Parmenides of Elea (c. 500 BCE)

Parmenides of Elea was one of the most influential of the Presocratic philosophers. He was born before 500 BCE in Elea, a Hellenic city on the southern coast of Italy where he founded the School of Elea. Unfortunately, his only known work, the didactic poem later titled “On Nature,” written in hexameter verse, is extant only in fragments totaling approximately 150 of what were originally around 3,000 lines. It deals with the topic of time indirectly by separating real being from the influences of time.

The poem was divided into an introduction and two main sections about “the way of truth” (ale-tbeia) and “the way of opinion” (doxa). In the proem the narrator describes his ascent to the home of an unnamed goddess from night to day, unusual for human beings. with the help of the sun maidens, he passes the gates of night and day and meets the goddess, who reveals to him the natures of truth and opinion, that is that which “is” and that which “is not.” According to her instruction, real inquiry via pure reason (logos) is only possible concerning that which “is,” because it is a true, real, unchanging, ungenerated, imperishable, indestructible, continuous whole that keeps remaining in being. But one cannot know or name that which “is not,” because it is the opposite of that which “is.” Ordinary human beings believe that which “is not,” namely, the physical cosmos including sun, moon, earth, and the stars, to be real. But they are mistaken, due to their using deceptive sense perception. They trust the illusion that perceived or imagined things actually “are,” and even give them names.

Although Parmenides does not explicidy lay down a philosophy of time, the characterization of that which “is” and which “is not” indicates his point of view. Scholars have different opinions on this subject, but they agree that according to Parmenides, unchanging being is never affected by time, because it has neither a “before” nor an “after,” both of which are indissolubly linked with change and process. Because the “is” has no duration, but is “now,” the question arises if being should be adequately described as atemporal or even atemporal eternity. Surely one is not allowed to identify the “now” of being with the “now” in the realm of opinion that is embedded in the process of coming-to-be and passing away. Whereas the latter “now” is changing all the time, the “now” of being remains always the same without lasting in time. Because being is free from doxical time, it seems correct to understand it as atemporal. It can also be addressed as eternal, insofar as being eternal is usually characteristic of the revered realm that has neither beginning nor end, and insofar as eternity is not meant as everlastingness here but as a continuous present beyond ordinary time.

The Parmenidean duality of appearance and reality as well as the connotations for a philosophy of time considerably influenced Plato and Neoplatonic thinkers, as is apparent in Plato's Sophist and Parmenides, as well as in Proclus's commentary on the latter dialogue. Both philosophers treated Parmenides' work with extreme respect and saw themselves as adherents of his ontology, but they introduced further differentiations, such as the ontological comparative and the explicit distinction between real eternity, everlastingness, and time.

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