Parmenides’s cryptic claim that thought and being are the same has echoed throughout Western philosophy. In this first instalment of our idealism series, in partnership with the Essentia Foundation, Tom Rockmore argues that in making this claim, Parmenides set the foundations for the struggle between idealism and realism, and suggests that unlike many interpretations, Parmenidean idealism ultimately supports the view that we cannot know mind-independent reality.

Philosophy seeks to arrive at, analyze and choose between different views against the background of the ongoing philosophical tradition. Many exponents of philosophy, talented or otherwise, believe that, in at least some instances, there is a correct answer to the difficult questions that continue to attract philosophers. Others, including myself, believe that we cannot go further than framing or at least seeking to frame philosophical questions in the most useful ways possible. This includes what we might consider to be the correct approach to answering a question. But it need not include anything so grand as proposing a solution to any philosophical concerns.

According to Plato, Parmenides, a sixth century pre-Socratic thinker, invented what has since been known as philosophy or perhaps more narrowly Western philosophy. Numerous other qualified observers also believe that Parmenides began Western philosophy, and that once it began, philosophy has always been and still remains Platonic. The relationship of Parmenides to Plato is crucial but complicated. Parmenides advances a theory of knowledge according to which we can, or at least hope to know in some general way. He famously believed that thought (or thinking) and being (or reality) are the same. The meaning of this claim is uncertain, but one way it can be read is as a defense of philosophical idealism. Parmenides then can be seen as the first idealist in the Western tradition. What is more, his idealism is a form of anti-realism, the view that we cannot have direct knowledge of reality.

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Parmenides formulated what according to Plato and others became the initial view of philosophy which echoes through the entire tradition, that thought and being are the same.

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Parmenides on Thought and Being

There is a difference between Parmenides, who began philosophy, and later thinkers beginning with Plato, who sought to build on the Parmenidean view. Parmenides formulated what according to Plato and others became the initial view of philosophy which echoes through the entire tradition, that thought and being are the same. In his claim that thought and being are the same, Parmenides seems to be suggesting that cognition depends on either or both of two basic claims. One possibility is that he is making the ontological claim that when we know something we know mind-independent being, that is, the way the mind-independent reality is. The other possibility lies in the view that we do not and cannot grasp the mind-independent world as it is, but cognition is still possible through an indirect grasp, by the construction of the cognitive object.

At this point in many texts, one might anticipate a series of learned remarks, often of a philological nature, since Parmenides wrote in ancient Greek, intended to demonstrate the true meaning of the Parmenidean view.  This seems unnecessary in the present context. Suffice it to say that Parmenides neither demonstrates nor attempts to demonstrate his thesis which, since pre-Socratic philosophy, continues to function as the only universal criterion of knowledge.

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