Parmenides

To understand the Greek philosophers a preliminary observation on their way of reasoning will help.

Let’s think for a moment about the attributes that every object has, for example the color. We can see that attributes never exist alone, but they always belong to an object. For example, there is no white color alone. There are only objects that have this color. However, observing attributes, such as colors, gives us an earlier knowledge of things. For example, I can learn over time that white objects are visible in the dark better than black ones. The interesting thing is that it is possible to foresee this effect without having to know all the white and black objects of the world. What we need is just learning that this is a typical characteristic of the white color. This means that reflecting by abstraction (abstracting means working out the qualities of an object) allows us to guess, to a certain extent, what we do not know yet. I can guess that, if an object is white, it will be more visible in the dark, even though I’ve never seen that object. This work of reflection on attributes gave philosophers a feeling of mastery over reality; philosopher who had learned this method were tempted to feel almost like people who had discovered the formula for dominating all the things of the world. The reasoning is: if so, then let’s throw ourselves into reflecting on attributes and we will have conquered the world. This plunging headlong onto a very promising strategy may make us think of American people, who make interesting discoveries and throw themselves blindly to their exploitation on a large scale, exept discovering many times, often when it’s too late, that the new discovery creates more problems than it solves (Wile Coyote cartoons are a funny caricature of this).
At this point in the reflection, it became logical for the Greeks to ask what are the attributes on which it would be most fruitful to reflect. We have seen the example of the white color; another attribute that does not exist by itself is, for example, the number. We know that, if we learn even just a little about Maths, this makes us possible to acquire a great mastery of many aspects of the world and of life. The philosopher Pythagoras was interested in numbers, but is there an attribute that is the most basic of all, whose reflection could allow us a basic cognitive mastery of the entire universe? According to the philosopher Parmenides and others, even contemporary ones, this attribute exists and is “being”. The white color is not a very useful attribute to think about, because it is not possessed by all objects, but “being” really has this very special property, because all the objects of this world “are”; the verb “they are” may possibly be accompanied by some other word, for example “they are here” or “they are there”, “they are white”, or even by no word, in the sense that “they exist”: if I say that four-legged horses “are”, but green horses “are not”, I am saying that four-legged horses “exist”, but green horses “do not exist”. In any case, with or without other words of accompaniment, we can certainly say that all things of this world “are”. As a consequence of this discovery, Parmenides, and many others after him, devoted themselves to reflect on “being” considered in itself, that is abstract from the single objects, the same way as it is possible to abstractly reflect on numbers or on the white color, without taking into consideration the objects to which they can be applied. This reflection on being was called, and still today is, “ontology”, because in Greek “of being” was said “ontos”, while reflection, speech, was called “logos”. Thus from ontos + logos the term ontology was born, meaning “reflection on being”. By reflecting on being, Parmenides thought he could identify as its essential characteristic what was then called the “principle of non-contradiction”, that is “being is, not being is not”. Even today many people believe that this principle is the essential, necessary basis for all those who want to use their mind to reflect. However, many years have passed now; with Parmenides and Pythagoras we are between the fifth and sixth centuries BC; many philosophers now believe that considering ourselves masters of every reflection, just because we know the principle of non-contradiction, is an unjustified claim. When we make a speech, who can guarantee that we have not fallen into any contradiction? Therefore, if today we want to continue doing ontology, we will have to understand “being” no longer as the abstract attribute understood by Parmenides, but rather as our human existence; moreover, if we really want to reflect, we must not limit ourselves to thinking about abstract attributes, but we must have the patience to take into consideration even individual particular objects. However, these are just anticipations of today’s philosophy; for the point where we are now in this exploration of philosophers, we still have to continue on the path of the beginnings.