Parmenides of Elea is generally considered the most profound and challenging of the Presocratic philosophers. How historians have understood his particular achievement has substantially determined how they portray the development of early Greek philosophy and science. John Palmer presents a new interpretation of Parmenides metaphysical poem, according to which he was the first philosopher to distinguish in a rigorous manner the fundamental modalities of necessarybeing, necessary non-being or impossibility, and non-necessary or contingent being. Palmer also reassesses the major Presocratics' relation to Parmenides in light of this modal interpretation, focusing particularly on Zeno, Melissus, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles. Parmenides emerges as as the founder ofmetaphysics as a domain of inquiry distinct from natural philosophy and theology. The book also presents in an appendix the Greek text of the fragments of Parmenides' poem with English translation and textual notes.

John Palmer is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Florida. He is the author of Plato's Reception of Parmenides (OUP, 1999) and of numerous articles on early Greek philosophy. He received his doctorate from Princeton University and was subsequently a research fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge. He has also been the receipient of an ACLS Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship and is a fellow of the National Humanities Center.