Appendix Fragment 5
So far I have only glancingly confronted the question of Fragment 5, which at first blush would seem to be in clear tension with the linear, sequential discursive architecture I have suggested that Parmenides’ use of hodos imagery helps give to his poem.Footnote 1 The fragment, which comes to us from Proclus, runs as follows:Footnote 2
The translations and interpretations that scholars have provided differ on two key points: (i) how to render xunon, and (ii) whether to take hoppothen … tothi as correlative. In what follows, I shall survey different possible interpretations, assess their merits and demerits, and finally consider how well each interpretation squares with the account of Parmenides’ poem I have provided above.
Point (i) has yielded the following alternatives. One school renders the first two clauses as ‘it is indifferent to me | from where I begin’.Footnote 3 The second, which has commanded the lion’s share of favour in recent decades, offers a more diverse array of interpretations; so we find ‘it is common for me | that where I begin …’,Footnote 4 ‘it is a common point | from which I start …’,Footnote 5 ‘commonly present it is, | wherever I start from …’,Footnote 6 and ‘in common, for me, is the point from which I shall begin …’.Footnote 7
Regarding point (ii), the widely accepted view, at least before Bodnár’s important article on Fragment 5, was that these clauses were correlative (viz. ‘wherever I start from, to that place I shall return again’). As Bodnár points out, however, there is no need to interpret hoppothen and tothi as correlative; hoppothen and tothi, that is, can refer to two different things.Footnote 8
This yields a four-part grid of possibilities.
| Correlated | Uncorrelated (‘Focal Image’)Footnote 11 | |
|---|---|---|
| ‘Indifferent’ | 1a | 1b |
| ‘Common’ (etc.) | 2a | 2b |
Refining the set of possible translations accordingly, we have:
1a: ‘It is indifferent to me | where I begin, for there I shall come back again …’;
1b: ‘It is indifferent to me | where I begin, for to [x] I shall come back again …’;
2a: ‘It is a common point | from which I begin, for there again and again I shall return …’;Footnote 9
2b: ‘It is a common point | from which I start, for to [x] I shall come back again …’.Footnote 10
Each rendition presents its own interpretative challenges. In the case of (1a), the two main questions are, first, why the starting point should be ‘indifferent’; if the starting point will determine the end point, it should presumably be of great importance. Second, there is also the question of just what kind of thing might qualify as a reference for hoppothen and tothi: an(y) object of inquiry? A key principle? One of the four sēmata in Fragment 8?
Proponents of (2a), meanwhile, must answer the question of just what the goddess’s starting point is, and in what sense this could be understood to be ‘common’. For their part, proponents of (2b) must not only answer these two questions – what is the starting point, and in what way is it ‘common’ – but must also fill in the ‘[x]’: to what, precisely, does tothi refer? Similarly, proponents of (1b) must also answer this last question – to what, precisely, does tothi refer – as well as the second question posed to proponents of (1a). What kind of thing might be an appropriate candidate for the reference of both (i) hoppothen and (ii) tothi, and (iii) in what way should it be ‘indifferent’ to the goddess where she begins? These concerns can be summarized in the following way:
To which, or to what kind of, ‘starting point’ does hoppothen refer? (1a, 1b, 2a, 2b)
In what sense does the goddess ‘come back again’ to that to which tothi refers? (1a, 1b, 2a, 2b)
Why, or in what sense, is the starting point ‘indifferent’? (1a, 1b)
Why, or in what sense, is the starting point ‘common’? (2a, 2b)
To which, or to what kind of, point of return does tothi refer? (1b, 2b)
As the list above suggests, one of the central challenges for any interpreter of Fragment 5 is to find a reference (or, in the case of 1b and 2b, references plural) for hoppothen and tothi. One of the primary ways to grapple with these questions is to consider where in the sequence of Parmenides’ ‘Route to Truth’ Fragment 5 might have been located;Footnote 12 to the extent that this reference or references might be contained in an adjacent fragment, the question of location takes on a particular importance, especially for interpretations 1b, 2a, and 2b, where at least one relative pronoun needs a specific reference that is not merely ‘indifferent’. Two proposals are commonly found:
2: vicinity of Fragment 2 (viz. immediately before or after Fragment 2)Footnote 13
8: vicinity of Fragment 8Footnote 14 (e.g. as Fragment 5)Footnote 15
Before deploying this framework to survey possible interpretations of Fragment 5, it will be useful to frame what follows with the remarks of two scholars who have written on this fragment. More than half a century ago, Tarán suggested that many discussions of Fragment 5 are occupied with ‘conjectural interpretations’ that go well ‘beyond the evidence’; responding to this some decades later, Bodnár insisted that whether or not this is true, nevertheless ‘we are able to contrast and rank different interpretations of this fragment’.Footnote 16 Both points remain valid. Fragment 5 is so cryptic and denuded of context that any interpretation of it must be deemed considerably more speculative than most other aspects of interpreting Parmenides’ fragments; it can therefore provide only feeble grounds for supporting or militating against a particular interpretation of Parmenides’ poem as a whole. On the other hand, certain interpretations are in and of themselves stronger than others according to such criteria as how well they address the questions listed two paragraphs above, how well their central claims are reflected or borne out in the existing fragments of Parmenides’ poem and the arguments they make, and what new light they shed on other fragments or long-standing cruces in the interpretation of Parmenides.
Finally, it is also true that the scantiness of the evidence at our disposal makes it difficult to rule out any interpretation of Fragment 5 conclusively. Rather, the exercise of trying to make sense of Fragment 5 also invites us to reflect on the many different kinds of hermeneutic circularity inherent in the act of making sense of the fragments of Parmenides’ poem that remain. How are we to understand any given individual fragment in relation to the larger sense of what it was Parmenides was trying to accomplish? If we introduce the question of Parmenides’ larger project – is he a neo-Ionian cosmologist? A metaphysician critical of earlier cosmological projects? A mystic? Something else entirely? – earlier or later into the process of reading Parmenides, how does this guide our subsequent interpretations of individual fragments like Fragment 5? When we encounter a word like xunon – or indeed, more generally – should we prioritize the semantic parallels and intertextual linkages with Homer or, say, Heraclitus? Do we give free reign to a ‘creative genius not much in debt to anyone’,Footnote 17 or ought we to try to re-embed Parmenides’ concerns and arguments within their cultural, intellectual, or discursive contexts? How hard should we try? How much do our answers depend on our own (often unacknowledged) presuppositions and commitments concerning the development of ideas and the process by which conceptual and intellectual change occurs?
Some Interpretations
Many proponents of 1b, 2a, and 2b have found it desirable to locate Fragment 5 in the vicinity of Fragment 2. We may begin with one of Bodnár’s proposals, a form of 1b2 that can be rendered: ‘It is indifferent from where [viz. from which object of inquiry] I start, for there [viz. “the outcome of Fragment 2”, or “that it exists”] I will return again.’Footnote 18 To the question of to what point of return tothi refers, the answer would be: ‘the procedure described in Fragment 2’.Footnote 19 The ‘starting point’, meanwhile, would be ‘objects of inquiry’, and the meaning of ‘indifferent’ would be that no matter the specific object of inquiry with which one started, one would still apply the procedure described in Fragment 2 just the same – and would thus ultimately arrive in each case at the same conclusion (viz. ‘that the object of inquiry in question exists’).Footnote 20 On this interpretation, Fragment 5 would introduce (if before Fragment 2), or emphasize (if after), the enormous importance of Fragment 2 in Parmenides’ subsequent arguments – a plausible, indeed valuable, function.Footnote 21 What is more, Bodnár’s interpretation has the additional benefit of justifying the notorious absence of a subject in Fragment 2, which, following Barnes, he supposes to be the subauditur subject ‘the object of inquiry’.Footnote 22 Since any object of inquiry would be just as suitable a starting point as any other (hence the ‘indifference’ of the goddess), Fragment 5 would suggest that there is no need to specify any subject in Fragment 2.Footnote 23
Versions of 2a, meanwhile, have their own respectable pedigree, notably in the discussions of Reinhardt, Hölscher, and Bicknell.Footnote 24 The traditional objection to this view has been that it is incompatible with the meaning of the word xunon.Footnote 25 This is only true, however, if one insists that xunon can only rightly be construed to mean ‘indifferent’. As Bodnár points out, however, this meaning is otherwise unattested beyond Heraclitus 103, and the interpretation of that fragment is itself much disputed. (In fact, one finds advocates of both ‘indifferent’ and ‘common’ who adduce the parallel in support of their reading of Parmenides.)Footnote 26 By contrast, in Homer the word ‘common’ is clearly the primary meaning;Footnote 27 whichever rendering of xunon one prefers, that is, it does not seem possible entirely to rule out ‘common’. Furthermore, one might feel that had Parmenides wanted to convey the notion of indifference, he had many other hexameter-friendly words with a venerable Homeric pedigree.Footnote 28 In short, the primary argument against interpretation 2a has been largely defanged.
If nothing stands in the way of pursuing 2a2, what might it mean? A particularly attractive expression of this position has recently been advanced by John Palmer, who stakes out what we might call a ‘recursive’ version of 2a2. On this view, Fragment 5 underscores that Fragment 2 announces the foundational point or ‘fundamental principle’ (e.g. ‘that it is and cannot not be’)Footnote 29 anchoring the goddess’s argumentation, a point or principle to which she will recur again in the course of the arguments of Fragment 8.Footnote 30 Of course, as nearly all contemporary interpreters agree, at various points – most explicitly in Fr. 8.15–18 – Parmenides’ arguments do recur back to just this point or principle. Whether it introduced or immediately followed Fragment 2, Fragment 5 would thus underscore the paramount importance of Fragment 2 and serve ‘as a comment by the goddess on the recursive character of her argumentation’.Footnote 31 The notion of recursiveness thus provides the meaning of xunon, ‘common’, insofar as the principle of Fragment 2 is not only the point from which Parmenides’ goddess will begin (ἄρξωμαι), but is also that to which she will recur time and again in the course of her subsequent argumentation (πάλιν ἵξομαι αὖτις).Footnote 32
If there is no ban on translating xunon as ‘common’, reading 2b2 is also fair game. This interpretation works in a similar way to 1a2. As Bodnár, who presents this view, observes, both xunon and tothi would here refer to the outcome of Fragment 2;Footnote 33 the idea is again that no matter the object of inquiry with which one starts, one will again be funnelled through the ‘procedure’ of Fragment 2 and forced to the conclusion ‘it [viz. the object of inquiry] exists’.
Reading 1a remains to be addressed. Despite a rather chequered critical reception, there are still proponents of the view advanced by Kirk and Raven (what we might term 1a8),Footnote 34 namely that ‘every attribute of reality can be deduced from every other’.Footnote 35 A recent presentation of this view has been assayed by Patricia Curd; she asserts that ‘the goddess’s remarks in B5 should be taken, not as a description of the route [of inquiry presented in Fragment 8], but as an account of the various characteristics of what-is … Whatever aspect of what-is that we begin with, we will eventually reach the others.’Footnote 36
This interpretation has the virtue of making excellent sense of the notion of indifference, and also of providing a clear answer to the question of what category of thing would qualify as a reference for hoppothen (viz. a sēma addressing the nature of what-is). On the other hand, just what might be meant by the clause introduced by gar becomes mysterious, since it is not clear in what sense the mutual deducibility of the sēmata could be captured by the phrase τόθι γὰρ πάλιν ἵξομαι αὖθις. More specifically, to what would tothi refer on this interpretation? Surely not to a sēma, or to something in the sēma-like category, for the idea is not that the goddess provides a proof of the same attribute more than once. It is hard to think of how one could answer the question in a way that would produce the sense: ‘whatever aspect of what-is that we begin with, we will eventually reach the others.’Footnote 37
This interpretation faces another set of difficulties. Is the claim that no matter with which aspect of what-is we begin, we will eventually reach all the others borne out by the actual argumentation of Fragment 8 that Parmenides chose to make, especially in fragments 2 and 8? As Curd herself notes,Footnote 38 Parmenides has expressly chosen to base his argument for akinēton (Fr. 8.26–28) on the results of his first sēma:
It is by no means clear that the concern can be waved aside by observing that ‘were we to begin with the completeness of what-is, we would have to pause to consider whether anything else could come to be in order to complete it, or whether it is divisible and so could lack a part of itself’.Footnote 39 Such an assertion misses the point, and the possible objection it would address is not one we might easily imagine arising. If, say, with either Owen or Austin, one sees the sequence of argumentation in Fragment 8 to be cumulative in that aspects of later points build on earlier ones (or even if one considers it, with Sedley, to be cumulative in some respects, since, for example, sēma 3 builds on sēma 1), then it stands to reason that ‘were we to begin’Footnote 40 with arguments for the third or fourth attributes of to eon, we should of course be able to unfold from them arguments for earlier attributes. Rather, the real difficulty, obscured by the phrase ‘were we to begin’, comes from the other direction: for how, precisely, could one ‘begin’ by proving that to eon is akinēton had one not already delivered the proof for the attributes ‘imperishable and ungenerable’? The charitable verdict on this question is well summarized by Barnes: ‘I do not think that this interpretation of [Fragment 5] can be ruled out; and it is possible to invent arguments, similar to those of B8, which would support the thesis it ascribes to Parmenides. But as it stands B8 does not attempt to establish the mutual implication of all the “signposts”.’Footnote 41 A more critical interpreter might ask what is to be gained by interpreting Fragment 5 in this way, especially when one is required to invent hypothetical (and in some cases potentially quite controversial) arguments that Parmenides gives no indication of having made.Footnote 42
Finally, one might observe further infelicities implied by this interpretation. It would seem quite unsatisfactory, for example, to think that what is currently the fourth and final sēma, teleston/tetelesmenon, usually glossed as ‘completeness’ or ‘perfectedness’, might come at some point other than the end of the argumentative sequence. Are we to imagine that, rather than forming the climax or culmination of Parmenides’ previous claims about the nature of what-is, the argument for completeness might come at an arbitrary point in the middle of the ‘Route to Truth’, or was to have been followed by some other attribute (such as, say, the indivisibility of what-is)?
Reviewing the four ways of construing Fragment 5 on their own merits, then, provides the following picture. The examples of interpretations 1b2 and 2b2 surveyed above make strong sense on their own terms, fit neatly with the existing fragments of Parmenides’ poem as they stand, and even have the added benefit of illuminating a notoriously vexing aspect of Fragment 2. Interpretation 2a2, freed from the unjust charge that it is incompatible with the semantics of xunon (and perhaps capitalizing on a better-attested sense of the word),Footnote 43 likewise makes excellent sense of the Greek and provides clear and persuasive answers to the central questions that confront interpreters of Fragment 5; what is more, the ‘recursive’ reading in particular captures a vitally important phenomenon of the argumentation as we actually find it in Fragment 8. For its part, the Raven–Curd view of 1a makes excellent sense of the first half of Fragment 5, but struggles to make good sense of the Greek in the clause introduced by gar. In addition, it seems to introduce unnecessary, and potentially controversial, hypotheses about arguments Parmenides might have made but apparently did not.Footnote 44 What is more, it is far from clear what new, valuable insights into the nature of Parmenides’ arguments it delivers. In sum, interpretations 1b2, 2a2, and 2b2 offer coherent accounts of the Greek of Fragment 5 that are also strongly consistent with what we find in the rest of Parmenides’ poem; each also offers the added benefit of illuminating otherwise obscure portions of the ‘Route to Truth’. By contrast, interpretation 1a8 relies on a controversial construal of the semantics of Fragment 5, is not well supported by the arguments as we now find them, and, finally, does not seem to illuminate other aspects of Parmenides’ poem (while raising more difficult questions in its own right).
Squaring the Circle with the hodos of Inquiry?
As the previous section made clear, despite the fact that Fragment 5 is so obscure and decontextualized, we can nevertheless attempt to evaluate relative strengths or weaknesses of different interpretations based on the information that we now have. I also suggested, however, that its ambiguity and deracination makes this fragment a weak basis for contesting or supporting a more holistic interpretation of Parmenides. Still, it is worth seeing how my account of the structure of Parmenides’ poem squares with the foregoing interpretations of Fragment 5.
Despite the alarming first impression, interpretations 1b, 2a, and 2b are fully consistent – and, indeed, even elegantly consonant – with my analysis above. In readings 1b2 and 2b2, what matters is that wherever one begins one’s inquiry, one will inevitably be funnelled into the krisis expressed in Fragment 2 (tothi), and from there, inevitably and necessarily along the (logical or rhetorical) rut road of fragments 6, 7, and 8. The ‘recursive’ 2a2 is perhaps even more intuitively attractive. On this interpretation, Fragment 5 would express the fundamental importance of the sequentiality of the argumentation in the ‘Route to Truth’: only by passing via the krisis in Fragment 2 could one proceed to the sēmata in Fragment 8Footnote 45 (or even: once one has passed via the krisis in Fragment 2 – and perhaps another krisis in fragments 6 and 7 – one must proceed along the path formed by the sēmata of Fragment 8).
By contrast, the Raven–Curd version of 1a8 may seem at first glance to fit rather less neatly with the account I have provided above; the linear, sequential, goal-oriented aspects of the word hodos and the discursive architecture distinctive to it that I have outlined may seem difficult to reconcile with the apparently circular qualities often attributed to reading 1a.
In response to this, one can record two observations. The first is that, as noted above – and asserted by both SedleyFootnote 46 and Curd – in the poem that we now have, Parmenides chose to express his arguments with at least some sense of order, and it is by no means clear that his claims about the nature of to eon are ‘mutually implicative’. At the least, the onus seems to be on those who wish to assert such a position to prove its possibility, or at least provide a clearer picture of how this might work – and why this view is attractive in the first place.Footnote 47
Second, one might ask just how damaging this interpretation of Fragment 5 ultimately is to the argument I have advanced above. Even were one to accept Curd’s interpretation, for example, the implications for the argument I have presented in this book would be little different from those explored in Chapter 6 in relation to Sedley’s reading of Fragment 8. Even if Parmenides had ordered his arguments differently, and expressly asserted as much in Fragment 5, the fact remains that he needed some kind of discursive architecture in which to express his ideas. In this context, what I have asserted in this book amounts to this: Parmenides thinks, speaks, and, most importantly, argues through roads. What I termed in passing hodopoiēsis – creation or composition via the road, road-poetry, poetry about hodoi – emphasizes the degree to which the word and image of the hodos and the discursive architecture it triggers via Odyssey 12 organize the structure and progress of Parmenides’ discourse in a distinctive way, both at the level of rhetorical schemata and types of dependence. It is this distinctive way that I claim mediates the transition from Homeric narration to Parmenidean deductive argumentation (as we would call it); that would remain true whether or not the ‘underlying geography’ of the ‘story-world’ – be it the Sirens’ meadow, the Wandering Rocks, Scylla, Charybdis, and Thrinacia, or the krisis between ‘IS’ and ‘IS NOT’, the krisis between ‘IS’ and ‘IS and IS NOT’ (perhaps), and each of the four sēmata – were anchored in a fixed map. Put another way, we can observe that Homer might have elected to put Thrinacia first and the Sirens’ meadow last; in that case, he would have told a different poem, but would this have changed the need for his character Odysseus to travel from one point to another via a hodos, and the manner in which his goddess, Circe, narrates the points in a sequence, and then describes each item and advises Odysseus’ about how to navigate each one? Even in the event that Parmenides put the argument for ‘completeness’ in middle of his argument and, say, the argument for ungenerability and imperishability last, (1) he would still have had to order them in a sequence, and (2) this sequence would still necessarily come after Fragment 2 (and, potentially, 6 and 7).
1 See e.g. Reference Osborne and TaylorC. Osborne (1997) 33–35.
2 See e.g. Reference TaránTarán (1965) 51; Reference Coxon and McKirahanCoxon (2009) 55.
3 E.g. Reference JamesonJameson (1958); Reference TaránTarán (1965) 51; Reference BarnesBarnes (1982) 177; Reference Coxon and McKirahanCoxon (2009) 54; Reference McKirahanMcKirahan (2010) 146; one finds minor variations of word order across these sources. Similarly, one finds ‘it is all one to me’ (Reference GallopGallop (1984) 59; Reference ThanassasThanassas (2007) 93; ‘it is all the same to me’ (Reference O’Brien and AubenqueO’Brien (1987) 23 [= ‘Où que je commence, cela m’est indifférent’], likewise Reference Sedley and LongSedley (1999) 122); ‘gleichviel ist mir’s aber, wo ich beginne’ (Reference DielsDiels (1897) 33).
4 Reference CorderoCordero (2004) 123; he continues ‘… there I shall return again’; see also ‘Il est commun pour moi où je commence’ (Reference CorderoCordero (1984) 37).
5 Reference Kirk, Raven and SchofieldKirk, Raven, and Schofield (2007) 244; see also ‘it is a common point for me, from which I shall begin’ (Reference PalmerPalmer (2009) 85 n. 104, 365).
7 LM 36–37. See also Reference LöwLöw (1935) 9; Reference MeijerMeijer (1969) 104; Reference HölscherHölscher (1969) 77, 118.
11 Reference BodnárBodnár (1985) 59, with helpful diagram.
9 Reference Kirk, Raven and SchofieldKirk, Raven, and Schofield (2007) 244. See also LM 36–37, and also, it would seem, Reference MourelatosMourelatos (2008b) 193.
10 Reference BodnárBodnár (1985) 61 offers: ‘Commonly present it is, | wherever I start from, for there I will return again’; in light of his observation that hippothen arxōmai is to be a subordinate conditional clause rather than an indirect question, for the sake of clarity, if not elegance, we might offer: ‘Commonly present it is, | wheresoever I start from, for there I will return again.’
12 The notion that this fragment might have been located in the Doxa has not been seriously entertained since Reference KarstenKarsten (1835), and for good reason; see discussion in e.g. Reference JamesonJameson (1958) 16–17; Reference TaránTarán (1965) 52.
13 This position could be described already in 1985 as a ‘growing new orthodoxy’ (Reference BodnárBodnár (1985) 59 and 62 Footnote n. 17). It is placed there in the sequence of Parmenides’ fragments by e.g. Reference Kirk, Raven and SchofieldKirk, Raven, and Schofield (2007), Reference Coxon and McKirahanCoxon (2009), and LM; see also e.g. Reference MourelatosMourelatos (2008b) [1970] 193, Reference Sedley and LongSedley (1999) 122, Reference CorderoCordero (2004) 122–24, Reference PalmerPalmer (2009) 85 n. 104. The view is in fact much older; Diels originally placed this fragment directly before Fr. 2 (Reference DielsDiels (1897) 32), and Reinhardt persisted in calling this Fragment 3 (see Reference ReinhardtReinhardt (1916) 60).
14 The lone source for the fragment, Proclus, quotes it alongside portions of Fr. 8.25 and Fr. 8.44 (Procl. in Parm. 708.16–17).
15 I count Fragment 5 as close to Fragment 8 since scholars such as Curd both take the reference of the relevant indefinite pronouns to be parts of Fragment 8 (viz. the sēmata), even though they do not relocate Fragment 5 so that it sits adjacent to Fragment 8; see likewise remarks at Reference BarnesBarnes (1982) 177.
16 Reference TaránTarán (1965) 51; Reference BodnárBodnár (1985) 57, emphasis original.
18 Reference BodnárBodnár (1985) 59–61.
19 Reference BodnárBodnár (1985) 59, and see also Reference BarnesBarnes (1982) 157 n. 65 and Reference OwenOwen (1960) 94–95.
21 Reference BodnárBodnár (1985) 59–60.
22 Reference BodnárBodnár (1985), and cf. Reference BarnesBarnes (1982) 157 n. 65.
23 For a slightly different version of 1b2, see Reference Sedley and LongSedley (1999) 122 Footnote n. 15, who allies himself with Bodnár’s reading; as he sees it, tothi refers ‘not to the arbitrarily chosen starting point, but to what-is. [The goddess] would then mean that all arguments, wherever they may start from, will bring you back to being, because ultimately that is the only possible subject of rational discourse’.
24 See e.g. Reference ReinhardtReinhardt (1916) 60, and discussion in Reference BodnárBodnár (1985) 58; Reference HölscherHölscher (1969) 77, 118; Reference BicknellBicknell (1979) 9–11.
25 E.g. Gallop’s criticism of Bicknell (Reference GallopGallop (1984) 37 n. 57), or Bodnár’s of Hölscher (Reference BodnárBodnár (1985) 58).
26 For ‘indifferent’, see e.g. Reference DielsDiels (1897) 51; Reference TaránTarán (1965) 52; Reference Hölscher, Molho, Raaflaub and EmlenHeitsch (1991) 148; Reference Coxon and McKirahanCoxon (2009). For ‘common’, see e.g. Reference CorderoCordero (1984) 173; Reference CorderoCordero (2004) 123; Reference Kirk, Raven and SchofieldKirk, Raven, and Schofield (2007) 244 Footnote n. 1.
27 See Reference BormannBormann (1971) 180.
28 See Reference BodnárBodnár (1985) 61, 63 Footnote n. 26, where other arguments for ‘common’ can be found; likewise Reference CorderoCordero (2004) 123.
29 See Reference PalmerPalmer (2009) 85 n. 104 for both quotations and lucid summary of the ‘recursive’ position’s merits.
30 See esp. Reference Kirk, Raven and SchofieldKirk, Raven, and Schofield (2007) 244 and Reference PalmerPalmer (2009) 85 n. 104; also Reference HölscherHölscher (1969) 77.
31 Reference PalmerPalmer (2009) 85 n. 104.
32 There is also what we might call a ‘dialectical’ reading of Fragment 5 that is best classified as a version of 2a2. Reference CorderoCordero (1984) 172–73 and (Reference Cordero2004) 123, building on Reference MeijerMeijer (1969) and Reference MeijerMeijer (1997) 123–24, is the most prominent spokesman for this view.
34 See Footnote n. 15 above.
35 Reference Kirk and RavenKirk and Raven (1957) 268, see also 278; endorsed also by Reference GuthrieGuthrie (1965) 97 Footnote n. 1. Reference BodnárBodnár (1985) 59 called the view ‘fanciful’ (and see also excellent analysis in Footnote ibid., 62 Footnote n. 14), though others (e.g. Reference GallopGallop (1984) 19) have been more enthusiastic.
36 Reference CurdCurd (1998b) 69. Strikingly, Curd continues in a footnote: ‘This is the case even if some of the attributes of what-is depend on others; for instance, it seems that the discussions of the characteristics “unshaking” and “complete” depend on proofs of ungenerability and cohesiveness. Were we to begin with the completeness of what-is, we would have to pause to consider whether anything else could come to be in order to complete it, or whether it is divisible and so could lack a part of itself.’
37 Curd (1998) 69.
38 Curd (1998) 69 Footnote n. 16; see Footnote n. 36 above. Since Parmenides rarely deviates from the present tense aspect elsewhere in the poem (see especially Chapter 6 above), the use of the aorists ἐπλάχθησαν and ἀπῶσε is especially noteworthy and arresting. (Notably, we also saw the perfect in 8.15–18, another instance in which the strict sequencing of the argumentation was centrally important. Here we find a rare but striking return to narrativity, now at the ‘argument’ level of dependence: a key signal of the ordering power of he hodos and the importance of the sequence of the sēmata.)
39 Curd (1998) 69 Footnote n. 16.
40 Similarly revealing is the use of the phrase ‘each attribute follows directly or indirectly from the krisis or decision between is and is not’ (Curd (1998) 69, emphasis added). The caveat ‘indirectly’ is precisely the point: as the argument now stands, one may go directly from the krisis between is and is not to the argument for the attribute ‘ungenerable and imperishable’, but most go indirectly – that is, by way of sēma 1, ‘ungenerable and imperishable’ – from the krisis to get to the attribute ‘immobile and unshaking’.
41 Reference BarnesBarnes (1982) 177.
42 Incidentally, it is not clear that Curd’s innovative and important notion of ‘predicational monism’ would be harmed at all by accepting interpretation 1b, 2a, or 2b of Fragment 5 – nor that it necessarily benefits from the version of 1a8 that she espouses.
43 See Footnote nn. 26, 27 above.
44 It is also worth reflecting on the fact that at no other point does Parmenides state, otherwise indicate, or even suggest that he might have made the arguments another way but declined to do so.
45 And, perhaps, a second krisis in fragments 6 and 7 in between. I intend to address this question in a future publication.
46 It is worth recalling once more that Sedley associates himself with a version of 1b2; see Footnote n. 23 above.
47 Even those who find this interpretation ‘intriguing, if unprovable, speculation’ admit that ‘[t]his goes far beyond the available evidence … . No such pattern of circular reasoning has ever been traced’ (Reference GallopGallop (1984) 19). Reference BodnárBodnár (1985) 62 Footnote n. 14 offers one version before dismissing it is as implausible; Reference McKirahan, Curd and GrahamMcKirahan (2008), for his part, expressly states that the ‘notionally equivalent’ characteristics, of, ‘[f]or example, “whole” and “all together” are not synonyms, and do not as a rule entail one another’ (189).
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