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• W3208363585 abstract "Timothy Clarke’s monograph offers a detailed explication of Aristotle’s Physics 1.2–3, two difficult chapters where, as a preliminary to his survey of views on the natural principles, Aristotle examines the thesis of Parmenides and Melissus that what is (to on) is one and unchanging. Clarke intends this explication to serve as the basis for a comprehensive account of Aristotle’s understanding of these thinkers. He contends that Aristotle represents them as propounding both “entity monism,” the view that reality consists of just a single entity, and “essence monism,” the view that reality is all of the same essence.In chapter 1, Clarke concludes Aristotle must have understood Parmenides and Melissus as entity monists because he says considering their view that what is (to on) is one and unchanging does not properly belong to an inquiry into the natural principles, for their view entails that there are no principles (Physics 1.2.184b25–185a17). The question of how Aristotle understands Parmenides and Melissus is thus settled for Clarke prior to consideration of Aristotle’s detailed treatment of their views, and his interpretation of that treatment in chapters 2 through 7 is conditioned by this premature conclusion. It is telling, however, that Aristotle at the outset of Physics 1.5, where he claims universal agreement on the view that opposites are principles, says that even those who say everything is one and unchanging suppose this is so, given that Parmenides effectively makes hot and cold principles (Physics 1.5.188a19–22). The apparent contradiction between his point that Parmenides makes hot and cold principles and Aristotle’s previous assertion that Parmenides’s view does away with the principles may be resolved by a more adequate understanding than Clarke provides of Aristotle’s treatment of Parmenides in the substantive discussion of Physics 1.2–3.Aristotle says in Physics 1.2 that Parmenides and Melissus understood ‘being’ univocally when it is actually said in many ways, and he proposes several ways of understanding their view that everything is one. It might mean that everything is substance, either such that everything is one substance or such that there are multiple substances. It might mean everything is quantity, either such that everything is one quantity or such that there are multiple quantities. Or it might mean everything is quality, either such that everything is one quality or there are multiple qualities. Not all these options are meant to correspond to historically held positions, and while one can see more or less readily the options with which Aristotle associates Parmenides and Melissus, what the resulting positions are supposed to amount to can be difficult to understand.Clarke suggests Aristotle also has in his sights essence monism, which is supposed to correspond at a higher level to their mistaken presumption that ‘being’ is said in just one way. The focus on essence monism unfortunately obscures how Aristotle actually distinguishes the positions of Parmenides and Melissus, and it would have been better to focus on where Aristotle locates Parmenides and Melissus in his schema of options. Aristotle makes it clear that he understands Melissus as having held that all things are quantity: “Melissus says that what is (to on) is unlimited. What is then is a quantity; for the unlimited is in [the category of] quantity” (185a32–34). Clarke proposes understanding this as meaning that what is has a quantitative property (29–30); but this is not what Aristotle says, and the result would not correspond to any of the options Aristotle has himself just identified. Although Aristotle does not explicitly indicate with which option he associates Parmenides, his subsequent characterizations of Parmenidean being as “what just is” (to hoper on) and as not being an attribute of anything else (Physics 1.3.186b1–2, 4–5), and his criticism that even if ‘being’ had only one sense, this would not mean that there is only one being (Physics 1.3.186a24–27, cf. 187a6–10), together confirm that Aristotle understands Parmenides as having held that everything is one substance.Aristotle also suggests several ways of understanding the thesis that everything is one insofar as ‘one’ is also said in many ways: it could mean that all things are one by being continuous, or indivisible, or identical with respect to the account of their essence (Physics 1.2.185b5–9). At Metaphysics A.5.986b18–20, Aristotle says Parmenides understood what is to be one in account (kata ton logon), thus associating him specifically with the third of these options, while Melissus understood what is to be one materially (kata tēn hulēn), thus associating him with the first option and possibly the second. Clarke supposes that Aristotle means to associate Parmenides (and Melissus) with all three of these options. He thus looks for what might have led Aristotle to conclude that Parmenidean being is continuous, indivisible, and one in account. He finds in Parmenides B8.22–25 DK an argument for continuity and in B8.22 evidence for attributing to him the view that reality is indivisible by being partless. He has difficulty understanding why Aristotle might want to associate Parmenides with the third option, that all things are identical with respect to the account of their essence. He misses the connection between this view and Aristotle’s attribution to Parmenides of the view that everything is one substance. Instead, Clarke suggests that at Physics 1.2.185b19–25 Aristotle is implicitly attributing to the Eleatics the view that it is impossible to speak or think of what is not (40). In making this suggestion, Clarke imports into his reading of Aristotle a modern interpretation that has no textual warrant in Aristotle.In examining Parmenides’s position at Physics 1.3.186a22–b35, Aristotle explores the error of supposing that ‘being’ is said in only one way. Clarke endeavors to make sense of the suggestion by attending closely to Aristotle’s peculiar diagnosis of the fallacy in Parmenides’s reasoning: “if one were to take only white things, with ‘white’ having a single signification, nonetheless the white things would be many and not one; for what is white will be one neither by continuity nor in account” (186a26–28). This amounts to pointing out even if ‘being’ is used in just one way, that does not entail that there is just one being. Clarke goes much further, however, and finds in these few words a basis for reconstructing Aristotle’s understanding of Parmenides’s principal argument for monism, here once again in Parmenides B8.22–25 DK. Clarke also works carefully through Aristotle’s subsequent critique of Parmenides’s position at Physics 1.3.186a28–b35, in a generally successful effort to make Aristotle’s line of thought more comprehensible and to show how he means to highlight what he takes to be Parmenides’s metaphysical naı̈vet é.The line of thought Aristotle imputes to Parmenides in Physics 1.3 amounts to the following. Recognizing only a use of ‘being’ indicating what something is with respect to its substance or essence, Parmenides understood everything that is to be substance, and he supposed everything to be one in the sense that the account of the essence of everything is identical. Whatever might differentiate what is cannot do so with respect to its essence but only accidentally, but no accident of what is can belong to its essence, so no differentiating accident of what is can be said to be. Aristotle summarizes this analysis when in Metaphysics A.5 he thus characterizes Parmenides’s reasoning: “Besides what is, deeming what is not to be nothing, he necessarily thinks that what is (to on) is one and that nothing else is (we have spoken more clearly about this in our works on nature)” (986b28–31). Aristotle continues: “but being compelled to follow the phenomena, and presuming that what is (to on) is one in account (kata ton logon) but many according to perception, he posits two causes and principles, hot and cold, speaking of them as fire and earth” (986b31–34). Aristotle’s characterization of Parmenides as having held that what is (to on) is one in account picks up directly on his analysis in Physics 1.2–3. When he says that Parmenides held that what is (to on) is also many according to perception and so posited two elements to serve as natural principles, he appears to be associating the phenomena of the natural world with what in Physics 1.3 had been characterized as the potentially differentiating accidents of the one substance. Because he recognized only a use of ‘being’ according to which only substance is, Parmenides, according to Aristotle, does not allow that things apart from his one substance are. (Melissus actually says something very close to this at 30B8.2 DK, and Plato sometimes advocates restricting the use of being to substances, most notably at Timaeus 27d–28a, a passage with heavy Parmenidean overtones.) If only the one being is (in the way substance is), that does not mean things that are not substances do not exist, only that they should not be said to be because ‘being’ is reserved for substances. Thus, in attributing to Parmenides in Metaphysics A.5 the view that what is (to on) is many according to perception, Aristotle is acknowledging that Parmenides’s one substance has its nonsubstantial aspects.The account of Parmenides in Metaphysics A.5 poses serious problems for Clarke, for what Aristotle says runs counter to the view Clarke adopts at the outset, according to which Aristotle understood Parmenides as a radical monist denying the reality of all multiplicity and change. He accordingly devotes chapter 8 to explaining away its awkward evidence. Clarke’s treatment of Aristotle’s important remarks on Parmenides and Melissus in De Caelo 3.1 similarly minimizes the significance of evidence that is crucial to understanding Aristotle’s view of these thinkers. Clarke is interested in the passage only because it indicates that Aristotle took Parmenides’s spatial descriptions of what is literally. But Aristotle says here that “one should not suppose [Parmenides and Melissus] to speak in a manner appropriate to natural science. For that some things that are do not come to be and are completely free from change is a thesis that belongs instead to another inquiry prior to natural science” (298b18–20). The inquiry prior to natural science is first philosophy or theology, and Aristotle’s characterization here of the views of Parmenides and Melissus as belonging, not to natural philosophy, but to that higher domain ought to help one understand why he says in Physics 1.2 that consideration of their view that what is (to on) is one and unchanging does not properly belong to an inquiry into the natural principles (184a25–185a1). For Clarke, it is because that view does away with the natural principles in a simplistic way. But the reasons why Aristotle thought Parmenides’s position does away with the natural principles are actually more complex, and they are connected with his understanding of Parmenides’s conception of what is as belonging to first philosophy or theology rather than natural philosophy." @default.
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