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The Fragments of the Poem of Parmenides RESTORING PARMENIDES’ POEM: ESSAYS TOWARD A NEW ARRANGEMENT OF THE FRAGMENTS BASED ON A REASSESSMENT OF THE ORIGINAL SOURCES by Christopher John Kurfess B.A., St. John’s College, 1995 M.A., St. John’s College, 1996 M.A., University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 2000 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2012 UNVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH The Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences This dissertation was presented by Christopher J. Kurfess It was defended on November 8, 2012 and approved by Dr. Andrew M. Miller, Professor, Department of Classics Dr. John Poulakos, Associate Professor, Department of Communication Dr. Mae J. Smethurst, Professor, Department of Classics Dissertation Supervisor: Dr. Edwin D. Floyd, Professor, Department of Classics ii Copyright © by Christopher J. Kurfess 2012 iii RESTORING PARMENIDES’ POEM Christopher J. Kurfess, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2012 The history of philosophy proper, claimed Hegel, began with the poem of the Presocratic Greek philosopher Parmenides. Today, that poem is extant only in fragmentary form, the various fragments surviving as quotations, translations or paraphrases in the works of better-preserved authors of antiquity. These range from Plato, writing within a century after Parmenides’ death, to the sixth-century C.E. commentator Simplicius of Cilicia, the latest figure known to have had access to the complete poem. Since the Renaissance, students of Parmenides have relied on collections of fragments compiled by classical scholars, and since the turn of the twentieth century, Hermann Diels’ Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, through a number of editions, has remained the standard collection for Presocratic material generally and for the arrangement of Parmenides’ fragments in particular. This dissertation is an extended critique of that arrangement. I argue that the reconstructions of Parmenides’ poem in the last two centuries suffer from a number of mistakes. Those errors stem from a general failure to appreciate the peculiar literary character of his work as well as the mishandling, in particular instances, of the various sources that preserve what remains of his verse. By reconsidering a number of rarely questioned assumptions underlying the standard presentations and by revisiting the source material with greater care, a number of scholarly impasses that have beset the discussion of this difficult text are resolved, and the foundations for a more faithful and fuller reconstruction of Parmenides’ work are established. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS viii I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. PART ONE 18 A. CHAPTER ONE – RESTORING PARMENIDES’ PROEM 18 1. Unreliable Sextus 20 2. Finding Fragments: Methodological Points 24 3. Diels’ Addition 28 4. Kranz’s Move 32 5. Irksome Repetitions 37 6. Chiasmi 38 7. The Unity of Sextus’ Quotation 43 8. Appendix to Chapter One: Texts 51 B. CHAPTER TWO – EXAMINING THE SOURCES 55 1. Unreliable Sextus? 56 2. Reliable Diogenes? 67 3. “But Judge by Reason”? 73 C. CHAPTER THREE – PARMENIDES’ PROGENY: EMPEDOCLES 84 1. Empedocles’ Poem(s) 85 v 2. Καὶ δὶς γάρ, ὃ δεῖ, καλόν ἐστιν ἐνισπεῖν: Unreliable Sextus Again 87 3. Sextus’ Strategy in adv. Math. VII.122-124 90 4. Empedocles’ Addressees and the Integrity of DK 31 B 3 95 5. The Orthos Logos Interpretation and the Unity of DK 31 B 2 and 3 107 III. PART TWO 123 A. CHAPTER FOUR – THE TRUTH ABOUT “PARMENIDES’ DOXA” 123 1. Parmenides’ Doxa Dismembered? 124 2. Stage One: The Modern Reconstructions Reconsidered 125 a. Fülleborn’s Titles 128 b. Estienne’s Collection 130 c. Scaliger’s Arrangement 132 d. Simplicius’ Significance 137 3. Stage Two: The Ancients Cross-Examined 140 a. “Internal Anomalies of the Doxa” 140 b. Doxai and “Appearances” 143 4. Stage Three: Features of a “Physics”-free Doxa 152 5. Stage Four: Restored “Physical Truths” 155 a. Constraints on the Reconstruction 156 b. Survey of the Sources 159 6. An Opinion about Parmenides’ Doxa 164 a. Something Else We Owe to Simplicius 164 b. Doubts about Cosmology 174 7. Appendix to Chapter Four: Synopsis 190 vi IV. CONCLUSION 191 BIBLIOGRAPHY 199 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I could not have written this dissertation without the benefit of many dear teachers at a number of institutions. More people than those listed below have provided one form or another of guidance or inspiration, and my gratitude extends beyond those I can single out by name here. My first introduction to Parmenides, as far as I can remember, was from Douglas Allanbrook, one of my tutors at St. John’s College, and came in the form of an impromptu lesson as we were reading through the galleys of his memoir. In later, more formal settings, but before I ever dreamt of writing a dissertation on Parmenides, I had the good fortune of reading the fragments in Greek for the first time with Peter Adamson at King’s College London, and for a second time with Helen Cullyer during the spring of my first year at the University of Pittsburgh. On the latter occasion, we were assisted by John Newell, who had just completed his impressive dissertation on Parmenides and generously set aside the time to serve as a guide. It has been a perennial pleasure for a decade now to have studied with Edwin Floyd, whose gift for spotting easily overlooked points of interest in texts of all stripes has been a regular source of insight into a wide array of writings, including Vedic hymns, Greek and Sanskrit epics, the Upaniṣads, and Plato’s dialogues, as well as the works of Parmenides and other philosopher-poets. It was in Prof. Floyd’s seminar on “Pre-Socratic poets” that this dissertation began to take shape, and he has been an ideal supervisor over the course of its composition. For his patience when things were proceeding slowly, for his prompt and attentive feedback whenever I had something to share with him, and for his kind encouragement and support throughout, I am most grateful. The other members of my committee are also inspiring scholars and teachers, and I thank all of them heartily. Mae Smethurst deserves special thanks for her willingness to serve on the committee on short notice, a task which she performed with her customary thoroughness, fairness, acumen, and charm. Every graduate student of the Classics department can attest to the special care that Prof. Smethurst takes to foster our development as scholars, regularly expressing sincere interest in whatever we might be working on and freely sharing the developments in her own work. viii Mark Possanza, though illness prevented him from taking part in the defense, has encouraged my forays into Quellenforschung since well before this project began, showed enthusiasm for the dissertation early on, and gave feedback on it at several stages since. Prof. Possanza has also been the source of much guidance on many other aspects of academic life over many years, as a teacher, as chair of the department, and as supervisor of Latin instruction, consistently providing valued advice with welcome wit. The extraordinary feel for the subtleties of expression that make Andrew Miller a peerless language instructor also made him a keen reader of the dissertation. I am grateful to Prof. Miller not only for his ever careful reading and perceptive comments, but for his willingness to remain actively involved in the committee even after his retirement. I am sorry I could not finish in time to let him enjoy his retirement on time, and I wish him happy and undisturbed otium in the years ahead. I thank John Poulakos, of the Department of Communication at Pitt, for serving on the committee as the outside examiner. Additional thanks are due him for having made me feel welcome in many of his seminars on rhetoric, philosophy, and related matters over the years, as well as for inviting me to submit papers on panels he has chaired and encouraging me to attend conferences I otherwise would not have. Prof. Poulakos is a powerful force, an artistic and intellectual free spirit, and his generosity towards me has been remarkable. A general word of thanks is owed to the faculty, students, and staff of the participating departments of Pitt's Classics, Philosophy and Ancient Science (CPAS) program. Liz Conforti, the Departmental Administrator of Classics, deserves special thanks for helping me to negotiate various clerical obstacles in recent years. The CPAS program provides the opportunity to study an uncommonly broad array of ancient thought with a larger concentration of similarly-interested people than is easily found elsewhere. In actual practice that community extends beyond the University of Pittsburgh itself, and Ronald Polansky, Professor of Philosophy at Duquesne University, has done as much as anyone to contribute to the thriving study of ancient philosophy in Pittsburgh. I am especially grateful for the opportunity to have gotten to know him, and am much indebted to him both for his encouragement of my own work and his invitations to make the odd contribution to his own. Thanks also go to a number of friends who have helped me think through problems posed by Parmenides’ poem. Many conversations over coffee, tea, or tennis with Keith Bemer, Scott ix Dinsmore, Mike Ivins, Michele Kennerly, and Joseph Tipton have helped to shape the presentation of one or more ideas in this dissertation. I have also benefitted on several occasions from stimulating discussions with those for whom the Presocratics are a full-time obsession: Néstor-Luis Cordero, Patricia Curd, Peter Kingsley, Emese Mogyoródi, and Simon Trépanier, in addition to providing much food for thought in their own writings, have each generously shared with me their impressions of some of my own thoughts on Parmenides’ poem.
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