Eleatic Sentence Examples

Aristotle, in a passage already cited, Metaphysics, A5, speaks of Xenophanes as the first of the Eleatic unitarians, adding that his monotheism was reached through the contemplation of the oupavos.

Its foundation is often attributed to Xenophanes of Colophon, but, although there is much in his speculations which formed part of the later Eleatic doctrine, it is probably more correct to regard Parmenides as the founder of the school.

In these main contentions the Eleatic school achieved a real advance, and paved the way to the modern conception of metaphysics.

According to Aristotle, "the first of Eleatic unitarians was not careful to say whether the unity which he postulated was finite or infinite, but, contemplating the whole firmament, declared that the One is God."

The demonstrations of the unity and the attributes of God, with which the treatise De Melisso, Xenophane et Gorgia (now no longer ascribed to Aristotle or Theophrastus) accredits Xenophanes, are plainly framed on the model of Eleatic proofs of the unity and the attributes of the Ent, and must therefore be set aside.

If then he was indifferent to the problem, he can hardly be credited with the Eleatic solution.

The Pythagorean and Eleatic systems of philosophy had their chief seat in Magna Graecia.

But into combination with this' he brought the Eleatic doctrine of Unity.

Perceiving the difficulty of the Socratic dictum he endeavoured to give to the word "knowledge" a definite content by divorcing it absolutely from the sphere of sense and experience, and confining it to a sort of transcendental dialectic or logic. The Eleatic unity is Goodness, and is beyond the sphere of sensible apprehension.

A new departure was taken by the Eleatic Parmenides (q.v.), who, expressly noting that, when Thales and his successors attributed to the supposed element changing qualities, they became pluralists, required that the superficial variety of nature should be strictly distinguished from its fundamental unity.

It was Zeno, the controversialist of the Eleatic school, who was regarded in after times as the " discoverer " of dialectic.3 Zeno's amazing skill in argumentation and his paradoxical conclusions, particular and general, inaugurate a new era.

The result is a selflimiting dialectic. This higher dialectic is a logic. It is no accident that the first of the philosophical sophists, Gorgias, on the one hand, is Eleatic in his affinities, and on the other raises in the characteristic formula of his intellectual nihilism' issues which are as much logical and epistemological as ontological.

The nihilism of Gorgias from the Eleatic point of view of bare identity, and the speechlessness of Cratylus from the Heraclitean ground of absolute difference, are alike disowned.

Between Euclides and Antisthenes the Socratic induction and universal definition were alike discredited from the point of view of the Eleatic logic. It is with the other point of doctrine that Plato comes to grips, that which allows of a certainty or knowledge consisting in an analysis of a compound into simple elements themselves not known.

Thus may be explained the selection of an Eleatic stranger to be the chief speaker in the latter, and of Parmenides himself to take the lead in the former.

Again, Aristotle's description of Xenophanes as the first of the Eleatic unitarians does not necessarily imply that the unity asserted by Xenophanes was the unity asserted by Parmenides; the phrase, "contemplating the firmament, he declared that the One is God," leaves it doubtful whether Aristotle attributed to Xenophanes any philosophical theory whatever; and the epithet a ypoLKOTEpos discourages the belief that Aristotle regarded Xenophanes as the author of a new and important departure.

The town was mainly celebrated for the philosophers who bore its name (see Eleatic School).

Among the pre-Socratic nature-philosophers of Greece, Heraclitus and the Eleatics are the chief representatives of this polemic. The diametrical opposition of the grounds on which the veracity of the senses is impugned by the two philosophies (see Heraclitus, Parmenides, Eleatic School) was in itself suggestive of sceptical reflection.

If Eleatic thought stands over against Pythagorean thought as what is valid or grounded against what is ungrounded or invalid, we are embarked upon dialectic, or the debate in which thought is countered by thought.

Parmenides and Zeno (see Eleatic School) enunciated the principle that "Nothing is born of nothing."