Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Parmenides, Zeno: Missinterpretation der Symbole der Transzendenz

Kurzinhalt: The Zenonic demonstrations imply a metaphysical misconstruction similar to that of Anaxagoras. The latter had made the Nous a being thing; Zeno construed the manifold of being

Textausschnitt: 369d In the Parmenidean experience of transcendence the Nous as its subjective term can be distinguished from the Being as its objective term. We have traced the line of immanentization from the subjective term to the Protagorean Man-the-Measure. We shall now trace the line of immanentization that runs from the objective term into sophistic thought. (Fs)

369e Parmenides had formulated three propositions about being: (1) That only Being exists; (2) that only Non-Being exists; (3) that both Being and Non-Being exist. He decided that the first proposition was the Truth, the second proposition was unthinkable, and the third proposition was the opinion of men who were fascinated by the manifold of the changing world. The Parmenidean decision must have aroused resistance because it violated the common-sense experience of the world in which we live. The resistance is presupposed in the work of Zeno of Elea, since it has the form of a demonstration that the thinker will involve himself in contradictions if he assumes that Being is not One but Many. The Attacks of Zeno consist of a series of demonstrations that, under the assumption of Being as Many, it will have to be at the same time large and small, homogeneous and heterogeneous, finite and infinite, moved and unmoved, and so forth. The brief B 4 may illustrate the type of argument: "That which moves, neither moves in the place in which it is, nor in the place in which it is not." This is probably the demonstration to which later were attached the famous Eleatic paradoxa, as, for instance, the one of Achilles and the Tortoise, or of the arrow that cannot move. (Fs)

370a The Zenonic demonstrations imply a metaphysical misconstruction similar to that of Anaxagoras. The latter had made the Nous a being thing; Zeno construed the manifold of being (ta onta) as a Being (to On) that is Many, inevitably involving himself in the paradoxa of the infinite. The Being revealed to the Nous in the Parmenidean transport is not the being of immanent experience; and, hence, Parmenides was quite right when he categorized immanent being as Not-Being. The problem of immanent being cannot be solved by construing it as a Being that is Many; the quest for its nature will rather lead toward the discovery of form, of essence, in being, as it finally did with Plato and Aristotle. Once this misconstruction had happened, however, a style of dialectical demonstration was established that could extend beyond the Zenonic range of subject matter (time, space, motion, quantity, and so forth) to ethical questions. It seems that Protagoras was the first thinker to apply antilogical reasoning to problems of justice. A tradition has it that he was the first to say that there were two contradictory arguments about everything (B 6a); and, specifically, he had the reputation of being able to make the weaker cause the stronger (B 6b). In the extant form, this specific information probably has a slanderous intention; nevertheless, it indicates the use to which the antilogical technique could be put in public pleading. (Fs) (notabene)

Kommentar (03/13/06): Cf. zu Voegelins Aufweis, dass das parmenideische Sein nicht das Sein der immanenten Erfahrung ist, Lonergans Analyse des Bewusstsein.