Eleatic School of Philosophy-Urdu

Eleatic School of Philosophy-Urdu

ایلیاتی مکتب فلسفہ۔ قدیم یونانی قبل از سقراطی فلسفیوں کا تعارف

The Eleatic School is an early Pre-Socratic school of philosophy founded by Parmenides. He established it in the 5th Century B.C. at Elea, a Greek colony in southern Italy. Other important members of the school included Zeno of Elea, Melissus of Samos (born c. 470 B.C.) and (arguably) the earlier Xenophanes of Colophon (570 – 480 B.C.)۔ Eleatic School of Philosophy-Urdu

Historical Sources

The sources for the study of Eleaticism are both archaeological and literary. Archaeologists have ascertained that, at the time of Parmenides, Elea was a large town with many temples. There was also harbor and a girdle of walls several miles long. They have also unearthed a site presumed to be that of the medical school that Parmenides established and an inscription bearing Parmenides’ name.

One Being Reality

Xenophanes, in particular, criticized the belief in a pantheon of anthropomorphic gods which was then current. The Parmenides developed his ideas further, concluding that the reality of the world is “One Being”. An unchanging, timeless, indestructible whole, in opposition to the theories of the early physicalist philosophers. Later, he became an early exponent of the duality of appearance and reality. His work was highly influential on later Platonic metaphysics.

Founder of Modern Logic

History knows the Zeno of Elea for his paradoxes. But Aristotle knew him as the inventor of the dialectic (the exchange of propositions and counter-propositions to arrive at a conclusion), and Bertrand Russell credited him with having laid the foundations of modern Logic.

Criteria of Truth

The Eleatics rejected the epistemological validity of sense experience, preferring reason and logical standards of clarity and necessity to be the criteria of truth. Parmenides and Melissus generally built their arguments up from indubitably sound premises, while Zeno primarily attempted to destroy the arguments of others by showing their premises led to contradictions (“reductio ad absurdum”).