THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS: Focus on Parmenides

Parmenides came from Elea, a Greek colony in Southern Italy.  Scholars think he lived in the early 500s and late 400s BC.  Most find Parmenides difficult to understand.  He argued that there is no such thing as change and that the world is really just "one."  That is, there are not many things in the world but only one thing.  To motivate this claim he introduces a distinction between how things in the world appear versus the way things really are.  Rather than simply asserting his unusual claims, Parmenides constructed careful logical arguments for them. Take an ancient philosophy class to learn more.