Abstracts "Night" in Presocratic Philosophy Heraclitus on Thanatos: A Philosophical Interpretation Two-Headed Mortals in Parmenides
"Night" in Presocratic Philosophy
Vishwa ADLURI
"Night" plays a significant role in Parmenides’ poem, Peri Phuseos. In order to reconstruct the significance of Nux (Night) in this poem, I rely on mythic cosmologies such as Hesiod and relevant Orphic texts. Parmenides exploits these accounts of Night in a philosophically significant way. Night presents challenges to any epistemological program by introducing obscurity, death and limits to analysis. These features are not "absence" of light. Night has a dunamis of its own, a power requiring philosophical reckoning and one which complicates and qualifies Parmenides’ message. I argue that Night cannot be understood simply and negatively as the counterpart of philosophically privileged light. Scholars (Curd 1998 and others) have understood Night and light thus, as enantiomorphs, or opposing terms, relying chiefly on the goddess’ exposition of false mortal opinions as expressing a mixture of Night and light (Parmenides, fr. 9). This view posits a contradiction between the two terms (comparable to that between being and non-being) and resolves this contradiction in favor of light. Peri Phuseos has typically been seen as a straightforward journey of rational enlightenment (Kingsley 1999 is a notable exception). I question this view and show that the text is much more complex.
Parmenides introduces Nux in three significant passages. Night plays a prominent role in the first and third parts of the poem, which frame the better-known message on true being (fr.8). In the first passage, the youth is led by Sun Maidens who leave the Halls of Night (domata nuktos) to escort him to the gates where Night and day cross their paths. Later in fr.9, the goddess mentions Night along with light as two forms, the naming one of which leads mortals astray. Finally, in fr. 14, Parmenides uses the adjective nuktiphaes in a beautiful description of the moon.
I begin with fr. 14, which shows Parmenides’ keen grasp of the interplay of Night and light and his skill in using this knowledge in making subtle distinctions of philosophical relevance. The light of the moon is borrowed, not its own, and it wanders, homeless in the darkness over the earth. The original source of light, the sun, is not visible in the Night sky. Parmenides is keenly aware of Night in relation to light and day (not the same thing!), to absence and presence, to original and "borrowed" light, to motion and stability, to clarity and obscurity, visibility and concealment and to Night’s important meanings in genealogy, cosmology and philosophy.
A brief historical digression clarifies the philosophical relevance of Night. Night and light do not have equal value in early Greek thought. Night has priority in two senses: both as having power over the gods, and as coming first, or as a principle of generation. Aristotle notes the archaic cosmogonical aspect of Night. (Metaphysics N4, 1091 b4), explaining that the gods are themselves generated from Night in ancient cosmogonies. In Hesiod, Night comes into being at an early stage (although not first), in the generation of Gaia, Okeanos and Ouranos. (Theogony 20,106f). Orphic thought elevates Night to a first principle. Night, Aer and Tartaros appear at the origin of the world in these poems. Light, on the other hand, does not share such a privileged position in the cosmologies of Hesiod, and the Orphics. Night is primordial and privileged. Light is just not important yet, in the history of philosophy.
When we apply this evidence to Parmenides’ poem, we are better able to understand the question: what does the goddess criticize as wrong, in this third part of the poem, the so-called mortal doxa? Two current interpretations are relevant: 1) The goddess faults mortals’ opinions for being dualistic (enantiomorphic) or pluralistic, as Curd, for example, holds, and 2) The minimal positing of difference is a mistake (as Tarán 1965, p.225) holds. He says, "...consciously or unconsciously those who explain and believe in the sensible world posit difference as real and the minimum of difference is two." Based on this misinterpretation, says Tarán, scholars attribute monism to the material world. He concludes: "Since the existence of this minimal difference is impossible, any explanation of the phenomenal world is apatelon."
I conclude that neither the "minimal difference" of Night and light, nor their supposed "dualistic opposition" fully explains the problem of the goddess’ elaboration and criticism of mortal doxa (opinion). Parmenides exploits the significations of Night to evoke essential features of mortal knowing. Any account of nature (phusis) is ineradicably involved with Night and thus with obscurity, death, unknowability and "borrowed" light. Night has a determinate dunamis, which light either as absent or present ("revelation" or philosophical illumination), cannot fully explain. Parmenides’ paradoxical separation of mortal knowing and immortal epistemology is thus deeper than we wish to admit.
Heraclitus on Thanatos: A Philosophical Interpretation
Vishwa ADLURI
Thanatos (death) and related terms dominate the surviving fragments. The themes signified by this term, provide an essential key to understanding the philosophical project of Heraclitus.
I begin by reviewing three standard interpretations. These are the "logos doctrine", the "flux doctrine," and finally the monistic-eschatological interpretation of Heraclitus. A central philosophical problem remains unanswered in these interpretations: How does he understand temporality, so that both the transcendent logos doctrine and the flux doctrine become possible in the first place? And can we ignore this temporal issue and justify a monistic interpretation? The problem is serious, as these models imply mutually exclusive accounts of time. I argue that Heraclitus uses thanatos to integrate two different temporalities: an unchanging one enshrined in logos, and another, manifest as flux.
A philological analysis of the texts demonstrates the significance of thanatos to Heraclitus. "Thanatos" (and its forms such as thnesko, apothnesko, tethneotos) is the most frequent term of philosophical importance, occurring twelve times (fragments 21, 26, 27, 36, 48, 62, 76, 77, 88). Thanatos is not only the most frequent theme (outnumbering psuche, logos, hen) in the writings of Heraclitus, but also the most philosophically significant. Heraclitus relates death to the life and degeneration of men (88), to souls (psuchai, 36), fate (moira, 25), to ever-flowing fame (kleos aenaon thneton, 29), to religious ritual, to sleep (hupnos, 21), and to the immortals (62). Yet there is nothing morbid or otherworldly about Heraclitus’ extended meditation on death. Even though humans cannot anticipate or comprehend what awaits them after death, death is of deep philosophical significance (27). As mortals, our temporality is defined by the paradoxical presence of death in life.
Thanatos imbues the Heraclitean universe with a surprisingly complex temporality. His is not a simple universe of eternal being nor is it one of rapid flux. Instead, Heraclitus attempts to construct a mortal temporality, with mortal life as the basic temporal phenomenon. He then paradoxically unites life and death, flux and stable logos
Heraclitean meditations on time unfold a pan-mortal viewpoint that includes an account of both mortals and immortals, and thus flux and transcendence. Thanatos rather than logos defines and describes time as we mortals experience it, and by extension, the kosmos which we mortals inhabit. Logos serves as a counterpoint.
Two-Headed Mortals in Parmenides
Vishwa ADLURI
In interpreting Parmenides, scholars emphasize the long speech (in fr. 8) by the unnamed goddess about eternal, unchanging, unitary being. In introducing this speech, she describes mortals as "two-headed" (dikranoi, 6.5). This expression, I argue, provides a key to understanding the entire poem, Peri Phuseos, in its totality. When the goddess calls mortals "two-headed", she refers to the paradoxical duality of our mortal nature and our ability to think, speak, and long for immortality.
We must set the speech on truth (aletheia) in the context of the entire poem, and not focus only on Fragment 8 as if it were the entire message of the Presocratic. The two-part speech of the goddess presents both an account of immortal being and (in a lengthy cosmology too often overlooked) mortal opinion (doxa) about the cosmos. Parmenides also articulates these two logoi through a dialogue represented poetically by the encounter of a mortal with an immortal goddess, who claims to demonstrate the false opinions of mortals. But the dialogue is a conversation, not a conversion.
Traditionally, Parmenides’ interpreters assume that the protagonist (the kouros) was persuaded by the goddess’ logic to forsake mortal phenomena. Some scholars question whether Parmenides and the Eleatics even believed in the existence of the cosmos of becoming. We should rethink our assumption that the mortal doxai presented in this poem are to be dismissed on either logical or ontological grounds. Why does the goddess present a lengthy Presocratic cosmology at all? I argue that we can see the two ways of knowing of the goddess’ speech differently than as two contestants in a logical contradiction with one winner. Rather, the double logoi express two irreducible ways of experiencing temporality.
Mortals are "two-headed" because they can conceive two realms of being: one atemporal and unchanging, the other mortal and rooted in time and phusis (coming-to-be, flourishing, and passing-away). The poem begins with the journey of the kouros from one realm of temporality (namely becoming) to the other (unchanging being). His encounter with the goddess juxtaposes these two realms dialogically. However, mortals cannot remain in this aetherial realm of logical monism to which Dike (Justice; 1.14) usually bars the way. To do so would be hubris. Our nature includes a desire to transcend. The kouros travels on the ways of thinking, through language, propelled by his desire (thumos, 1.1).
But the kouros inevitably returns to the mortal world and to his death. We can understand his return as a nostos. Odysseus’ refusal to stay with Kalypso provides a parallel, and we should situate Parmenides against this Homeric background of concern with the tragic mortal condition. The poem presents, rather than solves or negates, this ainigma. The poem’s different parts, comprising the journey (of the proem), the goddess’ realm of logos, and the mortal cosmos, convey the true condition of mortal life. The poem is two-headed, the speech of the goddess is two-headed, and mortals are, and always will be, two-headed: blessed with immortal logos and cursed with mortal moira.
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