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I Its Institution The One That Holds Together (Parmenides) Parmenides, it has been said from antiquity, is the father of philosophy. He was the first to place discursive reason in the service of intuitive thought. He was also the first to designate the one problem worthy of a philosopher, the problem of being. He carried out this act of paternity by arguing that being is one. His predecessors, as well as all those after him who distrust argumentation, could wage wars of unreasoned intuitions and opinions. He could have shown them the way to perpetual peace. In arguing that being is one, he taught us a sure way to proceed—the instigators of opinion speak for themselves; those converted to reason speak in the name of the universal. Whether it knows it or not, the West was trained in his school. There we have learned where to anchor discourse, all discourse, so that it may be certain. What is at stake in philosophy was prescribed by him—in arguing that being is one, necessarily, we acquire a point of reference that lasts, immutably, and that lays down the law, universally. This necessity, this immutability, and this universality of an ultimate reference are what metaphysicians have surpassed each other in working on and reworking. With a magisterial gesture, like Alexander before the Gordian knot, “our father Parmenides”1 bisects yes and no, being and not being, truth and error, knowledge that can be grounded and rambling assertions; he set apart the man who knows from the dumbfounded soul. Philosophyʼs initial argumentative tack is to oppose so as to posit better, to oppose contradictories so as to posit the one (hen). This ploy springs up there, moreover, with such simplicity that it thwarts all classification. How are we to understand the hen? As the unity making a genus, or instead as the units that compose it? As the exclusive oneness of a being, or instead as the inclusive totality of all beings, as their union that constitutes the universe? As the form of given things, hence as uniform a priori, or instead as this particular unified given being? If the one can be placed in one or the other of these classes (logical, ontological, transcendental), that would be the end not only of its dawn-like simplicity but also the argument based on contradictories. Each of these figures indeed introduces a certain multiplicity into the one. Parricide. To think the one is as difficult as saying what it is. We do so constantly but in all innocence of the concept. If being is one, it will indeed be necessarily “everywhere the same”—in Greek, isos (isopalés, 8.44)2 or homôs (8.49)—therefore “isomorphic” or “homogeneous.” We encounter the simple one everywhere and speak of it everywhere. But if we seek to grasp what we are doing and to get it back in hand, innocence is lost and with it, the simplicity of the one. A giant would be needed in order to keep hold of it. In the “gigantomachy over being,”3 Parmenides is the most formidable of giants. 52 PART ONE: THE GREEK HEGEMONIC FANTASM By establishing that being makes the law because it is one, simple, isomorphic, and homogeneous, he set himself up as laying down the law for all future argumentation about principles. We recognize this simplicity of the referent that lays down the law as a primary characteristic of the common opinion regarding Parmenides. But let us now read the words that open what remains to us of his poem. Theyʼre jolting: “The chariots that carry me. . . .” What—a thought that, in short, is to have but a single thing to say, “one,”4 begins with the evocation of a journey? The calm radiance of the most austere simplicity conceivable formulated by describing a gallop, the circle of turning wheels, the screech emitted by the axle rubbing against its hub? For a text which is said to sing of the immobile splendor of the one, this is a beginning that leaves one perplexed. Whoever undertakes a voyage expects rather to be, like Ulysses, borne from here to there (polytropos)—involved in the polymorphic, not to the isomorphic. One may agree to treat the assertion “being is one” as expressing not a composition but an intuition. Principles are not constructed by gathering together elements, nor by being deduced from the analysis of underlying premises—they would emerge from either of...

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