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ΝΟΥΣ, Noein, and Their Derivatives in Pre-Socratic Philosophy (Excluding Anaxagoras): Part I.From the Beginnings to ParmenidesAuthor(s): Kurt von FritzSource: Classical Philology, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Oct., 1945), pp. 223-242Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/265805 .

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NOTE, NOEIN, AND THEIR DERIVATIVES IN PRE-SOCRATICPHILOSOPHY (EXCLUDING ANAXAGORAS)

PART I. FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO PARMENIDES

KURT VON FRITZ

INTRODUCTION

IN N earlier rticle' I tried o analyzethe meaning or meanings of thewords '6osand voeZv n the Homeric

poems, in preparation for an analysis ofthe importance of these terms in earlyGreek philosophy. The present article willattempt to cope with this second andsomewhat more difficult problem, but tothe exclusion of the vovisof Anaxagoras,since this very complicated concept re-quires a separate investigation. By wayof an introduction it is perhaps expedientto repeat briefly the main results of thepreceding article.

The fundamental meaning of the word

voeZv n Homer is to realize or to under-stand a situation. Etymologically, thewords voos and voe?v are most probablyderived from a root meaning to sniff or

to smell. But in the stage of the seman-tic development represented by the Ho-meric poems, the concept of voe?vs moreclosely related to the sense of vision. Acomparison with the words 1&6tv and7t7VWcTKVE as used in Homer leads to thefollowing results.

I. The use of the word &fZv has sowide a range that it can cover all the casesin which something comes to our knowl-edge through the sense of vision, includ-ing (a) the case in which the objectof vision remains indefinite, for in-stance, a green patch the shape ofwhich cannot be clearly distinguished; (b)

the case in which a definite object is seenand identified; and (c) the case in which1 CP, XXXVIII (1943), 79 if.

the importance of an object or of its ac-tion within a given situation is recognized.

II. The word 7L7V(UKtEV is used wherecase b is to be clearly distinguished fromcase a, that is, when stress is laid on thefact that a definite object is recognizedand identified (especially after first hav-ing been seen as an indefinite shape andwithout being recognized).

III. The term voetvdistinguishes case cfrom the first two cases and is used mainlywhere recognition of an object leads to therealization of a situation, especially a situ-ation of great emotional impact and im-portance.

From this fundamental meaning of voos

and voe?v everal derivative connotationshave developed, which can already be ob-served in Homer.

1. Since the same situation may have adifferent meaning to persons of differ-ent character and circumstances of life,the notion develops that different personsor nations have different voL.2 As thesedifferent meanings of a situation evokedifferent reactions to it and since these re-actions are more or less typical of certainpersons, v6os sometimes implies the no-tion of a specific attitude.

2. A dangerous situation, or a situationwhich otherwise deeply affects the indi-vidual realizing it, often immediately callsforth or suggests a plan to escape from, orto deal with, the situationL The visualiza-tion of this plan, which, so to speak, ex-

tends the development of the situationinto the future, is then also considered a2 Ibid., pp. 81 and 90.

[CASSICAL PHILOLOGY, XL, OCTOBER, 19451 223







224 KURT VON FRITZ

function of the voos, so that the terms voosand voEtv can acquire the meaning of

plan or planning. 3 With this deriva-tive meaning of the words, a volitional

element enters into the concepts of voosand voztv, which originally designate apurely intellectual function. It is also per-tinent to add that in Homer this intellec-tual function is not, as in Plato, opposedto and restraining of, but very often ratheran immediate cause of, violent emotion.4

3. Another derivative of the originalmeaning remains in the purely intellectualfield. Ordinarily the realization of a situa-tion merely adds a further element to therecognition of an object or of its action, forinstance, the realization of imminentdanger or inescapable doom to the recog-nition of the approaching enemy asAchilles.5 In other cases, however, therealization of the meaning of a situation isthe immediate consequence of the cor-rection of a previous, but inaccurate, rec-

ognition -for instance, the realizationthat the person appearing in the shape ofan old woman is, in fact, the goddessAphrodite.6 In this case the second andmore correct identification of the objectis not the result of a clearer vision of itsexternal form-which may still remainthat of an old woman7-but rather of adeeper insight into its real nature, which

aIbid., pp. 86 and 90.

4 Ibid., pp. 83 ff. 5 See Iliad xxii. 90 if.6 See ibid. II. 386 ff., and the examples discussed in

von Fritz, op. cit., p. 89.7 Sometimes Homer describes this experience in a

very strange fashion. In II. iii. 386 if. Aphrodite ap-pears to Helen in the shape of an old woman. But aftera while Helen '%6tqcre he beautiful neck, the lovelybreast, and the shining eyes of the goddess and real-izes who has been talking to her. Yet Homer does notsay with one word that the goddess has changed hershape and is now appearing in her true form. It seemsrather as if in some strange fashion the real beauty ofthe goddess shines through, or can be recognized

through, her assumed appearance. In many other in-stances, however (Odyss. i. 322; iv. 653; etc.), the godwho appears in human shape and retains this shape tothe end is recognized as a god without any referenceto visible qualities which might reveal him as such.

seems to penetrate beyond its outwardappearance. This deeper insight itself isthen also considered a function of thevoos.Another example of this is the case

in which a person, for instance, suddenlyrealizes that evil intentions are hiddenbehind a seemingly friendly attitude, etc.

4. In the cases described under 3, theimplication is usually that the voos whichpenetrates beyond the surface appearancediscovers the real truth about the matter.There can, then, be no different vOot inthis situation, but the voOS in this case isobviously but one.8 What is of still greaterimportance, with this connotation of theterm voos, the later distinction, so impor-tant in pre-Socratic philosophy, betweena phenomenal world which we perceivewith our senses but which may be decep-tive and a real world which may be dis-covered behind the phenomena seems insome way naively anticipated.

5. Still another extension of the mean-

ing of voos, closely connected with thecases described both under 2 and under 3,is the voos which makes far-off thingspresent. 9 In this connection Y'oS seemsto designate the imagination by which wecan visualize situations and objects whichare remote in space and time.10

6. On the negative side it is importantto stress the fact that v6os and voEZv nHomer never mean reason or reason-

8 See von Fritz., op. cit., p. 90, and below, p. 226.

9Von Fritz, op. cit., p. 91.10This meaning of the word is especially well Illus-

trated by the passage II. xv. 80 ff.: Just as when thev6osof a man who has seen many lands and thinks 'IfI were only here or if I were only there' darts from oneplace to another, just as quickly Hera flew through theair. Here we have also the origin of the expression

with the quickness of thought, mit Gedankenschnelle,which can be found in most modern languages.Thought or Gedanke in this expression, just as v6os inthe passage of Homer, does not, of course, mean theprocess of thinking or reasoning, which may be very

slow, as Lessing pointed out in his famous fragmentFaust, when he made Faust reject the services of adevil who is only as quick as thought, but it means theflight of the imagination. Cf. also Odyss. vii. 36: rCv vieS

6KefaLL wg el orrep6 vo671/a.







NOTI, NOEIN, AND THEIR DERIVATIVES 225

ing. l Nevertheless, it is possible to dis-cover even in the Homeric poems tracesof a development which later, though veryslowly, resulted in an extension of the

meaning of the terms in this direction.When a man who at first has been de-ceived by a seemingly friendly attitude be-gins to suspect that evil intentions may behidden behind the friendly appearance, hedoes so on the basis of certain observa-tions. Putting these observations together,he deduces, as we would say, that the ap-pearance must be deceptive. A certainamount of reasoning, therefore, seems toenter into the process. Yet there is abso-lutely no passage in Homer in which thisprocess of reasoning is so much as hintedat, when the terms voos or voetvare used.On the contrary, the realization of thetruth comes always as a sudden intuition:the truth is suddenly seen. It is mostessential for a full understanding of earlyGreek philosophical speculation to deter-

mine as exactly as possible how far theelement of deductive reasoning is clearlyand consciously distinguished from the

intuitive element wherever a philosoph-ical discovery or the realization of a philo-sophical truth is ascribed to the voos.

All the derivative meanings of theterms voos and voEZv isted can also befound in Hesiod, but their frequency inproportion to the cases in which the wordshave preserved their original meaning hasbecome much greater. Apart from this,one can observe that in several respects adevelopment already started in Homer iscarried somewhat further still.

1. The notion that different personsmay have different voot has been furtherdeveloped in two opposite directions. Onthe one hand, the same person may have a

different voos at different times.'2 On the11 Von Fritz, op. cit., p. 90.

12 See, e.g., Erga 483: &XXOTe 6' &XXoZos Z7oPas P6oSatyt6xoLo.

other hand, voos now can designate notonly a more or less permanent attitude,13as in Homer, but also a fixed moral char-acter, so that the word is now often con-

nected with adjectives expressing moralpraise or blame.'42. In some cases the volitional element

which the concept sometimes contains inHomer is strengthened and also entersinto new combinations with the intellec-tual element. One very interesting exam-ple of this can be found in the Scutum. Itis a well-known fact that the language ofthis poem of an unknown author showsthe influence of both Homer and Hesiod.Naturally, the combination of these twoinfluences sometimes produces somethingnew. In my earlier article I tried to show'5that whenever voos in Homer approachesthe meaning of wish, there is a definiteconnection between the realization of apresent situation and the vision of a de-sired future, including the visualization

of a way in which this desired future statemay be reached. This connection seemsno longer to exist in Scutum 222, when itis said of Perseus Ws e v0rn.L' xroraro. Thevo6f,ua n this expression is, of course, essen-tially the imagination by which far-offthings are made present and the quicknessof which in overcoming time and space isalready a familiar concept in the Homericpoems.'6 But when Perseus flies around csvo6rnua, his body follows his imaginationwith the same quickness, which, of course,implies that he wishes to be in the placeof, which he thinks. Thought and

wish have become indistinguishable inthe complex notion of voos, but the orig-inal connection with the realization of apresent situation is no longer felt.

13 Not only v6ot but also v67,uca s now used in thesense of attitude (cf. ibid. 129).

14 So in the typical expressions KaKS6 v6oS, v6oS &9X64,or KbCeos 6oS in Erga 67.

16 See op. cit., p. 82.16 See above, p. 224 and n. 10.







226 KURT VON FRITZ

This new combination of the intellec-tual and volitional elements in the conceptof voos may have been facilitated by thefact that in the genuine works of Hesiod

the volitional element in the meaning ofthe word had been further developed in asomewhat different direction. While inHomer voos never means clearly deliber-ate attention, though in a few very rarecases it seems to approach this meaning,17this connotation is now definitely estab-lished in the expression 6os&mevmqs.18

3. Most interesting, however, is thefurther development of the concept of av6oswhich understands a complex situa-tion and also penetrates below the sur-face appearance of things. The implica-tion, characteristic of the concept inHomer, that this voos always sees thetruth, is occasionally, though less fre-quently, made also in Hesiod.'9 It is prob-ably on this basis that, in the ScUtum,20

vooscan acquire the meaning of clever-

ness> or intelligence in the sense ofhigh intelligence.But in contrast to the idea that this

penetrating and understanding voosalways sees the truth, the notion is nowdeveloped that this v6os can also be de-ceived. It is quite interesting to observehow this idea, which cannot be found any-where in Homer, gradually evolves. First,there is the notion, quite familiar to Ho-mer, that something can escape the voos2' orthat the vooscan be stunned, dulled, or en-tirely taken away either by a physicalblow or by passion or strong emotion.22

17 See von Fritz, op. cit., pp. 82, 87, and 91.

18 Theog. 661.

19 The best example is Erga 293 if.: O4rOs piV wav-

PTpTOrTos ds abrTs I&PTa cWicr77, but cf. also ibid. 89 and 261;Theog. 12; etc.

20 Scutum 5 f.: .6ov yef9oh Oh tspL T*6V &1 O3Tal O'17rO

TiAiov e&IVO71TiaL: no mortal woman rivaled her in regardto V6OS.

21 E.g., Erga 105 or Theog. 613.

22 E.g., Theog. 122; cf. also Scutum 144.

All this, of course, is not in conflict withthe notion that the voos, if and when itfunctions, invariably sees the truth. Butthe transition from a dulled to a deceived

voos s very easy, and this transition is in-dubitably made in three passages in Hesi-od.23But, easy as the transition seems, itcreates, in fact, an entirely new concept;for now we have a vooswhich still in a wayis more penetrating than mere vision orrecognition, since it is concerned not withthe appearance of things but with the

real meaning of a situation and thetrue character and intentions of the

persons involved in it. Yet what the voossees behind the surface appearance

may be all wrong, because the voos,though still functioning with seeminglucidity, is deceived by greed or anger andtherefore no longer functioning properly.

It is very interesting to observe how, inthese cases, concepts which later were toplay an important role in the beginnings of

a philosophical theory of knowledge and ascientific psychology are already devel-oped in a naive way out of the problemsand observations of everyday life and inconnection with speculations which in away may be called philosophical butwhich are certainly very remote from anyconscious theory of knowledge or scientificpsychology.

With the rise of philosophical specula-tion in the narrower sense, common lan-guage and philosophical terminology grad-

23 When (Erga 323) Hesiod says that greed de-ceives the Psi of men, it is obvious that the v6os ofthe greedy man not only recognizes an object but real-izes a situation and, in agreement with the notion ofvics in Homer, conceives a plan to deal with, or todraw advantage from, the situation. At the same time,however, the vics conceives of the situation or of itsplan as of something which will be conducive to some-thing which is good for the person conceiving it, andin this respect the v6os is deceived or deceives it-self. This must be contrasted with the many cases in

Homer (and Hesiod) in which It is the function of thev6osto realize the true importance of a situation forthe welfare of a person. Similar allusions to a v6oswhich can be deceived are found in Theog. 537 andErga 373.







NOT2, NOEIN, AND THEIR DERIVATIVES 227

ually begin to develop on different lines.Though it would be interesting to observethe interrelations which in the beginningare naturally still very close and never

cease altogether, it seems preferable, forthe sake of clarity, from now on to followthe two trends separately.

There also arises a new problem be-cause of the nature of the tradition. In re-gard to Homer and Hesiod, the danger ofbeing misled by late interpolations is notvery great. But it is commonly knownthat a good many of the sayings attrib-uted to the early Greek philosophers byGreek tradition are not authentic. The in-vestigation, therefore, will have to pro-ceed with great caution, and it will per-haps be useful to start with a rough out-line of the different types of tradition andof the procedure which has to be followedin regard to them.

It is obvious that the analysis must bebased mainly on those fragments which

have come down to us in their originalwording. Fortunately, the works of mostof the early Greek philosophers are dis-tinguished from the products of later pe-riods not only by their contents but alsoby their style, their dialect, and, in not afew cases, by the meter. Even so, how-ever, since the dialect of indubitably gen-uine works of the sixth and fifth centuries,as, for instance, the work of Herodotus,has not been preserved in its original pu-rity, so that faulty dialect forms do notnecessarily prove that a fragment is spuri-ous, it is not always quite easy to dis-tinguish between authentic pieces andlater imitations.

As to the rest of the tradition, Aristotleand his disciple Theophrastus can, on thewhole, be relied upon to have used the

original and genuine works of the authorswhom they quote, though Erich Frank2424 Plato und die sogenannten Pythagoreer (Halle,

1923), pp. 290 ff. and 331 ff.

seems to assume that in one case Aristotlewas misled by a work of Speusippus,which the latter had either partly orwholly attributed to the Pythagorean

Philolaus-a somewhat strange assump-tion, considering the fact that Aristotlemust have seen Speusippus almost dailyin the Academy from the time that thelatter was about thirty years of age to thetime that he was fifty. On the other hand,Aristotle habitually translates the ideas ofhis predecessors into his own terminology,so that he can rarely be used as an author-ity for their linguistic usage. Neverthe-less, his discussions of pre-Socratic philos-ophy are not without importance for thepresent analysis; for, especially wherethey can be compared with fragments ofthe original works, they often make itpossible to show how the change of con-cepts and of the connotations of terms in-fluenced the interpretation of the philo-sophical systems and ideas of an earlier

period. All this, though to a slightly lessdegree, is also true of Theophrastus.Some of the later doxographers and an-

cient historians of philosophy, though not,for instance, Sextus Empiricus, are lessthorough in the adaptation of early ideasto the concepts and language of their owntimes. Yet their testimony can hardly everbe accepted without careful scrutiny. Onthe other hand, the results of the first partof the analysis starting from the indubi-tably genuine fragments can occasionallybe used to prove that a late author whosereliability is justly questioned on generalgrounds must have had some access togenuine information, since he uses theterms PoUS, oeziv, etc., in a sense whichhad been more or less common in the sixthand fifth centuries but which had gen-

erally disappeared from philosophical us-age after the middle of the fourth centuryor even earlier. The same principle mayalso be applied in order to find out how







228 KURT VON FRITZ

far later imitations of early philosophicalworks may have made use of authenticmodels.

XENOPHANES

The first Greek thinker-for some mod-ern scholars would not grant him the nameof a philosopher-who uses the word infragments of indubitable authenticity isXenophanes, who, in all likelihood, wasborn in 571 B.C. but lived to a very ripeold age and, according to his own testi-mony, was still active as a poet when hewas ninety-two years old.25 The most im-

portant fragment in regard to our prob-lem is Frag. B24 (Diels), where he says ofGod: oviXosopa, oivXos e5 I'OL, oivXos be T'aKOvet.

The place of this fragment within thegeneral philosophy of Xenophanes is easyto determine. He objects to the anthropo-morphic ideas of God or the gods whichwere current at his time. God is no more

25 In Frag. B8 (Diels), Xenophanes says that it isnow sixty-seven years that he has carried his sorrow up

and down the land of the Greeks and that it was twen-ty-flve years after his birth that he began his wander-ings. This shows that wheni he wrote these lines he wasninety-two years old. But it does not, of course, in it-self give an absolute date. Diog. Laert. ix. 20 placeshis I&KIAj, a date which he generally derives from thefamous work of Apollodorus, in the sixtieth Olympiad,i.e., 540 B.C. This is also the date of the foundation ofElea, which shows that Apollodorus, according to hiscustom, determined the AKAi# by a famous event in whichXenophanes had taken part. Since Apollodorus usuallyequates the &KlAi of a person roughly with the fortiethyear of his life, Clem. Alex. (Strom. i. 64) and Sext.Emp. (Adv. math. L. 257) cannot be correct when theysay that Apollodorus placed the birth of Xenophanesin the fortieth Olympiad, i.e., 620 B.C. This would alsobe at variance with the statement of Timaeus (alsoquoted by Clement) that Xenophanes came to thecourt of Hieron of Syracuse. The error in Sextus andClement is probably due to a confusion of the flguresM and N.

Since Apollodorus' axiA,-dates are usually only arough approximation to the age of forty, it is not neces-sary to accept 580 as the date of Xenophanes' birth;and if he came to the court of Hieron, he was probablystill somewhat younger. It seems, then, most likelythat the beginning of his wanderings falls in the yearwhich, in another fragment (B22 [Diels]), he claimsto have been the decisive date in the life of coequalfriends, namely, the year when the Median came,i.e., 546 B.C. On the other hand, it seems quite impos-sible to consider him a disciple of Parmenides (bornafter 540), as K. Reinhardt (Parmenides [Bonn, 19161)has done.

like a human being than he is like a horseor an ox.26 f he is to be God, he can haveneither the shape nor the character andattitude of a mortal creature.27 He cannot

move around and be first in one place andthen in another, but he is always presenteverywhere.28 He must be all-powerfuland hence only one.29For the same reasonhe must be unborn and uncreated.30 Inconnection with these ideas the funda-mental meaning of the fragment quotedis quite clear: God can have no specialorgans of sensation or perception. He isall-seeing, all-hearing, and also altogethervocov.

It is characteristic of the meaning ofvoetv in this fragment that it is so closelyconnected with the sensual perceptions ofseeing and hearing. Its place between thetwo is probably due to the meter. But the

26 Frags. B15 and B16 (Diels).

27 Frags. B11, B12, B14, and B23 (Diels).28 Frag. B26 (Diels).

29 (Pseudo-)Aristotle, De Melisso Xenophane Gorgia3. 2, p. 977a. 19 ff. The expression is 7rAwVTn KP6TLc-TOs,

which in itself can also be translated the strongest ormost powerful of all. But the context shows clearlythat God is said to be not only stronger than any otherbeing individually, but all-powerful, at least in thesense that he is more powerful than all the rest of theworld together.

30 Ibid. 3. 1, p. 977a. 14 ff. On the basis of thesepassages in the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise, Rein-hardt (op. cit., pp. 103 ff.) contends that Xenophanesmust have been a disciple of Parmenides because hisform of reasoning shows the influence of the latter.But it is extremely unlikely that Xenophanes couldhave been the disciple of a man who must have beenat least thirty-three years younger (see above, n. 25).At most, one could assume a certain secondary influ-ence. But even this is hardly necessary. The form inwhich the author of the treatise presents the ideas ofXenophanes is, of course, that of a later age. But thereis nothing in the arguments which he attributes toXenophanes that could not easily be retranslated intothe comparatively simple form of the literal fragmentsof Xenophanes' work; and these fragments show notrace of the heavy and difficult language and argu-mentation of Parmenides or Melissus or of the keendialectic of Parmenides' other disciple, Zenon. Thefact that Xenophanes says of his God what Parmen-

ides says of the 46v, namely, that it does not move butstays where it is, certainly does not prove anything,since this follows from the omnipresence of God,which, as Reinhardt himself concedes, is an attributeof God in a great many monotheistic religions.







NOTE, NOEIN, AND THEIR DERIVATIVES 229

connection itself must have been quitenatural to Xenophanes. It is, then, per-haps not without significance for the his-tory of the word voeZv hat none of the

later authors who refer to the content ofthe fragment, without quoting it literally,has preserved this connection. Diog.Laert. ix. 19 mentions seeing, hearing, andVOelV in this sequence, but in two separatesentences and so that Voe?V s connectedwith Op6vants rather than with thesenses.3 All the others mention either onlythe senses32 or only the vosX,33 but notboth. Sextus34 finally explains the attri-bute voep's, which Timon of Phleius hadgiven to the god of Xenophanes, byXO-lKOs. All this, if taken together, seemsto prove beyond doubt that the concept ofVOelV must have undergone a great changebetween Xenophanes and those Greek au-thors who wrote about him and whoseworks have come down to us.

In Xenophanes' mind there was obvi-

ously no such clash between the notions ofsensual perception and of VOelV as musthave been felt by those later Greek au-thors who refused to connect these notionswith one another, or as we feel in Diels'stranslation of the fragment: Die Gott-heit ist ganz Auge, ganz Geist, ganz Ohr.But this means only that, at least in onevery essential respect, Xenophanes' con-cept of voos is still the same as Homer's.For in Homer also the voos is very closelyrelated to sensual perception.35 This ob-servation may, then, also help to inter-pret the fragment correctly. Xenophanes'point is clearly that God does not see orhear by means of special organs. At first

31 'OXoV B4 6paV Kad Mov AKOf4JV, 12 pAviro& Ava&voeTw

al4Lrari T- Te elVai VOVV Kat Op6p?7aty Kal &t5Loy.

32 Pseud.-Ar., op. cit., pp. 977a. 37 f., 978a. 3 ff.and 12 f.; Pseud.-Plut. Strom. 4; Hippol. Refut.L. 14. 2.

33 Simpl. Comm. in Arist. Phys. xxii. 22. 9; TimonPhl. Frag. 60.

34 Sextus Emp. Pyrrh. hyp. 1. 225.35 See von Fritz, op. cit., pp. 88 ff.

sight, it might, then, seem as if the anal-ogy required that human beings and ani-mals, in contrast to God, have a specialorgan of voos, just as they have special

organs of vision and audition. But there isno trace of a connection between the voosand a special bodily organ anywhere inGreek thought before the second half ofthe fifth century. The voos in Homer andelsewhere perceives by means of andthrough the organs of the senses. There isno reason to believe that Xenophanesthought otherwise. What he wishes to sayis that the voos of God does not perceivethe truth about events or situations andtheir character through the medium ofspecial organs of vision, audition, etc.

The second fragment in which the con-cept of voOSoccurs is B25 (Diels): aXX' airai-VeUve 'rO6volo vOov q5pevL ravTa KpalaaveL.

Again the main point is quite clear. Goddoes not need any tools or organs to

shake the world. That he wills some-

thing is sufficient to bring it about. Butthe expression voOU 4pevL is interesting.It is, of course, impossible within the pres-ent context to attempt a complete analysisof the difficult concept of 4p4v. The worditself disappears almost completely afterthe first decades of the fourth century, ex-cept in direct imitations of Homer, andsurvives only in its derivatives, q5poveZv,4p6vnTLs, wopoo`vmq, etc. Even more thanvoos, t originally can refer to emotional,volitional, and intellectual elements inthe attitude of a person. But, contrary tovoos, t is always connected with the po-tential or actual beginning of an action.Contrary to OvAo's,t never is used where apassion or emotion is blind. The intellec-tual element is always present. This intel-lectual element comes even more into the

foreground in the derivatives, OpOVE?V,dp6v7OaLt, etc. But, unlike VOeZV, tc., thesederivatives also refer always to attitudeswhich reveal themselves exclusively in ac-







230 KURT VON FRITZ

tions. The connection of voe?vand /ppiv c-curs as early as Homer.36 But in thiscase voe?vmeans to plan. So the refer-ence to potential action is also implied in

this part of the expression. Noos, on theother hand, in contrast to voe?vand vorn,ua,never means plan in Homer. There mayperhaps be just a shade of this connota-tion in Xenophanes' bold expression. Butit is more likely that the genitive voov isused to strengthen the intellectual elementin 4p'v, so that one may interpret thus:

He shakes the world by the active will(or impulse) proceeding from his all-per-vading insight.

The third and last fragment containinga derivative of voos3 says that God istotally different from mortal beings inshape and vo6mtta. his does not add verymuch to what has been discussed so far.But a negative observation may perhapsbe made. Neither in the literal nor in theindirect fragments of Xenophanes' works

are the words voos, etc., ever used in re-gard to human beings. Perhaps this is notquite accidental. The fragment just quot-ed, of course, seems to imply that mortalsalso have vorAara, even though they aredifferent from those of God. In other frag-ments,38 however, Xenophanes expressesextreme skepticism concerning the capac-ity of human beings for true insight.Opinion and guesswork39 is all that isgranted to them. This may not precludethe presence of voos in mortals altogether,but it seems to indicate that, in Xenoph-anes' opinion, the voos in mortals was

36 II. ix. 600: Do not plan [or contemplate (Pv6e)]

such a thing [namely, to go home and let the ships ofthe Greeks be burned by the Trojans] in your opEPtS,

says Phoinix to Achilles.

37 B23 (Diels).38 B34, B35, B36 (Diels).

39 This seems a more correct translation of theword 56KO6 than Diels's translation, Wahn, whichfalsely implies that the opinions of the mortals are al-ways wrong, while Xenophanes says merely that theyare always uncertain.

not only more restricted in scope than itwas in God but also very rare. If this in-ference is correct, we find here the mostimportant deviation from the Homeric

concept; for in Homer all people naturallyhave voos, even though of varying qualityand degree. In any case, the notion thatvoos s something exceptional which onlyfew people possess becomes very preva-lent in the generation after Xenophanes,especially with Heraclitus, though it canalready be found in the poems of Semon-ides of Amorgos. It is obvious that thisimplies a change in the character of the in-sight which is supposed to be the result ofgenuine voeYv.

HERACLITUS

Reinhardt has proved conclusively40that Parmenides does not refer to Hera-clitus4' in the famous passage on the errorof the two-headed mortals, as mostscholars since Bernays had believed. But

his attempt to prove that Heraclitus wasconsiderably younger than Parmenidesand strongly influenced by his philoso-phy42 s not very conclusive. What he con-siders direct chronological evidence for hisassumption can easily be explained in adifferent way;43 and the passages which,in his opinion, prove Parmenides' influ-ence on Heraclitus seem rather to showthat there may have been some connec-

40 Op. cit., pp. 64 ff.

41 Frag. B6. 3 if. (Diels).42 Reinhardt, op. cit., pp. 155 if. and 221 ff.

43 Reinhardt has two arguments of this kind. One isthe passage in Plato's Sophistes, in which Plato saysthat the Ionic Muses, i.e., Heraclitus, tried to solvethe Eleatic problem, which was flrst posed by Xenoph-anes or even earlier ; the other is Heraclitus' refer-ence to Hermodorus (Frag. B121), which in his opin-ion was possible only after the complete democratiza-tion of the government of Ephesus. But the flrst argu-ment is obviously conclusive only if one accepts Rein-hardt's theory that Xenophanes was a disciple ofParmenides (see above, nn. 25 and 30). As to thesecond argument, see H. Gomperz, Heraclitus ofEphesus in TEZZAPAKONTAETHIP12 OEOE4IAOT BOPEA,II (Athens, 1939), 48 if.








tion between Heraclitus' philosophy andthe thought of Xenophanes, on the onehand, and Anaximander, on the other, butthat he remained completely outside the

philosophical development which wasinitiated by Parmenides.4 Since Hera-clitus had also singularly little influenceon later philosophers before Socrates-ex-cept the so-called Heracliteans, who, aseverybody now agrees, misunderstoodhim and, in a way, converted his doctrineinto its very opposite-while Parmenideshad the deepest influence on all Greekphilosophers of the next century, includ-ing the Heracliteans, it seems expedientto analyze Heraclitus' concept of voosfirst, regardless of the purely chronologi-cal problem.

Again, there are only three extant lit-eral fragments in which the word voos oc-curs, but they are deeply significant. Twoof these fragments45 clearly express theopinion that voos is something which but

few people possess. The first denies thatHesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, andHecataeus had voos and adduces this al-leged fact as proof to show that 7roXv/LLaOhqis not conducive to voos. The second seemsto refer to the overwhelming majority ofhuman beings in general and says thatthey have neither voos nor 4p7v, for theylisten to the minstrels in the street anduse the crowd as their teacher, not know-ing that the many are bad [or, rather,'worthless'] and that only few are good [orrather, 'worth something']. B. Snell hasshown46 that /ia0e?v and its derivativesoriginally mean a knowledge, a skill, oralso an attitude which is acquired by

44 See Olof Gigon, Untersuchungen zu Heraklit(Leipzig: Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1935),pp. 31 ff., 75 f., and passim.

45 B40 and B104 (Diels).46 Bruno Snell, Die Ausdriicke fiur den Begriff des

Wissens in der vorplatonischen Philosophie ( Philol.Untersuchungen, Vol. XXIX) (Berlin, 1924), pp.72ff.

training, by being brought up in certainways, or by practical experiences-as, forinstance, when a man learns to be cau-tious or even learns to hate47-but that

later they come to designate also theknowledge of specific objects and groupsof objects about which very definite andunquestionable knowledge could be ob-tained. It is, of course, in virtue of thissecond meaning that the word could beused specifically for what we still call

mathematics. Snell very ingeniouslyfinds the connection between these twovery different meanings in the fact that inboth cases the knowledge and its acquisi-tion are determined by the object ratherthan by the subject. The man who learnsby (very often unpleasant) experienceslearns the hard way, and his knowledge isdetermined by objects which he not onlystudies but with which he often collides.The mathematician, on the other hand,may search for the truth, but more than

any other scholar, and certainly more thanthe poet or the philosopher, who are therepresentatives of knowledge and wisdomin the period of our study, he is bound byhis object. There is no room for differentand subjective viewpoints.

It is obvious that the meaning of -/ia0Lrqin the first of the fragments under discus-sion does not coincide completely witheither of the two meanings pointed out bySnell, but is somewhere in between. All thepersons whom Heraclitus mentions weremen not so much of practical experienceas of prominence in various fields of theo-retical knowledge. Pythagoras may ormay not have been a mathematician, butthe other three certainly were not. What iscommon to all of them is an unusuallybroad and detailed knowledge in specific

fields: Hecataeus in geography and his-torical legend, Hesiod also in historicallegend and in mythology and earlier

47 Cf. Pindar Pyth. 4. 284; Aesch. Prom. 1068,







232 KURT VON FRITZ

mythological speculation, Pythagorasthrough his interest in various sciencesand pseudo-sciences, and Xenophanesthrough his travels and as a man who

7roXXw-v vOpcw'7rcwviaevakrea KaL voovEyv7w.The 7roXv/iaOhq f which Heraclitus speaksis then obviously this factual knowledgein various specific fields. Noos, in Hera-clitus' opinion, is not acquired by the ac-cumulation of such knowledge, but itmust be sufficiently related to it for such aclaim to have been made, whether openlyor tacitly.

In the second fragment there is thesame close connection between voos and45piv as in Frag. B25 of Xenophanes.48 Itcan be interpreted with the help of B112,where Heraclitus says that q5poveTvs thegreatest virtue and that wisdom consistsin saying and doing the truth (under-standing it according to nature).49 Wis-dom,50 then, seems to have a theoreticaland a practical side; and if one may as-

sume that, in accordance with pre-Hera-clitean usage,51 voOS and 4p'v representthese two sides respectively, it is perhapspossible to conclude that the voos hassomething to do with 4Xt0cia &yewv. hisinference, however, since the voos is notactually mentioned in the fragment as wehave it, is not quite cogent unless con-firmed by further evidence; and even if itis correct, it will still be necessary to findout with what kind of aXqOIEahe voos isconcerned.

By far the most important fragment isB114: {vv vo'y X\eyovTas boXVPlte-Oat Xpr1TqWvvcp 7rav'Tcvw, U1SKCDrEp vO6c rAOLs, Kai

7roX)v l-XvpOTEpciS. TpOcovTaL adp 7ravres t

48 See above, p. 229.

49 Some scholars (see Gigon, op. cit., p. 101) haveexpressed doubts concerning both the meaning andthe genuineness of the last three words (Kara 4wtwdirato^Vras) of the fragment.

60 For the history of the term aoota see Snell, op.cit., pp. 1 ff.

s1 See above, p. 229.

dvOpcbireaot vobuot '7r6 evs6 -oi Odeov Kparec

,yap roaooVrov oKocrov i0iXG Kai E9apKET raot

KaL 7rEpLyLveraL. Since Heraclitus likes toplay with words and to suggest some sig-

nificance in their similarity,52 he choice ofthe parallel forms nv' owynd (vv - is hard-ly fortuitous and obviously stresses theinherent connection between the voOS ndthe {vvov or KOLVOV: Those who speakwith v6osmust base [what they say] upon53that which is common to all and every-thing, just as a political community isbased on the law, and even more strongly.For all the human laws are nourished bythe one divine law, etc. It seems evident,then, that the (vvov on which any voeZvmust be based is identical with the divinelaw which governs everything. For thelaw of the political community is broughtin only as an analogy in a more restrictedfield, which is at the same time part of,and determined by, the larger and morecomprehensive order.

The function attributed to the voosin

this fragment obviously goes far beyondanything attributed to it in Homer orHesiod; yet the early and the new con-cept are closely related. In both cases thevoos s concerned not with isolated objectsor even conditions but with somethingmore complex, which it tries to under-stand in its meaning and importance.What Heraclitus claims is merely that it

is not possible to understand anythingof this kind properly unless the divine lawwhich governs everything is part of thepicture.

But in what way does the voos attainknowledge of, or insight into, this divinelaw? By reason, by intuition, or in what

52 See, e.g., Bi, B25, B47 (Diels).53 Literally, must strengthen themselves, support

themselves with, or rely on (cf. Lysias vi. 35) thatwhich is common, etc. But obviously one has to sup-plement in regard to what they say. For this reasonthe translation given above seemed to express themeaning more clearly than a more literal translationwould have done.








other way? Since tie word voOS nd its de-rivatives do not occur in any other frag-ment beyond those already discussed, theanswer must be found with the help of

those passages which refer to the mainobject of the voos-the (vvov. At firstsight it may seem as if Heraclitus was con-tradicting himself continually concerningthe relation of this object to human knowl-edge. He says again and again that people(65vOpwirot) o not understand or recognizethis (vvoveven after having been told thetruth about it.54 Yet there is Frag. B113:

VvOVTv t -at To 4povic4v. In B54 Hera-clitus says Ap.iovrt'q &4as's 4avepaS KpELT-

Tcwv. Yet in B56 he says that it is the4avepa about which most men are in er-ror.55 Finally, in B35 he says that philoso-phers must be 7roXXOWv-ropes, while in B40he seemed to express the opinion that tohave seen or experienced many things,like Xenophanes, is not conducive to trueinsight.56

In none of these cases, however, is therea real contradiction, and the solution ofthe difficulty leads also to an answer tothe main problemr. f Frag. B113 is takentogether with B2: ro'v X6'yov6' vOvTos vvoV

tcbovatv ot' 7roXXo1 U'S t'blav ri:XoYn POp6Vtqow, t becomes quite clear that wvv6veoTl waot rT OpovE4av does not mean, asDiels and most earlier scholars under-stood, 7ravTE:s av Opcrot 4pOVi4ovO, but,

as Gigon was the first to point out,57 TraoTraLrTO O- pov4L'av--or, in other words, thereis only one way in which one can OpovEtv.But since the term chosen is the same as

54 Bi, B2, B17, B19, B34, B40, B51, etc.55 The seeming contradiction between the two frag-

ments results from the fact that in both cases Hera-clitus obviously refers, if not to the tiw6v tself, at leastto its most essential manifestations.

56 See above, p. 231.57

Op. cit., p. 16. Gigon has also rightly pointed outthat Frag. B116 d.Opcno7ro iarL a fTETrL -y6owKetWf aVTObs Kai, OppO;eLt, which does not show the char-acteristic language and style of Heraclitus, is probablyan erroneous paraphrase of B113.

in B114, it is also clear that the two frag-ments B113 and B114 belong closely to-gether and that the one way of acting orbehaving wisely, which is the same for all,

is determined by insight into the (vvov nthe sense of the all-pervading divine law.Interpreted in this way, B113 clearly con-stitutes a link between B112 and B114and confirms the interpretation of thefirst of these fragments given above.58

The seeming discrepancy between B54and B56 is perhaps not entirely removedbut is explained by B51, B8, B10, andB80. All these fragments (and manyothers) speak of discord, conflict, strife,which are really concord and harmony.B51 states that men see only the discordbut not the harmony in it. The meaningof B54 is then quite clear: the hidden har-mony in discord is stronger and more pro-found than the obvious harmony whicheverybody sees. But the second half ofB51-7raMLvTpoiros ap,iovrL' &c`arep ro'Ov Kai'X'bp7-s-shows that this hidden har-mony is not hidden in the same sense as insome of the cases where voedv s used inHomer,59 as, for instance, when hostile in-tentions are hidden behind a friendly ap-pearance or a god behind the appearanceof a human being. For the harmony in thetension or discord of the bow must notand cannot be inferred in the same wayin which the hostile intentions or the pres-

ence of a god is inferred from somethingin the expression or attitude of the personconcerned which does not quite agree withhis or her apparent character or nature.It is, on the contrary, quite directly visiblefor him who is able to see it.G0 In this

58 See above, p. 232.59 See von Fritz, op. cit., p. 89.a0 It is perhaps interesting to observe how a modern

Heraclltean, Kurt Riezler, in his beautiful book, Trak-tat vom Sc&hnen (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1935), isvitally concerned with the description and analysis, inthe field of art, of this hidden harmony and beautywhich Is not hidden behind something, and cannot beinferred, but must be directly seen.








it loses the faculty of remembrance. Whenwe waken, it resumes the connection withthe external world through the senses andrecovers he XOytK? )'cvaLS, whatever that

may mean.67 Finally, since the commonand divine Xo'yos s the criterion of truth,it follows that that which appears to allpeople in common (TOKOLVw act 4altvO-

vov) is trustworthy and that which oc-curs (irpouiriirm.) only to an individualis not.

It is hardly worth while to unravel thisterrible confusion step by step and toshow up in detail Sextus' misinterpreta-tions of Heraclitus, which, fortunately, ac-cording to his owni testimony, are basedalmost entirely on passages of Heraclitus'work which we still have in their originalwording. To characterize his ability as aninterpreter of Heraclitus' thought it isperhaps sufficient to point out that he at-tributes the opinion that that which ap-pears 68 o all people alike is the truth to

Heraclitus, who again and again affirmsthat the overwhelming majority of menare absolutely blind and do not under-stand the truth even when it is explained

67 See below, p. 236.

68 To cauvp6evov in Sextus usually means the phe-nomenal world comprising everything that appearsto us or is conceived as an object outside ourselves,though, in fact, it may have no correlate in an externalworld considered real and independent of the sub-ject conceiving it or, as a subjective phenomenon,may have been evoked by a real object which is en-tirely different. According to the preceding passage inSextus, it should then seem as if the ,oDs, when de-prived of the help of the senses, was producing phe-nomena which have no correlate in the real world,while the senses establish the relation to the latter.Yet, at the same time, it is the vois which participatesin the vcotmas 6yos, and the latter is the criterion oftruth, while the senses are considered unreliable. Atmost, if one tries to find any sense in the whole exposi-tion, one might say that the voos(or the X&yos ), whena man is awake, has the function of flnding out which

phenomena appear to all men alike. But this stilldoes not explain why the same rovs, which is alwaysin contact with the KO&PaS XO6y0 hrough respiration,does the very opposite when separated from thesenses and, nevertheless, is more trustworthy than thelatter-quite apart from the fact that all this has cer-tainly nothing to do with Heraclitus' philosophy asrevealed by the literal fragments.

to them. For the rest we shall have to con-fine ourselves to an inquiry into the dif-ference between Heraclitus' own conceptof voos anid Sextus' interpretation of it,

which necessitates a brief discussion of theterm X6oyos, ince Sextus makes such ampleuse of it in the passage quoted.

Heraclitus' concept of voos has beenanalyzed above. As to his concept ofX6yos,almost all recent commentators arerightly agreed that in Heraclitus it is stillnothing but the noun belonging to XfyEtv,

to say, and that he means by it simplywhat he is going to state. His X6oyoss com-mon because it is the truth and becausethe truth is common to all, not in thesense that all people know or understandit, which is far from being the case, butbecause there can be no different truthsfor different people. It is also common be-cause it reveals the common law whichgoverns everything. It reveals this law bypointing out its various manifestations.

But it is understood only by those who,when it is pointed out to them, are able tosee with their voos the law in these

manifestations-and there are but fewwho are able to do this. Whether one be-lieves in the divine law which he tries topoint out or not, the concepts of theobscure Heraclitus are all perfectly clearand can be very exactly defined.

In contrast, the empiricist Sextus,whose arguments seem so clear and easyto many readers, has no clearly identifi-able concept of either X6'yosor vovsat all.Nov'swith Sextus is either identified withXoyosor considered a manifestation of it.Aozos, where Sextus speaks in his ownname, is most often logical reasoning orthe capacity of logical reasoning or someforce or entity having this capacity,

though it may also be the order of the uni-verse or a force upholding this order, thelatter concept, of course, being essentiallyStoic. But where Sextus reports the views







236 KURT VON FRITZ

of other philosophers, X6yosbecomes justthe alternative to aOfnos, whatever thisalternative may be, and so loses all clearlyidentifiable meaning.69 Yet it is highly il-

lustrative of the change which the conceptof vovshad undergone between Heraclitusand Sextus that Sextus, in trying to ex-plain Heraclitus' concept, begins by con-necting it with a term the preponderantmeaning of which is reasoning and endsby almost identifying it with sensual per-ception. 70 Heraclitus' own concept of voos,as we have seen, was clearly distinguishedfrom both but somewhat more nearly re-lated to the latter than to the former.

PARMENIDES

The philosophy of Parmenides marksthe most important turning-point both inthe history of pre-Socratic philosophy ingeneral and in the development of theconcept of vovis n that early period. AfterParmenides the form of the questions

asked and the answers given, as well asthe terms and concepts used in givingthese answers, is completely changed.Yet, though without doubt all post-Par-menidean Greek philosophy is most pro-foundly influenced by Parmenides, it israther doubtful whether the character ofParmenides' thought is not nearer to thatof his predecessors than to that of his suc-cessors, whether they professed them-selves his followers and disciples or criti-cized his philosophy.7

The first and fundamental questionwhich has to be answered before any fur-ther analysis of Parmenides' concepts of

69 Sextus had, of course, a perfect right to hold andexpress the opinion, shared by many modern philoso-phers, that sense perception pure and simple and logi-cal reasoning are the only ways in which human beingscan acquire knowledge. But the fact cannot very wellbe denied that other philosophers were of a different

opinion, and It Is neither quite fairto them nor con-

ducive to clarity to interpret their philosophy as ifthey had thought in the same terms as the empiricists.

70 See above, n. 68.71 See Part II.

voos and voEZv can be undertaken is thatof their relation to truth and error. Since,at least at first sight, the evidence in re-gard to this question seems plainly con-

tradictory, it will perhaps be helpful toremember that, even before Parmenides,the concept of voos had been somewhatambiguous in this respect. As early asHomer the notion could be found of avooswhich discovers a truth that is hid-den behind a deceptive appearance72 andwhich, since the truth is but one, is thesame wherever it is found. On the otherhand, there was the notion of differentVOOl in different persons. But this does notmean that in some of these persons thevooswas mistaken. Since it is the originalfunction of the voos to realize a situationand its importance for the person realizingit and since a foreigner, for instance, actu-ally is something different for the Laestry-gonians and for the Phaeacians, the vooscan function quite properly in both cases,

though what it sees in the same object isin each case quite different. In otherwords, the Laestrygonians and the Phaea-cians live in a different order of things, theworld has for them a different aspect, andtherefore the truth for them is also dif-

72 In this connection, another observation can bemade which is of some importance for the further de-velopment of the concept of v6os and voeTh. It wouldnot be incorrect to say that when the v6os discoversthat the old woman is really not an old woman butthe goddess Aphrodite, it recognizes an object-orcorrects a faulty recognition of an object-and doesnot realize a situation, which supposedly was the func-tion of the v6or. Nevertheless, it is easy to see how itcame about that roe?v rather than yLyVc)frKELP wasused in such cases. First, because the recognition ofthe true character of the person implies the immediaterealization of a situation of great importance whichdid not seem to exist as long as there seemed to be onlya human being. Second, because POe7p in its originalmeaning is the third step leading from tse?h over,yzpCat to an ever more complex awareness and becausethis is also the case in the example under consideration,though the object after the last step is still an individ-

ual person and not a situation. But though the transi-tion is slight, it is not without importance, because itexplains how, later, Poe?h can have at least seemingly-very concrete objects, as, for instance, the atoms ofDemocritus.







NOT2I, NOEIN, AND THEIR DERIVATIVES 237

ferent.73 In the Homeric poems, further-more, the v6os can be dulled or blunted,but there is no passage saying that it canbe deceived, while seemingly functioning

properly, but the latter notion is de-veloped in Hesiod. In Heraclitus the no-tion of different voot in different people,as well as the notion that the v6oscan bedeceived, is excluded, since with him it isthe function of the voOSto be aware of thelaw which governs the universe, and thislaw is but one.74

The philosophy of Parmenides falls intotwo parts, one dealing with a4X-OaEa,heother with a64a. K. Reinhardt in a mostpenetrating analysis has shown conclu-sively that the second part is neither adescription of the actual beliefs and opin-ions of the two-headed mortals who livein the world of 'o6a nor an attempt to givea better system of the world of mere beliefthan most people have, but that it is fun-damentally an attempt to show how there

can be a world of belief side by side withtruth and how it originates.The term vo'os nd its derivatives occur

in both parts. Right in the introduction,when the goddess says a&X od'v ioTkc'&4'8oiv &6Natos eip-yc voJ'6ra75 ( but you keep

away your vo'7bra from this way of in-quiry ), the implication clearly seems tobe that the v6'bn.a an err but that it canalso find the truth. It is in perfect agree-ment with this conclusion that in a greatmany passages76 OELv eems to lead to thetruth, while in sonme others77 we find av6oswhich is obviously in error. This fact

73 Cf. the excellent analysis of the connection be-tween the concepts of iLbK and Akq'oeta nd their rela-tion to the different norms which govern the lives ofdifferent individuals and groups of individuals, in H.Frainkel's Parmenidesstudien, GGA, ph.-hist. KI.,1930, pp. 166 ff.

74 Xenophanes seems to approach Heraclitus' con-cept of v6ot but is not quite clear and consistent (cf.above, p. 230).

7 Bl. 33; cf. B7. 2.76 B2. 1; B5; B6. 1; B8. 34ff. and 50.77 B6. 5f.; B1i; cf. also B8. 17.

in itself, of course, is not strange, as longas we translate v6oswith thought andvoLtv with thinking, as most translatorshave done, and understand this to mean

logical reasoning. For reasoning can becorrect or incorrect, can start from trueor from false premises, and therefore canlead to truth or error. But a very realdifficulty, which has never been solvedand perhaps does not admit a perfectsolution, is created by the fact that insome instances Parmenides seems to as-sert that voos and vOelV are always andnecessarily connected with Etvat and C6v

and therefore with the truth, which seemsto imply that the voos cannot err.

The most comprehensive passage whichseems to, contain this assertion is B8.34-37: rav6rv 'oria VOe-TV TE Kat 01VEKEKVEcrTt

vo6jua. ou yap avEv roU3 6vros, C req4aytq-VOVCOTPv, Ebp?,OEtS TO POEPV06iMEV yap <i> EUT-w

77 o-rat XXo irapet rovi i6vroS KTX. Frankel78

and Calogero,79 n contrast to most other

translators, have interpreted the first sen-tence to mean to think and the thoughtthat it [the object of the thought] is, arethe same thing. In my review of Calo-gero's book I accepted this interpreta-tion;80 but I am no longer quite sure thatit is correct. It is true, as Friinkel pointsout, that in the overwhelming majorityof the cases in which the word Ovii'Ka oc-curs in Homer, it means either becauseor that (the latter in content-clausesafter verba declarandi) and that there isonly one case in the Odyssey in which itmeans because of which. But, in spiteof this, it can hardly be denied that es-sentially and originally OiwPEKa is ov0EVEKa.

It acquires the meaning of because atfirst after a preceding roVib' 'PEKa.81 Thisshows that in these cases it takes the place

78 Op. cit., pp. 186 f.

79 Guido Calogero, Studi sull'Eleatismo (Rome,1932), p. 11.

80 In Gnomon, XIV (1938), 97.81 See, e.g., Il. i. 1lOf.







238 KURT VON FRITZ

of 6 or 6rt through relative attraction, towhich the Greek language is so prone. Itretains the same meaning when the pre-ceding roi36' f'vEKa, by which it originally

was produced, is dropped; and it acquiresthe meaning of that following a verbumdeclarandi in the same way as 6rt in Greekor quod n late Latin (Fr. que; It. che). Butits origin from o?v'VKa is so apparent thatit was always possible to revert to theoriginal meaning.82 In Parmenides theword OUVEKEV occurs only once outside thepassage discussed, but in this case it cer-tainly means because of which or

therefore and not because, as Frainkel(loc. cit.) asserts. Parmenides has statedthat the 66v s immovable and remains initself. Then he goes on to say: Kparrp) -yap

'Ava'yKf 7rELparos 'v 6EzoIoZotv exezn r6' ,tv

a,4L's f4p-yet. OLVEVKEV VK aTEXEU'T71ov ro fovGE/US JtvaLc fiTc yap OVK f7LEVE'S KTX.83

It seems obvious that the first yap inthis passage is illustrative or explicative

rather than causative. If, then, O6VEKEV inthe second sentence meant becauserather than hence, this would implythat Parmenides wished to say that theEov must be immovable because it is finite,which would completely reverse the natu-ral logical order, as well as the order whichParmenides has followed so far, alwaysputting the more essential qualities of theEov ahead of its less essential qualities.

Because of this analogy and also be-cause Frankel's interpretation makes itnecessary to assume a very forced order ofwords in B8. 34, it seems very likely thatin this passage also OVVEKEV means oivviVKa.

But the passages in Homer as well asParm. B8. 32 do show that in early Greek,including Parmenides, e'vEKa does not, ornot preponderately, mean for the sake

of, but because of, designatingnot the

causa finalis or purpose as in Attic Greek82 See, e.g., Pindar Pyth. 9. 96 (165).83 B8. 30 ff.

but the causa efficiens as well as the logi-cal reason. Diels's translation, des Ge-dankens Ziel, therefore, is also incorrect.What Parmenides means seems to be that

vOElv and the cause or condition of VOEZVare the same. This interpretation is inagreement with the sentence ov' yap avfvrOV fOVTOS KTX, which follows and whichclearly states that the 'Ov s the conditiosine qua non of the vOEZV.

There still remain the words &v X

7rE4a,rtlo/VOV (f'olv, which have not yetbeen explained. Frankel84 again resorts tothe assumption of a very forced order ofwords, because he thinks that the relativeclause quoted, if it is to make sense, mustbe connected with VoEzVn the followingline rather than with rovI 6vros, whichprecedes. Consequently, he translates thepassage in this way: For not without theEOv will you find that in which it is re-vealed, namely, the voEZv. But it ishardly necessary to attribute to Par-

menides such a grammatical tour de force.(DaIrlTLEtveans to express, to reveal,to unfold (especially in words). It seems

clear, then, that the voEtvcan no more ex-press or unfold itself without the Eov,

that is, without an object, than the 6Ovcan be revealed or expressed without theVOELV85 for without an object the Po6tvwould be completely empty or, in Par-menides' terms, a AU71ov tself. The mean-

ing of the sentence is, therefore, obviouslythat there can be no voEtvwithout its ob-ject, the 60v, n which it unfolds itself.Frag. B5-r6 yaypabrb voELtvEianTV E Katetvat-must then be interpreted in thesame way.

Since, as this analysis has shown,Parmenides undoubtedly does say thatthere can be no voetvwithout the sov andthat both are inextricably connected, even

84 Op. Cit., p. 190.

85 See also Kurt Riezler, Parmenides (Frankfurt:Klostermann, 1934), p. 70.







NOTI, NOEIN, AND TEEIR DERIVATIVES 239

identical, and since the b6v oes not onlybelong to but is the realm of truth, how isit possible that in other passages Parmen-ides speaks of a rXayrsr v6ooswhich errs?

Frankel explains the sentence a. xaviyap c'VfiUw^v rfjeatv i'Vvet Xa KTOV VO 87

as ironical and deliberately paradoxicaland self-contradictory, connecting twoterms, lBUYEL and 6 ,s which point to

straight or true insight Nvith wo otherterms, aA-qxavt'iq and rXa'YKrOs, which in-dicate bewilderment and error. This in-terpretation contains some truth, but it ishardly sufficient. For the vbos appearsagain as dependent on the Kpaacs eAroXVrXa6KroWV in another passage, vichundoubtedly intends to give a seriousexplanation. This second passage givesthe key to the problem. Men have the6os which corresponds to the mixture of

their constitution-not, as FrAnkel88rightly pointed out in contrast to earlierscholars, of their organs -and this

constitution is called roVrrXacyKros be-cause it causes them to err. For the fur-ther interpretation we may for once makeuse of the indirect tradition, since Theo-phrastus obviously read a part of thepoem which is now lost. He says89 thatthe mixture is of warm and cold, lightand dak, and that we recognize only thatwhich is prevalent in ourselves, whereasthe dead, according to Parmenides, areaware only of the cold, the dark, and thesilent, but not of warmth and light. Thismust be taken together with B2, wherethe goddess asks Parmenides (and anyonewho wishes to see the truth) to see withhis voos that which is far off as firmlypresent. That is, we are mistaken whenwve ee dark here and light there and feelthe warmth at one time and cold at an-

86 Op cit., p. 171.87B6. 5 f.Osp. cit., pp. 172 f.

8} TheoPhr. De sensu 3; Parm. A46. 3 (Diels).

other; for the world is not really split intothese contrasts.0 It is all one everywhereand at any time: the f6v. If this explana-tion is correct, it follows that even the

AyXarKTos Poos of the mortals cannot failto be linked up inextricably with the kOVIt could no more exist without the &ovthan the v6os which sees the full truth.But it wanders and errs in splitting theone e6v up into the many contrastingqualities, finding one here and the otherthere. In this it is all wrong and falls preyto 663a.

This interpretation does not solve thelogical difficulty, since one may still askhow there can be such an uneven mixtureof the contrasting elements in the struc-ture or constitution of human beings if itdoes not exist in the $6v, since this mixturewhich is the cause of the error of the mor-tals, it seems, must be real and objective.One may also ask how something as vagueand unreal as 36ba can exist at all if only

the 6Ovxists. It is doubtful whether thesedifficulties can ever be solved, at least inthe realm of human logic.91But the inter-pretation given seems to come nearest towhat Parmenides actually says.

It is perhaps 'not without interest toobserve the relation between Parmenides'

90An additional difficulty is created by the factthat Theophrastus says that insight or voeCY ccord-ing to warmth and light is better than otw toughcold and dark, but that there must als be a balance orsymmetry between the two; for it is not easy to deter-mae how the preference for one side of the contrastflts In with the postulate sy etry. This certaintyhas led to two different Interpretations of the sentencer yp ro r P6na, which concludes ag. B16.Frlinkel (op. cit., p. 174) understands this to men

More (light) means fu1 isight into the truth. Buteven if v6,1a ( als vollzogener Akt, as Fr'nkel ter-prets; but cf. below, n. 95) could men 'full insightImmediately after Parmenides has spoken of a P6oswhich errs, It seems unlikely that Parmenides woulduse a rather indefinte comparative to designate thatkind of mixture whi uses insight into the absolutetruth. As Riezler (Parmenides, pp. 68 f.) has pointed

out, it Is much more likely that we must understnd:Whichever of the two sides of the contrast prevails (ismore) determines what we imagine that we recog ae(cf. also, below, . 93 and 131).

91See also Riezler, Parmenides, pp. 76 ff.







240 KURT VON FRITZ

notion of voos and PoJLP in regard totruth and error with the notions of hispredecessors and contemporaries. Thevbos of Parmenides is even less concerned

with the understanding of individual sit-uations than that of Heraclitus. LikeHeraclitus' voos, it is essentially con-cerned with the ultimate truth, which isbut one. But since the voos, in spite ofbeing linked inextricably with ultimatereality, nevertheless can err, there is also,just as in Homer, the possibility of differ-ent voot in different people, according tothe mixture of their structures or con-stitutions. Yet, contrary to Homer, itcannot be said that the reason for thedifference in their voot is that the truthitself is not the same for all of them. Forit is the erring voos which is different inthem. This implies, of course, that-as inHesiod but not in Homer-the voos canbe not only dulled but also, at least insome way, deceived. So all the notions of

voos in regard to truth and error thatcould be found before Parmenides appearin his work. But they are no longer sepa-rated but have all of them become differ-ent aspects of one and the same indivisibleconcept, and in the process of this unifica-tion they have all of them been slightlychanged.

All this, however, does not yet answerthe question of the nature of the voos inParmenides' thought. Theophrastus says92that Parmenides makes no distinction be-tween sensual perception and 4povEZv; nd,since he himself in this passage seems notto differentiate between OpopEZp andPoEZP, is statement seems also to apply toPoos and voEZJ'. his interpretation is byno means, like Sextus' misinterpretationof Heraclitus, due merely to an indiscrimi-

nate application of the oversimplified92 De sensu 3; Parm., Frag. A46 (Diels): rt yap

atoOJ&etyOat Katc TrO 4poVV (S Trairci Mye; but cf. AristotleMetaph. A 5. 986 b. 32.

concepts of a later period to a philosophyto which they do not apply. At first sightit may seem as if it could be justified evenon the basis of Homeric and generally

pre-Parmenidean terminology. For if thevoos of human beings is concerned withwarmth and cold, with light and dark,etc., it seems that it is not its function tounderstand situations, like the voos inHomer, or to recognize definite, concreteobjects, which in Homer is the functionof yV4yPWKEGP, but that the voos in Parmen-ides is on the same level with 1s5Zv,aKOiELv, etc., in Homer, since warmthand cold seem to be sensual qualities.Yet there is a very essential difference.The voos in Parmenides perceives 93not only sounds, or rather sound, butalso silence, which can hardly becalled a sensual quality; and in this con-nection it is certainly significant thatParmenides does not, like Democritus,who is really concerned with sensual

qualities, speak of color94 but of light anddarkness. We have then to remember thatthe presumed sensual qualities of whichParmenides speaks are most closely re-lated to the primary contrasts from

93 It is very difflcult to render adequately in anymodern language what Parmenides means by VoeiV.When we say It was so quiet that one could hear thestillness, we feel that we use a metaphorical, almostparadoxical, expression. But Parmenides' point is justthat this is quite wrong. Silence and darkness are aspositive and real as sound or light. In fact, to the deadthey are what light and sound are to us. We should notmake this difference, which is merely a difference inname (cf. B8. 53 ff., and B9. 1 if.).

Perhaps this makes it also possible to explain theseeming contradiction in Theophrastus' two state-ments: (1) that perception through warmth and lightis purer than perception through cold and darknessand (2) that the two perceptions should be symmetri-cal or equally balanced. For in the light of the passagesquoted, it seems likely that, according to Parmenides,perception through warmth and light is pure in us (theliving) because it makes us feel light and warmth assomething positive, while our perception through coldand darkness is not pure because it makes us perceive

cold and darkness as something negative. If we had a'symmetrical or well-balanced perception, we wouldfeel no such difference.

94 Frag. B9 (Diels): vP61tcYXVK& . . . V611u Xpov4, b-fn 5f

Aro,ua Kat KfEMM.







NOTZ, NOEIN, AND THEIR DERIVATIVES 241

which, in the philosophy of Anaximander,the world in which we live emerges. Itis these primary world-creating contrastswhich the - ra7KTOS oos of human beings,

even though erroneously, imagines itgrasps. This shows that what Parmenideshas in mind in the second part of his poemis by no means sense perception pure andsimple but something much more nearlyrelated to the intuitive voos of Heracli-tus, though the concept has become muchmore complicated, since the voos in Par-menides can err. The same intuitivenature of the voos is also most clearlydescribed in Frag. B2-X EivX E a'6wcosa7reovTpra oco rapeoPTca 3EcacLcs-which be-longs to the first part of the poem anddeals with a voos which does not err but isaware of the truth.

So far it might seem as if Parmenides'concept of voos was still essentially thesame as that of his predecessors, includ-ing his contemporary Heraclitus. In fact,

however, Parmenides brings in an entire-ly new and heterogeneous element. It is arather remarkable fact that Heraclitususes the particle ycap only where he ex-plains the ignorance of the commoncrowd. There is absolutely no ycap or anyother particle of the same sense in any ofthe passages in which he explains his ownview of the truth. He or his voos sees orgrasps the truth and sets it forth. There isneither need nor room for arguments.Homer and Hesiod, likewise, when usingthe term Poos, never imply that someonecomes to a conclusion concerning a situ-ation so that the statement could be fol-lowed up with a sentence beginning with

for or because. A person realizes thesituation. That is all. In contrast to this,Parmenides in the central part of hispoem, has a yaip, an ebrEL, 0v, ToVu6'eY'PKa,

oiVPCKa in almost every sentence. Heargues, deduces, tries to prove the truthof his statements by logical reasoning.

What is the relation of this reasoning tothe voos?

The answer is given by those passagesin which the goddess tells Parmenides

which road of inquiry he should followwith his VoOS and from which roads hemust keep away his PornIa.95 These roads,as the majority of the fragments clearlyshow, are roads or lines of discursivethinking, expressing itself in judgments,arguments, and conclusions. Since thePoos s to follow one of the three possibleroads of inquiry and to stay away fromthe others, there can be no doubt thatdiscursive thinking is part of the functionof the Poos. Yet-and this is just as im-portant-PoEZP is not identical with aprocess of logical deduction pure andsimple in the sense of formal logic, aprocess which through a syllogistic mech-anism leads from any set of related prem-ises to conclusions which follow withnecessity from those premises, but also a

process which in itself is completely un-concerned with, and indifferent to, thetruth or untruth of the original premises.It is still the primary function of thevoos to be in direct touch with ultimatereality. It reaches this ultimate realitynot only at the end and as a result of thelogical process, but in a way is in touchwith it from the very beginning, since, asParmenides again and again points out,there is no Poos without the sov, n whichit unfolds itself.9 In so far as Parmenides'

95This passage seems also to prove that Parmenidesdoes not use the word vo677Aatrictly as a nomen reiactae or to designate einen vollzogenen Akt, as Frankelcontends (see above, n. 90). The meaning of the wordas used here and, in fact, in most of the passages whereit occurs in Parmenides is rare with nouns in -,ua buthas a perfect analogy in the use of the word 0,lia inEuripides Electra 439, where Achilles is called KoDi4OSA&Xsaro&av and wlhere the reference is certainly not tothe completed act of jumping.

96 Though the element of reasoning in vocZv is here

much further developed and much more conscious, theconnection with the Homeric concept of voeiv, whichmeans an intuitive understanding, which, however,may be the result of a process of reasoning, is not yetcompletely broken.







242 KURT VON FRITZ

difficult thought can be explained, thelogical process seems to have merely thefunction of clarifying and confirmingwhat, in a way, has been in the voos from

the very beginning and of cleansing it ofall foreign elements.So for Parmenides himself, what, for

lack of a better word, may be called theintuitional element in the Poos is stillmost important. Yet it was not throughhis vision but through the truly orseemingly compelling force of his logicalreasoning that he acquired the dominat-ing position in the philosophy of the fol-lowing century. At the same time, hiswork marks the most decisive turning-

point in the history of the terms Poos,

POELP, tc.; for he was the first consciouslyto include logical reasoning in the func-tions of the Poos.97 The notion of voos

underwent many other changes in thefurther history of Greek philosophy, butnone as decisive as this. The intuitionalelement is still present in Plato's andAristotle's concepts of Poos and lateragain in that of the Neo-Platonists. Butthe term never returned completely toits pre-Parmenidean meaning.COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

(To be concluded)97See above, p. 241.

nous in presocratic philosophy (excluding anaxagores).pdf

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