Abstract

In this paper I examine the traditional reading of Parmenides’ fr. B3 (τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι), which implies a strong “identity” between thinking and being, suggesting the hypothesis of a “correspondence” of what is thinkable and what is. These considerations lead me to defend a translation of fr. B3, which seems to me the less anachronistic: “For there is the same thing for being thought and for being”. I discuss in what follows the meaning of the verb νοεῖν and of the connected terms in Parmenides’ Poem (especially in fr. B4). I indicate three interpretative options of νοεῖν: 1. As a form of purely intellectual knowledge of true being (that is, the intelligible); 2. As a form of propositional or “veritative” knowledge concerning the truth or the falsity of a proposition; 3. As a capacity of “catching a situation”, of “recognising” something or someone, suggesting a meaning of being that implies the simple observation of the being of things and of the sensible world.