Читать книгу A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval Philosophy онлайн

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The Practical Philosophy of Heracleitus.

Heracleitus was a profound observer and theorist. His physical theory foreshadowed the modern theories of natural law and of relativity; his practical theories reappear in the psychology of Protagoras and the ethics of the Stoics.

4. The Eleatic School.

Parmenides

Parmenides wrote about 470 B.C. He is represented as a serious and influential man, with a high moral character. He exercised strong influence upon such philosophers as Plato and Democritus, and was a political power in the city of Elea, of which he was a native. He was not a stranger to the Pythagoreans. The large fragment of his poem is the most ancient monument extant of metaphysical speculation among the Greeks.

Parmenides takes the doctrine of Xenophanes with great seriousness, and what Xenophanes says about the Godhead, Parmenides says about all things. Xenophanes’ religious weapon of an unchanging cosmic substance becomes in the hands of Parmenides an academic doctrine of science and the basis of logical controversy. Parmenides used the conception of Xenophanes in his great didactic poem, The Way of Truth and the Way of Opinion, with the evident purpose of refuting the theory of Heracleitus. The fragment of the poem reveals the driest abstractions dressed in rich poetry. As a thinker Parmenides is the most important in this period. Zeno was the friend and pupil of Parmenides.