Plato versus Parmenides investigates the concept of genesis, or coming into being, a problem that has absorbed the greatest philosophical thinkers. Robert J. Roecklein explores two philosophical giants who tackled this issue: Plato and Parmenides from Elea. Particularly interesting to Roecklein is how the respective arguments of reality, or lack thereof, of coming into being functions as a political barometer: how Plato and Parmenides sketch foundations for political regimes. Plato and Parmenides, philosophers of immeasurable respect and influence, represented two sides of a fierce debate. On...

In the origins of Western philosophical thought, doctrines of physics intertwined with the debate between political philosophers. It is for this reason that Plato devoted his dialogues Theatetus and Parmenides to investigating and meeting the arguments of his principal philosophical adversaries. The doctrine of atomism, which developed under the influence of Parmenides' philosophy, is one that Plato refutes directly. In the modern era of philosophy and science, a revived doctrine of atomism has been treated as apolitical. Atomistic postulates lay at the root of the doctrines of Early Modern...

This book investigates the influence of Epicurean physics on the argument developed in Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy. Towards this end, the full philosophical history and origins of atomist philosophy are investigated during the first three chapters. Plato's critique of the atomist philosophy, from his dialogue the Parmenides, is a part of that investigation. In fact, Plato provides a refutation of the atomist philosophy in the Parmenides. A significant amount of scholarship has been accomplished that demonstrates the currents of Lucretian atomism in Machiavelli's Florence. Evidence is...

Modern Philosophy, Philosophy of Physics, Philosophy of language, Neurobiology, Philosophy of Perception, Modern Political Philosophy--all share a common philosophical foundation: atomism. The theory of atomism that is developed in the writing of Einstein, Bohr, Schrodinger, and Reichenbach shares the same metaphysical roots as the atomism of Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Bertrand Russell. These atomisms share the same foundation as the one developed by John Locke and David Hume. Until now, the full philosophic history, and metaphysical foundations of this theory of atomism have not...