Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Commons^™

The Truth About Parmenides' Doxa, Christopher Kurfess

Classics Faculty Publications

In a recent article in this journal, Néstor-Luis Cordero has offered an interesting account of how scholars may have been misreading Parmenides' poem for centuries, as well as some provocative suggestions on how to correct that misreading. He calls into question the prevalent notion of the Doxa as Parmenides' account of the phenomenal world, and he challenges the standard arrangement of the fragments that assigns lines featuring 'physical' topics to that portion of the poem. The 'Doxa of Parmenides', if that phrase is understood to imply that Parmenides himself embraced doxai of any kind is, Cordero claims, an imaginary …