Editing Parmenides (section)

==== B8.5-21 "What is" cannot be begotten or destroyed ====
From verse 5 to 21 a lengthy argument is developed against generation and corruption. Verse 5 posits  On the other hand, if nothing can be understood or said about "what is not", then there is no possibility of finding out from where it would have been generated, nor for what reason it would have been generated "before" or "after", emerging from nothing. (verses 6–10). It is necessary that it be completely, or that it not be at all, therefore it cannot be admitted that from what is not something arises that exists together with "what is" (vv. 11-12). Generation and corruption are prohibited by Justice, by virtue of a decision: "it is or it is not", and it has been decided to abandon this last path as inscrutable, and follow the first, the only true path (vv. 14-18) . Nor can the entity, being, be born. And if he was born, he is not. Nor can it be if it is going to be. Therefore the generation is extinct, and perishing cannot be known (vv. 19–21). The first sign that the goddess deals with is the one related to the entity's relationship with time, the generation and corruption. In verse 5 of fragment 8 she affirms that the entity was not in the past nor should it be in the future, but is entirely now (νῦν ἔστι ὁμοῦ πᾶν). The past and the future have no meaning for the entity, it ''is'' in a perpetual present, without temporal distinction of any kind.{{sfn|Kirk|Raven|Schofield|1982}} What follows (vv. 6–11) is the argument against the birth or generation of what is. The first words (“one”, ἕν, and “continuous”, συνεχές) advance the content of another argument located later on unity and continuity (vv. 22–25). From there, she wonders what genesis would you look for? It denies the possibility that "what is" arises from "what is not", since one cannot think or say “what is not” (vv. 7–9) there would be no need for something "that is" to emerge from "what is not" (vv. 9-10). Schofield has interpreted Parmenides here as 'appealing to the [[principle of sufficient reason]]. He supposes that everything that comes to be must contain in itself a principle of development ("necessity", χρέος) sufficient to explain its generation. But if something does not exist, how can it contain such a principle?»{{sfn|Kirk|Raven|Schofield|1982}} The meaning of lines 12–13 is ambiguous, due to the use of a [[pronoun]] (αὐτό) that can be interpreted as referring to the object that has been spoken of for nine lines, “what is”, or as referring to the subject of the sentence in which it appears: «what is not». The first alternative and the final meaning of the sentence would be: from "what is not" something cannot arise that becomes together with "what is", that is, something other than "what is". This sentence would have the same content as that of verse 36–37: "nothing can exist apart from what is." This interpretation has been followed by Raven,{{sfn|Kirk|Raven|Schofield|1982}} but rejected by Guthrie, because it introduces, according to him, elements alien to the argument about generation and corruption that dominates the section as a whole. He interprets as follows: 'what is not' can only be generated from 'what is not'.{{sfn|Guthrie|1979|p=41}} In this sense, it would be one of the first versions of the phrase ''[[ex nihilo nihil fit]]'', "from nothing nothing arises", which is also an axiom already accepted by the "philosophers of nature', as [[Aristotle]] observes (''Physics'' 187a34).{{sfn|Guthrie|1979|p=43}} Throughout the fragment there is no direct argument against corruption, but it can be deduced from postulating as exclusive the "is" and the "is not" (v. 16), and rejecting the "is not" (vv. 17– 18): perishing involves accepting that "what is" might "not be" in the future. Likewise, the generation implies that "what is" has not been in the past (vv. 19–20).{{sfn|Kirk|Raven|Schofield|1982}} From the point of view of the history of thought, Parmenides achieves a true intellectual achievement by distinguishing here the ''enduring'' from the ''eternal''. What is ''enduring'' is in time: it is the same now as it was thousands of years ago, or in the future. This is how the ancients thought of the perdurability of the cosmos or physical universe, as distinct from the eternity of what it is (Plato, ''Timaeus'' 38c2, 37e–38a). While eternity was posited by the Ionians—[[Anaximander]] said that their ἄπειρον was immortal, eternal, and ageless—they had also thought that their respective principles were starting points of the world. Parmenides, on the other hand, shows that if it is accepted that what is is eternal, it must be one, and cannot be the beginning of a multiform world, of an order of plural elements. Much less of a world subject to becoming, as Aristotle also expresses as the opinion of the ancient philosophers: "what is does not become, because it already is, and nothing could come to be from what it is not" ('Physics' ' 191a30).{{sfn|Guthrie|1979|p=44}}