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My Dissertation Abstract

 

The following is an abstract of my dissertation
submitted for Phd. to the Department of Philosophy. New School University, New York.

 

Mortal Knowledge in Parmenides and Plato

A Study in Phusis, Journey, Thumos and Eros

 

Vishwa P. Adluri

 

 

Parmenides and Plato include both a metaphysical transcendence and a return to phusis. The two thinkers share the theme, not only of immortal being, but another, which I call the mortal journey. Plato and Parmenides dialogue with each other not only about issues of epistemology, but also about other crucial issues: mortality, living in the physical world of change, and longings (eros) of the soul (thumos or psyche). Their pervasive entanglement with phusis marks an important return to mortality, providing a new beginning for post-metaphysical thinking. Here I invoke radical individuality: each life is a unique trajectory from birth to death. Parmenides’ protagonist (the kouros) and Plato’s Socrates are such unsubsumable singulars.

Human beings desire a transcendence of mortality, but they can attain it only in logos. Phusis (nature) demands that each individual return to their mortal fate, their death as a singular being. Mythic narrative, precisely what critics have had problems with in Parmenides and Plato!, best articulates this paradoxical, two-fold journey of transcendence and return (nostos).

Parmenides call mortals "two-headed." This dissertation presents a new philosophical hermeneutic for understanding all the fragments of Parmenides’ poem "Peri Phuseos" ("About Nature"), by returning the logical ontology to its context within the poem, between the proem and the cosmology. Typically the proem and the cosmology are dismissed as a so-called literary device and outmoded science, respectively. The narrative structure of the journey holds together all these elements in a richer philosophy.

Parmenides attempts a radical synthesis of metaphysics of unchanging being and mortal phusis. Impelled by desire (thumos) but achieved only through logos, the kouros enters the immortal realm of the goddess, where he hears a logos of immortal being. The third part of the poem, a cosmology, marks a return to the mortal cosmos.

"Return" (nostos) cures metaphysical transcendence, and Plato follows Parmenides in this. The Phaedrus is Plato’s most Parmenidean dialogue. Socrates’ mortality, preserved through dialogue, deconstructs the immortal forms in favor of a return to the world of phenomena. Socratic self-knowledge is erotic and radically individual, not merely noetic.

Parmenides and Plato draw inevitably mortal phusis and immortal logos into dialogue.


 

 

 

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