| I have read Parmenides' poem many times over the years. The first time was in a 1990 introductory Greek philosophy course at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. That particular course was (surprisingly) more on the Pre-Socratic (the arche/ai) thinkers than either Plato or Aristotle. The professor was a very interesting woman - in her 50's I would think - and she had a unique way of approaching the poem. She tried to unpack the symbolic meanings of the various motifs encoded within Parmenides journey i.e. she spent more time upon the 'journey' therefore than on the substance of the poem itself. She as such never attempted to relate to us the actual / true meaning of the poem (All philosophy professors should be this conscientious - and the good / best ones always are i.e. they seek to produce autonomous thinkers, not followers.). Rather, her structural reading was I think designed to give us specific inroads into the poem as a whole - 'handles' with which to begin to glimpse or see into the meaning of this compact (almost densely so) little poem. Her efforts - with reference to Parmenides - were lost upon me that year. I wrote my large essay for that course upon Anaximander - whose thought I deeply identified with then.
And although I have used what I learned from Anaximander in many ways over the years - it was to the 'impenetrable' Parmenides that I kept unfruitfully returning. Once I thought I might memorize the poem as a whole - since it is not that long - and repeat it to myself during those times when I was alone on a city bus - to puzzle out the depth of its meaning. It was not until I studied Plato at the graduate level and learned something of the Bushido (the japanese samurai's warrior code / philosophy) that I began to have some insight into this poem.
Within the Phaedo, Plato, through Socrates, depicts the philosopher as one who lives life in preparation for death. Specifically, the philosopher is a servant of the divine who stands guard over the soul. The philosopher accomplishes this / these task(s) by focusing the power of his / her mind upon only those 'formal' aspects of human reality which alone endure. Time, pleasure, pain - these things are of the body and perish when and as the body does. They cannot as such endure. They are unsustainable. A person who spends all or even most of his or her time dwelling upon only those unsustainable aspects of human existence is ill prepared for death, when the soul is suddenly separate from the body. The philosopher - by concentrating upon the unchanging 'forms' of human existence - thus prepares the soul for the instant of its separation from the body - so that s/he might experience 'eternity' as fully and completely as possible. The samurai warrior is in this way exactly analogous to the Phaedo's definition of the philosopher. He (all samurai warriors were male) spends his whole life preparing for the moment of his death. Like Socrates within the Apology, the samurai warrior would never walk away from or turn his back on 'who' and 'what' he is - just so that he might continue to experience more of an unsustainably configured bodily existence. Such an action would betray the 'meaning' of his whole life - for it is a certain 'quality', not 'quantity' of life that he seeks by his actions to instantiate. A 'good' death, a death which upholds 'who' and 'what' he is, which brings conclusion and fulfillment to the narrative of his life is all that he aims for - it is both his 'target' and his 'way' of life.
What has all this got to do with Parmenides' poem? Parmenides' poem strikes me as a kind of 'formal' manual / methodology for teaching one on 'how' best to think. As integral as his metaphysics (his theory of being) is, Parmenides' epistemology (his theory of knowledge) is the best place to begin within this poem (This said, Parmenides' epistemology is not at all separate from his metaphysics - which is indeed the primary point of the poem.): thus, 'Discipline your perceptions and speaking to recognise and utter being only, and your thoughts will ultimately instantiate this target - and formally / sustainably / eternally be.' 'But if you instead opt to spend all or most of your time perceiving, speaking and thinking that which cannot endure / that which is unsustainable / that which is not (If you are two headed / ulterior - if you say one thing and mean another i.e. if you say you love someone just so that you can have sex with them / or if you pretend to know that which you do not know so that you might gain influence and prestige with / over others, etc.), then you yourself (as you are presently configured) cannot abide.' You in effect willingly 'miss the target' (i.e. your personal 'existence' in this way misses the target of your unique 'essence', and as such remains configuratively separate / alienated), choosing to instead opt for a quantitative gain at the expense of a qualitative loss (Sometimes less is better i.e. too much of the inessential in life can cause one to temporarily lose contact with the essential. This is ultimately why the japanese samurai developed the practice of 'ronin' - as a corrective to compensate for loosing touch with what is most important in life i.e. 'Ronin' was a cross between a kind of enforced communal exile and an Arthurian quest - and it symbolically paralleled one's loosing touch with / sight of what is truly important in life - so that if one completed the quest, effectively overcoming the reasons for one's exile, then one also simultaneously re-attained the 'mark', returning to the true 'path' of one's life. ). 'Missing the target' does not therefore here mean ceasing to be (since not-being does not and cannot 'formally' exist), its just that you will not knowingly begin to be 'who' and 'what' it is that you really are until you learn to reach deeply enough within yourself to say / think in a meaningful way i.e. in a way which endures / is sustainable. Perhaps in the spirit of Hinduism - if you 'miss your target' altogether - you will have to live your life over again (i.e. reincarnation). And / or perhaps less dramatically, but just as significantly - you will be condemned to spend most of your life habitually repeating, over and over again, the same sorts of existential 'mistakes' / re-living the same 'dead ends' i.e. a kind of living 'hell'.
This reading of Parmenides' poem therefore takes to heart the spirit and gist of Kant's 'copernican revolution': "While previously metaphysics assumed that 'our knowledge must conform to objects', now 'we must make trial' and 'suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge'." - Howard Caygill, A Kant Dictionary, page #135. That is, Parmenides' poem recognises that individual human beings are inherently reality creating / generating organisms (like the Judeo-Christian God of Genesis) and therefore provides us with a non-trivial methodology specifically designed to transform this natural, unhoned ability into a state of being which is effortlessly lived / instantiated i.e. perceiving, saying, thinking - these activities are for being - so do not waste or squander or abuse them ever - not for a moment; for what your perceive, say and think effectively constitutes the existential targets which your whole being essentially aims to instantiate; each not only constitutes your 'what', but ultimately works towards determining your 'who'. Kant's ethical maxims in a similar way embody both the spirit of Parmenides' poem and Plato's 'forms' i.e. roughly, 'Do not do what you cannot formally universalise'.
Mike Cleary.
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