The Philosophy of Zeno. Zeno was the active controversialist of the school of Elea, and he was not a constructive philosopher. He offered no contribution to advance the thought of Parmenides. He appeared rather as the master of logical argument in defense of his predecessor, by tearing to pieces the arguments of his opponents. The opponents that Zeno is attacking are the Atomists of Abdera, who were his contemporaries, rather than Heracleitus. His contribution was negative and formal, but it was nevertheless effective and searching. His arguments and paradoxes will, however, lose their cogency unless it be kept in mind that he is trying to show how absurd magnitude, multiplicity, and change would be in discontinuous space such as the Atomists describe. While his paradoxes have been attacked again and again, they still have effectiveness against atomic theories.
His arguments are against magnitude, multiplicity, and motion. There can be no magnitude, because a thing would then be both infinitely small and infinitely great. There can be no multiplicity of things, since they would be both limited and unlimited in number. There can be no motion, because (1) it is impossible to go through a fixed space; (2) it is impossible to go though a space that has movable limits; and (3) because of the relativityof motion. The dilemmas which he proposed of Achilles and the tortoise, the flying arrow at rest, and the bushel of corn are classic.[10]
The Results of the Conflict between Heracleitus and Parmenides. 1. One important result of this final conflict between the inconsistent motives in the Milesian teaching was that reason was contrasted with sense, reflection with experience. The more fully the philosophers developed their doctrines, the more their doctrines became contrasted with the opinions of unreflecting people. At first the contrast appeared in this naïve form: that what they thought was right, and what others thought must be wrong, if others differed from them. Then the contrast came in this form: that reflection gives the true and sensations the false. Thus reflection came to have such conclusiveness that it gained independence. The philosopher began to feel the supremacy of reason, to assert that he has truth, to call unreasoned belief by the opprobrious name of “opinion.” This is curiously illustrated in the case of Heracleitus and Parmenides. Their opposing conceptions of the cosmic substance are claimed to be the result of reason, while each calls the other’s theory “opinion.”
2. Another result was that in the Greek thought the monistic theory was found to be useless in the study of nature. These early monistic views led up as necessary steps to pluralism, but they were not in themselves serviceable. The imperfection in the Milesian teaching appeared in the impassable gulf between Heracleitus and Parmenides. It now remained for the last Cosmologists to see if, on the basis of pluralism, theycould not reconcile the preceding views and at the same time obtain a satisfactory metaphysics of nature.
3. The third result of the controversy between the Eleatics and Heracleitus was that the peril from the Orphic Mysteries was averted,—not immediately, nor in a year’s time, but after many years. Philosophy became established. The Greek reason now had an object of interest, in a sharp scientific issue. Mystery was not crushed, but subdued. The mental life of the future Greek had a topic for its reflection which supplanted, when the time came, its emotional interest in the supernatural.
CHAPTER III
PLURALISM
Efforts toward Reconciliation. The theories of Heracleitus and Parmenides were in part fantastic and in part abstract. They were the two motives of the Milesian school that had been developed so far as to reveal their inherent inconsistencies.
Physical theories now began to spring up which modified the metaphysical theories; and these produced results which while not so logical, were less distant from the facts of life. The Eleatics had so conceived Being as to deny the existence of changing phenomena perceived in the world of nature. On the other hand, Heracleitus had so emphasized the universality of change that there was little reality left in the particular changes. The later Heracleitans were Heracleitus gone mad. “We not only cannot step into the same river twice, but we cannot do it once.” All the preceding philosophers had been monists. The time had therefore come for thinkers to abandon monism if thought were to have any usefulness. Monism, whether in the form of Heracleitus’ doctrine of universal change or of Parmenides’ doctrine of universal permanence, had merely set aside the problem about the Many. Of course, a more satisfactory solution of this problem could come only when human life had become riper and had more experiences upon which to draw. It was natural for the Greek philosopher to look now to pluralism for his solution, when he turned away from monism. At theoutset pluralism tried to reconcile the two extremes to which the Milesian motifs had gone. Its later development in the doctrine of Protagoras was as extreme as that of the monists.
The New Conception of Change of the Pluralists. Facing the fact that change has to be explained and cannot be denied, change is conceived by the pluralists to be not a transformation but a transposition. It is an alteration in position of the parts of a mass. Birth, growth, death, are only such changes of transposition. Empedocles, to whom the origin of the doctrine is attributed, says, “There is no coming into Being of aught that perishes, nor any end for it in baneful death, but only a mingling and a separation of what has been mingled. Just as when painters are elaborating temple offerings,—they, when they have taken the pigments of many colors in their hands, mix them in a harmony,—so let not the error prevail in thy mind that there is any other source of all the perishable creatures that appear in countless numbers.” All origination, then, is a new combination, and every destruction only a separation of the original parts. The Pluralists thus make Heracleitus’ conception useful in the explanation of nature.