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Eleatic Motions, Wallace Matson

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In "Parmenides Unbound," Philosophical Inquiry 2.1 (1980) 345-360, Matson argues that the accomplishment of Parmenides was the fundamental philosophical distinction between what is known certainly by pure reason and, on the other hand, the domain of (mere?) experience. In this paper Matson argues that Zeno's paradoxes are meant to demonstrate the incoherence of Pythagorean philosophy, for example that the arguments of the Pythagoreans commit them to the unreality of motion, a reductio argument. He takes Melissus as directing his arguments against Heracliteans.