Abstract

The text of Fragment 3 of Parmenides' Poem can be construed in two basic ways: as asserting that (1) νοεῖν (to grasp, apprehend) and εἶναι (to be) are the same, or that (2) the same thing is there for νοεῖν (grasping, apprehending) and for εἶναι (being). Faced with this ambiguity, and the parallel ambiguities elsewhere in the Poem, commentators have defended one construal or the other, thereby generating significantly different interpretations of the Truth section as a whole. In this chapter, I take a different approach. Instead of seeing the ambiguity as a liability, I approach it as a resource, by offering an interpretation that combines both construals of the text. I argue that the same thing is there for νοεῖν and εἶναι precisely because νοεῖν and εἶναι are the same thing. Νοεῖν, I argue, should be understood in Parmenides, as in Homer, as to grasp, to apprehend, or to be coherently oriented to a situation. Yet in Parmenides, unlike in Homer, the situation in question is that of grasping being (ἐόν). Thus, Parmenides has the goddess affirm that the same thing—being—is there for both νοεῖν and εἶναι. Grasping being, however, is what being does in relation to itself: “being holds to being" (fr. 4.2). The “to be” (εἶναι) that holds being to being is not a bond of bronze, rope, or some other material as in Homer (e.g., Il. 5.386-391; Od. 12.160-164, 194-200), but instead the intelligible grasp, apprehension, or orientation that is nothing other than νοεῖν.