Parmenides and the History of Dialectic: Three Essays.
By Scott Austin.

Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2007. Pp. xiii + 98. $28.00 (cloth). ISBN-13: 978-1930972193.

E.F. Beall

The three essays of Austin’s subtitle are, respectively, ‘Parmenidean Dialectic’ (1-27), which asserts that the central Parmenides fragment, B8, bespeaks a method that recurs in the second part of Plato’s Parmenides; ‘Parmenidean Metaphysics’ (29-49), which mostly makes claims about the ‘signposts’ cited in B8; and ‘Parmenides and the History of Dialectic’ (51-83), which compares B8 with the dialectic of a number of later figures, especially Plato, Aquinas, and Hegel. The essays are given a certain unity—hence their appearance together here—by the author’s predominant concern with the structure of Parmenides’ thought as opposed to its content.

This book appears in the context of recent questioning of the traditional view of Parmenides as pure rationalist. An extraterrestrial who examined his fragments in ignorance of what has been written about them since his time might well think that he was at once an epic poet, a mystic healer, and a rational thinker, but of course until recent times virtually all who have indeed written on him have stressed the ratiocination: One thinks of Parmenides as working out a system by reason alone, without regard to how he would express it to the public, and only thereafter ‘casting his thought’ into epic meter and imagery for one reason or another that need not detain the student long in the quest to explicate the system itself. Still, lately some studies have allowed him a degree of poetic expertise—at least to the extent of arguing how his proficiency was put in the service of the ratiocination. Writers such as Floyd speak of Parmenides using epic motifs and themes to advance his philosophical position; some (such as Mourelatos and Coxon) also detail the Parmenidean use of epic phrases; and Henn has now treated epic metrical structures within a verse (if not multi-verse structures such as enjambement). The mystical angle has been treated by Kingsley in a generally engaging and insightful manner, if at a semi-popular level, and some commentators have now pursued his approach in more academic fashion—especially in Gemelli Marciano’s (quite scholarly) 2008 article in this journal.

One naturally wonders where Austin fits in this framework, and the answer is that he is not one to pay undue attention to the poetry, but does allow Parmenides some mysticism, or better, theology. After his earlier book had allowed that the poem’s introduction, fragment B1, manifested a transformation of ‘the epic quest for victory and homecoming…into the search for truth’, but promptly stated that it would ‘sidestep’ such questions as the meanings of the metaphors appearing in the fragment (Austin 1986, 3), the book under review does not even cite B1. But the earlier book concluded with a chapter on Parmenides’ anticipation of monotheism’s ideas of finitude and infinity (136-154), and now, in the first essay of the new work Austin ‘do(es) not deny’ mysticism (24), while in the third he holds that a mental activity resembling dialectic occurs in non-rationalist as well as in strictly philosophical contexts, including in particular the Christian idea of Trinity.

As to specific theses, Austin’s first essay revisits the material of the second chapter of his earlier book, which had discussed the pattern of thought in B8, but this time compares it with Plato’s method in the second part of the dialogue Parmenides. Austin summarizes the ‘signposts’ of B8 as including both affirmed and denied predicates about positive terms and both affirmed and denied predicates about alpha-privatives, with the four types in forms like ‘it is necessary that what-is be’ as opposed to direct affirmations like ‘what-is is’ (that is to say, whatis simply does be). It is as if Parmenides invented a logic of modal statements as opposed to one of syllogisms. This structure then, says Austin, parallels Plato’s discussion, where the Eleatic is held to assert hypotheses numbering eight, but reducible to four according to Austin and others he cites. Namely, the historical Parmenides’ rejection of positive features of ‘what-is’ tracks the Platonic version’s denial of One; the first’s affirmation of privatives, the affirmation of One; the affirmation of positives, the affirmation of Others; and the denial of privatives, the denial of Others (19-20). In all this Austin agrees up to minor reservations with recent commentators on ‘the Eleatic nature’ of the dialogue, and also anticipates part of his third essay.

Here I hold that the parallel with Plato would be more persuasive if Austin retreated from the sense he conveys that Parmenides is offering us a mature modal logic. Especially given that much of the material in B8 constitutes dogmatic pronouncement, not logical argumentation (see most recently Gemelli Marciano 2008, 37n47 and the references cited there), one would be more comfortable with an image of the Eleatic as a person who had some type of vision that included germs of positions that could be argued rationally, rather than someone who thought in terms of Boolean operators. Plato himself could certainly read the statements of 8.22-25, say, that ‘what is’ is undivided, etc., as meaning that there is an abstract ‘one’ with certain integral properties (Parmenides 137c-142a), and beyond that, to perceive a method in the way the earlier figure ordered his arguments. Still, that would not prove that the historical Parmenides thought of whatever ‘is’ as a unity per se, nor that he was conscious of following a method.

Unfortunately, the second essay does not follow a recognizable train of thought. After Austin begins by proposing to treat B8’s metaphysics rather than its method, and states that he will offer ‘compressed’ (i.e., unjustified) assertions and then will comment on them, the first and the final (ninth) assertions alike turn out to be that to Parmenides the signposts constitute all possible assertions about Being. That seems to be the point of the piece; yet the second assertion, for example, cites identity of the morning and evening star out of the blue, to posit a Parmenidean distinction between meaning and reference. The commentary on these assertions includes argument that the Eleatic’s use of negative language 156 does not violate his own principles, certainly a much discussed point. However, I see no reasoning pertinent to the apparently main assertion, such as an argument that other signposts that some skeptic might posit cannot exist. Again it is implicit that Parmenides himself was aware of the distinctions the essay makes, and again I am skeptical.

The third essay seems the most important of the set. This short piece offers an outline of the logic of dialectic from Parmenides to Plato, and then on to Christian theology, followed by Hegel and his post-modern critics such as Derrida. Of course, Austin is not speaking to anyone who would insist that theology and philosophy were entirely different subjects, and that any patterns of thought common to representatives of the respective fields were accidental, but if we bracket that objection his discussion is engaging. For example, he is able to compare Parmenides’ treatment of Being with respect to time (meaning that it transcends that), space (not localized), and a sphere (analogous to that in its integrity) with Aquinas’ focus in Summa Contra Gentiles on the Father, Son, and Spirit, respectively, as ‘modes’ of Being’s existence (80). To be sure, Parmenides’ dialectic is simpler in that it focuses on the transcendent Being almost to the exclusion of these components (82-83), while Aquinas speaks of a ‘unity in difference’ (73- 74). Still, as interesting as this treatment is, the comparison and the corresponding parallel with Hegel cry out for elucidation beyond the sketchy treatment here.

As to that, an expansion of the essay might recognize that Austin has been impressionistic in what he chooses to include or not in this brief journey through logical space. The only Christian thinker apart from Aquinas that he treats, pseudo-Dionysius (70-72), is surely a minor figure in comparison with Origen, Augustine, etc. Meanwhile, it is high time that historians of philosophy took seriously the point that, especially insofar as we speak of specifically metaphysics, the Western tradition mostly passed through Arabic writers. Aquinas was heavily influenced by Latin translations of Avicenna (as Austin 41 tacitly acknowledges in speaking of ‘the Avicenna/Aquinas’ theory of the relation between existence and essence), whose major metaphysical work is entitled al-Ilahīyāt, literally ‘Divinity’. Austin certainly does not mind citing a monist, noting Derrida’s reduction of all to the entity différance (not différence as he claims, 80). Given that, I for one would like to hear how, in stressing the Trinity, Aquinas is able to flout Avicenna’s sustained case that the first principle (i.e., God) brooks no division whatever.

But my principal quarrel with Austin’s new book is that (although he is hardly alone in this) with it he in effect arrogates the field of history of philosophy as a whole to a branch of the history of ancient philosophy. On the one hand, he speaks of Hegel, for example, without citing any actual scholar on that philosopher, and on the other, he presents a work that in spite of its brevity will be heavy-going for the general historian of philosophy. The reader is expected to agree that Heidegger’s interpretation of Parmenides is wrong without benefit of even a one-sentence summary of just what that (probably not well known) interpretation might be (48-49), and worse, will also need familiarity with Moure- 157 latos’ (surely even less known) reading of B3 in order to judge Austin’s statement that it is also wrong (24). None of this will win us students of Presocratic philosophy any friends among the larger scholarly public.

Some nitpicks. The book has not been carefully edited, so that there is no consistent system as to whether a work cited a second time in the notes is referred there to its first citing (e.g., at 5n5, where by the way the reference to ‘note 1’ is an error for ‘note 3’), or is simply given anew with full bibliographic data (e.g., 34n21, notwithstanding 22n12). The Stephanus page numbers are frequently cited for Plato in the third essay but not at all in the first. The bibliography is perhaps adequate insofar as Parmenides is concerned (although not for Aquinas or Hegel), but if Curd’s book from as late as 2004 can be included, why not Cordero’s from the same year and publisher?

In sum, this is a thought-provoking little book of some originality, if no more than that. One would like to see the third essay in particular developed more rigorously.

Washington, DC
www.efbeall.net

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aquinas, Thomas, St. 1975. Summa Contra Gentiles. C.J. O’Neil trans. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Austin, S. 1986. Parmenides. Being, Bounds, and Logic. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Avicenna. 2005. The metaphysics of The healing: a parallel English-Arabic text = al-Ilahīyāt min al- Shifā’. Translated, introduced, and annotated by M.E. Marmura. Provo: Brigham Young University Press.

Cordero, N.-L. 2004. By Being, It Is. The Thesis of Parmenides. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Coxon, A.H. 1986. The Fragments of Parmenides. Assen: van Gorcum.

Curd, P. 2004. The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic monism and later presocratic thought. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Floyd, E.D. 1992. ‘Why Parmenides Wrote in Verse’ Ancient Philosophy 12: 251-265.

Gemelli Marciano, M.L. 2008. ‘Images and Experience: At the Roots of Parmenides’ Aletheia’ Ancient Philosophy 28: 21-48.

Henn, Martin J. 2003. Parmenides of Elea: A Verse Translation with Interpretative Essays and Commentary to the Text. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.

Kingsley, P. 2003. Reality. Inverness, CA: The Golden Sufi Center.

Mourelatos, A.P.D. 1970. The Route of Parmenides. A study of word, image and argument in the fragments. New Haven and London: Yale University Press [reprinted 2008 by Parmenides Publishing with a new introduction, additional essays, and an essay by Gregory Vlastos].