Eleatic thought evidences a rigor of thought rich in branches, arguments and foundations of all kinds and order, above all, in reflections focused on the field of the theory of being and knowledge, in this thought there was a close relationship in the interest of unveiling the being, its knowledge and its transmission, a concern that precedes Plato and Aristotle, because from Elea and Ionia comes a heritage to the Greek world and is the fervor for the philosophy of nature, already from an abstract and metaphysical point of view «the Greek philosophy ….. It is based on the rational understanding of the very nature of reality;» (pag 8) Jeager,
And this rational understanding gives an ontological foundation for philosophy, which is affirmed and created through the poem of Parmenides. From the conception of being that we find in the poem of Parmenides it is deduced that this exists, is immutable, eternal above all that is sensible, this supposes an ontological foundation to the thought about being and truth, since it gives man a way to reach it.
But this radical thought has its flip side, thinkers like Gorgias go to the opposite extreme of ontology and exclaim angrily that being does not exist, demonstrating and dissociating the relationship between being and thinking, starting from the same arguments and ontological postulates that are expressed in the Parmenidean poem, The thesis described by Gorgias in the treatise is that «being is not, even if it were unknowable, even if it were knowable it is incommunicable», while in Parmenides’ poem, being is, it is knowable and communicable. Apparently, Gorgias with this thesis does not recognize the existence of being, but the accidental causality as the opposite of the essential, that is, the conditional and relative as opposed to the existent, to the existence of truth.
I invite everyone to read Matias’ post with the topic of the day.
El Arbol de la Vida - Tercer Ciclo 