Colloquium 1 Parmenides, Liars, and Mortal Incompleteness

Abstract

Abstract On the road of inquiry that Parmenides’ goddess recommends, one is to say and conceive that what-is is one, unmoving, continuous, ungenerated, undestroyed, complete, and undivided. Yet the goddess’s arguments in favor of this road use negations, distinctions, divisions, and references to generation and destruction. The requisites of inquiry that she outlines are both defined on and at odds with other features that inquiry appears to require. This essay argues that the goddess’s arguments manifest something like a liar paradox: She demonstrates on the basis of the opinions of mortals that mortals’ opinions are flawed. If so, then the goddess’s arguments do not establish that what-is is one and unchanging. What they show is that what inquiry and inference seem to require, given the opinions of mortals, is at odds with itself. To refer to what-is is to make aletheia impossible to reach. To be mortal, for Parmenides, is to journey through that incompleteness.