Un Universo Aperto. La cosmologia di Parmenide e la struttura della Terra – CALENDA (RA)

CALENDA, G. Un Universo Aperto. La cosmologia di Parmenide e la struttura della Terra. 2017. Resenha de: PRIVITELLO, Lucio Angelo. Revista Archai, Brasília, n.29, p 1-6, 2020.

Guido Calenda fearlessly places the reader within a few ongoing battles in Parmenidean scholarship. In these fierce skirmishes, there are no clear heroes, and casualties are not properly accounted for. From a rough start, questionable chapter sequence, and his d isplay of courage in pursuing doxographical dangers (viz., Aëtius), Calenda brings out tools of scholarship in places where the battle is either all but over, surrounded by an interminable fog, or yet to begin. Through a soft and hard credit inquiry assess ed from his admirable use of the economy  of  textual  support,  long  established  scholarship  and determined fragment-citation sequences continue to control the field. The thickets of Parmenidean studies have become a force all their own, alluring, entangled, and difficult to adopt in both range and detail. Calenda is to be given credit.

Calenda’s goal is to show that if we abandon the presupposition that fragment 12 (and Aëtius’s gloss) refers to celestial phenomena, and instead read it as a description of the earth, then incoherencies disappear, and we are shown an important doctrine of the Elean based on solid empirical elements (p. 15). This is quite a claim. What these incoherencies exactly are or whether they reside in Parmenides’ actual fragment-citations, in the sequence order of the fragments, or in the paraphrases of commentators, is not clear. What is clear is that Calenda was inspired by Livio Rossetti’s “Parmenides’ Polumathia: an inventory of his doxai “(Rossetti, 2015), as well as Rossetti’s forthc oming work, Parmenide ‘astronomo’ e ‘biologo’, along witha small renaissance in the study of Parmenides’ physics and astronomy (so-called ‘opinion of mortals’), from the International Symposium dedicated to Parmenides in Buenos Aires in 2007. With Un Universo Aperto, Calenda is also revisiting, recalibrating, and clarifying his previous works to better argue that Parmenides’ cosmological-scientific doxai share some affinity with his alētheia. Here, too, is an example of how grappling with Parmenides’ poem, milieu, and centuries  of  brilliant  and,  at  points,  questionable  doxography, testimonia, and scholarship, temporarily blinds one to a path through the enchanted tangles.

As a main problem in Parmenidean scholarship, Calenda is wrestling against a determine d fragment-citation sequence that he does  not  question,  and  accepts  the  very  strained  and  rather questionable division of the poem into two parts. For Calenda, an ontological/epistemological section clearly precedes the exposition of scie ntific doctrines f rom fragments 8.53-61 and 9 (p. 9, 20). I find this lack of questioning the very fragment sequence structure of the poem (while seeking to reveal the meaning of one fragment), as improperly joining skeletal remains that betrays and distorts a once vibrant living body. Calenda mentions the perils in the little that has remained of the original text, joined fragments, and interpretations (p. 13), even calling upon Luigi Ruggiu to warn us that these citations (from Plato and Aristotle onwards) have not always followed philological care, but rather their own designs, intentions and contexts. Yet, Calenda (and how many more) remains ensnared in these dusty regions. First is in having remained deaf to the way that the oral tradition, from which the poem clearly em erged, and served, lends us a way to reconstruct the fragments that would free them from what Calenda sees as heavily compressed, and of arbitrary distinction due to the use and abuse of language (p. 14 & n. 12; p. 24).

Any resequencing or reconstruction o f the poem must seriously take into account Parmenides’ position as legislator, and healer. Parmenides is the initiate of the lessons of the goddess, and the poem’s structure is a retelling of the lessons prohibiting our use of illusory and pervasive disti nctions in naming. Parmenides directed his poem for the Elean community. The citizens heard his lessons, honored his laws, and had their magistrates swear to these years after his death. To regain this veritable opening, and measured restraint, one must fi rst extend and apply the greatest care to the compositional and fragment sequence order of the poem. These lessons are clear in fragments 8.38-41, and 6.4-9 as Calenda well recognizes. Therein one finds the greatest mishaps in distinctions, and the all too human application of names/labels. While Calenda hints at this problem in the Introduction, and in chapter 1, he lets it slide as fallout of the “strongly compressed character of the original text”coupled with damaging effects upon its transcriptions wit h “the passing of time”(p. 14, 19).

It is intimated, but not stated, that Calenda follows the fragment ordering of Diels and Kranz, from Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, but also distances himself from how Diels, and more contemporary scholars, have ident ified, and merged the δα ί μων in fragment 12.3 with Necessity, Law, Justice, Fate. While this is a positive sign, this study needed to show the reader how the poem moves through various fields, and how the specific field where fragment 12 belonged was perha ps a transition from the cosmological to the geological/ biological, or the mythological. Resequencing of the fragment citations in the following manner: fragments 8, 10, then 14-15 as one, then 11, 9, then fragment 12.1-3, then fragment 13 [as 12.X], then again 12.4-6, and lastly fragment 17 [as the last line of 12.Y], would have helped this transition in being more reflective of the greatness of Parmenides’ po wer of cosmogonic storytelling.

In a similar vein, Calenda’s chapter 4 “La dea della vita”(The goddess of life), would have been best situated following chapter 2, “Le due forme”(The two forms) seeing how in both chapters Calenda is preparing his terms, and references. This would have freed up and linked his more illuminating chapters on “La sferici tà della terra”with “Struttura della terra”, and take us into a Verne-like journey to the center of the earth, and to his arguments for the possibility that fragment  12  refers  not  to  celestial  entities,  but  to  the  very composition, and zones, of the earth. This is defended, quite boldly, in chapter 5, section 3, “Descrizione della sfera terrestre”(p. 75-80), yet it is tempered, and thrown out of orbit, when Calenda admits to the “residual uncertainties”when speaking of a description of a Parmenidean universe (p. 99), due to the lack of direct information, the silence of sources, and indirect circumstances (p. 100). With this in mind, the conjectures about a cosmolo gical order leave us only with Calenda’s strongly held conviction of the earth’s geological composition, and thereupon the place of the δα ί μων (Gaia?) who steers all in fragment 12.3. These conjectures do nothing to show, or defend, how there is an open, o r reopened, universe based on his particular rereading of Parmenides’ poem. The structure of the earth is clear enough, while the general cosmology still suffers, artificially torn between pitting Aëtius’ easy equation of κόσμος-ἐ όν, against Hippolytus’ re ndition of fragments 10 and 11 as purely destructive forces of the physical cosmos.

In all, Calenda merits praise for his focus on fragment 12, peppered by illustrative footnotes that build interest and inroads towards the more scientific aspects of Parmen ides’ poem (p. 10, n.2; p. 12, n. 5; p. 49, n. 5; p. 65, n. 79). One wishes that these illustrative notes had subsections of their own. Gathering the mentions of fragment 12 in his text, with an eye to “Table 1”(p. 66-67), a sideby-side view of Aëtius, and Parmenides, that is developed in detail in chapters 5, “Struttura della Terra”and 6 “Cosmologia”, leads us to “Figura 1”(p. 98). Here we find Calenda’s real contribution, along with his vision of the cosmos of Parmenides. While the bibliography and g enerous footnotes display plenty of supporting sources (pro and con), I find that due to the growth, and historically entangled overgrowth in Parmenidean studies, a few helpful sources are missing, to mention only a few. There is, while cited, no actual cr itica l use of J. S. Morrison’s “Parmenides and Er”(Morrison, 1955), where we also find an interpretation and graphic rendition of Parmenides’ stephanai. A very pertinent work by Christopher J. Kurfess (2012) is missing, and would have helped clarify, and critique Calenda’s reliance on Cordero’s view on the doxai, as well as provide detailed issue with doxographical sources. There is no mention or use of Popper, or Feyerabend’s poignant studies on Parmenides, or Verdenius’ “Parmenides’ Conception of Light”(Verdenius, 1949). Missing also is Franco Ferrari’s enlightening Il Migliore  dei  Mondi  Impossibile:  Parmenide  e  il  Cosmo  dei Presocratici (Ferrari, 2010), as well as Giorgio Colli’s seminal lessons on Parmenides (Colli, 2003). Here is either the curse or blessing of the proliferation, and layers of sedimentation that make up Parmenidean studies. The “Biblioteca Parmenidea 1961-2016”of Massimo  Pulpito,  is  actually  manageable,  and  available  in: http://www.fondazionealario.it/neweleatica/biblioteca-parmenidea/. Yet, together with the vast collection of critical editions, multilingual translations, and A to Z annotat ed bibliography on Parmenides, available in: http://www.ontology.co/biblio/parmenides, one is faced with more than enough to be inspired, humbled, or discouraged, but mostly to seek restraint from finding an all too easy way through the thickets  and  battlefields of  Parmenidean  studies.  Calenda  has valiantly tried. Alluring, entangled, and difficult as they have grown, the presence of Guido Calenda’s Un Universo Aperto, will add another signpost to an opening for future study, in caution, courage, and dedication to Parmenidean studies.

Referências

COLLI, G.  (2003). Gorgias e Parmenide. Lezioni 1965-1967. Milano, Adelphi.

FERRARI, F. (2010). Il Migliore dei Mondi Impossibile: Parmenide e il Cosmo dei Presocratici. Roma, Aracne.

KURFESS, C. J. (20 12). Restoring Parmenides’ Poem: Essays Towards  a  New  Arrangement  of  the  Fragment  Based  on  a Reassessment  of  the  Original  Source. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.

MORRISON, J. S. (1955). Parmenides and Er.The Journal of Hellenic Studies 75, p. 59-68.

ROS SETTI, L. (2015). Parmenides’ Polumathia: an inventory of his doxai. Chôra 13, p. 193-216.

VERDENIUS, W. J. (1949). Parmenides’ Conception of Light. Mnemosyne, Quarta Series 2, n. 2, p. 116 – 131.

Lucio Angelo Privitello – Stockton University – Galloway – NJ – USA. E-mail: [email protected]

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I Precetti della Dea: Non Essere e Contraddizione in Parmenide di Elea – GALGANO (RA)

GALGANO, Nicola Stefano. I Precetti della Dea: Non Essere e Contraddizione in Parmenide di Elea. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia, 2017. Resenha de: PRIVITELLO, Lucio Angelo. Revista Archai, Brasília, n.25, p. 1-7, 2019.

Nicola Stefano Galgano (2017), I Precetti della Dea: Non Essere e Contraddizione in Parmenide di Elea deserves to be seriously considered for translation into various languages. In this text, there resides a truly persuaded Parmenidean spirit, one that has lived by an inspired  vision,  while  having  demonstrated  the  courage,  and measured cr aft in carving out its fortune. Due to its length and its conjectures, dutiful scholarship, and engagement with many studies and scholars of Parmenides, this admirable text also deserves a substantially longer critical review, of which this can merely serv e as a short preface. To my delight, Galgano realizes how discussions in Parmenidean  scholarship  can  easily  slip  into  fields  of  battle (Galgano, 2017, p. 216), and yet, even though Galgano has wounded, or tried to wound, more than a few theoretical positio ns, or details therein, and suffered his own wounds, his overall strategy remains “un discourse affidabile”(a trustworthy discourse) (Galgano, 2017, p. 207). With atremes ētor, Galgano seeks to follow the maxims of the goddess.

Even though the field and s ubfields of Parmenidean studies receive careful tending, more than a few brambles, thorns, and brier impede the way to its fruits. The fields of battle of scholarship tend to proliferate their own ensnaring bittersweet vines and creepers. There is a tenden cy for this to hinder and haunt the very composition of scholarly texts, of which Galgano’s is no exception. These texts become greater puzzles than what has remained of Parmenides’ poem. Hope for a greater unanimity of interpretation (Galgano, 2017, p. 13) is impossible without first retranslating and resequencing the fragment citations. This applies to puzzles that are philosophical, purely textual-philological, or stylistic (Galgano, 2017, p. 28-29, 58). Galgano offers us some delightful and telling tran slations of various fragment lines, and the reader would hope for a full view of the poem. Though Galgano accepts and uses the DK order of the fragments (Galgano, 2017, p. 37, n. 22) with very few exceptions, he gives Diels-Kranz the lie by stating that th e division of the poem in two parts (alētheia and doxa) is purely and superficially (and justly, I might add), a “didactic cliché”(Galgano, 2017, p. 102). However, Galgano then waivers. He sees the two parts of the poem as Parmenides’ two separate respons es to inherent human cognitive distortion (Galgano, 2017, p. 169). Galgano should follow this text with a new translation and sequence of Parmenides’ poem.

A few irksome thorns are: under 2.5 Il frammento 4, on page 69, should read see 6.2 “Il frammento 4”page 189, not 187, but more importantly 2.5 should be expunged from the text. After 2.6.2 “I versi 6.4-9”, the table of contents must include the important subsections and titles from 2.6.2.1 through 2.6.2.6. The same applies for the important subsections 3.2.4.1, “La meditazione del non essere”through 3.2.4.5 that follow section 3.2.4 “Il secondo cammino (versi 5-8)”. Subsection 4.1.1.1 “I versi 6.3-4”is also missing from the contents page as is 4.2.2.1 “I versi 8.6b-7a”, 4.2.2.2 “I versi 8.7b-9a”, and 4.2.2.3, “Ripresa dei versi 8.7b-9a”. The table of contents for part 6 also requires 6.1.2.1 “Versi 12 e 13a”that should read “Versi 8.12 e 13a”and the same would apply to 6.1.2.2, read “Versi 8.13b-15a”, and 6.1.2.3 “Versi 8.15-18”. While these editoria l minutiae seem inconsequential, the puzzle pieces of a text should retain the utmost clarity   in   outline   and   comprehensiveness.   As   a   final recommendation, and due to firmly believing in the worth of Galgano’s text, and its hopeful lives in translation, or in a second Italian edition, there is need of a carefully crafted Index Locorum, Index of Authors, and a general index. These will greatly enhance the “cammino di ricerca”already provided.

Galgano’s focus is found, and gains its fascination, from the Par menidean theme of to me eon (that which is not). In tracking its many mentions through the poem, we confront the Eleatic aporia, and the object of the text, viz., to overcome the history of relegating nonbeing to a formal logic or linguistic operation, an d instead to see it as the very condition of the possibility of contradiction and the foundational comportment of human cognitive behavior. Galgano claims that the turning away from investigating to me eon (that which is not) derives from Plato, who was th e first to use and incorporate snippets of Parmenides’ poem. Galgano was justly bewildered at the vastness of his undertaking when embarking on this thematic journey (Galgano, 2017, p. 23), and more so in framing Parmenides as the first psychologist (p. 26). Nietzsche must be turning in his grave. Galgano also states that Parmenides is “the philosopher of non-being”(Galgano, 2017, p. 109), and “invented the notion of non being”(Galgano, 2017, p. 163). At this point, the reader’s lifeline appears taut betw een M. J. Henn’s category of “ontophobia”, and a quase eastern function of nihilphilia. This is due to the chase after contradictions (oute phrasais) and negative definitions that will inevitably point (phrazō) back to the subject’s cognitive operations; o r more realistically, their juridical/social Ecce Animus from the impasse of living in nots (Galgano, 2017, p. 131, n. 143, and p. 132).

Present in Galgano’s text is a highly speculative example of comparative philosophy that sneaks in (and is then brushed off) due to having sidestepped the everyday position of Parmenides as legislator, and healer to his Elean community. As a deeply respected lawgiver (in the spirit of Solon, Cadrondas, or Zaleucus), Parmenides would have plenty of examples, (and was an awe some example), with no need to import something new from the Chāndogya Upani ṣ had, to teach  an  Elean kouros of  their  social  and  juridical  duties  in trustworthy speech (Galgano, 2017, p. 151-153, 163, n. 163, p. 207). The realism Galgano is after is a social ontology, more than a gnosiological realism, or even a cosmology, and this is mentioned, but quickly glossed over, as “la dignità esistenziale di ogni essere, il che impone l’impossibilità di eliminare qualunque essere, anche quello che si giudica – in un modo o nell’altro, a torto o a ragione…”(the existential dignity of every being, that sets the impossibility to eliminate any being, even one which is judged – in one way or the other, whether wrong or right) (Galgano, 2017, p. 166). Here we see the  hard kernel  (zoccolo  duro),  and  distinctive  isonomy  of Parmenides’ approach, and perhaps the very reason for the poem’s existence, and a page out of the book of the concrete everydayness of a social setting. Parmenides’ poem has a pre-Epicurean undertone to it from being directed at his community as a way to secure conviction in their social/cultural setting, and the world/phenomena around them, while remaining free from the disturbance of contrived unthinkable paths and hearsay. Galgano timidly gestures toward s this, but overlooks it in his otherwise very commendable text (Galgano, 2017, p. 91, 171, 177-178, 213), and his own lived and supported “quotidianità dello sviluppo della ricerca del libro”mentioned on page 216. This would have answered Galgano’s searc h for the possibility of “un altra struttura cognitive”(Galgano, 2017, p. 177-178). Look no further than to the social/cultural being, and that would in turn answer to “natural”, “super-natural”, and cognitive eccentricities (p. 178). This is how the thre e precepts of the goddess (Galgano, 2017, p. 213) return as one, for “it is all the same/ from where I begin; from there I return back again”(DK 5.1-2, best placed as fragment 2).

What presents a deeper problem (inciting further rereading of the text) is Galgano’s view of Parmenides as psychologist. On a trivial level, of course he was. On a more profound level, certainly, but as an iatromantis. Recall, “Parmenide figlio di Pyrês, Ouliadês, medico”; sounds more Freudian with a touch of Rank, Jung, or Reik, if anything. Yet, it is not clear, nor explained in any detail, what type of cognitive psychology, or “cognitive operations”, (which is Galgano’s favorite and overused nomenclature), is at stake (Galgano, 2017, p. 84, 86-88, 92-93, 98, 179, 192, 210). Cog nitivist? No individual can internalize a total system of language, and this problematizes nativism. A system (or operation) is only lived as consensual practices by an entire society, culturally acquired and emergent  over  time,  and  afterwards  merely  appro ximated  by idealized theories in a general heuristic sense. Galgano does not point out what specific innate capacities are acquired, save perhaps the most basic laws of logic (Galgano, 2017, p. 168-177). The term polypeiron points in a direction of cultura l and socially acquired experiences, and should be further pursued (Galgano, 2017, p. 85, n. 88-89, and p. 86), and might even lead to an actual direction in a specific cognitivist methodology known as pattern recognition. In all, very general mentions on psychology are present throughout the text, beginning on page 14, through to page 100, then disappearing until page 168, and again mentioned up until page 210. There Galgano states that Parmenides the psychologist would “probably be what we today call cogn itivist”. Unlikely. All this is very unhelpful without actual details as to issues of attention, memory, consciousness, perception, and thinking. To substitute “operare cognitivamente”for noein does not cut the muster (Galgano, 2017, p. 70). We are not su re if Galgano is pointing towards an extreme, moderate, or a cognitivist position at all. Perhaps Galgano is wrestling with Parmenides as a social psychologist, but not enough is given to the reader for that methodology. We might be able to dig out some ex amples of cognitively innate (and unavoidable) competence from what Galgano presents from crucial terms in Parmenides fragment 6, that follow chapter 2.6.2 “I versi 6.4-9. Yet, could these not be purely socially acquired conceptual abilities, or social con tingencies of language acquisition? How particular and extensive are these possible innate competences? This would jeopardize, or at least problematize, any robust cognitivist or nativist reading.

Engaging these mentions would require a substantially longe r, and more detailed critical review. What remains to be questioned, and then developed by Galgano (as if he has not done enough already), is his claim that his is a study on the “psychology”in the work of Parmenides (Galgano, 2017, p. 26, 34-35, 39, 50, 70) that has not been previously undertaken in a sustained manner. We must then ask Galgano for a clear and distinct list of what he calls a “vocabolario psicologico”(Galgano, 2017, p. 68, 71, 83, 194). Without this list, we remain without the resources (amēchaniē) to conclude anything about Parmenides as psychologist. More than a cognitivist approach, the readings of specific terms, and fragments, especially fragment 6, could lead to an even more radical Lacanian approach, and stepping through  the  snares, registers  and  knots  of  the  Imaginary,  the Symbolic, and the Real (Galgano, 2017, p. 69-81). However, Lacan would side with Heraclitus. In all, Parmenidean studies is lucky to have Galgano on their side as a valiant scholar in the field.

ReferênciaS

GALGANO, N.S (2017). I Precetti della Dea: Non Essere e Contraddizione in Parmenide di Elea. Bologna, Diogene Multimedia.

Lucio Angelo Privitello – Stockton University – Galloway – NJ – USA. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5875-6068. E-mail: [email protected]

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