, I think, we should not conclude from the Aristotelian summarythat Parmenides argued the same way the summary does, not only because Aris-

totelian paraphrases are suspect without further ado but also because it is clear

from the evidence we have already examined that the equation what-is-over-and-

above-being = nothing, instead of being self-evident (or even easy to prove) for

Parmenides, is, instead, something that he feels compelled to argue for in at least

two places: in i2-13 (and this is so with or without the emendation) and in

36-38. Of course, the Aristotelians might not have meant what they wrote as

anything other than a statement of the fundamental ontological presuppositionsof Parmenides. But, to the extent that their summary represents the whole of

Parmenides' argument as having been the equation what-is-other-than-being =

nothing (not to mention the fact that something that is other than something thatis is not necessarily nothing), it is not to be trusted, even apart from the fact that

it makes Parmenides arrive at monism paralogistically.But we do learn one thing from the summary, and that is that Aristotle, as a

Greek speaker, takes an eleatic rapci + accusative to mean at least "other than"

and perhaps also "alongside of" - otherwise the argument does not go througheven as paralogism. I mention this, not only to comment generally on the Aristo-

telian testimony, but also to point out that "besides," in the double colloquialsense described above, is a good, and also a noncommittal, translation. It does not

matter whether or not Parmenides actually meant vrapd in 13 only in the sense of

physical alongsidedness - even if he did, what counts in his proof is that what is

"alongside" is also what is "other than." The emendation, which affects only thequestion where this "other" comes from and not the question of its relation to the

)Cv, is, however, a separate question from those of the meaning of Trapd n 13 andof iraipe in 37.







166 Scott Austin

what-is would more naturally be described as being "from out of"

(lrapdE)what-is. Thus the unemended text is more natural. And it would

be much more appropriate to find the assertion that being does not giverise to another made in 36-38, after its wholeness and immovability have

been asserted by the time line 32 rolls around. Otherwise there is no

sense in saying that, because what-is isdaKLrrrTOv,

there can be no other.

Once its bounds have been drawn, it is much easier to say that it cannot

transgress them. Such boundaries would not be affected if an other were

to pop into existence from nothing besides it; but they would be affected

if a new being budded off. Thus, it is also more natural to have the

unemended text (the assertion that is to be found in 36-38) after 22-33.

Parmenides did not seem to feel himself under any compulsion to speakof a coming-to-ber7ple

70o E•VTroSas aY•VEaLS.

The fact that children

come from parents is apparently of little importance here. So we should

not feel under any compulsion to find this possibility discussed or refu-

ted before line 21. Lines 36-38 belong to the proof ofdTrpEIIE9line 4),

not to that of dyEv'qTrovline 3). Of course they recapitulate and include

what went before; but they also add something new.

The last reason for making the emendation is that it is supposed to

explain how lines 6-21 can be read as containing a refutation of,AEOpos

(perishing) on the part of what-is. For this seems to be one respect in

which the poem is entirely lacking in logical rigor. 'AvdEepov

("unperishing") is announced in'line 3 as one of the signposts to be

proved; but the proof seems to be lacking in lines 6-13, which, on the

surface at least, are entirely devoted to proving dyv'qTrov;and yet, in lines

13-15, Parmenides says that Justice did not permit what-is to perish, as

if this were a conclusion that had been established in the interveninglines. Again, lines 19-21 do seem to be devoted in part to perishing, but

one seems to look there in vain for the sort of detailed refutation of

~OAEposhat one finds for yEVEULs,nd the lines are, in any case, partly

recapitulatory, as can be seen from the fact that some sort of conclusionis drawn in lines 12-15.

It is claimed that the emended version of line 12 supplies such a

refutation. I have already explained why I think that Stokes' version of

this claim does not make sense for Parmenides (primarily because it

requires Parmenides to be using rT, "something," to refer to nothing).Barnes' proposal is very close to Stokes'. He says, paraphrasing:

"Nor from a state of existence can o [Barnes' object of discourse and

thought, i.e., the E'Ov]become something other than what is"; i.e., ocannot change from existing to not existing, o cannot be destroyed.That offers a statement, not an argument. Yet it is obvious what







Genesis and Motion in Parmenides : B 8.12-13 167

argument we are to supply: if o is destroyed at t, then o exists before t

and o does not exist after t. But "it is not sayable or thinkable that it is

not."29

This is not only rather peculiar but also militates against the spirit of

Barnes' own interpretation, for one would have expected him to read the

emended lines as saying that the object of knowledge and discourse

cannot turn into any existing thing besides itself. Otherwise it is not

really worthwhile for Barnes' Parmenides to spend time discussing the

possibility raised in the emended line; for a Parmenides who takes it as

nearly undeniable that what is available for discourse or for thought

must exist, would hardly spend time discussing the possibility that sucha thing might suddenly cease to be. It would be much more worthwhile

for him to show that there is only one such thing.

Finally - and this applies against both Barnes and Stokes - if it were

already so obvious in lines 12-13 that anything (TL) besides being would

have to be nothing, so obvious that a turning of what-is into such a thingwould be no less than the complete destruction of what-is, then why on

earth is Parmenides still bravely denying that there ever could be any-

thing other than what-is, some twenty-four lines later in lines 36-38?

Surely, if this needs to be said so forcefully so late, it cannot be obvious

in the earlier passage. And yet it must be taken to be no less than

obvious in I2-13, if the emendation is in fact to furnish us with a

refutation of JAE0pos.The (before 12-13, on all accounts, still unproved)

equation what is other than the d6v= what does not exist - an equation

which both Barnes and Stokes must attribute to Parmenides in those

lines - is one which Parmenides himself never took for granted, as lines

36-38 show.

I conclude that the emendation does not provide us with a refutation

of OAEOposefore line 19. In fact, there is no refutation of JAEOpos efore

line 19, and there does not need to be. For, if rT ~dv undergoes 1AE0pos,then there is a time when Tr

fyvoUK aTtnis true, and this would have

crisped Parmenides' hair with horror. And this is, as Barnes implies, so

obvious for Parmenides as hardly to need a separate argument. As

Barnes and others have pointed out, there is some connection in Parme-

nides' mind between perishing and future being, as lines 5-6 and 19-21

reveal; but a comprehensive study of the temporal language in Parme-

nides' poem, one to which Barnes, Owen, Kneale, Mourelatos, and

29Barnes 189- 9o.

I am very much indebted to Alexander Mourelatos, Martha Nussbaum, David

Francis, and Jonathan Barnes for help and suggestions.







168 Scott Austin

Schofield have made contributions, is outside the scope of the present

investigation. In any case, though, no matter what is really happening in

19-21, 0AE6poS is really announced as disproved in 13-15, and, if theemendation does not help Barnes and Stokes before i3-15, it does not

help them at all, since they want to find a refutation of 0AE0posbefore

line 19.I suggest, then, the adoption of the following points. (i) Lines 36-38

are to be read as denying, in part, that something besides what-is (i.e.,

something existing, but not identical with what-is) might come to be out

of what-is. (2) Consequently the emendationToO

for p" in lines 12-13 is

neither necessary (since the strongest reason for making it was to have it

supply the alternative which is in fact to be found in 36-38) nor desir-able, since, if it is made, the fragment then lacks an important alternative

(the coming-to-be of something besides what-is out of what-is-not). (3)It is also claimed that the emendation allows us to find the long sought,but never found, refutation of OAE0pos efore line i9. But this cannot be

done without also reading Parmenides as presupposing in 12-13 what he

still seems to think worthy of proof no earlier than 36-38, namely, that

what is other than being is nothing. Moreover, it is more than likely that

Parmenides thought that 5AEOpos efuted itself. After all, he calls it

elTrvros.

So:

(Lines 6-I I) Being doesn't ever come from nothing.

(Lines I2-13) Nothing else comes from nothing, either.

(Lines 36-38) And nothing ever comes from being.Conclusion: there is nothing but being, and it does not come to be; it

just is.

A concluding word on method. The logical universe of the Parme-

nides inhabiting the present article may seem a bit strange to those

accustomed to seeing clear, deductive arguments in his poetry. And yetit seems clear to me that Parmenides does widen the meaning of terms

(likeyYvEc•a,

CKl770rov)as he goes along in order to display the same

general principles first in temporal, then in spatiotemporal contexts; that

he recapitulates his argument in passages which also add to the meaningof what is recapitulated (lines 36-38); and, finally, that some of his

assertions are made quite without proof. Where is the proof that poipabound what-is? Where is the proof of 6uopov in B 8.22? Of lavAov in B

8.48? I do not want to fault Parmenides; his method, however, was a

dialectical rather than a strictly deductive one. This statement seems to

me to accord perfectly well with according him high respect as a thinker.

BOSTON UNIVERSITY

austin, scott_genesis and motion in parmenides. b 8. 12-13-1983_hsph, 87, pp. 151-168

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