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Οὐδὲ διαίρετόν ἐστιν, ἐπεὶ πᾶν ἐστὶν
ὅμοιον, οὐδέ τι τῇ μᾶλλον τό κεν εἴργοι μιν ξυνέχεσθαι, οὐδέ τι χειρότερον· πᾶν δὲ πλέον ἐστὶν ἐόντος· τῷ ξυνεχὲς πᾶν ἐστίν· ἐὸν γὰρ ἐόντι πελάζει. |
Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 5, p. 986, b. 29, with the Scholia, and Physic. i. 2, 3. Simplikius Comm. in Physic. Aristot. (apud Tennemann Geschichte der Philos. b. i. s. 4, vol. i. p. 170) πάντα γάρ φησι (Παρμενίδης) τὰ ὄντα, καθὸ ὄντα, ἑν ἐστίν. This chapter, in which Tennemann gives an account of the Eleatic philosophy, appears to me one of the best and most instructive in his work.
[66] “To make parts, — or to part or divide, Space or Time, — is nothing else but to consider one and another within the same: so that if any man divide space or time, the diverse conceptions he has are more, by one, than the parts which he makes. For his first conception is of that which is to be divided — then, of some part of it — and again of some other part of it: and so forwards, as long as he goes in dividing. But it is to be noted, that here, by division, I do not mean the severing or pulling asunder of one space or time from another (for does any man think that one hemisphere may be separated from the other hemisphere, or the first hour from the second?), but diversity of consideration: so that division is not made by the operation of the hands, but of the mind.” — Hobbes, First Grounds of Philosophy, chap. vii. 5, vol. i. p. 96, ed. Molesworth.
“Expansion and duration have this farther agreement, that though they are both considered by us as having parts, yet their parts are not separable one from another, not even in thought; though the parts of bodies from which we take our measure of the one — and the parts of motion, from which we may take the measure of the other — may be interrupted or separated.” — Locke, Essay on the Human Understanding, book ii. ch. 15. s. 11.
In the Platonic Parmenides, p. 156 D., we find the remarkable conception of what he calls τὸ ἐξαίφνης, ἄτοπός τις φύσις — a break in the continuity of duration, an extra-temporal moment.
Parmenidean ontology stands completely apart from phenomenology.
The Ens of Parmenides thus coincided mainly with that which (since Kant) has been called the Noumenon — the Thing in itself — the Absolute; or rather with that which, by a frequent illusion, passes for the absolute — no notice being taken of the cogitant and believing apart from mind, as if cogitation and belief, cogitata and credita, would be had without it. By Ens was understood the remnant in his mind, after leaving out all that abstraction, as far as it had then been carried, could leave out. It was the minimum indispensable to the continuance of thought; you cannot think (Parmenides says) without thinking of Something, and that Something Extended and Enduring. Though he and others talk of this Something as an Absolute (i.e. apart from or independent of his own thinking mind), yet he also uses some juster language (τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἔστιν τε καὶ εἶναι), showing that it is really relative: that if the Cogitans implies a Cogitatum, the Cogitatum also implies no less its correlative Cogitans: and that though we may divide the two in words, we cannot divide them in fact. It is to be remarked that Parmenides distinguishes the Enduring or Continuous from the Transient or Successive, Duration from Succession (both of which are included in the meaning of the word Time), and that he considers Duration alone as belonging to Ens or the Absolute — to the region of Truth — setting it in opposition or antithesis to Succession, which he treats as relative and phenomenal. We have thus (with the Eleates) the first appearance of Ontology, the science of Being or Ens, in Grecian philosophy. Ens is everything, and everything is Ens. In the view of Parmenides, Ontology is not merely narrow, but incapable of enlargement or application; we shall find Plato and others trying to expand it into numerous imposing generalities.[67]
[67] Leibnitz says, Réponse à M. Foucher, p. 117, ed. Erdmann, “Comment seroit il possible qu’aucune chose existât, si l’être même, ipsum Esse, n’avoit l’existence? Mais bien au contraire ne pourrait on pas dire avec beaucoup plus de raison, qu’il n’y a que lui qui existe véritablement, les êtres particuliers n’ayant rien de permanent? Semper generantur, et nunquam sunt.”