Parmenides

Parmenides

Parmenides of Elea (; Ancient Greek: Παρμενίδης ὁ Ἐλεάτης; fl. late sixth or early fifth century BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia (Southern Italy). Parmenides was born in the Greek colony of Elea to a wealthy and illustrious family. The exact date of his birth is not known with certainty; on the one hand, according to the doxographer Diogenes Laërtius, Parmenides flourished in the period immediately preceding 500 BC, which would place his year of birth around 540 BC; on the other hand, in the dialogue Parmenides Plato portrays him as visiting Athens at the age of 65, when Socrates was a young man, c. 450 BC, which, if true, suggests a potential year of birth of c. 515 BC. Parmenides is thought to have been in his prime (or "floruit") around 475 BC. The single known work by Parmenides is a poem whose original title is unknown but which is often referred to as On Nature. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Parmenides has received more than 1,986,219 page views. His biography is available in 86 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 85 in 2019). Parmenides is the 32nd most popular philosopher (down from 30th in 2019), the 33rd most popular biography from Italy and the 3rd most popular Italian Philosopher.

Parmenides is most famous for his poem, "On Nature," in which he argues that the world of our experience is an illusion and that the only thing that truly exists is a changeless, eternal, and perfect sphere.