Eleatic School

Vocabulary flashcards covering the thinkers and core concepts of the Eleatic school, including Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno's paradoxes.

Elea

A historical location in the south of Italy that no longer exists, known as the home of the Eleatic school.

Xenophanes' Critique of Anthropomorphism

The philosophical position that any form of personification of God is godless because human beings cannot imagine the godlike form.

Pantheism (Xenophanes)

The concept that God is nature, characterizing the world as deity and one in a spherical shape.

Parmenides

Pre-Socratic philosopher known as the "Father of rationalism" and author of the work "On Nature," who taught that all of reality is a single, unchanging "Being."

"The way of truth"

Parmenides' philosophical proposition asserting "that being is and non-being is not."

Being (Parmenides)

The single, eternal reality that is ungenerated, imperishable, present everywhere, and accounts for all existence, rendering multiplicity and change mere appearances.

Monism (Eleatic school)

The doctrine advanced by Parmenides and supported by Zeno, stating that all of reality is one, that all change is impossible, and that non-being, motion, and multiplicity do not exist.

Change (Parmenides)

An illusion in which appearances alter, but the underlying essence does not.

Zeno's Paradoxes

Arguments developed to support Parmenides' doctrine of monism by demonstrating that non-being, motion, change, and the multiplicity of things do not exist.

Achilles and tortoise

A paradox in which Achilles races a slower tortoise with a head start and can never overtake it, because he must endlessly reach each new position the tortoise moves to, showing motion to be an illusion.

Arrow paradox

Zeno's paradox assuming time consists of indivisible instants; because a moving arrow occupies a space equal to its size and cannot move during any single instant, it is never moving and motion is an illusion.

Dichtomy paradox

Zeno's paradox arguing that to reach a destination one must first travel halfway, and half of that distance repeatedly in an infinite series of smaller distances, proving that motion is impossible.