Zeno

After reading Zeno, I am sure of only one thing: I am not a metaphysics person. That being said, the following is an attempt to talk about Zeno without talking about metaphysics.

Zeno says that his many metaphysical arguments are purely efforts to defend Parmenides' argument that the what-is is one. In this spirit, he advances many different metaphysical arguments countering things like plurality and movement. Through them, he shows that there is only one thing in the universe, which runs counter to what we are able to perceive. In a roundabout way, Zeno is not only focused on metaphysics but also on epistemology. Just because we can perceive something doesn't mean we can know it - we must think logically about things in a metaphysical manner to be able to know things.

However, I'm not so sure that Zeno accomplishes what he sounds like he's trying to prove. Parmenides, when speaking about the what-is, was speaking about Truth. Parmenides is a monist and was saying that there is only one, objective Truth, NOT that there was only one single entity in the entire universe.

That being said, I don't think that Zeno misunderstand Parmenides and what he was trying to say (how could he, if they were so close?). I think that those who heard Parmenides' monism may have misunderstood him to be saying that there is only one actual thing in the whole universe (let's be honest, the whole "what-is" thing is just a tad confusing), and that Zeno was actually defending Parmenides' thesis by making counter-arguments to what common people thought Parmenides was saying. Thus, in order to be Parmenides' defender, he didn't  have to defend Parmenides ACTUAL thesis, he just had to counter what others interpreted that thesis to mean (which was also easier).

In doing this, Zeno challenges common perceptions of the physical world, and shows that there is much more than meets the eye (and the ear).