Existential Parmenides

1800 words, 8 minute read

You know a particular thinker is important in Intellectual History when their ideas are reinterpreted rather than abandoned or converted to dogma. Take Parmenides (c. 475 BCE), for example. His On Nature is the oldest, substantially intact work of Western philosophy. Although his ideas were undoubtedly revolutionary, they were also in sync with the Zeitgeist of his day.  

Parmenides linked the naturalistic Thales and Anaximander to the more metaphysical Anaxagoras and Empedocles.  Although subject to conflicting interpretations today, Parmenides’ ideas were apparently well understood by his immediate successors and faithfully incorporated in their work.

But by the time we get Plato (150 years later), that intelligibility has been lost. Consider a typical human language, Old Norse for example. As the language of the Vikings, it was spoken throughout mainland Scandinavia and ‘the islands’ (e.g. Iceland, Faroe, Shetland, Orkney). As Old Norse evolved in its various geographic enclaves, its dialects became less mutually intelligible until they became a half dozen distinct languages.

The language of philosophy is no different. It is apparent, for example, that Plato did not understand Parmenides. The proof: his own testimony! Of his 25+ authentic dialogs, one is widely considered to be his most enigmatic: The Parmenides. Not that any of Plato’s dialogs make easy beach reading…but The Parmenides stands out!

So much so that an honest assessment of the critical literature can lead to only one conclusion: even scholars have no idea what Plato intended! The dialog reads like something out of Ionesco or Beckett, not to say Edward Lear. Was Plato ‘having us on’ in the manner of Aristophanes? Such SNL style humor is not characteristic of the world’s most highly acclaimed philosopher, but still…

On the other hand, if Plato meant the dialog to be read seriously, what on earth was he trying to say? Did he mean to agree with Parmenides or not? Regardless, I think it’s most likely that he simply didn’t understand him. A lot can change in 150 years, and it is not always possible to recapture the mindset of someone from another era.  

The Platonic enigma notwithstanding, a large body of criticism has grown up around the ‘Head of the pre-Socratics’…and almost all of it is certainly wrong!

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Parmenides’ epic poem distinguishes two aspects of reality: Aletheia (truth) and Doxa (appearance). Re Aletheia, Parmenides wrote: “…What-is is ungenerated and imperishable, whole…and complete. Nor was it once nor will it be since it is now all together, one, continuous…Thus coming to be is extinguished and perishing not to be heard of. Nor is it divisible since it is all alike.” (Fragment #8)

But when describing Doxa, he writes “To come to be and to perish, to be and not to be, to change place (motion), and to exchange bright color.” (ibid)

On the surface, these characterizations would seem to lend support to the popular idea that Parmenides regarded Aletheia and Doxa as conflicting ontologies/epistemologies. But this consensus directly contradicts the text: “It is right that you should learn all things, both the steadfast heart of persuasive truth (Aletheia) and the beliefs of mortals…how things that seem (Doxa) had to have genuine existence, permeating all things completely.” (Fragment #1)

In previous essays I have argued that Parmenides conceived of Aletheia and Doxa, not as alternative models of reality but as ‘complements’ on the order of ‘particles and waves’ in quantum physics. Arguments against this interpretation assume that the ‘concept of complementarity’ per seis a product of the 20^th century; but this chauvinism is symptomatic of the ‘eternal hubris of the present moment’.

On the contrary, I find traces of Parmenides alive and well in the 20^th century’s best philosophy. Consider Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism, for example. Like Aletheia, Sartre’s Neant is characterized by the total absence of qualia; like Doxa, his Etre is the home of all that is empirical, physical, etc. Being in the mode of Doxa/Etre is being-in-flux. It is reminiscent of Heraclitus: ‘Everything flows!’ But being in the mode of Aletheia/Neant is static, qualia free, and without spatiotemporal extension.

Just as the Universe reveals itself under two aspects, so does the Self. On one hand, I am the sum of my experiences filtered through the phenotypical expressions of my DNA. As such I am unique and ever changing. On another, I am myself, unchanged from the cradle, unchanging to the grave.

At its deepest level, the ‘you’ that you are now is the ‘you’ you were when you formed your earliest memories. You are the same ‘you’ today as you were on your first day of school. And who’s that? Odysseus’ Nemo (no one)! You are the non-linear, recursive process of being aware of being aware. You are neither mind nor matter, neither body nor soul; you are pure process. As Buckminster Fuller said, “I seem to be a verb!”  

Gertrude Stein wrote that we are always to ourselves young men and young women (Making of Americans). She had a unique ability to translate the most abstract philosophical concepts into concrete human experience. Her ‘always…young men and young women’ refers to the never changing you.       

You can test my hypothesis by quietly recalling some of your earliest moments of self-awareness. Yup, that was you, way back then, and it’s still just you today! I’m not talking about memory; I’m talking about the universal and eternal feeling of ‘being there’.

No matter what has happened to me from birth to today, I am who I am and I am ‘odorless’, i.e. without any qualia of my own. According to 20^th century gurus, I am supposed to be finding myself. Ok, but what I’ll find is precisely nothing.

On the other hand, what I appear to be to you is filtered through my DNA (nature) and my experiences (nurture). To you I am something. But guess what? I do not ‘find’ who I am to you, I ‘create’ it: “There will be time, to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet…” (Eliot)

From the get-go I am who I am, which is who I have always been and who I will always be, regardless of circumstances. The story of my life is as yet unwritten but the ‘I’ who will experience that life and write that story was fixed perhaps even before my birth.

God is the universal ‘I am’, i.e. am-ness per se: “I am who am.” (Exodus 3: 14) I am the particular ‘I am’: I am who I am. This is the sense in which I am the image and likeness of God. I am not God, but God’s image, a projection of God in the world.

Sartre, an avowed atheist, gave us a marvelous meme to help us grasp our mirror image relationship with the divine: God’s essence precedes his existence, but our existence precedes our essence. We are God’s image but with the chirality reversed. God stares into our eyes, and we into God’s.

Alice says it well at the end of Lewis Carroll’s Looking-glass: “Now, Kitty, let’s consider who it was that dreamed it all…it must have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my dream, of course – but then I was part of his dream too!” Either? Why not both?

This is not to suggest that we are identical to or equal with God. We share the same form (image) but not the same substance. Paul says it best in his Letter to Philippians: “Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not deem equality with God as something to be grasped…emptied himself…coming in human likeness.” (2: 4 – 7)

It’s not just that my identity survives my actual experience; my identity survives any possible set of experiences. I am who I am but then, “Who R U?” (said the Caterpillar).

Thanks to Occam’s Razor, I believe that you are you in the same way that I am I. You are who you are to yourself regardless of your DNA and your life experiences. Who you are to me is filtered through the expression of your DNA and the details of your autobiography.

Me too. My DNA is subject to mutation and the expression of my genes can and will evolve over my lifetime. Yet like the Ship of Theseus, I remain unchanged. Like Proteus, I am always the same ‘I’ even though I can be innumerable different versions of ‘me’. I do not share any of your experiences or memories, but I do share absolutely your sense of being you, being there. How then am I not you?

You’ll object: “Because we have distinct bodies, different DNA.” But I contend precisely that that makes no difference. Bodies are in the realm of Doxa, Etre. And besides, as with the Ship of Theseus (above), very few of the cells that make up my body today were part of my body 75 years ago. (Yup, 75…and counting.)

If you were kind enough to donate some blood, or even a portion of your non-alcoholic liver, for my benefit, would that change my identity in any way…or yours? Of course not! I will still be me, hopefully sober now, no matter how much of my body was once yours. Bodies have nothing to do with identity, what I am has nothing to do with who I am.

Let’s summarize. I am who I am regardless of my DNA or my experiences. Changes in either of these will change who I am to you, but nothing will change who I am to myself…or who you are to yourself. And ‘who I am to myself’ is ‘who you are to yourself’! We are both pure process, qualia free, and process has no regard for personae: bodies, histories, etc. from the realm of Doxa.

But why stop there? We’re on a roll! Cannot the same analysis be extended to bonobos and chimpanzees, to dolphins and whales, to ravens and parrots, and to octopus? And what of bees…and their flowers? The single celled as well as the multi-cellular, the prokaryotic as well as the eukaryotic?       

We have been led as if ‘by a tedious argument of insidious intent…to an overwhelming question’ (Eliot): Do all living things share a common Aletheia, even though each one is radically unique in Doxa?