Parmenides and the moon

There is a new book out about the Greek philosopher Parmenides, the central figure of the Eleatic school. Well, it is listed as a 2025 publication. I, for one, will call that "new" given the antiquity of the subject matter.

It is an anthology titled simply, Parmenides: New Perspectives, edited by A.G. Long and Barbara M. Sattler.

The Eleatics may have made their greatest impact on subsequent philosophy through Parmenides' disciple Zeno. The simplistic view (my view) is that Parmenides took a position that seemed, simply, nuts. There is no change, no motion, and no division in the word, there is only Being.

Zeno provided arguments for that position that made it seem less nutso, by making the common sensical world of change, gaps, and differences itself seem oddly paradoxical.

That conventional understanding makes Zeno seem the more interesting figure in that dyad.

But the Long/Sattler book offers "new perspectives". One of them is that Parmenides was also an astronomer. He appears to have been the first to discuss the moon NOT as a source of light in itself but as an inert mass that reflects light from the Sun. Apparently no less of a figure in the history of philosophy than Karl Popper saw this as a major Parmenidean contribution.

What does that have to do with his monism? Little, directly, but when someone says something wacko it helps to know that he has also done some keen analysis at some point. Otherwise one wonders: why is the wacko even worth putting into history books?

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