Parmenides, Zeno, and Melissus are considered to be the Eleatic philosophers. In the search for truth, the Eleatics rejected any input from sensory experience. Instead, the Eleatics felt mathematics to be the method of arriving at the truth. According to the Eleatics, the true nature of things stems from the concept of a universal unity of existence or being. The Eleatics believed that are senses, because they are often inconsistent, cannot discover the nature of this universal unity. Instead, they argued that only through reason can be move beyond false impressions of the senses and discover the true knowledge of being. This analysis will discuss the views of the Eleatics, including an assessment of how Democritus responded to their philosophy.
The philosophy of the Eleatics focuses on a universal oneness or sameness of being. Within this view, the Eleatics believed that nothing can come into existence from nothing and that nothing can be reduced to nothing. To the Eleatics, there is no possibility of creation, since being cannot come from non-being. To the Eleatics there was no change in things, because they did not accept the notions of movement or plurality as being possible. With respect to being, we cannot say something came from something else or something came from nothing, because there is no was to discover the origins of things if this is the case. As one scholar on the Eleatics argues:
If we suppose that something came into being from nothing, then it would seem that things can pop into being at random, or without an existent source. Then we would not have any way of seeking anything, since we would not be able to tell when and where it could be found (Notes, p. 4).
Parmenides, Zeno and Melissus furthered the Eleatic principles in different ways. Many of ParmenidesÆ ideas stem from his poems in which a goddess reveals the route or journey to discovering truth. In these poems we
...