2. Of ELEA (Velia), son of Teleutagoras, and favourite disciple of
Parmenides. He was with the latter in Athens about the 80th Olympiad, when Socrates was still
very young. At this time he was 40 years old, and consequently was born about the 70th
Olympiad (Soph. p. 217,
Parm. p. 127; comp. Theaet. p. 183). With this
chronology we can easily reconcile the statements which assign, as the period when he
flourished, the 78th Olympiad (Suid. s. v.), the 79th (Chron.). The
statements that he unfolded his doctrines to men like Pericles and Callias for the price of
100 minae (Plat. Alcib. i. p. 119; Olympiod. in
Alcib. p. 140, Kreuzer; Plut. Vit. Pericl. 100.4) indicate a rather
long residence in Athens. Of a well-grown and graceful person (Parm. p.
127; comp. l.c.), not, as his
traducers thought (ad v. Col. p. 1126 ; Strabo, l.c.), and his love of legitimate freedom is shown by the courage with which
he exposed his life in order to deliver his native country from a tyrant. (Plut. ad v. Col. p. 1126, de Stoic. Repugn. p. 105, de Garrulit. p. 505; comp. Exc. p. 557, Wessel.) Whether he perished in the attempt, or
survived the fall of the tyrant, is a point on which the authorities vary. They also state the
name of the tyrant differently.
Unfortunately also the writings of Zenon perished earlier than those of Parmenides and
Melissus. Even the indefatigable Simplicius had not succeeded in possessing himself of more
than one of the treatises of the Eleatic philosopher, and even this he probably had before
him only in extracts (Simpl. in Arist. Phys. f. 30, a. b.). In
explaining the difficult passage of Aristotle respecting the mode in which Zenon demonstrated
the inconceivableness of motion, he manifestly had not Zenon's own words before him.
Alexander and Porphyrius in all probability were not even acquainted with what Simplicius
quotes from the treatise of Zenon. (Simpl. l.c.) But whether this was
the youthful essay characterised in the Parmenides of Plato, in which, in order to defend his
master's doctrine of the oneness of the existent, he had developed the contradictions
involved in the presupposition of a multiplicity of the existent (Plat. Parm. p. 128), we cannot determine. Simplicius like Plato characterises the treatise
to which he referred as composed in prose, as a Parm. p. 127; Arist. Elench. Soph. 100.10 ; ad v. Math.
7.6). Of other treatises of Zenon we only learn the titles : -- Discussions (s. v.), and must
leave it undecided whether it was one of these, and if so, which of them is the treatise
referred to by Plato in the Parmenides. In another passage (Phaedr. p.
26 ; comp. Parm. p. 129) Plato manifestly speaks of him, not of the
rhetorician Alcidamas, as Quintilian (Inst. 3.1) assumes, as the Eleatic
Palamedes, whose art causes one and the same thing to appear both like and unlike, one and
many, at rest and in motion.
The way in which Zenon undertook to show the merely relative validity of our assertions
with regard to the phenomenal world, is shown partly by his expressions which Simplicius has
preserved, according to which the multiplicity of phenomena must be set down as finite,
because actual, and consequently determinate; and as infinite, because not made up of
ultimate parts; and for that very reason as at the same time small and great; as, on the one
hand, in being divided ad infinitum, it loses all magnitude, and on the other hand regains it
through the infinitude of the number of the parts (the argument of the dichotomia, to which
Aristotle refers, Phys. Ausc. 1.3. p. 187. 1, and which Porphyrius had
improperly referred to Parmenides ; see Simplicius, l.c.); partly by the
question which he is said to have put to Protagoras, whether a measure of corn, falling down,
makes a noise (Phys. Ausc.
7.5. p. 250. 9; Simpl. f. 255; Schol. in Arist. p. 423b. 40). On the infinite divisibility of
space and time also was founded Zenon's arguments to disprove the reality of motion (Arist.
Phys. Ausc. 6.9; comp. 100.1, 2; Simpl. f. 236, b ; Themist. f. 55, b.
&c.; Schol. in Arist. p. 413 ; comp. Dict. Crit. s. v.). Consequently, Zenon
manifestly concluded, we nowhere find in the phenomenal world a really existing thing,
remaining like itself; and consequently we nowhere find an actual thing; it distributes
itself into a multiformity which has neither subsistence nor unity; for that which neither
increases when added, nor diminishes when taken away, -- that is, the true, indivisible Met. B. 4. p.
1001b. 7. ib. Alex.; comp. Simpl. in Phys. f. 21). Hence he asserted
that he would explain what things are, if he had unity given to him.
(Eudem. in Simpl. f. 21. 6.) Whether, and in what way, he nevertheless admitted the theory of
Empedocles as a hypothetical explanation of phenomena, cannot be ascertained with certainty
from the scanty statements of Stobaeus (Ecl. Phys. p. 60) and Diogenes
Laertius (9.29). The centre of gravity of his philosophy lies in the acuteness with which he
unfolded the contradictions which are against the conceivableness of the fundamental ideas of
experience, in so far as the world of experience is conceived as existent, i.
e. as actually real; and consequently laid down for all subsequent meta-physic the
problems of which it has still to seek the solution. It is easily comprehensible therefore
that the sceptic Timon (
Comp. Zénon d'Elée in Nouveaux
Fragments philosophiques, by V. Cousin. Paris, 1828, p. 96-150)