Editing Parmenides (section)

==== B8.22-25: "What is" is whole ====
From verse 22 to 25, the poem deals with the condition of integrity of "what is". No parts can be distinguished in it, since it is uniform: there is no more and less in it, it is simply full of "what is", and is alone with itself. In this passage Parmenides denies two ideas present in the cosmogonies and in the speculations of thinkers before him: the gradation of being and the [[emptiness]]. Anaximenes had spoken of the condensation and rarefaction of his principle (13 A 7), actions that, in addition to generating movement (which has already been rejected by Parmenides), supposes assuming certain degrees of density, but strictly adhering to "what is" prevents this type of gradual differences of existence.{{sfn|Kirk|Raven|Schofield|1982}} In this cosmogony, for the cosmos to emerge from the beginning, it must have some unevenness of texture, lack of cohesion or balance.{{sfn|Guthrie|1979|p=47}} It also prevents differentiating things according to their nature, as Heraclitus had intended (22 B 1). Guthrie rejects the reference to Anaximenes exposed above.{{sfn|Guthrie|1979|p=46}} But above all he seems to reject here the idea of emptiness, which the [[Pythagoreans]] considered as necessary to separate the units, physical and arithmetical at the same time, from which the world was composed.{{sfn|Kirk|Raven|Schofield|1982}}{{sfn|Guthrie|1979|p=47}} Apart from these historical considerations, the passage has generated some controversy regarding the dimension that Parmenides mentioned when referring to continuity. Owen interpreted this continuity of being to refer exclusively to time,<ref>Owen, ''Eleatic questions'', p. 97</ref> but Guthrie understands that the beginning of the passage ("neither differentiable is...", οὐδε διαρετόν ἐστιν, v. 22) introduces a new and independent argument from the previous one, and that the predicate of the homogeneous ("is a uniform whole", πᾶν ἔστιν ὁμοῖον, same verse), even based on what is said in verse 11: "it must be completely, or not be at all", that is, in a part of the argument against the generation, has a further consequence: in the present continuous of "what is," he exists fully, and not in varying degrees.{{sfn|Guthrie|1979|p=47}} Schofield indicates that Parmenides thinks of a continuity of what is, in whatever dimension he occupies, and this quote also refers to a temporal continuity.{{sfn|Kirk|Raven|Schofield|1982}}