Presocratic philosopher who lived in the southern Italian town of Elea (near the modern town of Agropoli), Parmenides was the first of a group of philosophers who are called Eleatics, the others being Zeno and Melissus.
He was born about 515 BC. Parmenides was a native of the Greek city of Elea, in southwest Italy, A member of a wealthy, influential family, he was said to have served Elea as a statesman lawgiver.
Elea, the Greek colony had been founded about 540 B.C. by Greeks from Ionia, who evidently brought with them the Ionian interest in the origin and development of the visible universe.
One of his teachers was supposedly the immigrant philosopher Xenophanes. Diogenes Laertius says that Parmenides was, at some time in his life associated with the Pythagoreans. Parmenides was known for having live an exemplary life and later Greeks talked on an ideal “Parmenidean life”. He founded a school of philosophy at Elam known as the Eleatic School.
His philosophical stance has typically been understood as at once extremely paradoxical and yet crucial for the broader development of Greek natural philosophy and metaphysics. He has been seen as a metaphysical monist (of one stripe or another) who so challenged the naïve cosmological theories of his predecessors that his major successors among the Presocratics were all driven to develop more sophisticated physical theories in response to his arguments.
He wrote a philosophical poem consisting of a prologue and two parts, of which considerable fragments have survived. The prologue describes Parmenides' meeting with a goddess who reveals the truth outlined in the first part of the poem; of the two possible paths of inquiry, It is and It is not.
Presocratic philosopher: Parmenides of Elea
Update on 6/11/2020
