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The Fragments of Parmenides: A Critical Text With Introduction and Translation, the Ancient Testimonia and a Commentary
Edited with New Translation by Richard McKirahan
With a New Preface by Malcolm Schofield
This book is a revised and expanded version of A.H. Coxon's full critical edition of the extant remains of Parmenides of Elea—the fifth-century B.C. philosopher by many considered "one of the greatest and most astonishing thinkers of all times." (Karl Popper) Coxon's presentation of the complete ancient evidence for Parmenides and his comprehensive examination of the fragments, unsurpassed to this day, have proven invaluable to our understanding of the Eleatic since the book's first publication in 1986. This edition, edited by Richard McKirahan and with a new preface by Malcolm Schofield, is released on the 100th anniversary of Coxon's birth. This new edition for the first time includes English translations of the testimonia and of any Ancient Greek throughout the book, as well as an English/Greek glossary by Richard McKirahan, and revisions by the late author himself. The text consists of Coxon's collations of the relevant folios of manuscripts of Sextus Empiricus, Proclus and Simplicius and includes all extant fragments, a commentary, the testimonia, a complete list of sources, linguistic parallels from both earlier and later authors, and the fullest critical apparatus that has appeared since Diels’ Poetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta (1901). The collection of testimonia includes the philosophical discussions of Parmenides by Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonists, most of which had been omitted by Diels. The introduction discusses the history of the text, the language and form of the poem, Parmenides’ use and understanding of the verb ‘to be’, his place in the history of earlier and later philosophy and the biographical tradition. In the commentary Coxon deals in detail with both the language and the subject matter of the poem and pays full attention to Parmenides’ account of the physical world. The appendix relates later Eleatic arguments to those of Parmenides.
With a New Preface by Malcolm Schofield
This book is a revised and expanded version of A.H. Coxon's full critical edition of the extant remains of Parmenides of Elea—the fifth-century B.C. philosopher by many considered "one of the greatest and most astonishing thinkers of all times." (Karl Popper) Coxon's presentation of the complete ancient evidence for Parmenides and his comprehensive examination of the fragments, unsurpassed to this day, have proven invaluable to our understanding of the Eleatic since the book's first publication in 1986. This edition, edited by Richard McKirahan and with a new preface by Malcolm Schofield, is released on the 100th anniversary of Coxon's birth. This new edition for the first time includes English translations of the testimonia and of any Ancient Greek throughout the book, as well as an English/Greek glossary by Richard McKirahan, and revisions by the late author himself. The text consists of Coxon's collations of the relevant folios of manuscripts of Sextus Empiricus, Proclus and Simplicius and includes all extant fragments, a commentary, the testimonia, a complete list of sources, linguistic parallels from both earlier and later authors, and the fullest critical apparatus that has appeared since Diels’ Poetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta (1901). The collection of testimonia includes the philosophical discussions of Parmenides by Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonists, most of which had been omitted by Diels. The introduction discusses the history of the text, the language and form of the poem, Parmenides’ use and understanding of the verb ‘to be’, his place in the history of earlier and later philosophy and the biographical tradition. In the commentary Coxon deals in detail with both the language and the subject matter of the poem and pays full attention to Parmenides’ account of the physical world. The appendix relates later Eleatic arguments to those of Parmenides.
- GenresPhilosophy
477 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
October 10, 2023
John Lennon famously sang, “Imagine there’s no heaven. It’s easy if you try.” He dreamed of no countries, no religion, no possessions, nothing to kill or die for, no greed or hunger: just a brotherhood of man where the world would live as one.
Parmenides, the fifth-century B.C. Greek philosopher from southern Italy, would have agreed with Lennon — and then gone further. Imagine, he might have sung, that in reality there is no living, no dying, no people, no differentiated reality of any kind. Imagine a perfectly ungenerated, unmoving, undying unity in which our so-called experiences are but illusions. Imagine that you don’t have to imagine the world as one, because it already is in an unchanging and eternally existent now.
Lennon and Parmenides have another connection beyond the whimsical one I’ve made here: both were artists well at home in the artistry of their day. Parmenides wrote his great philosophical treatise (of which only fragments survive) in a unique mix of everyday Greek and the epic poetry of the Homer tradition, as Coxon does an excellent job of underlining throughout his commentary.
Parmenides’ philosophy sounds strange to us, especially his insistence that only what is, is; that nothing is no-thing at all; and that all is a perpetually changeless unity. We’re accustomed to think in terms of matter in motion through space, but only because Parmenides challenged contemporary thought so explosively that his successors had to forge new frontiers of thought either to defend or attack his ideas.
Coxon’s work is thoroughly academic, and I had to reread some of his multiclausal sentences to work through their twists and turns. Still, I appreciated his close reasoning through the more obscure bits of Parmenides’ thought and various textual issues. Coxon’s translation is especially good at bringing out the dreamlike quality of Parmenides’s poem, a meditation on transcendence as much as it is a fountainhead of the more prosaic but less evocative philosophy of the ages that followed him.
Parmenides, the fifth-century B.C. Greek philosopher from southern Italy, would have agreed with Lennon — and then gone further. Imagine, he might have sung, that in reality there is no living, no dying, no people, no differentiated reality of any kind. Imagine a perfectly ungenerated, unmoving, undying unity in which our so-called experiences are but illusions. Imagine that you don’t have to imagine the world as one, because it already is in an unchanging and eternally existent now.
Lennon and Parmenides have another connection beyond the whimsical one I’ve made here: both were artists well at home in the artistry of their day. Parmenides wrote his great philosophical treatise (of which only fragments survive) in a unique mix of everyday Greek and the epic poetry of the Homer tradition, as Coxon does an excellent job of underlining throughout his commentary.
Parmenides’ philosophy sounds strange to us, especially his insistence that only what is, is; that nothing is no-thing at all; and that all is a perpetually changeless unity. We’re accustomed to think in terms of matter in motion through space, but only because Parmenides challenged contemporary thought so explosively that his successors had to forge new frontiers of thought either to defend or attack his ideas.
Coxon’s work is thoroughly academic, and I had to reread some of his multiclausal sentences to work through their twists and turns. Still, I appreciated his close reasoning through the more obscure bits of Parmenides’ thought and various textual issues. Coxon’s translation is especially good at bringing out the dreamlike quality of Parmenides’s poem, a meditation on transcendence as much as it is a fountainhead of the more prosaic but less evocative philosophy of the ages that followed him.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review