Being, Truth and Mystery: Parmenides’ Poem

Abstract

In this article we defend an intermediate position between the traditional interpretations of the poem of Parmenides, namely: the “logicist”, who sees in the poem a simple metaphorical wrapper to defend metaphysical thesis of a high level of abstraction, and the one more in vogue lately, which tends to read the poem in a most literal sense and sees it as the exposure of certain “mysteric” doctrines. We think that both lines run parallel on the text, and therefore, it must be distinguished, on the one hand, between the “way of truth”, closer to a mysteric-symbolic narrative, and the way (unnamed in the poem ) that we might call “rational” (which maintains the unity of all the real as being). An important consequence of this approach is that the “way of opinion” must not be seen as opposed to the two already mentioned, but as a parallel pathway, that, illuminated by them, gives account of both the dualisms and oppositions expressed by the senses and its ultimate overcoming in a truth that transcends them and which is accessed to via both a mystical and a rational way.