The Concept of Divinity or God According to Parmenides - Essay Example

Philosophers, Presocratic philosophers as they are called, pursued knowledge in a different perspective in an attempt to etch their own reasons on how the universe evolves. It was a complete renascence of the spiritual beliefs in Greece. It was a religious rebirth from traditional theology for the Presocratic. The theologies that they present ignored and even rejected the gods of Homer and Hesiod which were the traditional basis of the Greek religion. One of these Presocratic philosophers is a man named Parmenides, a nobleman who established a new law in Elea stating that all new officials of the city should pledge to follow the Parmenidean law before they were inaugurated.

He also built a philosophy Eleatic school which has become a strong inspiration for Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Parmenides was the teacher of Zeno ( Curd 3). They both advocate a single reality of oneness and reality. In Parmenidean doctrine, the “ the One”, who is indivisible and unbounded in time and space is the only true being but is not conceived by Parmenides as we do with God. Instead, he thinks of it as a quantifiable being with infinite extensions which was significant to his logical reasoning (Thomas J.

McFarlane, “Plato’s Parmenides"). Parmenides claims that the senses is deceitful, making our perception of the world different from what it really is. He states that the world is something we cannot comprehend and can only be explained through logic. Parmenides even denied the evidence of the senses, saying that even the distinction between the knower and the known, between the thinker and the object of thought, are illusions. Parmenides argues that since the perception of movement and change can always be thought and spoken of, they are just illusions and everything that is, has always been and will ever be.

The core of the argument is: The things that you speak or think is related to something that actually exist, that is both thought and language require objects outside themselves otherwise they would cease to exist in thought. He assumes monotony in the meaning of words and comes up with a conclusion that everything constantly exists and that there is no change because all can be conceive in the mind at all times. Parmenides doctrines regarding the canon of infinity and the perpetuity of the One was rendered in clearer pros by Melissus, an eminent citizen of Samos and an admirer of Parmenides states that everything that exist has a beginning, everything that has no beginning cannot exist, but what exists has not manifested.

Therefore it doesn’t have a beginning. Yet again, there is which end in destruction and there are ones that are everlasting. Therefore what exists, being indestructible, has no end. Those which have has no beginning and are everlasting would in fact be infinite. Therefore, what exist is infinite. If something would be infinite, it would be unique. Thus, if there were two they could not be infinite but would have limits against each other. But what exist is infinite; therefore there is no plurality of existence.

Therefore what exists is one. (Thomas Knierim, “Presocratic Greek Philosophy”) What we can see from these pros is a perfect example of classical monism. Parmenides inferences are logically correct but in truth, he is wrong. Even if the resulting theory is flawed, still his methodology was an unpretentious innovation. The problems aroused from his axioms; his assumption of the logical world and the things themselves having a common form of existence. These axioms were where Parmenides derived his logical conclusions in an attempt to build his metaphysics.

Hence, in simple words, divinity as defined by Parmenides is one and unchanging. It is an assertion that goes against the usual laws of the world