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ELEATIC SCHOOL

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Originally appearing in Volume V09, Page 169 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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ELEATIC SCHOOL , a See also:

Greek school of See also:philosophy which came into existence towards the end of the 6th See also:century B.e., and ended with Melissus of See also:Samos (fl. c. 450 B.C.). It took its name from Elea, a Greek See also:city of See also:lower See also:Italy, the See also:home of its See also:chief exponents, Parmenides and See also:Zeno. Its See also:foundation is often attributed to See also:Xenophanes of See also:Colophon, but, although there is much in his speculations which formed See also:part of the later Eleatic See also:doctrine, it is probably more correct to regard Parmenides as the founder of the school. At all events, it was Parmenides who gave it its fullest development. The See also:main doctrines of the Eleatics were evolved in opposition, on the one See also:hand, to the See also:physical theories of the See also:early physical philosophers who explained all existence in terms of See also:primary See also:matter (see IONIAN SCHOOL), and, on the other hand, to the theory of Heraclitus that all existence may be summed up as perpetual See also:change. As against these theories the Eleatics maintained that the true explanation of things lies in the conception of a universal unity of being. The senses with their changing and inconsistent reports cannot cognize this unity; it is by thought alone that we can pass beyond the false appearances of sense and arrive at the knowledge of being, at the fundamental truth that " the All is One." There can be no creation, for being cannot come from not-being; a thing cannot arise from that which is different from it. The errors of See also:common See also:opinion arise to a See also:great extent from the ambiguous use of the verb " to be," which may imply existence or be merely the copula which connects subject and predicate. In these main contentions the Eleatic school achieved a real advance, and paved the way to the See also:modern conception of See also:meta-physics. Xenophanes in the See also:middle of the 6th century had made the first great attack on the crude See also:mythology of early See also:Greece, including in his onslaught the whole anthropomorphic See also:system enshrined in the poems of See also:Homer and See also:Hesiod. In the hands of Parmenides this spirit of See also:free thought See also:developed on metaphysical lines.

Subsequently, whether from the fact that such bold speculations were See also:

obnoxious to the See also:general sense of propriety in Elea, or from the inferiority of its leaders, the school de-generated into verbal disputes as to the possibility of See also:motion, and similar See also:academic trifling. The best See also:work of the school was absorbed in the Platonic metaphysic (see E. See also:Caird, See also:Evolution of See also:Theology in the Greek Philosophers, 1904). See further the articles on XENOPHANES; PARMENIDES; ZENO (of Elea) ; MELISSUS, with the See also:works there quoted ; also the histories of philosophy by See also:Zeller, See also:Gomperz, Windelband, &c.

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