ZENO OF ELEA
273
1523
T
to Zeno. 1 Plato puts into the mouth ot‘ Zeno himself an
explanation of the character and object of his book. 2 It was
a youthful effort, and it was stolen by some one, so that the
author had no opportunity of considering whether to publish
it or not. Its object was to defend the system of Parmenides
by attacking the common conceptions of things. Parmenides
held that only the One exists; whereupon common sense
pointed out that many contradictions and absurdities will
follow if this be admitted. Zeno replied that, if the popular
view that Many exist be accepted, still more absurd results
will follow. The work was divided into several parts (Abyoi
according to Plato) and each of these again into sections
(‘hypotheses’ in Plato, ‘contentions’, hn)(eLprj/j.aTa, in Sim
plicius) : each of the latter (which according to Proclus
numbered forty in all 3 ) seems to have taken one of the
assumptions made on the ordinary view of life and to have
shown that it leads to an absurdity. It is doubtless on
account of this systematic use of indirect proof by the reductio
ad absurdum of particular hypotheses that Zeno is said to
have been called by Aristotle the discoverer of Dialectic 4 ;
Plato, too, says of him that he understood how to make one
and the same thing appear like and unlike, one and many, at
rest and in motion. 5
Zeno’s arguments about motion.
It does not appear that the full significance and value of
Zeno’s paradoxes have ever been realized until these latter
days. The most modern view of them shall be expressed in
the writer’s own words:
‘ In this capricious world nothing is more capricious than
posthumous fame. One of the most notable victims of pos
terity’s lack of judgement is the Eleatic Zeno. Having
invented four arguments all immeasurably subtle and pro
found, the grossness of subsequent philosophers pronounced
him to be a mere ingenious juggler, and his arguments to be
1 Zeller, i 5 , p. 587 note.
2 Plato, Parmenides 128 C-E.
3 Proclus in Farm., p. 694. 28seq.
4 Diog. L. viii. 57, ix. 25; Sext. Emp. Math. vii. 6.
5 Plato, Phaedrus 261 n.
