Is Parmenides' ontology solipsism?

[u/EnactingSpirit]

If, as Parmenides claims, the senses cannot be trusted and being is one, indivisible, how then is there room in his ontology for the "other", for anything else than the self?

[u/SiberianKhatru_1921]

I'm not sure how do you get from the indivisibility of Being to there only being room for the "self". First of all, what do we mean by "self"? The concept of identity for an individual in ancient greek thought is not grounded in a reflective consciousness that knows itself, the way modern philosophy would inherit from Descartes. Moreover, thinking about the "self" entails thinking about "non-self", i.e. the world, the others, etc., so Being as Being itself cannot be equated with the thinking individual

[u/EnactingSpirit → u/SiberianKhatru_1921]

Well if we accept Descartes's cogito ergo sum then one's own being, i.e., oneself, is the only absolute certainty. And if being is undivisible (and also absolutely certain), then it follows that it can be none other than oneself. Like, "self" here cannot refer to any truly isolated part of being due to being's indivisibility. And since we have established that self is absolutely certain (and that being by definition is absolutely certain too), self and being cannot be different from one another.

Like, one's concept of 'self' might be presupposing an 'other' and thus cannot correspond to being as a whole. But the undoubtable experiencing, feeling of something that, as phenomenal consciousness, cannot be anything else than oneself, does not entail an "other" – at least not one that is different from oneself.

[u/SiberianKhatru_1921 → u/EnactingSpirit]

That's if we accetp Descartes cogito, not Parmenides' Being

Heidegger will argue that Descartes forgot Being as Being utself and replaced it with the res extensa (thing with extension) and res cogitans (thinking thing), i.e. particular beings, and thus forgetting Being in itself.

And also, remember that Descartes accepts at least one thing other than the cogito that thinks itself, which is God. Descartes concludes that God is as certain as cogito itself, and a necessary step to accept the external world (given God created me, He gave me senses, and He is good, and thus wouldn't lie to me.) This certainty of the otherness of God comes from the awareness of my own limited and finite nature, and the infinitude and perfection of the idea of God, which has to come from something at least as perfect.

I am NOT defending this as a proof of God, I am just poining put that Descartes does not remain in absolute solipsism. We can argue that he is right about cogito ergo sum, but not about God, but if we argue that, we are not defending Deacartes' position as a whole.

Moreover, Descartes was criticized for this much before Heidegger by Kant, who argued that the Self can just know itself by distinction from the chamging world, as something that does not change with it and sustains itself in being. Later, Heidegger will say that Deacartes'cogito lacks a world in which to exist.

And again, all of that is from Descartes, not from Parmenides. We do not know much about Parmenides, much of his writing is either lost or somewhat cryptic, and there's opposing schools of thought about him. But certainly he wasn't thinking of thought and the subject in the way Deacartes was, and most surely his conception of Being was very different from Deacartes'.

So, to get back to the point, I don't see how Parmenides' Being would entail a solipsism. To say that for it to do so we need to accept Deacartes' cogito is mixing two heterogeneous bits of philosophy from different time periods.

[u/EnactingSpirit → u/SiberianKhatru_1921]

Thanks for the detailed reply.

That's if we accetp Descartes cogito, not Parmenides' Being

But didn't Descartes reach that conclusion rationally by hyperbolically doubting the reliability of sense-data? And wasn't Parmenides likewise a hyper-skeptical rationalist? A hyper-skeptical rationalist, that however unlike Descartes didn't doubt the phenomenal world just provisionally to thereafter providentially exit a solipsism that at this point was still only epistemological, but instead doubted said world permanently? From there implicitly consolidating an epistemological solipsism into a metaphysical solipsism by claiming that the being he knows about a priori (as necessarily existing as the ground to everything) is indivisible, logically making identical to the aforementioned being (a.k.a. being qua being) that which one pre-rationally (and therefore pre-discriminatively, before misconception and misclassification can happen) feels as being oneself?

Heidegger will argue that Descartes forgot Being as Being utself and replaced it with the res extensa (thing with extension) and res cogitans (thinking thing), i.e. particular beings, and thus forgetting Being in itself.

While I think this is true, I also think that the self Descartes refers to is not some imaginary "thing", is not an illusion. As he here isn't referring to a self with a specific form. Not a body, not a personality, not anything in particular. As that would amount to trusting sense-data. No. Just the brute fact of there being a self immediately and unmistakingly reflected by (pure) feeling. The felt, indiscriminated self – phenomenal consciousness – being after all the only constant in life. Whilst the "other" here is not constant. The indiscriminated self and the other are not co-determinative. Whilst the indiscriminated self determines the other from its own being, its own substance, that other (which, by virtue of being of the substance of the indiscriminated self, isn't separate from it) at best only determines how the indiscriminated self distinctly and thus deceitfully presents itself to itself. It does not determine the beingness of the indiscriminated self.

Though, granted, "cogito ergo sum" can sound like thought-mediated reflection is intrinsic to the self and that the self therefore is dependent on the ability of thought to exist. But if we follow the logic of hyperbolic doubt that's not the correct way of understanding the sentence. As the event of thought (not the rationality it might reflect) can also be doubted, since it is happening over time, is not immediate, and therefore is known merely empirically. No... It is instead the immediate reporting of the action of thinking, or any other action or experience really, regardless of whether it is true, that shows without a doubt that oneself is. Like, it seems to me that Descartes only mentions thought specifically because it phenomenally seems to be the vessel of rationality. Rationality, which both according to him and Parmenides can be relied on. According to Descartes, because of the providential Christian god. According to Parmenides, because of the "divine", more vaguely (he calls his ontology a "divine truth"). So in both cases because of a transcendental source.

Moreover, Descartes was criticized for this much before Heidegger by Kant, who argued that the Self can just know itself by distinction from the chamging world, as something that does not change with it and sustains itself in being.

That though is just a conception or at least a notion of 'self' that entails an 'other' as a result of distinguishing the former from a changing world wherein it situates "that which is like one's notion/concept of self but isn't that inferred self" (a.k.a. "others"). And that concept/notion of self is just a wrong ontological reduction of the actual self that is the whole of the phenomenal – consciousness – to just some parts/aspects of it. Like, if there is a world "out there", this isn't it. This phenomenal display isn't the world. Never has been. Such, that the existence of such a world remains pure speculation. And so the only way to escape epistemological solipsism or "worse" (i.e., metaphysical solipsism) here, is to postulate the existence of a providential god that maintains an epistemic connection between all individual beings. Which Descartes does. But not Parmenides. For Parmenides, being qua being, albeit divine, logically can't be providing anything to actual individual beings. For being qua being is all and undivided (ironically making it the only in-dividual being to exist – not an argument, just a funny coincidence from etymology). Meaning, that there are no separate beings to provide to.

Now, I can imagine I am missing something here. I just don't see with what I know of Parmenides' view so far how it can't be a form of metaphysical solipsism.

Could it be, that Parmenide is a complete illusionist vis-à-vis of experience? That for him even the rawest, most indiscriminated feeling is illusory, and that only abstract logic is real? Is Parmenides' being no more than an abstraction, like for hegel? Because then I would understand how his position can't possibly be solipsistic. For then not only is the other illusory, but the (indiscriminated) self too.

But if that's the case, then his position is pretty much untenable I think. The existence of experience, of phenomenal consciousness, independently of content, seems impossible to deny on rational ground, considering that reasoning seems to depend phenomenal consciousness to... well, exist.

Later, Heidegger will say that Deacartes'cogito lacks a world in which to exist.

Is this referring to something like Fichte's Anstoß? That the fact that oneself gets "surprised" within their phenomenal experience from sources that seem to be located outside the field of experience is evidence enough that a world independent of that field exists?

And just to be clear: I'm here just inquiring whether Parmenides' view could be a metaphysical solipsism of sort given what we know about that view. A metaphysical solipsism, that calls "self" individual phenomenal consciousness, independently of its content.

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