[MD] Parmenides the Taoist

[david buchanan]

Case said:
I could easily be mistaken but wasn't Parmenides' claim that the world is 
still and unchanging and that change is an illusion. Wan't his student 
Zeno's paradox supposed to prove that movement and change are impossible?

dmb says:
If Kingsley and Gallagher are right, the long-established interpretation of 
Parmenides is way wrong. I think he's construed as a cosmologist, one of the 
first to assert a rational account of things but both of these guys are 
saying something similar to Pirsig; mysticism was interpreted OUT of the 
equation at about this point in Western history. The case of Parmenides just 
being another piece of evidence for that. Pirsig may have been steered away 
by a valuable ally by this long-established interpretation and so he looks 
to the Sophists instead. I'm convinced that the Pythagorians, Orphism, and 
the mystery cults are all part of that same general outlook.

I was looking into the Hegelian dialectic a couple of weeks ago. Somebody 
pointed out that the basic idea of reality being composed of opposites has 
appeared in most every culture on earth and used Taoism as a prime example. 
Well, that notion is expressed in the yin/yang symbol anyway. But I suppose 
that has to do with the dualistic nature of thought itself.

"Even the finest teaching is not the Tao itself. Even the finest name is 
insufficient to define it. Without words, the Tao can be experienced, and 
without a name it can be known." Lao Tsu's opening line.

dmb

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