The Catholic University of America
School Of Philosophy

PHIL 353 History of Ancient Philosophy
Fall 2013
Instructor: Dr. Cristina Ionescu
Provide a close reading and interpretation to one of the fragments listed below. Papers (4-5 pages long) are due Tuesday, Sept. the 24th and are worth 15% of your grade in this course.
1. Heraclitus:

Things taken together are whole and not whole, being brought together and brought apart, in tune and out of tune, out of all things there comes a unity, and out of a unity all things. [DK 22 B10]
They do not understand how, though at variance with itself, it agrees with itself [or how by being at variance with itself it agrees with itself; more literally, how being [or by being] brought apart it is brought together]. It is a backwards-turning [or backwards stretching] attunement like that of the bow and the lyre. [DK22 B51]
2. Parmenides:
There is still left a single story
Of the way, that it is. On this way there are signs
Exceedingly many – that being ungenerated it is also imperishable, whole and of a single kind and unshaken and complete.
Nor was it ever nor will it be, since it is now, all together, one, continuous. For what birth will you seek for it?
How and from where did it grow? I will not permit you to say ‘ or to think from what is not; for it is not to be said or thought that it is not. What necessity would have stirred it up to grow later rather than earlier, beginning from nothing?
Thus it must either fully be or not.
Nor will the force of conviction ever permit anything to
Come to be
From what is not, besides it [i.e., besides what is not]. For this reason, Justice has permitted it [i.e., what is] neither to come to be nor to perish, relaxing her shackles, but holds fast. But the decision about these matters lies in this: it is or it is not. But it has been decided, as is necessary, to let go the one way as unthinkable and nameless (for it is not a true way) and that the other is and is real.
How could what is be in the future? How could it come to be?
For if it came into being, it is not, nor is it if it is ever going to be.
In this way, coming to be has been extinguished and destruction is unheard of.
Nor is it divided, since it all is alike;
Nor is it any more in any way, which would keep it from holding together,
Or any less but it is all full of what is.
Therefore, it is all continuous, for what is draws near to what is.
But unchanging in the limits of great bonds,
It is, without start or finish, since coming to be and destruction
Were banished far away and true conviction drove them off.
Remaining the same in the same and by itself it lies
And so stays there fixed; for mighty Necessity
Holds it in the bonds of a limit, which pens it in all round,
Since it is right for hat is to be not incomplete;
For it is not lacking; if it were