is, that these writings of mine were meant to protect the arguments of Parmenides against those who scoff at him and show the many ridiculous and contradictory results which they suppose to follow from the affirmation of the one. My answer is an address to the partisans of the many, whose attack I return with interest by retorting upon them that their hypothesis of the being of the many if carried out appears in a still more ridiculous light than the hypothesis of the being of the one.”
Zeno’s four arguments against motion were intended to exhibit the contradictions that result from supposing that there is such a thing as change, and thus to support the Parmenidean doctrine that reality is unchanging.[1] Unfortunately, we only know his arguments through Aristotle,[2] who stated them in order to refute them. Those philosophers in the present day who have had their doctrines stated by opponents will realise that a just or adequate presentation of Zeno’s position is hardly to be expected from Aristotle; but by some care in interpretation it seems possible to reconstruct the so-called “sophisms” which have been “refuted” by every tyro from that day to this.
Zeno’s arguments would seem to be “ad hominem”; that is to say, they seem to assume premisses granted by his opponents, and to show that, granting these premisses, it is possible to deduce consequences which his opponents must deny. In order to decide whether they are valid arguments or “sophisms,” it is necessary to guess at the tacit premisses, and to decide who was the “homo” at whom they were aimed. Some maintain that they were
