Journal of the History of Philosophy

Book Reviews Parmenides. Untersuchungen zu den Fragmenten. By Karl Bormann. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1971. Pp. vni+263) This remarkable book is a so-called Habilitationsschri[t. It was meant, that is, to obtain for the author the venia legendi, the permission to teach, as Privatdozent, or unpaid lecturer, at a German university. The goal was reached. The Philosophical Faculty (not the same as "department of philosophy") of the University of Cologne recommended the manuscript for publication. After a summarizing discussion (pp. 1 to 27) of most, if not all, of the interpretations of the Parmenidean doctrine, the book presents the Greek text, with an apparatus criticus, of the Fragments and on opposite pages a tentative German translation (pp. 28 to 55). Then comes, in five long and meticulously composed "paragraphs" (pp. 56 to 182), a detailed account of the author's efforts to find his own interpretation. The result is meant to be used--by the author--as criterion for judging the value of the various doxographical reports on Parmenides, in another book still to be written. 68 pages of annotations, a selective bibliography of 7 pages, and 4 pages of a register of names finish the volume. That there is still no unanimity among historians of philosophy about the teachings of Parmenides has prompted the young scholar to scrutinize once again the extant fragments, in the hope to uncover the genuine Parmenidean doctrine. What exactly does Parmenides mean by that one Being? To the author, this is the central problem (el. p. vzz). Historians of philosophy might feel priority should be given to the question: What was Parmenides' own problem? But never mind. Anyway, to find out what Parmenides teaches, one ought to listen to his own words carefully, without twisting and screwing them and without squeezing into them any contents they do not contain. Hence before pondering about what Parmenides might mean, one has to quote correctly what he actually says. He says: The only right way of inquiry is "6n03q~oxtvxe Ka~cbq o6~: ~crxt laiI eTvat" ("that there is and that there is no not-being"). The first ~crxtv (~stin, "there is") appears to need a grammatical subject. Diels, in 1906, had filled the gap by translating: "dass das Seiende ist" ("that the being is"). Disregarding his master's voice, Kranz rendered the first dstin as "dass IST ist" ("thai IS is") which unfortunately is neither German (or English, for that matter) nor makes any sense at all. And our author says "dasses ist" ("that it is"), as if "it is" were analogous to "it rains". He and Kranz as well should better have accepted Diels' translation. For it is obvious that, when Parmenides says ~stin alone, the implicit grammatical subject is vtgctt (einai, "being") or ~6v (eon, "the being"). Writing in verse like his teacher Xenophanes, Parmenides had to be elliptic sometimes because of the metre. In prose, he might have written: [3941 BOOK REVIEWS 395 tb~ [ffxtv eTvctt ~:ct[ o~ o6K I~ty'tt Ilfl 8[vctt (that there is being and that there is no not-being). 'Effxiv (estln)---to brush up some elementary grammar--, while enclitical as plain copula, is accented as paroxytonon, ~:t~xtv (~stin): (I) if it is supposed to mean existence , "there is"; (2) if equivalent to [~eoxtv (~xestin), "it is permitted" or "it is possible "; (3) at ,the beginning of a sentence; and (4) after o~r, (ouk, "not"), e[ (el, "if"), (o~ (hos, "how" or "that"), ~:tzt (kai, "and") and &L~." (all', "but"). In the sentence quoted above, the ~stin, since placed after hos and ouk, respectively, would be paroxytonon anyway, no matter whether it is the copula or means "there is" or "'it is permitted" or "it is possible.'" Around the middle of last century, however, something happened. The great Eduard Zeller decided that in Parmenides ~stin had to mean "it is possible." Period. Even Diels complied. After adding, in that brachylogical sentence, "das Seiende" as the implicit subject, he continued: "und dasses (sc., das Seiende) unmi~glich nicht sein kann" ("and that it is not possible for it [so., the being] not to be"). Which, besides, is impossible grammatically since the implicit subject of the...