The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-1977
Abstract
In the main Section of this paper I examine a certain "characterizing" use of meden/ouden and medeis/oudeis in pre-Platonic non-philosophical contexts. The passages discussed and analyzed offer cle.ar and suggestive illustrations of the assimilation of "nothing" or "nobody" to "not-being." In the concluding Section I explore connections between that use and philosophical concepts,with particular reference to Plato's doctrine of degrees of reality.
The dialectic of being in classical Greek speculation focuses not on 'What there is' but on 'what it is' or 'how it is'; not on existence but on physis, constitution, or form.
Recommended Citation
Mourelatos, Alexander P.D., ""Nothing" as "Not-Being": Some Literary Contexts that Bear on Plato and on Parmenides" (1977). The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter. 230.
https://orb.binghamton.edu/sagp/230
Included in
Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Commons, Ancient Philosophy Commons, History of Philosophy Commons
Notes
Alexander P.D. Mourelatos presented “‘Nothing’ as ‘Not-Being’: Some Literary Context that Bear on Plato and on Parmenides” to the Society at its meeting with the American Philological Association in Atlanta in 1977. It was published as "Nothing as Not-Being: Some Literary Contexts that Bear on Plato" in Glen W. Bowersock, Walter Burkert, and Michael C. J. Putnam, edd., Arktouros: Hellenic Studies Presented to Bernard M. W. Knox, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1979, pp. 319-29, and reprinted in John P. Anton & Anthony Preus, eds.1983. Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, vol. 2. Albany, State University of New York Press, 59-69.
For information about the author see: . https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/classics/faculty/apdm58; apdm@austin.utexas.edu.