Parmenides: new perspectives

Parmenides remains to this day the most stimulating, widely studied, and controversial of all early Greek philosophers. This collection presents new research into Parmenides’ poem from a range of scholarly traditions. The authors examine Parmenides’ modes of argument and their legacy, poetics, and intertextuality, and the relation between different parts of his poem. They argue that we must change fundamentally our conception of the manner in which Parmenides communicated with his readers, the division of his poem, and his reasons for dividing it. The collection challenges widespread assumptions, such as that Parmenides left his readers to grapple with the enigmatic poem unaided, that the poem is divided into three parts, and that the first part, the proem, should be interpreted as allegory. Against this it is argued that Parmenides wrote a commentary on his own poem, and the proem echoes representations of deities and the cosmos in previous poetry in order to subvert them and open a new world for poetic expression and intellectual inquiry. Collectively the volume showcases some of the best and most stimulating contemporary scholarship on Parmenides. The volume will be of interest to advanced undergraduates, and will be essential reading for scholars and graduate students who work in early Greek philosophy.