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Who Was One Of The Most Important? Pre Socratic Philosopher?

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So when the one and the many is explained, in my estimation it should begin with Parmenides who was one of the most, if not the most important Pre-Socratic philosopher, precisely because “subsequent thinkers felt they had to respond to the challenge he offered to all scientific thought.” (Waterfield, 49). This challenge was the one and the many problem. According to Parmenides, whose work ‘On Nature’ is divided into two parts. These parts are the ‘Way of Truth’ and the ‘Way of Appearance’ which describe reality and the reality we get by using our senses respectively. The ‘Way of Truth’ is used to never be deceived by the Way of Appearance’. Parmenides thought of the one as “what-is” and the many as “what-is-not”. To him it was a …show more content…

Melissus who was an Eleatic like Parmenides, agreed with him on most things. He said that this thing that exists is not liable to generation and destruction, is unlimited in magnitude, eternal, single, unchanging and motionless. He disagreed in terms of limits with Parmenides who said that “what-is was constrained within limits, [but] for Melissus what-is has no limits.” (Waterfield, 82). In regards to generation and destruction, for Melissus, what-is always was and always will be because if it had come into existence, there was nothing before it came into existence. But if there was nothing, there is no way that something could come into existence from nothing. It has no beginning and it has no end and is without limits. He argues that since it has always existed, it must also be unlimited in magnitude because nothing that has a beginning and an end can be either eternal or unlimited. Now, if it is unlimited, there can only be one thing because if another came into existence they each would have limits in relation to each other and that cannot be. Melissus also argues that what-is is not empty in any respect, because emptiness would imply nothing and nothing cannot exist. Because it is not empty, but it is full it cannot move because there is nowhere for it to go since it is one and everywhere. Melissus explains that there cannot be many things but only one and he uses the following argument to prove this: things such

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