The Secret of the Untrembling Heart

What is it about?

This paper offers a new interpretation of a contested verse in one of the earliest fragments of Greek philosophy, a lost poem about the true nature of being composed by Parmenides of Elea in the first half of the 5th century BCE. According to one of the quotes from the introduction to the poem, Parmenides speaks of the “untrembling heart of well-wheeled (eukukléos) truth” in order to convey the divinely inspired notion that reality is ultimately unified and unchanging. The rather odd and otherwise unattested Greek genitive eukukléos echoes another Greek word – kléos (“fame, glory”) – which would have suggested to Parmenides’ contemporaries the notion of an athlete’s undying glory: that which remains lustrous and unchanged after the athlete’s death. By highlighting this ambiguous “trick” in Parmenides poem, the paper suggests new means of appreciating the implications and beginnings of Greek philosophy in its proper cultural context.

Featured Image

Photo by Micael Navarro on Unsplash

Photo by Micael Navarro on Unsplash