Fragments of Parmenides

H. Coxon A.

Description

This book is a revised and expanded version of A.H. Coxon's full critical edition of the extant remains of Parmenides of Elea-the fifth-century B.C. philosopher by many considered "one of the greatest and most astonishing thinkers of all times." (Karl Popper) Coxon's presentation of the complete ancient evidence for Parmenides and his comprehensive examination of the fragments, unsurpassed to this day, have proven invaluable to our understanding of the Eleatic since the book's first publication in 1986. This edition, edited by Richard McKirahan and with a new preface by Malcolm Schofield, is released on the 100th anniversary of Coxon's birth. This new edition for the first time includes English translations of the testimonia and of any Ancient Greek throughout the book, as well as an English/Greek glossary by Richard McKirahan, and revisions by the late author himself. The text consists of Coxon's collations of the relevant folios of manuscripts of Sextus Empiricus, Proclus and Simplicius and includes all extant fragments, a commentary, the testimonia, a complete list of sources, linguistic parallels from both earlier and later authors, and the fullest critical apparatus that has appeared since Diels' Poetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta (1901). The collection of testimonia includes the philosophical discussions of Parmenides by Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonists, most of which had been omitted by Diels. The introduction discusses the history of the text, the language and form of the poem, Parmenides' use and understanding of the verb 'to be', his place in the history of earlier and later philosophy and the biographical tradition. In the commentary Coxon deals in detail with both the language and the subject matter of the poem and pays full attention to Parmenides' account of the physical world. The appendix relates later Eleatic arguments to those of Parmenides.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Parmenides Publishing
• Date de parution: 22 novembre 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781930972681
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THE FRAGMENTS OF PARMENIDES
THE FRAGMENTS OF PARMENIDES
A Critical Text with Introduction and Translation, the Ancient Testimonia and a Commentary
by A. H. COXON
Revised and Expanded Edition edited with new Translations by Richard McKirahan and a new Preface by Malcolm Schofield
PARMENIDES PUBLISHING Las Vegas Zurich Athens
2009 Parmenides Publishing All rights reserved.
Originally published in 1986 as The Fragments of Parmenides: A critical text with introduction, translation, the ancient testimonia and a commentary ( Phronesis Supplementary Volume III) by Van Gorcum, Assen/Maastrich, The Netherlands
This new edition includes-
corrections and additions by the late A. H. Coxon; new English translations of the testimonia and of Greek throughout the book by Richard McKirahan; a Greek-English Index and an English-Greek Glossary by Richard McKirahan; a new Preface by Malcolm Schofield
-and is published in 2009 by Parmenides Publishing in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-930972-67-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Parmenides. [Nature. English Greek.] The fragments of Parmenides / by A. H. Coxon ; edited with new translations by Richard McKirahan and with a new preface by Malcolm Schofield. -Rev. and expanded ed. p. cm. Includes indexes. ISBN 978-1-930972-67-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) I. Coxon, A. H., 1909- II. McKirahan, Richard D. III. Title. B235.P23F73 2009 182 .3-dc22
2009034152
Digitization of the 1986 edition by KatScan OCR | www.katscan-ocr.com Typeset in Palatino and OdysseaUBSU (Greek) by 1106 Design | www.1106design.com Printed and lay-flat bound by Edwards Brothers, Inc. | www.edwardsbrothers.com
Images of Sextus Empiricus, Codex Laur. (ms. Plut.) 85,19 (= N), f. 124 v. and f. 125 r. provided by the Library Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, reproduced with permission from the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, Italy Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
The cover image depicts an armillary sphere from 1554, made by Girolamo della Volpaia (c. 1530-1614) of Florence, Italy. A full view of the same armillary is shown on page 367. Photographs courtesy of the Science Museum / Science Society Picture Library, London, UK.
1-888-PARMENIDES www.parmenides.com
Contents
PREFACE TO THE REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION
EDITOR S NOTE
PREFACE
Introduction
1. The textual tradition
2. Parmenides poetic dialect
3. The form of the poem
(i) Parmenides debt to Homer
(ii) The way of the goddess and the journey of persuasion
(iii) Cosmology and myth
4. Parmenides criticism of earlier philosophers
5. Parmenides investigation of the nature of Being
6. Parmenides influence on philosophy in the fifth century B.C.
7. Parmenides influence on the theory of Forms
8. The criticism of Parmenides monism in the fourth century B.C.
9. Parmenides philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman period
10. The Biographical tradition
TEXT AND TRANSLATION OF THE FRAGMENTS
THE ANCIENT TESTIMONIA WITH ENGLISH TRANSLATION
COMMENTARY
APPENDIX
I Zeno s argument about magnitude
II Zeno s argument about numerability
III Zeno s paradox of the arrow
IV Melissus argument against pluralism
CONCORDANCE
I Fragments
II Testimonia
I TESTIMONIA
1. Ancient Authors
2. English-Greek Glossary
Preface to the Revised and Expanded Edition
Malcolm Schofield
Parmenides dominates the whole terrain of Presocratic philosophy like a colossus. Although Aristotle told the story differently, modern accounts of the development of early Greek thought find it hard to avoid presenting Parmenides poem as the turning-point decisive for understanding of the overall trajectory of the entire enterprise. Consequently monographs and scholarly articles devoted to the poem continue to appear thick and fast. The sheer difficulty and frequent obscurity of the verse are one standing provocation to new attempts at interpretation. But so too are Parmenides extraordinary combination of abstract logic and metaphysics (in the central philosophical part of the poem) and dense allusiveness to an inherited stock of poetic phraseology and religious imagery (in the proem), with seeming echoes of both in the relatively poorly preserved cosmological speculations which constituted the final section.
None of this intense scholarly activity could flourish, however, without one basic resource: a reliable scholarly edition of the Greek text of the fragments. A. H. Coxon s The Fragments of Parmenides immediately established itself as the authoritative modern edition on its appearance in 1986. No subsequent publication has even tried to replace it. The Fragments remains indispensable. The original has long been out of print. So a corrected and expanded second edition is timely and indeed badly needed.
With that, this introduction might well conclude: mission accomplished. But for the reader coming fresh to Coxon s work, a few further words may be useful in explaining what its importance consists in.
Fundamental is his presentation of the Greek text itself. Coxon s study of the manuscripts of Simplicius, Sextus, and the other authors who preserve Parmenides words enabled him to achieve two things above all. First, in the apparatus criticus he was in a position to set out the evidence for what the poet wrote (or may have written) more fully (albeit with due economy) and more accurately than in previous editions. Second, he was able to conclude (I quote): The evidence of the manuscripts, if combined with that of Parmenides general dependence on Homer, amply justifies the restoration of epic and Ionic for tragic and Attic forms in the few places where the manuscripts present only the latter. One further major feature is Coxon s inclusion, at the foot of the page, of references to passages of earlier Greek poetry that seem to be echoed by Parmenides, and to passages from later philosophical writers that seem to echo him in their turn. In these references, in the formidable chronological sweep of his Introduction, and in his rich commentary on the fragments (at once philological and philosophical), we get a sense of the apparently dogmatic Parmenides always in conversation with Homer, Hesiod and others before him, and with a whole host of later philosophers from Melissus and Empedocles onwards. Finally, facing the text of the fragments is Coxon s English prose translation, designed to express his understanding of the Greek as accurately as he could.
The book s other major contribution to scholarship is its collection of testimonia. Coxon s is a much fuller selection than was provided by Diels and Kranz in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. It is ordered not thematically (as in Diels-Kranz), but in chronological sequence of the writers who transmit the information: whether in their own extant texts (as with Plato or Aristotle), or-where those texts do not survive-as recorded in later authors (e.g. for Eudemus, in Simplicius; for Posidonius, in Strabo: though here Coxon usefully refers in the first instance to a standard modern collection of fragments and testimonia of the cited author wherever possible). To enhance the accessibility of the new edition, an English translation facing the original Greek or (occasionally) Latin has been prepared by Richard McKirahan.
Coxon himself indicated-in handwritten notes on two copies of the book-where he thought revisions or corrections were needed to the first edition. In this second edition any such instance amounting to more than correction of a typographical error is pointed out in a corresponding footnote (above Richard McKirahan s initials). One extra testimonium is added: Xenocrates, T16a. Really substantial revisions are in fact few and far between. The most significant comes in the commentary on lines 34-41 of Fragment 8, where Coxon had revised his understanding of Parmenides grammatical construction at lines 35-36, and had rethought the overall purpose of the passage. Here as elsewhere the text of the first edition is preserved in a footnote.
Richard McKirahan s translation of the testimonia is not the only extra help offered to the reader. There are also English translations of all Greek words and phrases throughout the Introduction, Commentary and Appendix, and line numbers have been inserted in the testimonia themselves to enhance ease of reference. Highly abbreviated forms of names of ancient authors and works have been spelled out more fully. New supplementary material includes the Greek-English Index and an English-Greek glossary to the translations of the testimonia . Finally, as a way of enabling the looking up of page references based on the pagination of the first edition, the original page numbers are provided here in square brackets inside the margins. All involved in the preparation of the second edition of this landmark of Presocratic scholarship share the hope and conviction that, with these improvements in presentation, the book will serve the needs of another generation of students and scholars as effectively as the original publication did its readers in their time.
Malcolm Schofield, August 2009
Editor s Note
Hopeful of an eventual second edition of The Fragments of Parmenides, A. H. Coxon made numerous corrections, changes, and additions in two copies of the first edition subsequently labeled A and B . These, together with the page of addenda and corrigenda that accompany the first edition, are incorporated into the present volume. It appears (partly from the tattered state of A ) that copy A is earlier than copy B, and that the notes in B consist of a transcription of the notes from A together with additional material. In the few places where the changes indicated in the two volumes differ (pp. 70, 74 and 325) I have placed the material from B in the body of the text and the material from A in a footnote. Where there are signficant changes from the first edition the corresponding text of that edition is recorded