Position
Eleatic Monism
What is, is one, ungenerated, and changeless; change and plurality are appearance.
Classification
- Position level
- specific
- Domains
- Metaphysics
Overview
Parmenides argued that what-is cannot arise from what-is-not, so being can be neither generated, destroyed, nor altered, and that reason rather than the senses must be trusted to reveal this. The apparent multiplicity and change of the sensible world is therefore mere appearance, not the deep structure of reality.
Position on
Held by traditions
- Eleaticism
Question scope: Change and Being
Broader position
Incompatible positions
- Universal Flux
Question scope: Change and Being
References
- G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 1983)
- Parmenides, DK B8 (in Kirk, Raven and Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed., 1983)