There is no such thing as separation: Similarities between Parmenides' poem and Plato’s Sophist
Abstract
In several passages of his poem, Parmenides identifies not-being with separation: “You will not sever what is from holding to what is”. Not-being is impossible means, thus, that there is no cut, no strip, no ditch inside being, by which not-being would pass. Being has no cracks in it, no interstices. There are no ontological separations. Plato sees this clearly: in Sophist he says that separation is “a-philosophical”, and defines being as capacity of relation. Isn’t there a sort of "deduction” to point out there, one that goes form Parmenides’ estín, to the Platonic dúnamis koinonías, by way of the impossibility of ontological separation? And is it possible to identify, in that continuity, a fundamental prevention against all substantialisms, against all understandings of the world as made of separated independent substances? In this article I investigate the relation, and even continuity, between Parmenides’ and Plato’s definitions of being. A relation in which the impossibility of separation is the key element.Downloads
References
Cordero, Néstor Luis (2017) El descubrimiento de la realidad en la filosofía griega. El origen y las transfiguraciones de la noción de Lógos, Buenos Aires, Colihue.
Cordero, Néstor Luis (2016) Platón contra Platón: la autocrítica delParménides y la ontología del Sofista, Buenos Aires, Biblos.
Cordero, Néstro Luis (2014), Cuando la realidad palpitaba. La pcncepción dinámica del ser en la filosofía griega, Buenos Aires, Biblos.
Cordero, Néstor Luis (2005) Siendo, se es. La tesis de Parménides, Buenos Aires, Biblos.
Deleuze, Gilles (2015), En medio de Spinoza, Buenos Aires, Cactus.
Deleuze, Gilles (1968), Spinoza et le problème de l’expression, París, Les Éditions de Minuit.
Fronterrota, Francesco (1995), “L’être et la participation de l’autre. Une nouvelle ontologie dans le Sophiste”, Les Études Philosophiques. núm. 3, pp. 311-353.
Gónzalez, Francisco J. (2011), “Being as power in Plato’s Sophist and beyond”, en: Ale Havlícek and Filip Karfík (eds.), Plato’s Sophist. Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Praguense, Praga, pp. 63-95.
Platón (2015), Diálogos V, Madrid, Gredos.
Soulez, Antonia (1991), La grammaire philosophique chez Platon, París, Presses Universitaires de France.
Tarán, Leonardo (1965), Parmenides. A Text with Translation, Commentary and Critical Essays, Nueva Jersey, Princeton University Press.
