Eleatic
/ˌɛliˈætɪk/adjective
Belonging to the school of Parmenides and Zeno, which held that being is one and unchanging.
The Greek roots
Literally: “of Elea”
The story of the word
Elea was a small Greek town on the coast of Lucania, and the adjective belongs to the philosophers who lived there. What made them a school was a single claim: what is cannot come to be or perish, so change and motion are appearance rather than fact. Zeno's arrow and his tortoise are not puzzles for their own sake but defences of that claim. Plato took the position seriously enough to name a dialogue after Parmenides and to hand the argument of the Sophist to an unnamed visitor from Elea.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
In a sentence
The lecture set the Eleatic denial of change against Heraclitus and left the students to pick a side.
His objection was Eleatic in form, whatever the vocabulary.