Eleatic philosophers

Book is called by Richard D. McKirahan Along with Parmenides, Zeno and Melissus are classified as “Eleatic” philosophers. But they didn’t just repeat what Parmenides said. Zeno composed a very different kind of treatise — 40 arguments designed to show that many of our ways of understanding the world cannot be correct. And Melissus wrote a series of arguments that lead to a view of reality that is like Parmenides’ in ways but different too. What Zeno and Melissus have in common is the heavy use of arguments to prove things that seem to us to be obviously false. I want to spend most of our time Thursday looking closely at the arguments — seeing if and where they go wrong and trying to understand whether or not they saw the problems with their argument that we find. Write your reading response on either Zeno or Melissus. Choose one of them and discuss one or more of his arguments. Answer the following questions about it: 1) Which argument is it? (possible answers: Zeno’s Arrow paradox, or Melissus fragment 1 section 3.) 2) What does it try to prove? 3) How does it go (step by step). 4) Is the reasoning valid (that is, does the conclusion actually follow)? 5) Identify any faults you find in the reasoning.